Lucky Star: A Hollywood Love Story (8 page)

I woke up a few hours after dawn broke, startled out of sleep by the heat from another person’s body warming my sheets. In that hazy, vague moment just after your body wakes but your mind hasn’t quite caught up yet, I panicked over the presence of that large, masculine body in my bed. The momentary fear lasted only a second before everything that took place the night before came rushing back.
Cameron Scott is in my bed
. I barely stopped myself from doing a spastic happy dance under the covers. Instead, I stretched my arms up over my head as a satisfied smile crossed my face.

I turned my head hoping in these quiet hours I’d have a chance to simply watch him sleep. (Yes, that made me sound like a creepy stalker who stalks, but I didn’t care.) Instead, I found him already awake, studying me.

“Good morning,” he said when our eyes met and I felt a flutter of something altogether wonderful and new take shape in the pit of my stomach. His face was angled toward me, a look of satisfied contentedness in eyes that gazed sleepily back at me. Rising up, he placed a warm, soft kiss on my lips before moving back to burrow down on his side of the bed.

“Good morning,” I echoed, my voice breathy.

Cameron Scott is in my bed and he’s in love with me.
No matter how many times I thought the words I never quite believed they were true. This strange, happy twist of fate wasn’t something that happened in real life. It wasn’t something that happened in
my
life. This was the sort of thing you only saw in the movies.

The movies.

That’s when I remembered we’d never gotten around to discussing the drama of my work day as it related to the excitement of his.

“Congratulations by the way. I’m so proud of you.”

“Yeah, thanks,” he murmured, rolling onto his back to stare up at the ceiling. I thought he’d have more to say – after all, this was his big break, something he’d worked toward for years – and I would have said something about his lack of excitement, but when I heard a weighty sigh leave his body I bit my tongue. That was
not
the good kind of sigh and it worried me. I wondered if he was going to tell me what the problem was or if I was going to have to drag it out of him like I always did. For as great a listener as Cameron was when other people needed a shoulder to cry on, he had a heck of a hard time talking about his own problems. I couldn’t remember a time I’d ever heard him complain without me having to coerce him into it.

I scooted over and laid my left arm across his body, set my chin on his chest, and glared at him. “That was
not
the happy kind of sigh I want to hear you make when you’re in my bed.” I gently bit his nipple to make sure I had his attention. “Start talking mister.”

He darted his eyes from the ceiling to my face and smiled. I swear my heart nearly stopped right then and there.

“I like this a lot, you know. There’s no awkwardness,” he began, a clear changing of the subject. “You’re still you, and I’m still me, and despite what happened last night”—he dropped a quick, distracting kiss on my forehead— “at the heart of everything we’re still best friends.”

“Of course we’re still best friends,” I replied, wondering when he was going to let me steer the conversation back to the subject of his newfound stardom. “What did you expect?”

“Truthfully?” He appeared to be giving my question some thought. “I’d never thought we’d come to this, but so I’d never let myself hope. But then as I watched you walk out out of your office toward me, I expected you to punch me in the nuts and tell me to go fuck myself.” He laughed and rubbed his hand along the light stubble that decorated his jaw. “

“I’m pretty sure I did tell you to go fuck yourself.” I was actually quite proud of myself that when I’d first seen him standing by my car I hadn’t immediately melted at his feet. “And speaking of punching, you need to go to urgent care because that looks terrible.” Gently I touched his bruised hand.

“It’s fine,” he said in a manner that suggested he was
not
going to get it looked at.

Why he refused to see a doctor, I had no clue, but to prove just how fine it wasn’t, I squeezed his hand no harder than I would an avocado when testing its ripeness. That is to say, not hard at all.

“Holy fucking shit Sarah,” he yelled, his whole body clenching in spasms of pain, as he jumped off the bed and landed nearly across the other side of the small room.

Hearing Cameron’s shouts, Duke ran into the room and howled, adding his own commentary to the debate over Cameron’s injured hand.

“Shut up Duke!” he yelled back.

At this, Duke stopped howling, cocked his ears, and dropped his head and slunk out of the room. Poor Duke. He loved Cameron more than anyone else – including me – and this was the first time Cameron had ever said an unkind word to or about the damn dog. The fact that he was taking his anger out on my poor besotted canine made me want to break his other hand.

“Don’t you yell at my fucking dog!”

“Don’t you yell at me!” he screamed back, turning to face me as he clutched his bruised fingers.

“I wouldn’t have to yell at you if you weren’t being so pig-headed!” I hollered back before realizing how utterly idiotic we both sounded.

I also realized he stood in front of me completely naked, the first time I’d seen him completely nude in the full light of day. He stole both my breath and my words and immediately I forgot what I’d been about to say. How could I not have? Everything about him was pure perfection, especially a particularly weighty nine inches I couldn’t tear my eyes from.

Cameron caught me ogling him and laughed self-consciously. At the same moment he realized I was staring at him, his thick dick decided to get in on the action. “Umm …” he muttered, looking around the room to find something he could cover himself with.

I took pity on him and tossed him a robe that hung on a hook to my right, just outside the bathroom door. It was a shame to cover up such bodily perfection, but it wasn’t fair for us to stand around fighting while he was in nothing but his birthday suit while lacy underwear and a cotton camisole covered my own flesh.

“Thank you,” he mumbled, wrapping the fluffy, pale pink robe around his body and tying the satin sash in a loose, awkward knot.

Smirking, I noted, “Pink is definitely your color.”

When my remark caused his skin to turn several different shades of the hue in question in about three seconds flat, I almost felt bad for teasing him. Almost, but not quite.

Our shouting match suspended, I plopped down on the bed and waited for him to join me. Instead he paced the room collecting the clothes he’d tossed this way and that the night before. I definitely needed to set aside some drawer space for him so he didn’t turn my bedroom into a disaster area. I wasn’t super finicky about my space but one thing I absolutely hated was when clothes were piled on every available surface.

“I think we need to talk,” I said, interrupting his search for his underwear. He turned and looked at me over his shoulder and I almost broke out laughing, the sight of him clad in pale pink from neck to knee too funny for words. My guffaws had clearly piqued his pride so instead of continuing to tease him, I stifled any further giggling and held my tongue.

“Yeah, I think so too. Let me get dressed first?” When he rose he clutched a bundle of clothes to his chest. When he marched into the bathroom, it struck me odd he hadn’t felt comfortable enough to dress in front of me given he’d had no problem
undressing
in front of me the night before. I wondered if his sudden reluctance had anything to do with his changed demeanor once I’d brought up the movie.

Oh fuck, what if that’s not it at all?
What if in the light of day he’s regretting everything that happened last night and all that talk of friendship this morning was my clue? A clue I’d completely missed until now?

My stomach lurched and I swear I felt a literal pain in my chest, the thought of him walking away from me again more than I could handle.

For several long months I had suffered in silence, my love for Cameron something I never dared hope he would return. And then for one glorious hour I had seen – felt – how good it could be between us only for him to go destroy the moment. If he thought for one minute he was going to do that to me again he had another think coming. I loved Cameron with all my heart, and I would do just about anything to be with him, but I wouldn’t let him toy with my heart in the process. To quote the great Meatloaf, “I would do anything for love, but I won’t do that.”

When almost twenty minutes later I heard the shower turn on, I cursed him. Pulling on a pair of yoga pants and a thin black tank top that wouldn’t show my nipples through the fabric without a bra. As I twisted my hair into a topknot, he emerged from the bathroom and looked around the room before his eyes landed on me.

“I’m going to make us some coffee, okay?”

“You know where it’s at.” I tried to keep the irritation from my voice but failed. “Be my guest.”

I didn’t want to be angry at his latest mood swing, but I could feel myself gearing up for a fight. The more I considered my reaction, the more I realized that I still harbored some amount of resentment toward him for what he’d put me through this past month. I had no idea how things had shifted so quickly between us this morning but the tide had shifted once we’d started yelling at each other.

I walked to the kitchen to find he’d started the coffee and set out a bowl of food for Duke. The dog had quickly and easily forgiven him even if I maybe hadn’t. I watched my two best friends – man and beast – and despite my aggravation of a moment ago, felt a surge of warmth in my heart. Sure, just a few minutes ago I’d wanted to tear Cameron a new one, but now? I wanted nothing more than to hug him to me and never let go.
Now who is being emo?
I thought.

Regardless of what he’d said when we first woke up, I sensed his thoughts – talk of nothing changing, how it was still the two of us as we had always been – weren’t entirely true. In the span of thirty minutes we’d gone from perfection to … not perfect. Now there existed a tension that had never been there before and I couldn’t figure out why that had changed. How had we altered so much so quickly? There was no reason for us to have started the morning yelling at each other, no reason whatsoever for Cameron to have retreated into himself yet again. Feeling worried and dejected, I hoped we hadn’t fucked things up before we could even truly begin.

Cameron hadn’t looked my way since I’d entered the room but I knew he sensed my presence in the doorway. Finally, his rub down of Duke complete, he glanced up at me and I felt the earth swing on its axis once again.

“I liked waking up here,” he said, interrupting my inner monologue.

“You wouldn’t have known it,” I responded, my voice flat.

“I think I panicked.”

“No shit you panicked. But why?”

“I dunno,” he said, standing up and leaning his long, lithe body against the counter.

As far as I was concerned he hadn’t answered my question so I didn’t speak. “I dunno” was not a sufficient answer.

Then he added, “Things were so perfect. I woke up and you were smiling at me and all I felt was this deep, profound sense of rightness.” He smiled and my traitorous cheeks warmed at the happy expression on his face. And then it fell. “I’ve wanted to be with you for so long but it seems like nothing has gone the way I thought it would.”