He started, sending the bottles clattering off his lap. “Shit!”
I stuck a foot out to stop the bottle nearest me and bent to help as he picked them up.
“Sorry,” he said. He sounded tired. He looked tired too from what little I could see. Like he had fallen asleep.
“It’s fine. What are you doing out here?”
“I, uh,” he looked around. “I guess I just got bored and was going to see what you thought of the walls.” He got to his feet, brushing off his dark jeans.
“The walls,” I repeated. I had spent every second of the day thinking of him alone in my house supposedly working on stripping the wallpaper. However, it wouldn’t hurt to at least pretend he wasn’t the first thing on my mind. And having him right here when I got home did strange little jiggy things low in my belly.
“Right. Well, let me have a look.” I stepped past him, breathing in his showered scent surreptitiously. Something fresh and outdoorsy I couldn’t quite put my finger on. My light-headed reaction to the scent was annoying.
I walked in the back door ahead of him, turned on the lights, and put my purse down on the counter.
“You want a beer?” he asked. “I found some at the beach house. They’re cold.”
I turned and looked at him. He was a little flushed from sleep, making his green eyes all the more startling. He must have been out there a while. “A beer?”
He nodded, putting the box on the counter.
“Are you ok?” I asked him, even though I was the one who kept repeating words back to him.
“Yeah, I’m good.” He ran both hands through his hair leaving it standing up. How did he do that? “I just, I can’t be with myself at the moment.”
I turned to the counter and grabbed two bottles, unsure of what he meant. I handed him one and twisted my cap off.
We raised our bottles and clinked necks.
He smiled and took a sip.
I wondered if, in his Hollywood life, Jack Eversea had ever had to really just enjoy his own company. I didn’t want to become his therapist, but if we were going to have this sort of strange trade-for-services friendship, I guessed I could be a shoulder to lean on. Of course, that would make me the sad lovelorn ‘good friend’ at the end of this, but I could hardly see it ending any differently at this point. I might as well discover a little more about Jack in the process.
“I’m guessing you don’t have to be on your own a lot?” I tried.
“I’m sure that’s pretty obvious, but what no one tells you is how isolating it can be to be surrounded with people all the time.” He took another sip. “I know that sounds weird, but it’s like, when you are surrounded by things and people and requirements all day long, you stop thinking for yourself. You become automated. Just doing what’s required, when it’s required. And you forget who you are inside all that and how you feel and what you like to do and how you would react.”
He leaned back against the counter, crossing his feet at the ankles. “And then, suddenly, when you get away from it for just a moment, it’s like you are in this big drowning vacuum of nothingness. There’s no you. There’s no one telling you how to be you or what to do, it’s just you, except there’s no you anymore.”
I wasn’t sure what he wanted me to say. “So you don’t trust who you are inside anymore?” I surmised.
“Exactly,” he said.
I felt stupidly pleased I’d said the right thing.
He went on, “You can’t see what you want, what you feel, whether you’re any good at what you are doing. You suddenly feel like you need the fame, the attention, because it’s the only thing that’s telling you that you are any good. But then you wonder, it’s all just bullshit anyway, right? It’s not you and your talent, it’s your luck. It’s the fans and their whims. It’s the money on the deals, the franchise. They spin the story, create your life, and if they take it away then you’re nothing. You don’t exist.”
Whoa.
He stalked across the room and grabbed a kitchen chair, straddling it backward. His forearms rested over the top, the bottle dangling from his fingertips. Forearms were a really big turn on for me, apparently.
I hadn’t moved while he talked. In all honesty, I had no response. I could see what he was saying. The emptiness was written all over his face, the void dark in his eyes. I saw parts of him in our few brief encounters, like now, that were incongruous with famous Jack. I wondered for a moment if he had any vices he used to deal with that void and emptiness he could feel inside him.
“God, listen to me. Don’t I sound like the pathetic schmuck? Spoiled movie-star complaining about his life, to you, a waitress, who’s still waiting around for her life to start.”
I flinched slightly, taken aback.
He didn’t notice.
“Well, then fuck you, Jack.”