Runaway (2 page)

Chapter Two

The nightmare hits me again, the one that I have had so many times before but I still find it difficult to comprehend. There’s screaming, splashing, bubbles of oxygen on the surface of freezing water, hands scrambling both above and below… And the most overwhelming feeling of dread that I’ve ever had. A life unlived… And I have to deal with that, to live with it myself… A blur as it all become distorted… And then complete silence – that’s the most terrifying thing of all.

My eyes flickered open in the light seeping around my half-closed apartment blinds. For a minute I remembered where I was and who I was, laying there in bed, the blaring sound of my alarm clock on my bedside table suddenly registering to me as I leaned over and hit it with the flat of my hand, during which I caught the time; 10:37am. The alarm had been going off for over 90 minutes and I hadn’t heard a damn thing as I groggily sat up in my double bed and looked around at my bedroom. Honestly, if paparazzi had access to film actors and actresses first thing on a morning, the world would be a much more interesting place.

Marcus wasn’t here, but much of the time we didn’t sleep in the same bed seeing as how busy our schedules were… But where had he gone last night? There was nowhere he needed to be today… At least I didn’t think so…

I sat up and looked about my apartment, a lavishly open space with plenty of closed-off rooms, oddly enough facing away from the sun. A lot of people feel head over heel for natural light, but not me – I liked things dim and out of the way, protected from the camera flash and the blinding light in the sky. I guess I just liked having a place to myself.

My apartment was in New York on the upper eastside, the kind of place where the artists and the poets of decades ago lived and worked prior to the rent and property price increases by thousands of percent. Now it was home to schmucks and sell-outs like me, highly paid business owners and celebrities who occupied apartments costing millions, the size of which you could rent for a few hundred dollars a month in a Midwestern city… But I liked where I lived – not because it was
New York,
with all its reputation and whatever, but because it was busy; here I could just slip away into the crowd, become just another person walking the sidewalk. It also meant that the paparazzi had a hard time finding me – sure, they knew where I lived, but what use was that? Catching me looking trashy in the morning while heading out for a latte? I had learnt a while back not to care what anybody thought of me in this industry – plenty will pass criticism, but you’ve just got to develop and iron shell and push through. Otherwise you’ll go crazy.

I dragged myself out of bed, clad in nothing but an oversized t-shirt and a pair of black underwear, hugging my slender figure. I rubbed my eyes as I looked at myself in the mirror of my dressing table, squinting back at myself in the early morning light before scratching at my messy hair and pulling a face.

Honestly, if anybody knew the kind of stuff I did when nobody was around.

I grabbed my phone and wandered through the quiet apartment, passing all manner of objects and props I had kept from sets over the past few years, odd little curios and contextless things that I couldn’t even begin to explain the meaning of – but again, that was how I liked it. Things around me, a cosy place to kick back.

That said, it was nothing like Casey’s – her apartment was a minimalist’s heaven, with nothing but the bare essentials…

As the thought of Casey crossed my mind I clicked my phone, illuminating the screen without wondering what to expect – and I what I saw I certainly did
not
expect. Usually I woke up to a few, but this was madness.

My closest friends had texted me several times asking if I was okay or if they would like me to come over, and there were others from scattered associates and colleagues, all with this repeated contextless lines, or some freaking variation of it – ‘are you okay?’ ‘Do you need me to come over?’ and the like.

‘What the fuck…’ I couldn’t help but whisper to myself, streaming through them all. What were they referring to? Had something happened last night after all the drinking? I couldn’t remember much… I knew I had gotten home fine, and that I had gone early, but…

My phone suddenly dinged off another three times with messages from Casey asking where I was-

Me: At my apartment, where else would I be?? What’s wrong??? x

I stood there for a second, biting my fingernails before my phone went off again, Casey responding with her typical lightning fast response time.

Casey: Good, because I’m trying to make it through the swarm of gossip columnists around your building right now – buzz me in!!

My first time on a major set I had been shaking like crazy from the nerves, but that had been the only time – ever since then I always felt cool, going through my performance motions without even a sliver of nervousness.

But right then, my hands were shaking like crazy.

A second later the buzzer for my apartment when off. I near enough sprinted to the door, pressing the speaker button and holding it down. I was suddenly greeted by a mess of shouting and general noise, before Casey’s voice suddenly came howling through the speaker so loudly that I had to hold my head back.

‘Get the fuck back, get back, you scummy sons of bitches! Miss Clarke is not open for comment.’

‘Just a couple of words on last night’s events-’

‘What did I just fucking say?!’

There was a sudden hard smacking sound, and the guffawing groans of pain from an unquestionably male mouth – Casey’s patented foot to the crotch kick when paparazzi got to her. Three assault charges and no convictions on account of self-defence.

Just one of the many reasons I loved her.

I buzzed her in, hearing more kicking and punching until the front door slammed shut and the speaker went quiet.

I spent the next thirty seconds pacing back and forth in my underwear, biting my fingernails – terrible habit, I know. Don’t judge me.

There was a sudden feverish knocking at the door.

‘Emma, honey, it’s me, open up.’

I scrambled for the door, undoing the plethora of locks on it – New York, you can never be too safe – before finally opening it. Casey darted in, slamming the door behind her and jumping me quickly before I could even get a word out, wrapping her arms around me.

‘Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry,’ she said, ‘I’m getting this whole thing sorted out – including those jerk-offs outside. Minus the one rolling around on the floor with his hands holding his-’

‘Wait, wait,’ I said, unable to stop myself from smiling at her remarks but still peaked with curiosity, ‘Sort out what? What’s happened?’

I looked my best friend/agent rolled into one up and down briefly. She was clad in her trademark outfit – tight jeans, boots, a loose blouse and a black denim jacket, equipped with her phone in one hand and a Bluetooth earpiece that I rarely saw her without. Her dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail, her eyes covered by dark sunglasses which she quickly whipped off at the sound of my question, looking me in the eye.

‘Are you serious…? You don’t know…?’ She looked at me with wide eyes, her face flat and serious.

‘Know what?’ I asked feverishly, ‘I’ve only just woken up.’

Casey rounded past me into the living room, snatching up the TV remote and turning on my flatscreen just as I entered the room. She flicked through channel after channel as I whipped my eyes between her engrossed face, fixed on the screen, and the TV itself. She finally came to a stop, leaving us tuned to some morning news gossip channel with a bubbly blonde host who looked like she’d had make-up applied with a shovel and an overly camp co-host.

‘-we’re back with the morning roundup, covering all the stories that you want to know about. But right now, we all know that there’s only one story that everybody’s talking about,’ the woman said, smiling smugly, ‘And that’s Emma Clarke’s status with her handsome beau Marcus Layton.’

‘Not just handsome, but handsy, Lola,’ her co-host continued.

‘Right you are, Robin,’ she continued, laughing lightly, ‘despite the charming couple appearing totally smitten with each other last night… Oh, don’t they look cute together?’

A picture emerged on screen of myself and Marcus from last night, one of the thousands of takes that were shot.

‘… But, yes, despite their apparent loved-up status, young Mr Layton was caught on camera last night seeming less than perturbed about shirking his monogamous duties to the lovely Miss Clarke, seen in this picture having a fun time with an unknown blonde at an afterparty last night…’

And then came the nail in the proverbial coffin. Another picture came up on the screen – it was a couch at a Long Island mansion where the afterparty had been held, and on it sat Marcus.

But, as you’ve probably guessed, he wasn’t alone – because I was also giving the early morning greeting of an image of a busty, curvaceous blonde sat in his lap with a painfully tight green dress on, and Marcus’s hands squeezing said chest, a happy look on his stupid face and half a bottle of whisky propped up next to him.

I stared at the picture for a moment, trying to comprehend the magnitude of what had happened… Well, it didn’t need much explaining. My boyfriend had gotten handsy – screw it, he had felt up – with some party girl last night, just hours after the premiere. And he didn’t look that concerned about being photographed doing it.

‘I’m so sorry, Em,’ Casey said, looking over at me from where sat on the sofa. ‘I’m trying to calm the storm, but you know how these things go…’

I had seen this kind of thing happen before in the press, people whose names everybody knew cheating on each other, and it had never seemed real, it seemed like a story, just like their movies… But now it was happening in my life, and I had no idea what I was feeling.

***

Or maybe I did. Heartache. Betrayal. Anger. Sadness – and above all-

‘I feel so freaking stupid…’ I sputtered, curled up in the sofa as I cried my eyes out. Forty five minutes later and Casey and I were swapping a vat of Cookies and Cream Ice Cream back and forth, my best friend’s hand held out permanently with a box of tissues in it.

‘I mean, I knew what he was like, y’know…?’ I continued, blowing my nose with one tissue before wiping away my tears with a second, ‘I know what everybody said – ‘he’s a player and he gets around and he’s a real heartbreaker’ and all that stupid stuff, but I really thought that things would be different between us… Do you know what I mean?’7

‘Of course, I do, sweetie,’ Casey replied, smiling over sympathetically at me, ‘Every girl does, that’s like that always seem so appealing, so…
Hot…’

I glanced up at Casey, her eyes drifting off to the side.

‘Not helping,’ I muttered.

‘Sorry, sorry… But that’s why every girl really wants a guy like that, even if they don’t want to admit it. You think that you can be the one to change him, you can be the anomaly, the
different
girl, who’s better than all the other’s…’

‘I’d never think that…’

‘We don’t mean to, but it’s just the way things are. That’s how everybody is. We all think we can change the other person, but it’s a lost cause. One, because we don’t need to change them, and two, because there’s no point in trying.’

‘Why’s there no point in trying?’ I asked, setting the ice cream down on the coffee table and halting my tears for a moment.

‘Because he’s forever an asshole, Emma, baby.’

My tears dissolved into laughter at Casey’s remark, and she joined in with me for a few moments. I still felt pretty awful, but having her here made things so much better than if it had just been me alone… Then I would have felt like the whole world was against me. That was how I had always been as a kid, preferring to be myself whenever something bad happened. And one time stuck in my mind, and forever would…-

‘But we need to get this sorted out,’ Casey continued, I snapping my head out of my random thought.

‘Yeah,’ I agreed, wiping away my tears and finally feeling like I was kind of getting a hold on myself. ‘But what are we gonna do? Half the city’s press is outside and we’re stuck up here…’

‘We could just stay here,’ Casey suggested, ‘You’ve only got a talkshow appearance scheduled for the next two weeks, everything else is parties and events. I could just cancel and we can hold up here. You’ve got plenty of food, right?’

‘Yeah…’ I started, the idea of hanging out with my best friend for the week and doing nothing but watching movies and playing video games actually sounding pretty appealing… But, then again- ‘But I shouldn’t have to stay up here just because they’re all waiting for me downstairs, holing up the door. I wish we could just get out of here…’

‘I know… But we’re gonna be spotted wherever we go. Well, I say we, but you is what I mean.’

‘No, no, you’re my best friend. I want you with me…’

‘Oh, honey, that’s so sweet of you,’ Casey smiled, wrapping her arms around me lightly as I returned the hug. I loved this girl – sure, she was overly protective and at times a borderline psychopath… But why would that make me love her any less? ‘But that still doesn’t solve the problem of getting us out of here. Where the hell can we go?’

I paced up and down my living room for a moment, biting my fingernails again as I looked about the room.