Starlight (Peaches Monroe #2)(70)
Author: Mimi Strong

“I can’t imagine you doing drugs. I keep forgetting, because you’re just so… you.”

“Everything ends eventually,” he said, gazing down at me, his gold-brown eyes serious. “I’ll get older, whether I have birthdays or not. This career won’t last, and the next one won’t either. But maybe things that are brief are better, and brighter, and sharper.” He took my hands and held them to his chest. “I feel you, in here. Like a diamond.”

My eyes burned, and I gritted my teeth. “I feel you, too, and… I don’t know what to say.”

“Bright and sharp,” he said, and he leaned down to kiss me.

My whole body was trembling, even my lips.

I pulled away after the kiss and fumbled with the door handle of the cab. Keith reached down and pulled the door open easily.

I got in the car, before my shaking legs collapsed.

Keith closed the door, tapped the roof of the car twice, and the driver put the car in gear.

We drove away. I raised my hand and watched out the back window as Keith waved back. I watched him until we reached the end of the street and rounded the corner.

Why did the driver have to drive so fast? What was the hurry? I turned back around and frowned at the back of his head.

Sharper and brighter.

Like a diamond.

I heard Keith’s words echo in my mind.

Home, I told myself. Think about home.

CHAPTER 26

I’m pretty sure I saw Gwyneth Paltrow at the dry cleaner when I was dropping off Luscious Hilda Mae Sparkles’ dress. This skinny blond lady in granny boots and black leggings was chatting with the woman at the cash register when I came in.

I looked around at the array of autographed glossies lining the walls and tried not to get paranoid about my taxi abandoning me.

The skinny lady turned around, gave me an apologetic smile, then turned back to finish putting her wallet back in her purse.

Holy f**k, that’s Gwyneth Fucking Paltrow. The room started to swirl. My mouth dried up, and my heart started pounding like crazy.

She finished and started to leave, but I was blocking the door.

“I’m a big fan!” I said, which wasn’t even true. I mean, I like Gwyneth, but someone gave me her latest vegan cookbook as a joke gift. I wasn’t a big fan, not really.

She gave me a gracious smile—almost regal—and walked out with her dry-cleaned pantsuit over one arm.

Such is life in LA.

I dropped off the dress, pre-paid, and returned to the waiting taxi. The whole way to the airport, I mused over my reaction to Ms. Paltrow (assuming it was her).

I would have thought that the whole experience with Dalton Deangelo would have changed me more, made me less starstruck when I met other celebrities. But, apparently, a brief affair with one famous person hadn’t inoculated me against other celebrities. I was, after everything that had happened over the last few weeks, not that different after all.

Or was I?

There were moments, like when I walked through the crowd at the airport and didn’t care that people were staring at the big girl in the red shirtdress—moments where I felt something harder over my entire surface, like that skin Jell-O gets after a few days in the fridge.

Seated on the airplane, I nodded my head to the right and gazed wistfully out the window. There was nothing to see but pavement, but I liked the idea of how I thought I might look to a casual observer—like the girl at the end of a movie who has grown in some way and is an adult now, which you can tell because she does something different from how she did it at the beginning of her tale.

We got in the air, and the flight attendant offered me a beverage. I’d had a Ginger Ale on the flight down, which was my third flight ever. This was my fourth flight, and I was different now, so I ordered a Bloody Mary. I’d never had one before, but people in movies order them on airplanes, and the words just came out of my mouth.

The flight attendant nodded curtly and came back with the tomato-juice-based drink. “Matches your outfit,” she said.

I paid, and she walked away, without having asked to see my ID. The nerve!

The girl sitting next to me said, “That smells so good.”

“You should get one. Call the attendant back, my treat.”

She laughed and looked pointedly down at her stomach, quite clearly swollen with a baby.

A chill went through my body. “How long?” I asked.

“Two weeks.”

“And they let you fly?”

Her lip started to tremble, then she put on a big, fake smile. “Short flight. Even if I went into labor…” She trailed off, as if she didn’t have the energy to finish the thought, to tell the lie that everything would be fine, no matter what.

She looked young—about as young as Amy, the sixteen-year-old girl who’d been my employee until recently.

I pulled out my phone and looked for a good photo of Kyle to show her.

“This is my son,” I said, showing her a picture of him pretending to eat two slices of pizza at the same time.

“Wow,” she said, looking back over at me.

“I was fifteen when I had him.”

She nodded, her eyes getting wet before she blinked them clear.

Her words burst out of her. “I’m scared. I don’t like pain.”

I patted her on the knee. “Nobody likes goodbyes, or labor pain. And it’s okay to be scared. I was, too. But I had a good doctor, and my parents were beside me the whole time. We’re so lucky to live in a time of hospitals, and medicine, and epidurals.”

Her chest rose with a deep breath I could hear, even over the whooshing white noise of the airplane.

“What about down there?” she asked, looking embarrassed. “Did everything go back to where it had been?”

“Yes, and everything works fine. No complaints.”

“Were you scared during labor?”

My skin started to tingle all over. I grabbed my Bloody Mary and shot it back.

“No,” I lied, smiling. “Your body kicks in with all the right hormones at the right time, and maybe there are a few moments where you get tired or frustrated, but you’ll know what to do. Everything’s going to be fine.”

Her face relaxed and she leaned her head back against the armrest.

I pulled a magazine out of the pocket in the seat in front of me and pretended to be engrossed in an article about natural fibers being trendy come autumn.

I felt bad about lying to the girl, but I also knew telling her the truth wouldn’t help either of us.

Me.

That night.

It’s Friday, and my stomach’s been acting up all day, but Mom and Dad are out of town I am ready to party! And by party, I mean I am going to order pizza with the money they left for groceries, and I’m going to eat it in the formal sitting room, where Dad and I aren’t allowed to eat.