Vicious Circles (13 page)

I dropped everything I had in my hands right beside the front door and scanned the area. I didn’t see anything out of place. I wandered through the apartment and found nothing out of the ordinary. I was curious so I walked back to the living room to grab the cordless phone. I would call him if I had to. I didn’t have to though. I saw exactly what he had done; it hung in the empty spot on my wall that had been reserved. The bleeding girl stared at me with her big, bleeding eyes. He’d found my painting; the painting that had become such a symbol of myself the moment I saw her. There was another of my post it’s clinging to the frame of my painting and I moved as close as I could despite the couch, to read it.
 

I love you.
 

Three little words were scrawled out in Mason’s almost illegible handwriting. I didn’t gasp or cry or react in any certain way. Instead I backed away and sat on the coffee table, still staring at the purple piece of paper. He loved me. In so many ways I knew he did and in so many ways I knew I loved him. It was shocking to see it in writing. My brain began to form connections that I would find out later were twisted but I didn’t know any better. I had essentially bettered myself and, since I’d been taking the medication, I felt controlled. It didn’t seem as if the world would fall away from me at any minute. All that on top of Mason telling me he loved me lead me to believe Percocet was my very best friend and we should never part.
 

The next thing I did surprised me the most. I pulled my cell phone from the side pocket on my bag and sent Mason a text message.
 

I love you too.
 

A warm, nervous feeling began in my toes and worked its way up. There was a smile on my face but I was apprehensive of what our admissions meant. There was no denying that we were dating. What would we tell the media? Would we even acknowledge our relationship?
 
 

My phone chirped in my hand. Mason replied.
 

Plug in the night light. Someone’s getting lucky tonight.
 

I didn’t bother to reply. All I could do was laugh.
 

Mason was still out practicing for his first tour with his band when I started dinner. I found that cooking was something I enjoyed and it seemed to calm my nerves. Without Lynn or Mason around, I got bored. At the rate I was going, I would eat everything in my cabinet. I stared at my painting while eating my dinner on the coffee table. When Mason showed up, I was already on dessert.
 

“Hey you,” he swept in and kissed me on the cheek before shedding his jacket and shirt. “Did you make brownies?”
 

I nodded and gestured toward the pan on the counter. “All I had was the mix with walnuts and I hate walnuts so I’ve been picking them out.”
 

He slid his left hand under my chin and back into my hair. Slowly he cocked his head to the right and moved in to press his lips softly to mine. “You taste like chocolate; it’s nice.”
 

“You taste like beer and cigarettes.”
 

“I’ve been with the guys. We drank beer and smoked cigarettes.” He laughed and opened the fridge to grab a bottle of water. “You’ll never guess who I saw hanging out by the gas station down the street.”
 

“No!” I said, already suspecting who it was. “Jill?”
 

Mason nodded. “I don’t know if she saw me but I saw her. She was sitting against the side of the building.”
 

I looked toward the floor and I actually felt guilty. Even though that bitch deserved what she got I couldn’t help but remember how it felt to have nowhere to go. The feelings were still alive inside me and it was hard to hate her in that moment.
 

“Thank you for the painting. How did you find it?”
 

He watched me as if he was trying to decide if he really wanted to let me change the subject or not.
 “I tracked it down. It wasn’t that hard.” His cheeks blushed pink.
 

I grabbed his hand and pulled him in for a hug. “It’s the best gift I’ve ever been given.”
 

“So far,” he said with a smirk. “I got a call about the Open Skies premiere today. I want you to go with me; as my date.”
 

It didn’t sound like it, but going out together like that was a huge step for us. Mason and I were hermits. We liked to lock ourselves away in a room and pretend there was no one else. Bringing in the media and others was scary as shit. Hopefully he had thought about how that would affect us beforehand. Either way, it was hard to say no to him.
 

“Of course I will. I get to buy my own dress though; no complaints.”
 

“As long as I’m taking it off afterwards, I don’t care who buys the thing.”
 

“Are you always planning out our sex life in advance?” I joked with a slight poke to his bare chest.
 

He lifted me to the counter and moved so he stood between my legs. “I’m not planning anything. There’s less chance for disappointment that way.”
 

Truer words were never spoken.

Chapter 13

October 2009

For the seventh time, I stood in front of the mirror and admired my appearance. I was ten minutes late to my lunch date with Lynn but I just couldn’t make myself leave the apartment without one more look. Mason had made an offhand comment the night before about how thin I looked and I could tell by his facial expressions that he wasn’t happy about it.
 

Of course, I didn’t quite see it and I wasn’t caught up in my weight to begin with. I was eating less because I was busy all of a sudden. My minor supporting role ended and led to a larger role in another movie that I’d been working on for at least a week. The one thing I was supposed to leave behind refused to separate from me. I was still carrying around Percocet but it wasn’t in the rusty brown prescription bottle anymore. It was packed away neatly in a small change purse in my bag where I hoped Mason would never find the damn thing. He would have been pissed to know I’d lied about quitting.
 

“Sorry, sorry…” I apologized to Lynn as I took a seat at our usual table. “I was checking myself out in the mirror. Mason says I’m too thin.”
 

Lynn nodded in agreement with Mason’s thoughts. “You should have a huge lunch and dessert. You’re looking sick.”
 

“I’ve just been so busy. Again, sorry I’m late.”
 

“So,” Lynn started with a devious grin, “I saw the latest on Google last night.”
 

Apparently, Mason and I had been found out. The cameras didn’t follow us but occasionally we were in the wrong place at the wrong time; and so began my love/hate relationship with the media. For some reason, it didn’t dawn on me that millions of people had seen my face and would know me anyway. I still felt relatively unknown in La
La Land. That was until the paparazzi.
 

“Why were you
Googling me Lynn? That’s beside the point…Mason thought it was funny but really, who wants to see that stuff? It’s not like we were making out or something. We were holding hands for Christs sake.”
 

“Do you ever wonder if your mother will see you on television and want to reconcile?” Lynn had recently learned about my past. She was far more supportive than I thought she would be.
 

“It doesn’t matter. I won’t have shit to do with her. She had her chance. Hey…have you found a dress for the premiere yet?”
 

The waiter came and we placed our order. Lynn and I talked about the dress she’d chosen for the red carpet and I whined over my inability to find one. I ate an unreasonably large lunch for Mason’s piece of mind and I even sent him a photo of it on my phone. The Percocet seemed to be dulled by my full stomach but it still had that calming, relaxing effect.
 

“When does Mason leave for the tour?” Lynn asked as we walked to the valet.
 

I sighed. I wasn’t happy about living without him for months.
“The end of December. Of course, I can’t go because I’ve got those back to back movies. I may be bald and violent when he gets back.”
 

“It will be good for you two to spend some time apart. You’re always together. I swear it’s like you two are living together.” Lynn would never hold back anything from me. She always told me the absolute truth as she saw it.
 

“First of all, we don’t live together. He sleeps at his place now and then. Besides, he’s been practicing with the other guys for weeks now. I barely see him.” So it wasn’t totally true but it
felt
like I barely saw him.
 

Lynn laughed as the valet brought her car around. “You two are cute, I can’t deny that. He also loves you Fallyn...” She hugged me.
 

“I know. Call me later.” I waved and hopped into my own car that had pulled up right after hers.
I drove through Hollywood to pick Mason up and we ran through the drive thru at In and Out because he claimed to be wasting away.  
 

“The guys want to meet you,” he told me in between bites of his burger. “They think you hate them.” He laughed but I was less amused.
 

“What? Why would they think that? I hope you told them I don’t.” I was panicking a little but I seemed to do that whenever he brought up his close friends.
 

“Calm down, I told them you just needed some time. You know I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do.” He crumpled his burger wrapper and tossed it in the bag.
 

I still felt bad. “I’ll meet them, Mason. I’ve been stupid about the whole thing anyway.”
 

His hand found mine on the gear shift. “Whatever you want baby.”
 

There hadn’t been a moment since I’d first
laid eyes on Mason Jennings that he didn’t give me exactly what I wanted and needed. Even months ago when Jill was in the picture and I was sure I hated the guy, he was intriguing to me. I just didn’t realize it. He was my first love.
 

“Can I tell you something?” I asked quietly while we sat at a traffic light in West Hollywood.
 

“You know you can.” He didn’t bother to look over at me. Instead he kept his gaze forward.
 

“Those scars, on my left side…some asshole my mother brought into the house did that to me. I was almost eighteen and London hadn’t been gone long.”
 

That got his full attention. I felt his hand tighten its grip on mine, urging me silently to go on.
 

“She was always blasted and hardly ever knew what was going on around her. This guy was confident he was going to have his way with me but I would have rather died. He came at me one night while I was sleeping and my mother was high on whatever it was she was taking. I broke a beer bottle and tried to stab him.” The words sounded odd coming out of my mouth. I felt like I was reciting lines from one of the television shows I’d worked on.
 

“That bastard cut you, right?”
 

I nodded. Mason let his head fall back on the headrest. He always reacted the same way when we talked about my life before him. He didn’t offer much of his opinion because it wouldn’t change anything and we both knew it. Mason was more of a silent support system which was okay with me. The less I talked about my past, the less the rip in my soul ached. Oddly enough, instead of thinking of my sister like I usually did, I thought about the medication tucked away in my bag and how badly I wanted to take a couple.