Chapter 4
4
Three days later, with the weather still grim, Oliver was hiding out in the media room with Pavarotti trying to put as much distance between them and Paige’s violin practice. He may not have been a fan of the rodent but there was no way he could expose the creature to the dreadful caterwauling that Paige inflicted on them several times a day.
She was dedicated, he’d give her that. But he was a firm believer in reaching a point in life where some things should never be attempted. That there was a window where taking up certain hobbies was acceptable and then it shut and that was that.
Like windsurfing for instance. And bungee jumping. And the violin.
Seriously, if Paige hadn’t been Bella’s friend he’d have shown her the door the morning after Pavarotti’s night-time escapades.
But, Bella…
He didn’t know what the statute of limitations was on his guilt but he had a feeling he’d never quite be able to absolve himself. Why hadn’t he spoken up in the weeks prior to the wedding when he’d been feeling more and more uncertain and avoided the total panic of that day that had led him to do such a calamitous, idiotic thing?
It had been the right thing, calling it off. On the morning of, though? And via text? That had been unforgiveable.
He’d been putting his feelings of disquiet down to nerves and the weight of responsibility he suddenly felt to be a good husband. To provide. To be the hunter and gatherer. Although God knew why – he had money and Bella had an amazing job and was independently wealthy. She hadn’t needed that from him.
All she’d needed was him to love her.
And that had been the crux of the issue. He’d been panicking about all the other stuff because that had been easier than admitting he didn’t love the woman he’d asked to spend the rest of his life with.
Not in the way she needed anyway.
He loved her. Of course he did. He still did. She was one of the best people he knew. But he hadn’t been in love with her. In fact, he’d known that morning he’d never been in love with her.
And that she’d deserved more.
There had been a lot of conjecture in the incessant tabloid coverage about his poor marital role models what with his parents’ infamous on-again, off-again relationship and eventual divorce. And maybe they were right because Oliver wasn’t entirely sure he knew how to love someone.
He’d been with women, had a couple of relationships that had even made it to the three-month mark. But when they’d ended as they inevitably had because he hadn’t been able to say the L word, he’d never been heartbroken. And there’d always been plenty of women who’d wanted to date a guy related to Hollywood royalty.
Maybe kids that grew up in a household fraught with marital tension never learned to be open with their hearts. Never trusted feelings to be true.
Bella seemed to understand that from the get-go. Perhaps because they’d been friends first? It certainly hadn’t seemed to matter to her that he’d never said the L word and there had been such comfort and ease in that but, as she’d said when they’d first spoken after the jilting – I just assumed you did and that’s why you’d asked me to marry you.
Which had been a fair enough assumption.
But when it came to standing up on that day in front of 400 people and, well God, he supposed – although he’d never been religious – in a ceremony that was all about true, deep, abiding love and solemn commitment, he’d realised he couldn’t say them.
Because he hadn’t loved Bella like she’d needed him to. And he liked her far too much to see her settle for less.
But yeah, in an Am I The Asshole reddit post, he would definitely be the asshole. And if a whirling dervish of a woman with questionable taste in clothes and a dubious commitment to veganism who never cleaned up after herself and subjected him to terrible violin practice and bloody hamsters was his punishment, then he could suck it up.
The wheel which had been merrily spinning around, its lights glowing a fluorescent rainbow in Oliver’s peripheral vision whirred to a halt and he glanced at said hamster.
‘Not yet, buddy.’ Checking the app attached to the wheel, Oliver used his poshest accent as that seemed to be the one that Pavarotti responded to best. ‘Another two minutes.’
The advantage to hiding out with the rodent several times a day was he’d been able to work on his plan to get the animal fit so he wouldn’t suddenly drop dead of a heart attack.
His thrice daily texts on hamster facts – they just kept coming at him relentlessly like the fucking Terminator despite him blocking the numbers – had informed him that the animals lived for about two years although the oldest recorded hamster had been four and a half.
Which had become Oliver’s goal. Four and half. Because he remembered acutely the death of his beloved turtle when he’d been a kid. Bolt had been given to him by Ernie Cummings, his father’s agent, for his fourth birthday. Ernie had told him turtles were a commitment because they lived for twenty to thirty years and if Oliver wasn’t up to the job he’d take him back and get him a guppy instead.
Oliver had solemnly declared he was up for the job. And he had been. Even at four he’d taken his responsibility very seriously especially given the adults in his life were too busy bickering to rely on for help. That time with Bolt had been a fabulous distraction from the raised voices of his parents and Oliver had loved and cared for that cool little dude until his mysterious demise a few months later.
To say he’d been devastated at the loss was an understatement. The fact that Bolt’s death had coincided with the first time his mother had left had probably amplified those feelings. Or at least that’s what a shrink had told him when he’d been thirteen and he’d undergone an assessment as part of his mother’s application to the courts for full custody.
Oliver didn’t know Paige’s nephew but he did know that four-year-olds could feel just as deeply as any adult. Bunky’s childhood might not be as anxiety-ridden as Oliver’s but there was still no need for him to find out about the grim realities of life at such a tender age.
With a name like Bunky, life would no doubt fuck him over soon enough.
So, aided by the YouTube videos, project Healthy Hamster was launched.
After discovering – unsurprisingly – that food was Pavarotti’s main motivator, Oliver had started training the hamster to work for his supper. It hadn’t taken as long as he’d thought given Pavarotti was exceptionally motivated but it had taken a while to figure out what food was a balance between healthy and naughty.
It turned out to be grapes. Not the cheapest fruit available in the middle of winter and a world-wide economic crisis in an English county which was not generally known for its grape-growing climate.
Of course the hamster would have champagne tastes…
But, luckily for Oliver and his father’s regular posthumous royalty payments, money didn’t matter and if getting him to ride the damn wheel meant spending his inheritance on grapes then that’s what he’d do. He’d gradually wean the animal on to more nutritionally appropriate hamster food, he just had to get him hooked on the routine first.
When the wheel remained stubbornly stationary, Oliver plucked the grape off the coffee table and held it up so Pavarotti could see it from his position on the floor. The little blighter might be being compliant but enthusiasm was a ways off so a little reminder of the end prize never hurt.
The wheel started up again, the rainbow array of lights a blur and Oliver smiled to himself as he placed the grape back on the table and used the remote to pump up the music volume another notch. It was playing the Rocky soundtrack both for the motivational benefit of Pavarotti and to drown out whatever nursery rhyme Paige was butchering today.
Turning his attention to the laptop that was balancing on his knees, Oliver stared at the blinking cursor on the screen. He’d been working on an action-adventure script since he’d returned to Cornwall and he knew people in Hollywood – directors, studios, producers – who would look at it seriously because of whose kid he was despite his father not being around any longer.
Ernie, who was in his late seventies now and still going strong, certainly would. In fact, he kept hassling him for it.
But he knew in his bones it was lacklustre. The stakes weren’t high enough. Probably because his spook hero – Zac Woodbury – was as wooden as the bespoke blonde floorboards upstairs.
Thanks to his connections he’d done some minor acting roles over the years, a lot of which had ended on the cutting room floor which had oddly not been overly disconcerting. Sure, he’d enjoyed it, he’d certainly bragged about it to date women, but his real passion had been writing and the acting just a side hustle.
His time at USC where he’d studied writing for film and TV had confirmed that. And also confirmed that this script was crap. Which was fine, writers learned their craft through writing crap and getting better. Handing it in, getting feedback and rejections and those dreaded notes.
The problem was, the son of Roger Prendergast could not show anyone a crap script. Even when his father was alive he couldn’t have but that went double now he was dead because people talked and although he had mixed emotions where his father was concerned, he’d hate to besmirch his name by having a kid who wrote dud scripts.
He didn’t want his dad to be a laughing stock. Nor did he want to be pitied or humoured especially in the aftermath of the not-wedding. He certainly didn’t want the script to be snapped up and splashed around for publicity purposes then made into some B-grade monstrosity written by Redondo’s runaway groom playing to empty houses for the ghoulish delight of the tabloids.
So, he was in a weird kind of limbo where he didn’t know how to progress or how to fix what was wrong. Not for the first time he thought he should just ditch it all and start afresh with a completely new idea. But new ideas were thin on the ground as well.
Also, he was self-aware enough to realise that this yearning-to-start-again thing probably wasn’t about the script at all.
Although God… it was truly a dog of a script.
The door to the stairs opened suddenly and Paige appeared brandishing two steaming mugs. Her hair was its usual tangle of stringy titian curls, her jeans a landscape of mismatched denim patches. Her T-shirt depicted a seagull in sunglasses, a French fry hanging out its beak. The words stamped beneath were – chip magnet.
Her perfume followed her like it always did, a zesty spritz of lime. She’d been in his house for less than a week and every time she passed by he got a hankering for tequila shots. Which made him think of things he could lick, sip, suck and Paige was Bella’s friend so that was very much not helpful.
‘I can hear that music all the way upstairs.’
He suppressed the urge to say, you’re welcome and point out that it was at least real music, not the musical equivalent of the jaws of life tearing through metal. Instead, he said, ‘Sorry, motivational music for Pavarotti,’ and reached for the remote to flick it off.
Pavarotti took that as a sign to stop his exercise, slowing right down until the wheel came to a standstill. Keeping up his end of the bargain, Oliver pushed three grapes through the bars of the cage. Leaping off the structure in a surprisingly agile manner for such a cumbersome creature, Pavarotti scurried over to his gastronomic treasure and proceeded to gobble his way through the reward.
Oliver tipped his chin at the mugs. ‘What do you have there?’
‘I had a hankering for hot chocolate. Thought you might like one?’
Trying not to think about the kind of mess that awaited him in the kitchen – spilt milk, chocolate powder, scattered sugar granules – Oliver nodded. ‘Thanks.’
She set the mugs down, pushing the remote control out of its usual position with her left hand and accidentally over tipping the drink with her right. His eye twitched at the asymmetry of the remote controls and the milky splash on the sleek glass table. But his irritation didn’t last long as she sat beside him, her limey freshness filling his nostrils.
Like a margarita. Christ, the woman was turning him into an alcoholic.
Picking her mug up, she eyed the laptop. ‘So, you’re not just watching TV down here all day,’ she said, blowing on the surface of her drink. ‘You write scripts?’
Closing the lid, he placed the computer on the table and picked up his mug. ‘I… dabble,’ he admitted.
‘Pretty inspirational room to do it in.’ Her gaze lifted to the top shelf where all his father’s awards sat beneath their individual spotlights. ‘Or intimidating, I guess.’
Oliver eyed the golden glow of the Oscar. Hell, if that wasn’t accurate…
‘How’s it going?’
He grimaced. ‘I’m kinda stuck, actually.’
‘Being the son of a famous actor doesn’t make it come any easier?’
Oliver realised this was the first time she’d mentioned his father directly in the whole time she’d been under his roof. He was so used to his father being the number one topic of conversation between him and people he didn’t really know that it had been refreshing to learn the world actually didn’t revolve around his father’s career. ‘God no. If only. Hell, I studied at USC?—’
‘USC?’
‘University of Southern California. They have a big film campus there and I studied script writing. And even that doesn’t make it any easier.’
‘Are you blocked?’
Oliver blinked at the question. What would Paige know about that? ‘No. More… stymied by expectation.’
‘Oh?’ She tilted her head a little as she regarded him. ‘Yours or someone else’s?’
His. Ernie’s. His professors at USC. People who knew his parents. The whole fucking entirety of La La Land. He gave a half laugh. ‘Both?’
A brief flash of… something crossed her features before she schooled them – impatience? Her lips pressed together as if to stop her from saying what she was thinking.
‘Am I allowed to know what type of film you’re working on?’ she asked instead.
Oliver had always been very private about what he’d written because of the expectation that came with the Prendergast name. He’d even hated having lecturers reading what he wrote. And so it was on the tip of his tongue to tell her to mind her own damn business because it was personal and bad.
But perversely because she was, to all intents and purposes, a stranger and hadn’t shown any inkling of interest in movie land – or his father – he felt he could talk to Paige. Even maybe wanted to.
‘It’s an action adventure.’
Bending her knees, she slid her feet onto the edge of the table, her toes curling around the smoothed glass edge. They were painted green. Bright lime green. And suddenly he was thinking about day drinking again.
‘Ah. That explains why you were watching Die Hard in January.’
No. It did not. ‘I watch Die Hard at least once a month.’ And sadly, Zac Woodbury was no John McClane.
‘I get that. I watch episode seven, season one of Outlander just about every month.’
‘Oh?’ The popular Netflix show hadn’t ever been on his radar but he knew several people who worked on it and that it was a quality show. ‘Why that one in particular?’
‘It’s the wedding episode.’
Well, of course it was. ‘Ah.’
‘Yeah, sorry, I know you’re not a fan of the W word.’
Okay yeah, he deserved that. Leaving her jibe alone, he asked, ‘Why do you watch it so often? What about it makes you keep going back to it?’
Oliver found this endlessly fascinating – what connected people to movies or TV. Why did they return to the same things over and over when there were a million different options vying for their attention? As one of his USC professors used to say, understanding the viewer and what connected them to a script was where the gold lay.
‘Is it the sex?’
The question tumbled out before he could stop it. It probably wasn’t very appropriate given they’d only cohabitated for five days. It wasn’t like they’d talked much in that time so throwing the S word into a conversation was probably a little intimate for someone he didn’t know that well. But there was no denying after probably the longest dry spell of his adult life and the memory of Paige’s naked freckly shoulders replaying a little too often in his head, sex was definitely on his mind.
She wrinkled her nose which drew his gaze to the freckles that popped across the bridge and smattered her cheekbones. Because apparently now he was obsessed with freckles?
‘How reductive of you.’
Slightly chastised by her obvious disappointment and then irked at feeling that way, Oliver pushed, ‘So, it’s not the sex?’
Sighing, she cradled her mug in her lap and turned slightly to face him. ‘It’s not just the sex, although that is very good.’
Her expression was so earnest it left Oliver in little doubt.
‘Too many sex scenes in my humble opinion seem to make it all about the man. Like they’re written for men with gratuitous nudity and the woman being passive or… performative. Like the sex is being done to her. The ones in that episode are all about Claire and the build of intimacy and trust between her and Jamie.’
He nodded. The female gaze. It had been taught at USC but he’d not really paid much attention. Not because he was unsympathetic to what Paige was saying but because he wrote action adventure, a genre not known for its exploration of emotion.
Her words from their discussion over Die Hard that first day came back to him. He’s doing it for the woman he loves. Hmm, maybe he needed to rethink the whole emotion thing.
Except that would probably require him to explore the reasons behind his avoidance of that messier part of life and the bloody script would never get done.
‘But it’s also about Jamie,’ she continued, unaware of his festering thoughts. ‘We already know he’s an honourable man. But it really shines through in this episode because you get to see this big, brave tough He-Man highlander brought to his knees and gladly so , by a woman. He’s a virgin?—’
‘He’s a virgin?’
She just smiled and nodded. ‘But he’s not ashamed of it or trying to pretend he’s some amazing lover. He’s keen and willing to learn, to be tutored. And he doesn’t just want to take, or for it to be all about him. He wants to give as well, he wants her to enjoy it.’
‘That sounds very modern of him.’
‘Why?’ she demanded. ‘Because men 200 years ago were all brutes and assholes? Surely there was a spectrum even then? And nuance? There’s so much nuance to Jamie in this episode. He’s funny and wry and self-deprecating and charming as well as earnest and serious and controlled. But mostly he’s just really… present. It’s…’ Her fingers fluttered against her throat. ‘Very swoony. He’s very swoony.’
Maybe that was what Zac was missing. He was an honourable man but maybe he needed the swoon factor. Some emotional nuance.
‘You should really watch it sometime.’
Oliver was thinking he might just do that. In fact, maybe he should watch a bunch of content with Paige. She might not know the technicalities behind things but she could certainly articulate how something made her feel .
‘Thanks, I will.’
‘You know who else is a really good action-adventure hero?’
‘Who?’
‘Jack Colton.’
Oliver nodded. ‘ Romancing the Stone .’
‘Uh huh.’
Yeah, Oliver had to admit, he was good. Textbook even. Which had been the whole point of him given he’d been the personification of the romance novelist heroine’s romantic fantasies.
‘Also, one of the best lines ever written. In my humble opinion.’
Oliver quirked an eyebrow. ‘“Bastards have brothers”?’
The fact he’d clearly stunned her by his almost encyclopaedic knowledge of film was evident. But it was that little flash of admiration that warmed him on the inside.
‘That’s the one.’
‘It’s good,’ he admitted.
‘Yeah.’
She nodded and they stared at each other in what very much felt like mutual admiration. Oliver wasn’t sure if it was over the movie line or over their synchronicity.
‘Anyway…’ She gave a little shake of her head, downed half of her mug then stood. On the ass of her jeans she had a big yellow don’t worry, be happy patch and it was definitely that she caught him looking at moments later, not the way she filled out those jeans, her round ass cupped to perfection.
Paige Barker was all about the bass.
‘I’ll leave you to your script,’ she murmured, making no comment about where his gaze had been. Crossing to the cage, she picked it up. ‘Come on Pavarotti, let’s get out of here so Oliver can get back to his action-adventure stuff.’
Quirking an eyebrow, Oliver pointed at her. ‘You called him Pavarotti.’
She looked nonplussed for a moment before what she’d said registered. ‘Thanks to you the damn thing only answers to that now.’
Oliver laughed. ‘Sorry. Not sorry.’
‘Bunky is going to be well confused when I get his pet home,’ she said as she headed for the stairs.
Like a kid called Bunky wasn’t going to have name issues anyway…
‘Door open or closed?’ she asked at the foot of the stairs.
‘That depends. Have you finished committing crimes against music for the day?’
Shooting him a sarcastic smile, she said, ‘Yes.’
‘In that case you can leave it open.’
Oliver couldn’t explain how very nice it had been hearing someone moving around the house these past days. Even the sound of Paige – a friend of the woman he’d jilted at the aisle – stomping up the stairs now made him feel less… alone. He hadn’t really realised how dark and quiet the house was and how isolated he’d been these past months.
It hadn’t been uncommon for him not to see or hear another soul for days at a time apart from maybe the occasional muffled voices that came from the beach. Not that there’d been much of those either lately given the shitty January weather. But he didn’t need to see a shrink to know that rattling around in a house by oneself and barely getting out wasn’t good for his mental health.
No wonder he hadn’t been able to see the wood for the trees with the script.
It hadn’t been his intention to become a recluse. But the initial tabloid interest had driven him indoors and the winter weather had added extra incentive to stay there. Since having his house guest here, however, he’d started to realise being barricaded inside had been a bit of a safety blanket for him and how even something like cleaning up after hurricane Paige had turned a light on – metaphorically speaking.
Which had to be beneficial, right?
Even if she did remind him of key lime pie and how very much he’d screwed things up with Bella. He felt for sure the universe was probably having a laugh at his expense but if this was his penance then maybe some good could come out of it for him too.
Despite the chaos and the mess and waking every morning to a degree of trepidation over what the day would bring.
Turning back to his laptop, Oliver straightened the remote control before returning his attention to that damn blinking cursor again. Zac was about to blow up a fuel depot but maybe what he needed was a love interest? Somebody to highlight his soft underbelly. Oliver paused and frowned for a bit. Hmmm. He tapped out a note.
Give Zac soft underbelly.
His phone pinged then and he absently plucked it off the arm of the couch where he always placed it when he was sitting in this spot.
Here’s your latest from HAMSTER FACTS! Did you know that in the wild, the female kicks the male out of the burrow at completion of coitus? Little wonder when the event is over and done with in approximately four seconds. Press 1 if you think male hamsters need to be better lovers. Standard messaging rates may apply.
Oliver blinked, temporarily at a loss for words, wondering if today’s bot had been AI trained in feminism. Or whether his phone really was listening in to his conversations. Or possibly reading his mind considering how much the Outlander discussion had him thinking about sex. And how very long it had been since he’d had any.
Four seconds? He’d be grateful to last that long if he ever got around to coitus again.