make it literal. We can take turns. You will be on top one day, and I’ll be on top the next.” I flicked the tip of my tongue against that delicate shell but immediately let out a grunt as the back of her hand smacked against my stomach.
I heard her exhale and waited for her to tell me to go to hell. I wasn’t at all prepared for her to meet my gaze and say in a quiet voice that only I could hear, “I like both parts of that. Being friends and the benefits. But I worry about how it would affect our work.”
I swore louder than I meant to, and once again had heads in the exclusive dining room turn to look at me with censure. I could care less about how sleeping together affected us working together. She said she wanted what was best for me and to make the best movie; if I had to pick between the two, I would tell her that being with her was going to help me heal the most.
“I already signed one crazy contract. Write up another one. Put your concerns in writing. I’ll sign it.” I didn’t care what it said.
She scoffed, but the sound died away when she saw just how serious I was. “Are you being real right now?”
I nodded. “I am.”
Love was frightening. I didn’t know anything about making the fake kind look believable, but I was willing to learn all I could to put on the performance of a lifetime. But only from Maren. I was clueless about real-life love, even though I was pretty sure the seed of it had been planted inside my teenage heart the first time Maren told me to stop screwing up my life. Even if she did end up hurting me, it was a pain I would welcome with open arms.
Maren
I’D LEARNED A lot about Salinger since we started our unconventional friends-with-benefits relationship.
I had yet to hand over a contract like he insisted because every time I sat down to put into words what was and wasn’t acceptable, it made me feel shallow and cold. I could also hear my father somewhere in the back of my head admonishing me for turning something as simple as a fling with a Hollywood heartthrob into a business arrangement just because I was overly worried about getting hurt and humiliated again. To his credit, Salinger frequently chimed in and reminded me he was more than willing to play by my rules, which made me feel even worse. I felt like I was making him conform to my whims without being willing to give the same consideration in return. Slowly but surely, I’d loosened the tight rein I had over my every reaction and response to him, so now things were a little more informal and natural between the two of us when we got together and hooked up. I felt less like I needed him to leave before dawn, and less like I was doing something wrong every time I ended up in bed with him.
And now that he was at my place once or twice a week, I was seeing parts of him that I would never know unless we were entwined in each other’s lives as tightly as we were.
Like the fact that he didn’t sleep… like at all.
I had no clue how he managed to function and get through his very busy days on the one or two hours of shut-eye he caught each night. He explained that insomnia was a byproduct of getting clean and having a lot of regret from his previous actions. He was too scared to take sleeping pills since he was prone to addiction and nothing over the counter seemed to work. As a result, he worked… a lot. I always thought I was diligent and motivated, but I had nothing on Salinger. He always had something brewing, and it seemed like his mind never took a moment to rest. It was even in the middle of the night when he quietly told me he decided to let Henrich adjust the ending of the script. It was something he’d been struggling with for a while, and it was obvious he was torn over which direction to go. I was falling asleep because it was late, and because having sex with him normally left me wrung out and exhausted in all the right ways, but he sounded certain and wide awake. I asked what brought