Slipping into a pair of shoes, I grab my coat and a pack of cigarettes and head to the front porch. The cold air momentarily takes my breath away, and for a brief moment, I consider going back inside where it’s nice and warm. Zipping my jacket and pulling up the collar against the frigid air, I cannot help but wonder what I’m doing here, in the middle of nowhere Wisconsin, in the company of Oscar-winning actors. Why did I agree to this in the first place? First of all, I wanted to tell my parents that an agent had signed me, as if that would somehow prove my worth to them as an actor—and as a son. But when I heard the desperate pleading in Jules’s voice as she stood on the chair in the lobby, begging for an actor, I recognized that desperation as my own when Stacey turned me down at the agency.
I rub my lips together before lighting up the cigarette and inhaling the first hit. That first drag normally brings an intense feeling of relaxation as the smoke fills my lungs; and, exhaling empties me of all tension. Usually, there’s a pleasant buzz—a momentary dizzy feeling—that accompanies each drag, but not this time. I look at the cigarette, and wonder why I hold on to this nasty habit. Why I even started. But whenever the smell of smoke envelops me, whenever I breathe in the scent of smoke that remains embedded in my clothing, I remember her.
I was seventeen when I first fell in love. It was the last time I fell, too. She was two years older but just as dark, just as broken. We both grew up in homes where we didn’t fit into the family portraits. We were the outcasts, the rejects, the creative types. Penny always believed in better days. She said that someday our acting careers would take off, and we’d show our families how much we didn’t need them to believe in us.
She was more intense than I was, more…passionate. She was also more damaged, more lost. She wanted more than anything in the world to prove that she wasn’t the negative space her family painted her to be. I wish she had been a little stronger, had a little more fight. There came a point when I realized that all of her passion, all of her bravado, was an act. She did not believe in herself. She saw herself as invisible. How her family portrayed her had become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I never thought I would be the one to land the agent, to actually give this acting thing a real run for its money, but look at me now, pretending to be someone’s boyfriend.
Penny would’ve laughed at this whole situation. Her laugh was contagious, spreading into my bones, infecting my soul. I guess I haven’t quit the cigarettes yet because they remind me of her, her kisses, her scent. Of her sadness.
I toss the cigarette into the snow, and hear it hiss as the snow melts around its glowing tip. I should let go of the whole smoking thing; yet, there’s this melancholy feeling that when I do, it means I’ll let go of Penny and lose all of my memories of her and of us.
And I’m not sure if I’m ready to walk away from it all just yet.
Arriving back in the bedroom, I gaze at the beautiful blonde sleeping in the bed and a part of me wants to forget Penny completely. A part of me wants to move on from my past and get to know Jules. She’s weird, emotionally scarred, and semi-annoying—in the best possible way—but I love those things about her. Love those things? Is that even possible? To love characteristics of a person you don’t even know? The gulf between the couch and the bed mocks me as I crawl into the bed, and wrap my legs and arms around her. What am I doing? And why wasn’t the cigarette enough? Why is it that, on this cold winter night, Jules Stone is the only thing in my mind that can bring me the warmth I’m searching for?
Gently kissing her ear, I whisper against it. “Sunshine…”
She shifts in her sleep, but not before relaxing against me, snuggling her curves even deeper into mine. I wonder if she knows I’m this close, if it would scare her. Does it scare me a little? I want her to wake up, roll over, and notice me. I want her to be all right with the fact that I’m this close.
I kiss her ear again, and she wiggles against the bed sheets and turns toward me. Her sleepy blue eyes slowly open; then open wide, startled with alarm and fear. “Ah!” she screams in shock, sitting up in bed and kneeing me in the gut.
“Ow!” I whine, grabbing my stomach, bending over in a small bit of pain.
“Oh my gosh!” She shakes her head back and forth, hands over her mouth, trying to dispel her dream state and waken more fully. “Kayden, I’m so sorry! But what the hell are you doing?! Do you sleep-walk?”
To be honest, I have no clue what the hell I was doing, why I chose to climb into bed with her. Jesus! I probably came off as a fucking psychopath just now. I don’t snuggle, I don’t hold people, and I don’t let people hold me. So why in the hell did I climb into that bed with Jules? And why in the hell did it feel so…right?
“I’m sorry, it’s just…never mind…I can’t even explain it.”
With her body turned toward me, all I want to do is kiss her over and over again. She shifts her eyes to the window, noting the darkness, and a yawn escapes her beautiful lips as she lies back down. “Kayden, it’s still sleep time. Go to sleep, Sexdorable.” she breathes out as she closes her eyes, and her smile widens. There’s so much I want to do to her, with her, right at this moment, but I can’t, and it pisses me off.
“Are you awake?” I mutter, sitting cross-legged on the bed next to her almost motionless body. It takes everything for me to not burst out laughing when I see her eyes reopen with a sassy look of attitude.