Mine(4)
I looked down at the heart. A tangle of thick veins and arteries surrounded the beating muscle.
“Which one should I cut?” I asked Gav, winking.
“Make it a show,” he said. “I haven’t seen blood in a while.”
“Sure,” I said, bending down and finding the main arterial vessel. I slipped the blade underneath and flicked it up, sending a spray of thick blood into the air above the operating room table. The man’s screams faded as his blood spurted in time to the end of the jazz tune, pumping the life out of him. “Like the motherfucking Bellagio fountains.”
“Beautiful,” Gav said. His face shone with pleasure. “Thanks for letting me sit in.”
“Anytime, quitter,” I said. “What else are friends for?”
CHAPTER THREE
Sara
“Hollywood is so fake, don’t you think?” Blaise leaned across the table and refilled my wine glass with whatever expensive Pinot Noir blend he’d bought to impress me this time. I was beginning to think that he just liked to flirt with sommeliers.
“Mmm,” I murmured in assent. I couldn’t tell a Versailles Merlot from two-buck Chuck, honestly. It all tasted the same to me.
Which was fine, because I couldn’t afford to drink anything on my own dime, two-buck Chuck or otherwise. So I smiled and nodded and let guys take me out to fancy places if they wanted to. And Blaise wanted to. I don’t think he would ever eat at a place where you couldn’t get valet parking.
“All of these fake models and fake actresses thinking that they’re hot shit, strutting around like they’re hot shit. They’re not, not really,” he said, waving the wine bottle in the air for emphasis. “That’s why I like you, Sara.”
Really?
“Because I’m not hot shit?”
“Because you don’t pretend to be hot shit,” he said. “You don’t pretend to be this skinny beautiful perfect being.”
“That’s… pretty rude, Blaise. Insulting, really.” What was it about guys nowadays? They felt like they had to put a girl down so that she would drool over them. I hated it.
“You know what I mean,” he said. “I saw this girl on Santa Monica today in the tightest dress: bleached blond hair, legs like toothpicks, tits out to here!” He held his hands in front of him. “Who does she think she’s impressing?”
“She made an impression on you, didn’t she?”
“You know what I mean. What I’m saying is, there are too many fake people in this town.”
“Mmmhmm. Are you fake, too?”
“Me?” Blaise looked offended. “I hope not. What do you think?”
I shrugged.
“I don’t think I know you well enough to tell if you’re fake.”
“Sara! I’m hurt.”
“Why? It’s only our third date.”
“You can’t tell the difference between me and a total phony? I would think you’d be able to know that right off the bat. I know I can spot a phony in this town right away. My dad works with so many phonies. All of them trying to get something from you. All total fakes.”
“I don’t know,” I said, swirling the wine around in my glass. After losing the one job that paid regularly, I was starting to wonder if I should have come to L.A. in the first place. Every guy I’d met here reminded me of Blaise. “Can you ever really know someone?”
“Is that the aspiring actress in you talking? Aren’t we all just wearing masks?”
“Well yeah, kinda,” I said. “I mean, aren’t you?”
“Is that serious? Are you asking that question seriously?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“Why not?” Blaise sputtered. “I am not fake.”
I thought it was stupid for him to deny something so obvious. Most people in Hollywood were fake. Hell, I hadn’t done anything real in years. No real relationships. No real friendships. Even the potted plant on my balcony was fake. I didn’t hide it. Hollywood wasn’t about reality.
“You never pretend?” I asked. “Not even when you pretend to like someone? Or when you act like you’re not hurt?”
“No! That’s the same thing as lying!”
“So when that seagull shit in my hair on our second date and you said it didn’t bother you after I wiped it off, even though you kept staring at that spot on my head the whole time and it obviously bothered you…”
“That was different. Being nice is different than faking.”
“Not if you’re faking being nice.”
“You know what I mean!” he cried in exasperation.
Okay, so Blaise was an idiot. For the first couple of dates, I’d thought that maybe his offhand insults and idiotic remarks were just him being nervous. This was our… third? date, though, and he hadn’t gotten any better. Shame, too. The guy was cute. Arrogant and stupid, but cute.