Fate is sometimes cruel, but not to the people it should be cruel towards.
Everything changed when I was discovered, sitting on a curb in my tattered sundress, with my skinned knees and bruised arms, my limbs browned from a mixture of sun and dirt. I was barefoot not because it was summer, but because someone had stolen my shoes at school and we couldn’t afford another pair. My sister and I had been looking for loose change on the sidewalk, scrounging around to see if we could get together enough for a soda after school, but really just buying time away from the trailer because mom was inside with one of her boyfriends and it wasn’t safe to go home.
He pulled up near the curb, in a shiny black car that looked like it belonged to a millionaire. He stepped out, and when he paused as he walked by me, looking down at me over the edge of his sunglasses, I thought I was looking at a prince or a king or something. This man was someone important, someone special.
And, as it turned out, he wasn't a prince or a king. But he was someone special.
He looked at me for a long time, my face reddening under his gaze, then squatted down to look me in the eye. “Is this your sister?” he asked me.
I nodded, too shy to speak.
“You’re going to have to say something,” he said. “What’s your name?”
“River,” I said.
He smiled and nodded. “It’s perfect,” he said, and stood up. “You’re perfect. Abso-fucking-lutely perfect. Where are your parents?”
“My mom’s at home,” I said. “Her boyfriend’s there.”
He just nodded, didn’t say a word for a minute, and I sat there on the curb, rolling a pebble around underneath my foot.
Then he cleared his throat. “When’s the last time you kids ate?” he asked.
I shrugged. I was used to being hungry. Had I eaten breakfast? I couldn’t remember. “Last night?” I asked.
“Where do people eat around here?” he asked.
The rest was history. The man was a major Hollywood producer and, cleaned up, I became the darling of one of his films. The first of many films. And my life became a carefully crafted Cinderella story, one that glossed over the more sordid details of my childhood, at least in the more reputable magazines. Every so often, the tabloids tried to dredge up details of the past- to interview one of my mom’s old boyfriends or talk to someone from my hometown. But mostly, they let me play the role of fairytale princess, the girl who was plucked from obscurity and swept up into Hollywood glamour.
It was supposed to be roses and sunshine, designer shoes and expensive champagne for the rest of my life. That was the fantasy. That was what people wanted when they looked at me- they wanted to believe in the power of fate, in the suggestion of possibility- that they too might be whisked away from their lives into the castle to live with a prince.
It was the reason that my wedding, the live broadcast to millions of viewers, was such a big deal. I’d grown up in front of cameras- and now I’d be married in front of them too.
Inside the hotel room, I opened a box of hair dye, a dark brown color I selected at the drugstore where I’d made a pit stop to buy pajamas and toiletries, my fingers lingering on the box of fuchsia I’d briefly considered, my whole body longing for a change. I wanted to be something else, someone other than the person I had become.
But in the end I chose sensible brown, something that wouldn’t call attention to me.
I still didn’t know what the hell I was doing, here in a hotel, dyeing my hair like I was some kind of fugitive. I needed to turn around and face things. I needed to go back home. I just wasn’t sure where home was anymore.
After I finished the dye job, I raised the scissors to my hair, snipping at the long tresses, now brown instead of blonde, a huge part of my identity.
My image was polished, classic- the past few years, I’ve been compared to Grace Kelly. The thing was, I'd always empathized more with Marilyn Monroe. She was tragic, her demons so much a part of her that they eventually destroyed her.
That was something I could understand.
The pieces fell into the sink, curling at the ends, scattering on the flat surface of the countertop. I chopped with the scissors until I resembled something I hoped was more pixie-punk than cut-by-a-lawnmower.
When I was finished, I surveyed my work in the mirror. The girl looking back at me, all big eyes and suddenly prominent cheekbones, looked nothing like the “me” I knew. At a glance, I was starkly different. I thought I would be able to pass undetected in a public place.
I grabbed a mini-bottle of vodka from the refrigerator, hearing my mother’s scolding voice in my head.
Always choose vodka, she would say, making a clucking sound and shaking her head. It’s the skinniest.
She would fucking know, skin and bones, her meals mostly diet pills and booze.
I slid the vodka back into the refrigerator and chose something else. Rum. My hand reached automatically for the diet cola and then I chose the regular one, the one with all of the calories.
It was only after I finally sat down on the bed that I allowed myself to cry. I breathed in deeply, and began to sob, the sound loud in the stillness of the hotel room.
I was selfish, feeling sorry for myself. I lived a charmed life. I was marrying one of the hottest rock stars on the planet. I made an incredible amount of money making films.
A little cheating came with the territory, right? So what if Viper was sticking his dick down my sister’s throat? He was a rock star and I was a starlet. It was to be expected.
It’s not that I was ungrateful for my life. Exactly the opposite. I knew what it was like to be hungry. I knew what it was like to be beaten within an inch of my life, and worse. And now I knew what it was like to have everything I could ever want, and more. I knew what it was to have the adoration of millions of fans.
And yet, I also knew what it was like to be so incredibly lonely that you ached for something - anything - that would make you feel like someone else.
Someone loved.
Someone known.
4
Elias
“Shit, man, you’re not going to pussy out on us, are you?” Adam turned to me and asked. He was the last in the group, headed down to the casino and the strip club and the night club to drink and pick up chicks.
I rolled my eyes. “Get the fuck out,” I said. My thoughts were foggy. I knew I was drunk. “I’m going to take a shit. Is that fucking okay with you, mom? I'll meet you down there.”
“Fuck, I didn’t need to know that, you stupid asshole,” he said, and I heard the door slam.
I didn’t head to the bathroom. Instead, I sat down on the bed, leaned my head against the headboard. My leg ached, and I just wanted to take off the fucking prosthetic and stretch out, go to sleep.
I can rally, I told myself. Another drink will perk me up. The guys are right. I should fucking party now, get some lap dances. Get laid. There's not anything fucking waiting for me in West Bend. None of that shit anyhow.
I thought I was out of that place, and now here I was, going back.
I should get good and fucking drunk.
After everything that had happened, why the fuck not?
I pulled myself up to a sitting position. My body felt like it was made of lead, weighed down, tethered to the bed. I was suddenly reminded of why I didn't drink, the feeling of being medicated a painful reminder of then.
Being back in the hospital.
It was like I was immediately transported back there, the smell of disinfectant and the stale hospital smell suddenly invading my nostrils. I could feel the sheets, rough and worn under my fingertips, the sensation of morphine coursing through my veins, making me tipsy and nauseous all at the same time.
And the realization that my leg was gone.
It felt like someone punched me in the gut.
And then I blinked, took a breath, and it passed. I'm here, I reminded myself, in a fucking suite, in a hotel room in Vegas.
Fucking lucky was what
I was. Fortunate. Not like some of the guys I deployed with, the ones who weren't so lucky.
I had no reason to feel sorry for myself, and I wouldn’t.
I stood up, wobbly on my feet for a moment, and caught myself by putting my hand on the mattress.
So, fuck it. I was going to go down and hang out with the guys, my makeshift family, and thank the man or woman up in the sky that I got home in mostly one piece. I was going to go get ripped and party like a normal twenty-four year old, like someone who didn't have all the worries and dark thoughts that I just couldn’t seem to shake.
I was going to be fucking happy.
I poured liquor into a plastic cup, followed by soda.
Where's the ice? I peered into the ice bucket at a pool of liquid. No matter. I would get some on the way down to the casino.
I walked down the hallway, squinting, looking for an ice machine.
Where the fuck is the ice in this place?
A girl was walking down the hallway ahead of me, her back toward me, wearing fuzzy pajama pants with cartoon characters on them, holding an ice bucket. "Hey!" I called out to her, and she turned slightly toward me, then spun around just as quickly, walking faster in the opposite direction.
Fuck. Seriously? What, she took one look at me and decided I was some kind of threat? Or maybe she just doesn't like fucking gimps like me.
"Hey!" I yelled, this time louder. I was being obnoxious. I didn’t care. "It's fucking rude to walk away when someone's talking to you."
She stopped, and I found myself suddenly a couple of feet behind her. She spun around, and I was face to face with the hottest fucking girl I've ever seen in my life.
She was also pissed off.
And all I could think about was grabbing her and pushing her up against a wall so I could fuck the hell out of her.
She looked up at me with her lips slightly parted, her breath short, and fire in her eyes. "You know what's fucking rude?" she asked, her voice louder than it needed to be for how close I was standing to her. "It's fucking rude to chase down a girl in the hallway of a hotel. Maybe she doesn't want to be chased down by some creep."
I was too distracted by her sweet lips to even register what she was saying. Her tongue flicked over her bottom lip, and in an instant I was hard. Goddamn it. I never wanted to just press my lips down hard against anyone else's lips as bad as I did right then.
I fucking wanted this girl so bad I could taste it. It was instant, some kind of primal thing, like I was a damn caveman.
I had to shake off the image that flashed in my head, the one of me throwing her over my shoulder and taking her to my room.
"Well?" she asked. Her hand was on her hip, the other hand holding the ice bucket. "Are you going to say anything, or are you just going to keep staring at me? Maybe you want a fucking picture? Or my autograph? What the hell is it?"
She seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place it. Her cheeks were flushed, though, and she was unsteady on her feet. She was just as drunk as I was, I realized.
I cleared my throat. "The ice," I said. "Where's the ice machine?"
Her mouth dropped open, like she wasn’t expecting me to ask a simple question like that. I wondered what the hell she thought I was yelling about. Then she laughed. "That's what you want?"
"Why the hell would I want your fucking autograph?" I asked. "I just wanted to know where you filled up the ice bucket."
She laughed, louder this time, the sound melodic. It felt warm, somehow, even though I couldn’t figure out if she was angry or full of herself or just a bitch. She shook her head, then ran her hand through her hair, strands sticking up messily every which way, and looked down at her hand, covered in little pieces of hair.
She caught the look I gave her, and shrugged. "I just cut it," she said, wiping her hand on her pajama pants.
"Yourself?" I asked. I didn’t even care. I just want an excuse to keep talking to her, no matter what her hair looked like. Even if it looked a little bit like someone took hedge clippers to it.
She shrugged again. "I needed a change."
"It suits you," I said. How did I fucking know what suited her?
She grinned. Her smile was radiant. It was a complete cliché, but it could light up a room. She could light up a room. She had that kind of presence. Even in a hotel hallway, drunk and wearing pajama pants.
"It does," she said, her hand going up to her hair again, the movement self-conscious. "I think it does suit me." She sounded surprised. She held out the ice bucket. "For your drink?"
I took a few ice cubes and dropped them into my cup. "Appreciate it," I said. Then there were voices in the corridor, and a group of college students, drunk and obnoxious, came closer. A fleeting look of panic crossed the girl's face, and she grabbed my arm, pulled me toward her, her back against the wall, her face close to mine.
She was still holding the ice bucket in one hand. I had my drink in my hand, my other palm on the wall, inches away from her head. I heard the college students from somewhere behind us, hollering as they passed.
"Yeah," one whooped. "Get it, man!"
My lips were nearly touching hers, a millimeter away. I couldn’t think of anything except how she would taste. I wanted her. I had never been so immediately sure of anything. I pressed my lips against hers, lightly for a second, and she responded, her mouth opening, and I heard her moan, just barely. The sound was so soft I was not sure it was her, but she arched her body toward me, and I felt her tongue against mine. I moved my hand away from the wall, grasping the back of her head at the base of her neck, and pulling her into me as I kissed her.
Kiss was the fucking understatement of the year.
I didn’t just kiss her. I fucked her mouth with my tongue, my thrusts insistent. I wanted to rip her clothes off right here in the hallway and press her up against the wall.
She made this little moan again, this sound that I thought would drive me insane.
And then she pulled away, put one hand on my chest, and pushed me back. "I -" she started. "I need to go."
She put her hand to her mouth. Her lips were red, swollen where I'd kissed her. I wanted to kiss her again, leave bruising kisses on her lips, her neck. On her breasts.
Before I could even respond, she had stepped away and was starting to walk down the hall. "Hey," I called. "I don't even know your name."
She turned again, and flashed me a grin. "No," she said. "You don't."
Then she walked away.
5
River
Shit. I rolled over and ran my hand over my face, then through my hair. For a second when I pulled my hand back I wondered where the rest of my hair was. Then I recalled taking the scissors to it last night.
Last night.
I touched my fingers to my lips where he kissed me - the guy from the hallway, the one with the red plastic cup in his hand. The one who was so hot.
My heart raced just thinking about his lips pressed up against