I MOVED BACK TO MY home in LA ever since Mason came back. Cameron and him both offered to let me stay, since, even though they didn't say the reason out loud, Klarise was gone. It wasn't really about her at that point though, okay, maybe a little bit, but it was mainly Mason himself. Or rather, his mother.
She was coming to their place more often than necessary, from what I had heard, and I didn't want to be there. In fact, I actually haven't even met Mary Qiu yet, not even crossed paths. And whenever Mason tried to get me over, I always had an excuse stirred up.
Cameron, who was once on my side about Mary, wasn't anymore. It turns out, in his quotes, "She's wonderful, Maeve, I can't believe I'm saying this, but I wish she were my mother."
I couldn't take it, I just didn't like something about this woman. She comes in here, taking everything I shared with Mason. And now, Cameron. I knew people like her, they come, but at some point, they always go. They leave, at one point when you're the happiest and you think they'll be there for you until the very end. Then they just...I didn't want to finish it. In some ways, I guess what I was describing felt pretty familiar.
I was trying to find a new place in LA. The home I was in was still the apartment me and Mason first rented when we came here, and the memories of all of it, I wanted it gone. Parts of Klarise were here, and though she only stayed for a bit in this place, I felt like everything had her on it. I couldn't handle that, couldn't stand the memory of feeling her, having her once being mine, knowing and thinking that she'd stay—no, I needed a new place.
So I called Mason to inform him about it, and he said he would look into the houses for me—since he managed a lot of things for me. But of course, at the near end of our call, he brought up Mary and without really thinking, I hung up on him. And then, frustrated with myself for doing that to him for the first time, somehow feeling heart crushed over it, I cried.
The next few days he kept calling, and I kept ignoring. I went to parties, show commercials, posed for movie and show posters, and then I slept with models or people I barely knew, drinking away. It wasn't the right way to deal with things of course, but somehow, ever since Mason came back with—
"With that stupid mother of his!" I screamed, the echo bouncing back making me dunk a big gulp of vodka back down my throat, the sting of it made it feel right.
"What?"
Her voice surprises me. I looked around, and sure enough, there was some girl half naked next to me. In bed. I blinked, looking back down at the vodka bottle in my hand, and then back at this blonde girl's perfect shaped face. I didn't recognize this room, or her, or have any idea of how I got here. I blinked at her some more. Where was I?
She smiles, perfect rows of teeth aligning with a spark, which would have been great for commercials. She pulls the blankets draped over us down and crosses a leg over me, sitting on top of me, I just stared at her, trying to recall how in the world I got here and who she was and how we met. She leaned down, hands cupping my cheeks, and kissed me, her tongue swirling everywhere in my mouth. It was all too overwhelming.
I jerked away in panic, and it startled her so much she fell off of me, then the bed. It sounded painful. "Ow, what the fuck?"
She was rubbing her head still and I was already throwing on a shirt and some jeans, still trying to gain some understanding at what had happened.
"Hey, where are you going?" She asked me when I'm looking around this place while searching for my phone. When I found it under the bedsheets, I swatted a tired hand at her. My head felt out of place, probably from the alcohol.
"I'm sorry, but I don't know who you are, or I have not a single idea how I got here." She crosses her arms over her black bra top, thick lips pouting. "But name a price, or whatever you want, a call or something to help you gain the social ladder, since you look like you might be a model. Just anything, so you'll keep quiet."
She just stares momentarily at me, frozen in time and not moving at all, like a gothic painting a little. Then she bursts out laughing and flops backward onto the bed. My head hurts more than ever, and her giggles drove me half mad.
"What is so funny?"
She just kept laughing, then, calming down finally, she sits up, one strap of her bra falling loosely from her shoulder, supposedly to make her look hot. I didn't think so though. "Jeez, Maeve Sun Lively is it? I'm not going to lie, but money and whatever you were thinking isn't what people want in exchange for a little bit of companionship all the time. Sometimes the companionship itself is the exchange, ever thought 'bout that?"
I frowned at her, head too dizzy and puzzled to understand. She laughs again, but this time it was a more soft kind of laughter. Reminded me of Klarise.
"You see, just because you're famous doesn't mean I'm going to go on bragging about that I've slept with you." She leans back more on the bed. "I have my own dignity."
Finally finding my mouth somehow, I stood a little taller. "This is a one time thing, just making sure."
She laughed again. "I know. I could see it in your eyes the moment you bought my drink, honey." I'm about to ask her about how I ended up buying her a drink when she reaches over for the vodka bottle still on the bed, uncapping it in one swift motion and chugs from it, the movement of her throat bopping up and down as she does.
My eyesight started to gain better control and clearer from the alcohol in my system fading, and I began to notice how she looked at least ten years older than me, if not, then five years give or take. There was something about her that sort of gleamed, her curly blonde strands of hair dug in with some pearl blonde that made her seem both mature but at the same time young. Like she's seen it all without trying, that feeling.
She finally stops the multi nonstop gulping, seeing that the bottle had only one fourth left of what it once held, she caps it back up and dunks it over her shoulder somewhere on the bed, then, drawing her eyes back to me. It was beginning to become clear she wasn't like the other girls I've slept with. "If you're not in the rush of leaving, you can come sit down here with me so we could talk." She pats the spot on the bed next to her.
I hesitate, feeling suddenly like a little girl.
"Alright, it's fine. Of course famous you won't have time for small-time folks like me." I opened my mouth to protest against that, because it wasn't true, when she put a finger to her lips and made that shhh sound, silencing me all at once. She was obviously way drunker than me, but it seemed to me then that she was somehow just more clear-headed than me. More mature. "Just kidding, life probably isn't so easy for you it seems. You know, I once tried to join the Hollywood elites too, trying to use this," she gestures at her body, which looked incredibly good, I had mistaken her for someone either my age or a few years younger than me before my eyesight cleared. "This body of mine. How many people have I slept with? Anyways, I gave up on that way of life. Too hard. Too restrained. I just wanted to eat what I wanted, fuck who I wanted, do whatever the hell I wanted. That's when I knew, this whatever fame thingy, wasn't going to go with my lifestyle."
I stared at her, looking at her plain blue eyes that just went with the blonde hair. And I thought maybe we might've even been together in a film or something if she hadn't given up, became friends. But this way was fine by me too, meeting her in this kind of mysterious gleam.
"I saw it in your eyes, kiddo," she was staring at some spot in the hotel but when she said this, she fixed her eyes on me again. "The eyes of someone who longed to be touched. Longed to be loved back as much as you loved them. You love someone pretty dearly. I see it, hon, because I used to have it too." She lays on the bed, her elbows plopping her up, and when her head falls backward, her front rib cage and collar bones become more visible. "Loved him. He loved me too, I think."
"What happened?" I found myself asking, which was, honestly, surprising.
She pushed her head back up, and when she looked at me, her eyes scared me. There was both a mix of anger and some other things in it. "Pneumonia. He didn't tell me, and I didn't bother to care since we were always...fighting. But I loved him. You had to know that, he made me feel like it was worth living in this trashy ass of a world. So when he was suddenly gone, I just." She stops, then, slowly, a smile curls up to her face, warming. "It seems like longing is somethin' that will never exactly leave, doesn't it?"
I nodded, so concentratedly fixed on how and why this woman made me care so much.
"Well," she stands, barely able to stand on her two feet, and comes over to me, resting her two hands on my shoulders with all firmness. "It was nice meeting you, Maeve. Probably won't see you again, like most people in this life." She laughed again, and I gazed into those sets of perfect teeth. "What am I saying? I'll probably see you on screen, it seems to me you'll become more famous than you already are."
The way she said that last part, she made it sound so... pitying.
"I guess I'll see you around it is," and I don't think she realizes she's particularly half naked, but she slowly walks me out of her place, which I find a lot of empty crushed beer cans, and as she led me to the door, I realized this was her home, a one room rent probably. We're in the hall right outside her door, other room doors with numbers on them looking exactly like hers. A guy from across the hall notices us and howls a whistle at her, she sticks her two middle fingers up in response. "Oh fuck off, Daniel!"
I laughed, feeling a little exposed since none of my face was covered as a protection from people recognizing me. This place looked poor, and my first instinct, which I hated, was to think that I couldn't be seen here.
She notices and grins, instead of feeling offended like what an average person would. Maybe because she was either so extremely drunk or high. "Hold the door open for a bit, will you?" I do as she says, watching her run back in, then coming back in seconds, with a purple scarf in her hands. She wraps it around my neck, and at last, uses it to cover up the bottom half of my face, right below my eyes. She stands back, examining her work like it was some sort of once in a lifetime art. "Perfectly Splendid it is. But I guess I also do have to give you some credit for havin' a flawless face."
I chuckled, my head feeling so much lighter.
"Okay, well, this draws us to the end of the line. Hope whoever it is you're loving," she grinned, a sort of teasing of a smile. "Definitely not that Cameron dude, yeah, I keep up with the tea. He doesn't look like it, not one moment."
For some reason, I didn't feel scared when she just exposed me like that. It felt more like relief. I smiled.
"But anyhow, hope whoever it is you're loving, you better love the fuck out of them. You hear me?" She points two hands at me, index fingers and thumbs sticking out, looking like imaginary guns. And until I finally nodded in response, she lowered her almost accusing looking hands. "Guess I'll see 'ya around then."
I walked the hallways she lived in, hearing the drunk shouts of her neighbors that brought shivers to my spine. I've never exactly been in this kind of neighborhood, and it really made me wonder how I ended up buying her a drink. But I was glad I did.
I was at the bottom of the staircase when I realized I didn't even know her name.
THE AIR WAS SHIVERING, a chill deep down to the bones. A black cat sprawled out in front of me out of nowhere, almost causing me to trip. The purple scarf's material made my face itchy, but I was too scared to take it off. But most of all, what I didn't expect was to hear my name being called out when I exited this apartment building.
I froze, already thinking about all the possible headlines this would make. And then the next surprising thought that striked me was those last few things the woman had said. It made me think about Klarise, and I didn't want to think about her because she broke me. I thought she deserved to burn for what she did to me, maybe deep under the surface though, I mostly blamed myself for her leaving.
But it was no paparazzi who called my name when I let my eyes wander to the owner of this voice. It was Mason. I must've not been as sober as I thought then, since I couldn't even recognize his voice in which I usually could in the first sound.
He stood with an umbrella held over his head, not in a suit like how he had always been since he came back, but a loose looking blazer with a Captain American t-shirt underneath and it reminded me of my best friend. Somehow it was raining, and he had everything ready, a car, an umbrella. Just him somehow always finding me. It suddenly rained harder, and my hair started to dot wet while the sound of the hard splattering drops of water started to become aggressive and painful. I wanted to run away, but under the rain, there was nowhere to go than to him.
"You smell like alcohol," is the first thing he says when I walk over to him. He takes out a towel from behind him as he starts the car, handing it to me.
"Yeah, because I drank alcohol, duh?" His face hardened when I said that, clearly not something to strike him as funny.
The purple scarf being taken off felt like taking off a mask. We drove in silence and as more buildings passed by, one by one turning beautiful again, I felt too cold. Maybe it was the water, my wet clothes and hair, my skin sticking to each other in an uncomfortable way. Or maybe it was just the thought of the conversation we will have to have about his mother.
"I don't like this. I don't like how you're treating yourself one bit." He stops at a red light, the windshield wiper ticking and ticking it might as well have been the second hand on a clock. He turned his head at me, and his jaw looked much more angular than I remember it being, his whole face looking so much more mature. It was hard to remember there was a time he needed me, a time he was so small and needed me to take him in and give him a job. "Why can't you just stop it? Stop harming yourself and putting whatever you are in you." His grip on the wheel was so tight his veins stuck out.
Instead of really answering him or telling him that I wasn't doing drugs or any of that, I almost confidently gazed my usual calm gaze back at him. But I felt so broken, and the moment I met my eyes with his, my face started to shatter. "You don't need me anymore."
"What——" a honk from another car behind us interrupts him, we must've been stuck at one spot for a while when the light already turned green. He drives, glancing at me in between throughout it. Finally, when we come to another red light, he washes his big brown eyes over me stably. "That is not true. Why would you even say that?"
The light thankfully turns green again, and he starts to drive. Although it was obvious he was waiting. My fingers go to my wet strands of hair, darkish brown and black now from the water. I curl it between my fingers. "You have her." And oh god, I sounded so childish, but that was what I said.
I closed my eyes shut, willing his laughter to come, expecting it, waiting for him to laugh his head off at me. My eyes were shut so tightly that I was starting to see little lines of lights.
I feel the car stop, then the engine turning off. And slowly, as I opened my eyes, Mason was facing me, his hand resting on top of my hand that had been fidgeting with my hair. "That doesn't mean I don't need you anymore. Maeve, do you realize how much you have helped me?"
My lips twerk upward the tiniest bit. "I think you've helped me more."
He shakes his head. "Maybe, but with you being in my life, you motivate me and bring me to my goals in so so many ways." My hand lets go of my hair and our fingers interlace together, his hand that used to be around my size now seeming to be so much bigger. "And I wanted to apologize."
I raise my eyebrows.
"I think I shouldn't have forced it on you. My mother and everything. I didn't really have the right to do that. You should meet her in your own time, when you're ready. Not me bugging you everyday about it, am I right?" His strict looking face he has gotten over the years never looks boyish until the moment he smiles, in every angelic way, carves into a blessing of a smile.
I rest my head on his shoulder, looking out at the window in front of us, parked somewhere on the side of a street. The rain has grown into a small drizzle. "I was just being a paranoid bitch anyways. If you'll forgive me for being that, I will meet her. Actually, even if you don't forgive me, I will meet her. I think I owe it to you."
In my side view, I feel his smile growing wider. "I will always forgive you."
We sit there together, watching the drizzle slowly fade to nothing but peace. I liked it, and everything, Klarise, the woman, shows and businesses I needed to attend to, without any effort, they all disappeared. There was only the present to think about. Only me and Mason, just like how it all started.
He brings our interlaced fingers to his mouth and places his lips gently on top. When he says what he says, it was a chant of promises stitched up into the very few words:
"You're my best friend. And I am yours."