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“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 amnotfake.”
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 itobviouslybothered 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.
His phone buzzed and he reached over to check it.
“Sorry, it’s a work thing,” he said, tapping away on his phone. I didn’t know if this was also a ruse to impress me, or if he really was such a workaholic he had to check his email every time a new one hit his inbox. What did he do, anyway? Some kind of sales job at one of the major studios, I vaguely remembered. His dad had gotten him the job. And the car to go with it.
Most people in Hollywood slept around with people who worked at studios. They used sex to get a better audition, a better part, a better paycheck. The main problem with sleeping around in Hollywood is that people think you’re sleeping around for the wrong reasons, not just to, you know, sleep around. But I liked sex. Sometimes I’d be talking about my latest date, and the friend listening to me would nod their head knowingly. They all thought I went to bed with men to get ahead.
Truth of it was, I’d never had sex with anyone I didn’t want to have sex with. I wouldn’t let myself do that, not ever.
But none of the guys I slept with impressed me. Not that they were all porn stars doing crazy kinky shit. If anything, the guys in Hollywood were too vanilla for me. I wanted the real kind of good sex, the kind where you explore all the ways to make each other feel good. The guys in L.A. were weirdly hung up about sex, though. They only wanted to fuck in positions that made them look good. They didn’t want to get messy. They needed their hair to stay styled and perfect. That was more important to them than good sex.
Take Blaise here. He could be a sex god. That’s why I had let him pick me up at the club, anyway. He had the looks and the physique, and a face that wasn’t movie-star handsome, but better than most. And really big hands. I’d hoped that meant what it usually meant.
I imagined those bulging muscles, naked and oiled, his chest broad and heavy, writhing in silk sheets as we twisted around each other. His thick hands gripping me around the wrists and pinning me down as he fucked me so hard the plaster rained down from the ceiling.
Three dates in, and he hadn’t made a move other than kissing me goodnight last time. I’d tried to get more from him. I’d let my hand brush against the front of his pants, hoping that there would be a thick erection there just waiting to burst out of his underwear. But nope. Nothing. Nada. One kiss and a goodnight.
Such a letdown. I know I wasn’t as perfect looking as most of the girls in L.A.—the technical term for a plain Jane like me is “character actor”—but I had a lot to offer guys, or so I thought. But I guessed for Blaise I was just the backup girl he could take out to one of his dad’s clubs whenever he needed somebody on his arm.
