Reel (Hollywood Renaissance #1)

by Kennedy Ryan

Her extended illness and when she passed away—they battered me. Stripped me of faith and illusions and, in many ways, hope. Hope lures you from safety, makes you dream again of things you thought impossible. It coaxes you out of your fears. Forget mercury or arsenic. Hope is the most dangerous element in the world.

“He sounds like a real character, but then, he’d have to be to handle you,” Mama says, a note of pride in her voice I don’t think I’ve ever recognized before.

“Ewwww, David!” I scream, pulling from our Schitt’s Creek vernacular.

She smiles, then reaches up to touch her headscarf like she’s making sure it’s still there. When she finds it askew, her wide eyes zip to meet mine. I keep my face impassive like I don’t know what’s bothering her—what she’s afraid I’ve seen.

There’s nothing normal about this phase of our relationship either—finishing a movie while waiting for a kidney transplant.

“Can I stay?” I ask, watching her face for signs of welcome or rejection. “So we can talk?” Something close to distress flares in her expression. Everything in me wants to growl that she is mine and I am hers, and I won’t tolerate closed doors and bathrobes between us, but I don’t want to misstep. I miss her. I miss us together.

I laugh self-deprecatingly, defusing some of the tension I don’t even understand that has crept up between us.

“Does it hurt or itch?” I ask, frowning, unsure if I should put shaving cream on the affected areas. The simmering passion stirring in her eyes extinguishes, and she jerks away, dropping her leg back into the water. “I’ll finish later. You can… I can do this. Thanks anyway.”

Neither of us looks away from the other, but for once I’m not sure what I’m seeing. She has frosted the glass, and I have no idea how to read her, how to reach her like this.

I see it. I see the discolored patches on her arms, legs, stomach. I see the spots where there is no hair. I note the rash on her face that the makeup hid. I know what she thinks I see, but all I really see is light. The same light that shone blindingly bright that first night on a Broadway stage, it’s still there.

She squeezes and I flinch, it feels so good, lowering my head until our temples kiss.

I reach blindly between us, finding the juncture of her thighs and sliding two fingers over her seam between the lips, caressing her slick clit in a rubbing rhythm, holding my breath so it’s quiet enough for me to hear how wet she sounds—to hear her breath hitch.

“Oh,” I whisper into her hair, sliding two fingers inside the hot, tight channel that clenches and contracts. “I ...

Self-consciousness spreads over her in the hand she reaches for her hair, and the way she crosses one leg over the other, trying to hide the lesions.

Looking into her eyes, the glass becomes clear again, the frost swiped completely until I see all her emotions. The desire, the fear, the self-consciousness. The love.

I’m a pauper at a feast, so lost in pleasure, I almost forget it’s hers, too, until her sobs and whimpers float over my head.

Our bodies move in sensual unison—a hypnotic rhythm that we can’t break, but that only builds.

I grip her leg to me, turning my head to kiss her calf, biting into the sleek muscle.

The previous night plays out in full panoramic color projected onto the walls of my memory. It was measured not in hours or minutes, but in kisses and whispers.

“Looking good?” I ask, walking across the plush rug to stand beside him. He drops the pad and pulls me down to sit on his knee. I snuggle into his strong arms and hard chest.

“It was a crazy thing to do.” I chuckle, cupping the hard angle of his jaw. “Trusting some girl nobody knows with a movie this big.” “I always know what I’m doing,” he says immodestly, grinning when I roll my eyes.

“You done?” I ask. “Not unless you want me to be.” He lowers the camera. “I’d like to take more.” “Why?” “Because I want to remember you exactly as you are right now.” I scoff and shoot him a sour look. “Right now? Like this?” He nods, his expression sober. “Exactly like this.” There is such love in his eyes, such… I don’t know… adoration… that for a moment, I don’t know how to respond.

“Neevah, baby.” I’ve never heard his voice this way. Desperate, panicked. Frightened. “I’m taking you to the emergency room.” I open my mouth to tell him that’s unnecessary, but a sob comes out instead. It’s a wretched sound, and I resent my body for making it.

My words from the night of the New York film festival, the night I met Neevah, come back to haunt me. Damn, I was arrogant. It was so easy to say story must be protected at all costs, at personal cost when I had so little to lose.

“Neevah hasn’t even…” Dr. Okafor chops the sentence off and presses her lips together.

As soon as we enter Neevah’s hospital room, her disappointment burdens the air.

Her lips quiver, even though she presses them tightly together, as if she’s fighting for control of the emotions spilling out.

“Will you hold me?” she whispers. I’m so used to her confidence, her fearlessness, that I almost miss her fear. “Yeah. Of course.” It’s probably breaking some hospital rule, but I don’t give a damn, climbing up into the bed, squeezing into the tight space and tucking her head into the crook of my neck. After a few seconds, she starts sniffing quietly and her tears wet my shirt. God, hearing her cry is ripping me apart inside.

“There’s something you should know. I didn’t come alone. I—” “I’m here,” Terry says from the door. All the joy that surged inside me stalls at the sight of my sister.

Cho!

“Needed the bathroom after that long ride,” she mutters, her expression growing stiffer and more uncertain the longer we stare at each other.

“Who is this?” Terry sneers, hands on hips.

“You will not stress Neevah out any more than she already is. Believe me, her doctor will kick you out before I get the chance if she walks in and finds you yelling at the woman who literally is about to begin dialysis waiting for a kidney.” “Dialysis?” Terry asks faintly, glancing at me and frowning.

Exactly

“You’re Neevah’s sister, I assume? I see the resemblance.” Is there? I study Terry’s beautiful face. She was always the pretty one when we were growing up, so I didn’t try to compare us. I knew she’d win the face race, but it didn’t really matter. I loved my sister with an affection so deep it bordered on hero worship. When she betrayed that, the only way I could deal with it and the consequences was to cut her off completely.

“Can I ask how long you’re here?” “I have three days before I have to get back to work,” Terry says. “And my daughter needs me. Her daddy…” Her wide eyes meet mine at the mention of Brandon.

Bitch please

“You knit?” I ask skeptically. It doesn’t really fit my image of her as the temptress who lured my fiancé into a scandalous affair.

“Nothing compared to Broadway, obviously,” Terry says, roughly thrusting a needle into the innocent pile of yarn. “Or a big-time movie.”

Such a bitch

“You just have to rub that in our faces, too, huh?” Terry says, dropping the needles in her lap. “That you’re dating Canon Holt and he’s crazy about you. We get it, Neevah. Your life is perfect.”

WHATT

“There was a small, petty part of me deep inside that felt like, finally, I have something she wants. I’m the best at something this one time.” “The best at my boyfriend?” I ask in harsh disbelief. “You were the prettiest girl at our school. In the whole town, T. You could have had anyone you wanted, and you chose the one who should have been off-limits.” “I was young and stupid. I paid for it.”

Fucking bitch

“Terry,” I say, not sure what should come next. She turns at the door, her expression guarded again—braced for the resentment, the anger that has characterized our relationship. “Yeah?” she asks warily. “Just… thank you.” She doesn’t smile exactly, but relief flickers in her eyes and maybe the first kindling of hope. She’s my sister.

Bitch

My massive crush is now the love of my life, so everything is perfect.”

It’s like a leg that should have healed a long time ago, and now it’s all rotty, but you can’t cut it off, so you still have to save it.” “You do see me trying to eat, right?” Takira points to her popcorn. “And all this rotten limb talk ain’t helping.”

Forgiving is harder than forgetting. Forgetting would be the oblivion of never knowing how you hurt me. Forgiving is accepting you hurt me, deciding that I’m going to keep loving you anyway.”

“And I’m so honored to offer this all-natural product for us,” she says. “Designed with black hair in mind. Give it a try and in no time…” She twirls, the long hair fanning out in a shimmering arc. “Beautiful.” The commercial changes into another for dishwashing liquid, but I can’t stop seeing all that beautiful hair. That flawless skin.

“Tomorrow,” she says from the screen, from a wheelchair precipitously close to the edge of a pier, “is the most presumptuous word in the world, because who knows if you even get that. Yesterday, spilled milk and old news. You can’t do nothing about how you messed up or fell short or didn’t do yesterday. Even when you mess up and make it right, it has to be done today.”

Better todays make better tomorrows, and if you don’t get tomorrow, at least you had today.”

For the entire documentary she has been all smiles and sunsets, but it’s near the end. She’s near the end, and tears fill her eyes.

“This body is a shell,” she says, her voice sober. “No matter how beautiful or what size or how healthy, every single body inevitably returns to dust. It is not y...

Her eyes shift just above the lens, to the man holding it, and her smile returns. “I love you, Canon,” she says, addressing him directly by name for the first and only time during the documentary. And you can see it in her eyes, the pride, the assurance that he is what she h...

Hers was a race that had already been decided, a race against time, but the beauty was in how she ran. And I think that’s the point.

I wish I could turn back the clock, find them on one of their piers as the sun dipped into the ocean to thank her for all she sowed into the remarkable man her son has become.