A Beautiful Star (Beautiful Series, Book 5) (8 page)

“Sounds perfect.”

“Ok. See you then.”

Then I hang up the phone and look into the empty box, moving my tongue around my mouth as I wish there was another cake inside to get that sweet taste back that I had before Brad brought up the subject of Jonathan. As I place the package in my waste paper basket, I pull up the search engine on my computer and search for the popular celebrity news sites, and sure enough, there is an image of Jonathan and I having brunch together at the Hyatt yesterday.

Rolling my eyes, I scan the caption below it, wondering what lame story they’ve come up with this time, but instead of becoming annoyed, I end up smiling when I read,
Official sources comment that no relationship exists between Masters and Haegan, insisting they are only friends.
I don’t know that anyone will actually believe the official comment, but at least he’s putting it out there–that’s one more tick in the very short pro column for Jonathan.

So, what was inside the box?

I find the text message from Jonathan waiting for me on my phone when I check it after work. I’d spent the entire day getting the boy band article finished since I’d lost so much time the day before at the hands of Mr Tinseltown on the receiving end of my next text.

Me:
a severed thumb

Jonathan:
Ouch. Just wait. Tomorrow it will be an ear.

Smiling, I tuck my phone into my bag then head home to my parent’s house to collect my things and head back to my place. Besides the secret photos that are being taken whenever I go out, I haven’t actually noticed any paparazzi hanging around these days, so I’m feeling a lot safer about being there on my own.

“Your father won’t be here for dinner again,” my mum tells me after I’ve walked in the front door. “So if you’d like, we can get some take away and eat it at your place just to make sure everything is fine there. I’m still a little worried about you and those awful pappies,” she states.

“Paps,” I correct with a laugh. “Not pappies.”

“Oh, whatever,” she says with a wave of her hand. “I can’t be hip all the time.”

“I’ll go pack my clothes up and then we can get going. You want to order so we can pick up on the way through?”

“Chinese? Indian? Thai?”

“Thai.”

I move around my childhood bedroom and collect my things, always loving that this room is here waiting for me whenever I need it. I’ve heard from most of my friends that the moment they moved out of home, their parents turned their room into a study or a guest bedroom or home gym. The idea of that makes me sad.

When I’m done, we get into my Astra and drive over to my place where my dad will pick my mother up and double check that my house is safe on his way home from work.

“You really should get a housemate you know,” my mother advises, as we unpack the takeaway containers from their plastic bag on my new dining setting. Another thing I forgot to thank Jonathan for. A pang of guilt hits me. Despite his faults, he has gone above and beyond what was necessary after Marcus destroyed my house.

As if reading my mind, my mother speaks. “Have you heard anything from Lisa yet?”

Moving into the kitchen, I take down two wine glasses and grab a bottle of white from the fridge. “No. Not a thing.”

“Would she go back to her family do you think?” she asks, accepting the glass and taking a sip after I hand it to her.

“I don’t think so.” I take a seat next to her and slide my wooden chopsticks out of their paper packet. “She never spoke about any family, and from what I know about her now, they’re all estranged.”

“Well, she has to be somewhere… I’m just really disappointed. She seemed like a really nice girl.”

I reach for the bag with the thin spring rolls inside it and slide one out, biting into the pastry with a crunch, thinking as I chew. “She’ll make contact when she’s ready, I suppose.”

We eat in silence for a while before my mother decides it’s time to pump me for information again.

“So tell me about this chef of yours. I saw the picture of you smooching outside that restaurant and he looks a bit of all right to me. Not a fan of those tattoos, but I understand they’re pretty popular these days because of all those Ink shows. Maybe you could call him to come and stay with you for a little while?”

“No mum. Stop trying to get me in bed with the guy. He’s nice though. We’re going out again in a few weeks.”

“A few weeks? Why so far away?”

“He’s got some work thing he has to go to overseas, which I don’t mind. I travel for work at times too. So if he has a schedule that’s up and down, he’ll understand the demands of my job.”

“Fair enough. And what about this other man you’ve been spotted in the papers with. The actor. What about him? What’s happening there?”

“Jonathan Masters. Well, that is…I don’t know what that is. I had coffee with him, and if he wasn’t so famous, and known for using his fame to bed women, then I might be interested. But…”

“But you’ve been down that road before. Is that why you were so down on the idea of love last night? Because you let yourself care for that musician fellow?”

“Marcus Bailey. Yeah. I suppose. But you remember how that was mum. I got caught up in the whole thing and I believed him when he said I was special. It was so stupid.”

“You were a twenty year old girl then. You were barely out of university and you got a little star struck. I don’t think you should let that colour your judgement of other people.”

“He’s been engaged twice though, mum. And both times he was unfaithful. I don’t think he’s capable of anything more than a hook up and I’m not that girl mum. I can’t do that kind of thing. I think we learnt that when I broke down over a fucking rock star.”

“OK, so let’s break this down. You have two men in your life and both seem quite interested. One is
nice
and can obviously cook, and the other sets your heart aflutter and leaves you all angsty and twisted up inside.”

“I never said any of that,” I argue.

“Sweetheart, you didn’t have to. I’m your mother–I can read you like a book. You have feelings for him and you just don’t want to admit it.”

“What good does having feelings for a man who will ultimately just break my heart do? I have to be logical here. Brad is the best choice for me.” 

“Love isn’t logical, Sandra,” she laughs. “If love was logical, I would have married a man called Peter Bartel. But instead, I chose a crazy engineer who loves me fiercely but is so obsessed with his work that I barely see him. But you know what? It’s worth it. For the moments we have. It’s worth it.”

I look down, poking at my food with the chopsticks. “I’ve told you before, mum. What you and dad have is different.”

“Is it?”

“Yes. It is,” I insist.

Tilting her head to the side slightly, she takes a sip of her wine. “I think you’ll find that it’s not so different at all.”

***

Come outside, Red. Your chariot awaits.

The text pops up on my phone the next morning.

Me:
I’m not even ready. I’ll catch the train.

Jonathan:
I’ll wait.

Getting out of bed, I tell myself to take my time, to make him wait because it’s kind of stalkerish that he’s here anyway. Maybe if I take too long, he’ll leave…

He doesn’t. And trying to get ready slow doesn’t work either. I’m ready and out the door a good ten minutes before I usually am.

“Are you watching my house?” I ask, leaning through the window of his white Mercedes sedan to talk to him.

“There’s a possibility that I hired security to keep an eye on your house while you were gone. And it’s likely that said security saw your car in the driveway and let me know about it.”

“So you’re paying someone else to stalk me? That’s just lazy.”

He shrugs. “I’ve got too much money for my own good.”  Flashing me that million-dollar smile of his, he leans across the car and pushes the door open for me. “Get in. I’m driving you to work.”

“Don’t you have a job of your own to do or something?” I ask, as I slide into the plush leather seat and buckle myself in.

“I’m in between roles right now,” he explains as he does a U-turn in front of my house and aims his car toward the city. “So, really, I’m all yours.”

“That’s very comforting,” I deadpan. 

“Isn’t it?” he grins, teasing me and loving every moment of it.

"You know, being woken up to a text from you is becoming quite a common occurrence." I say after a while.

"What can I say? I think about you a lot, and when I think about you, I want to talk to you. But, I settle for texting because I don't want to be a huge pain in your arse." He explains.

"You
are
a huge pain in my arse," I state flipping down the sun visor to check my appearance in the tiny mirror.

"Well, just imagine what a pain it would be if I called you every time I thought about you instead holding back and only texting when I really have to. So really, I'm doing you a favour here."

I run my fingers under my eyes making sure my make-up is blended properly as I smile at his answer.

"You look fine. Relax," he says, glancing at me quickly.

"I am relaxed," I counter. "I was just checking I got my make-up on properly because someone rushed me this morning."

He glances at me again. "I would have waited for you all day if I had to," he states letting a beat of time pass before changing the subject. "So, what was really in that box?"

"Ah, now I get why you showed up this morning."

"What? Friends are allowed to be interested in the things other friends get off their boyfriends."

"He's not my boyfriend. We’re just seeing each other. And you and I don't quite fit in the friend category yet."

"Really? Well, this is awkward…" He pulls down his bottom lip in this crooked way that makes me laugh at his silliness.

"You're incorrigible. But if you must know, the box contained a cupcake."

"A cupcake," he repeats. "And did you like the cupcake?"

"I did," I state.

"So that's what the girls go for these days, cupcakes?"

"Well, it worked well for me."

"Cupcakes and not flowers?"

"Flowers work too."

"Just not when they’re from me?"

"Well, it is a little odd getting flowers from your friends when you aren't sick, and it isn’t your birthday."

"I thought we weren’t friends.”

“I don't know what we are, Jonathan. Let's not try too hard, or put a label on it. I’m obviously not going to get rid of you. So, let's just… be two people, hanging out, ignoring all the shit of the world without pushing for some kind of relationship–friendship or otherwise. Do you think you can do that?" I ask, as he turns the corner and double parks to let me out in front of my work.

"Yeah, I can do that," he says as I open the door to quickly get out so he doesn't get a parking ticket. “I’ll see you at lunch.”

A driver hits the horn behind us, and I hold up one finger to say we won’t be long as I lean back in. “What?”

“I’ll be in the city all day. So I’ll meet you for lunch. It’s what friends do, Red. Get used to it.” He reaches across the car and gives me a wink as he pulls the door shut and takes off, leaving me a little dumbfounded as I step back from street to let the traffic go past.

The man from the car behind flips me off and yells at me to get off the fucking road. It snaps me out of the weirdness that Jonathan seems to evoke and I return the sentiment before heading into my office building to start work and try to ignore the clock as time creeps toward lunch.

This is where, if we were in a movie, there’d be a musical montage showing the growth of Jonathan’s and my friendship. It’s strange for me to even think of him as a friend now, and somehow in my mind, I’ve separated him from that movie star persona that we see in the media, and I see him for the man he is. Jonathan. My friend.

It takes a month for me to relax to the point where I’m comfortable with him, and in that time he’s become my regular chauffer and companion, picking me up and bringing me home, having lunch or dinner with me. We see a movie. We walk around the city and he takes me to the Sunday Markets at The Rocks, where we eat corn on the cob, smothered in butter, and I buy a beautiful silk cord bracelet, and instead of trying to pay for it, he lets me pick and choose, and pay for what I want – which I really like, because it’s what a friend would do.

There is something wonderful about being around Jonathan now. Once he quit trying to get me to date him and relaxed into just being friends, we could be around each other without any strange feelings between us. And while there have been a number of photos of us together in the tabloids, he’s been quite adamant that we’re just friends in all of his interviews, which I’ve appreciated, because it means that Brad understands that too, and our relationship is growing as well as he calls and texts and we get to know each other better by phone.

I suppose that would be in a montage too. The music would play. I'm thinking–
You Are The Best Thing
by Ray LaMontagne could work. The scenes would flick back and forth showing Jonathan and I enjoying each other's company. Then it would show me on the phone with Brad flirting my arse off, or texting him and having Jonathan steal my phone and do a dramatic reading of our texts as I chase him to get my phone back. I would then elbow him in the side when he returns it to me, laughing when I then hit him for teasing me. All that play would be interspersed with Jonathan alone at his red carpet events being questioned about his relationship with me. In each instance the music would fade a little and he would say, ‘no, Red and I are just friends. There's nothing more to it than that.’ And we’d probably see a case of me telling co-workers, ‘we're just friends’. And they don’t believe it. But I don’t care, because I know how things are, and for the first time in a long time, I’m feeling really happy.

The music would rise up again and show that time he came to pick me up from an interview that I’d conducted after a concert late at night, and each time I went to open the door he drove of a little then stopped and did it all over again, laughing his arse off like a teenager when he finally let me in the car and I began to slap him in his arm and chest.

Then, the music would begin to fade out, perhaps with a little more footage, proving that our relationship is only friendship, and it would end with us sitting right where we are now, on the side of the river bank looking up at the clouds like a couple kids, trying to make pictures to entertain ourselves.

"That one's a rabbit," he says, pointing out an oddly shaped cloud above us.

"That is not a rabbit," I argue. "It looks more like a pair of scissors."

"How can you not see a rabbit in that cloud? It’s a fucking rabbit. What's ridiculous is that you think that scissors.”

"It
is
scissors."

"It's a god dammed fucking rabbit,” he laughs.

“It’s scissors!” I insist.

“Whatever. Hey, you want to come to a movie premiere tonight. It’s one of those romantical things you chicks seems to dig.”

“Romantical isn’t even a word,” I counter, still squinting up at the sky as the clouds drift slowly overhead. 

“Sure it is. I said it didn’t I?”

“Doesn’t make it a word.”

“Yeah well, ‘selfie’ wasn’t a word last year, but this year it is. Just because ‘romantical’ isn’t recognised by the people at Websters yet, doesn’t make it wrong. And will you come, or not?”

“Not. I have a date tonight.”

“A date? Who with? The chef? Is he back?”

“His name is Brad and yes," I reply, sitting up and wrapping my arms around my knees as I look out at the water in front of us.

"What's this Brad got that I don't have?" he asks after a moment's thought.

Pulling out a blade of grass I split it between my fingers as I give myself a second to think. "A normal life," I answer.

"Is that what you want? Normal? Why would you want that? Normal is boring."

"No. Normally is good. I don't want a life where I’m constantly wondering if the man I’m with is acting with me.”

"So, it's my job that bothers you?" he asks, his brows raised and his expression serious.

I shake my head, throwing the blades of grass on the ground in front of me. "Yes. No. It's a lot of things–your reputation being the biggest of all. You were engaged to Lisa and then you were engaged to Simone. I don’t think I can go down that road with you, Jonathan. I thought we were friends. Things have been great for us as friends. Why do you want to mess that up?"

He sits up and twists around to face me. “I’m happy being your friend, Red. But I’d be even happier if you’d give me a chance. I know you’re worried. I understand that I haven’t been the best-behaved guy on the planet. But all that shit with Lisa happened after I just made it big, and I got caught up in the whole fame thing. And you already know the story with Simone. But I can promise you, that I’m not caught up in the whole fame thing anymore. The only thing I’m caught up in is you. I want you.”

Shaking my head, I ignore the prick of emotion behind my eyes and the swell in my chest as I hear his words. Then I refocus those feelings and turn them into annoyance because he’s trying to change what we have. “You want me now, Jonathan. But what happens when you get bored, and you fall for your co-star, or some other pretty girl who’s better for your image than I am?”

His brow knits together. “That wouldn’t happen. Not with you.”

Closing my eyes, I force myself to stay calm. I can’t let myself feel anything else in this moment. If I do, the man sitting next to me could possibly destroy me. And then I’d never find happiness again.

“You can’t guarantee that.”

“Give me a chance, Red. Let me prove to you that I can be that guy for you.
The
guy.”

“I can only be your friend, Jonathan. That’s as far as this can go.”

I open my eyes to look at him, hoping that he understands where I stand. But his eyes are bright and his jaw is set and then before I know it, his hand shoots out and grips the back of my neck, his lips pressing against mine as all of those feelings I’ve been trying to ignore jump to life and swirl around my body excitedly. My mouth responds to his, my lips parting to allow his tongue entry, and a whimper escapes my lips as it slides against mine. My body seems to merge with his, as his arms wrap around me, then slowly, all of my control is gone and he lowers me to the grass, his lips working with mine, transporting us both to a world where common sense doesn’t matter anymore. Just pure, unbridled emotion, forcing me to feel things for this man I didn’t want to feel, forcing me to face things I’m not ready to face, but I can’t seem to stop myself from loving every moment, every touch, every taste. 

Finally, he pulls away, and we’re both breathless as he looks down at me. “Is that what friendship feels like?” he murmurs.

My breath hitches and my eyes burn as I’m suddenly catapulted back to reality. Letting out a small whimper, I roll from beneath him and scramble to my feet.

“Why did you have to do that?” I demand, stepping away from him as he stands and reaches out for me.

“Red,” he implores.

“No!” I yell. “Just…stay away from me.
”
  Then, walking as fast as I can away from him I make my way home, feeling confused and annoyed and a whole bunch of other things that cause my head to ache whenever I try to think through how I feel about that kiss.  I have no idea if he followed me or if he stayed standing in the spot be the river. Because I didn’t look back. I couldn’t.