My earlier suspicions about Krystal having a waitressing job were confirmed. She was doing porn for a living. No wonder she never asked me to help her get representation from an agent. What kind of aspiring actress would have a roommate who worked for a Hollywood agent, and never once float the possibility of using that connection to get her foot in the door?
It wasn’t my place to judge her, but I was sure I wouldn’t be able to look at her the same way for a while.
I jolted upright off the couch, realizing that if she walked in, she’d find me looking at the DVD. I didn’t want her to know, didn’t want that kind of awkwardness. I grabbed the remote and ran the DVD back to the point where I thought she had paused it before. I turned off the TV and went to my room to try to get some sleep.
But it wouldn’t happen. My mind was racing. I had to tell someone. I couldn’t tell Grace. For one thing, it was almost 2 a.m. back in Ohio. Plus, I couldn’t be so sure that she wouldn’t freak out, blurt it out to my parents, and then I’d have to deal with a ration of shit about living in Hollywood with someone who does porn. No doubt my parents would project that on me and think I’d gone down a one-way street to Hell.
I called Max, who answered almost immediately. “Everything okay?”
“Fine. Why?”
“Just making sure you didn’t have any unwanted visitors.”
I sighed. “Let’s not bring him up anymore. I told you, he’s back in Ohio.”
“He better stay there.”
“I have something pretty wild to tell you.”
When I finished telling Max about the DVD, he said, “Typical.”
“Huh?”
“It happens to a lot of girls who come here looking for stardom. They end up in low-budget porn. I’ve seen it happen a thousand times.”
I said, “Really?”
“Don’t get any ideas.”
I laughed. “Uh, you don’t have to worry about that. I’d never do that. Besides, I’m having the best sex of my life right now.”
“Right now? Who’s there?”
“Shut up, you know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I do. And anyway, you’re not breathless like you usually are when you’re doing it.” He chuckled, and then there was silence, which wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear. I had hoped he would agree and tell me that he was having the best sex of his life, too. But he didn’t say it.
It was a good thing that I didn’t confess to the other feeling I had developed. I was falling in love with him.
TEN
I’m standing with my back to the wall, and he has me trapped. He’s backlit, and all I can see is his silhouette, standing about two feet in front of me. I have no escape. My body shakes with fear. Adrenaline is coursing through my veins. I could try to run, but I know he’d catch me. I see the silhouette’s right shoulder dip and pull back. Then the more frightening thing I’d ever seen: he has made a fist and he’s cocking his arm back for the punch, level with my face.
I awoke from the dream in a cold sweat. I was drenched, and so were the sheets. I was shaking. Scared. My heart was racing. My mouth felt as dry as cotton.
It was the same dream I’d had about Chris many times. It never varied. It was always one-hundred percent factual, almost not like a dream at all, but a memory burned into my subconscious emerging every once in a while to haunt me.
But this time there was a difference. Not in the setting. Not in the lighting. Not in the order of events. This time, the person raising his fist was Max.
What the fuck did that mean?
The clock read 3:38 am. There is no more lonely place than the middle of the night when you’re awake, by yourself and scared, sad or both.
I got out of the bed, ripped the sheets off and tossed them to the floor. At some point I had pushed the comforter away, so it had escaped the sweat. I pulled the t-shirt over my head, slipped out of my panties, tossed them in the hamper and went to the bathroom where I toweled off my damp body. I got back on the bed—on the harshly uncomfortable bare mattress—and covered myself with the comforter as I shivered.
Somehow I managed to fall back asleep after about thirty minutes of being afraid to let myself fall into that dream again.
Why Max? Why had my brain allowed that to happen?
6:45 am, the alarm woke me. Thank God I hadn’t had a continuation of that terrifying dream. It still lingered, though, and I thought about it way too much as I showered and prepared for the day.
By the time I left my room and made my way to the kitchen to get some juice and fruit, Krystal was just coming in the door. She looked awful. Her hair was ragged. Her skin was an ashy pale color. She had bags under her eyes. She looked like she had aged fifteen years.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
She yawned and said, “Fine, yeah, why?”
“Just making sure.” I could barely even look at her. Not just because of her appearance but also because her porn video was running on a loop in my mind.
On the way into work, I didn’t play any music. I spent the entire time trying to process why I might have had that awful dream about Max.
He had never done anything to make me feel the least bit threatened.
Physically, anyway….
Maybe the violence in the dream was a manifestation of my being afraid of him hurting me in some other way. The entire time we had been seeing each other, I’d been having those lingering thoughts that I wasn’t cut out to be with someone like Max.
Later, at lunch, we talked on the phone but I didn’t dare tell him about the dream. It would have opened up all kinds of possibilities for conflict, and I didn’t want to do that. After all, I’d pretty much figured out the source of the dream, so why burden him with an issue I needed to get over myself?
Not to mention our conversation was going so well. He told me he had a great time in NYC and I told him it was amazing.
“But,” I said, “maybe this weekend we keep our feet on the ground.”
“Does that rule out me carrying you to my bed?”
“I’d never rule that out. You know that.”
“Okay, so we stay in town. But I want you to myself all weekend. No going out. I’ll cook, we’ll talk, watch movies…” His voice trailed off.
“And?”
“And what?”
“That’s it?” I said playfully, and I knew he could probably hear the smile in my voice.
“Some things go without saying,” he replied.
I didn’t say anything. Just thinking about what we’d done in that hotel room on Saturday night, and Max’s comment about me waiting to see what comes next…well, it just had me vocally paralyzed.