Page 23 of Star Struck

Jack tipped his head back and looked at me from under a heavy overhang of hair. It made him look remote somehow. ‘You weren’t in the front?’

‘No. It probably saved my life.’

‘Your . . . best friend was sitting next to your fiancé?’

My breath caught. Raked down my throat like a mis-swallow. ‘Yes.’ I gulped, couldn’t get air down fast enough and began to panic. Sweat broke out on my forehead, my breathing began to race and yet I still couldn’t fill my lungs. Sickness rose, but I couldn’t throw up, didn’t dare, how could I breathe if I was vomiting?

‘Skye.’ Jack spoke suddenly close, right by my ear. ‘It’s all right. Relax. Just breathe.’ I could feel a cautious hand stroking my hair. ‘Don’t think about it; let your body do the work for you. Trust me, it wants to breathe, when you fight you’re stopping it from doing its job.’

I tried to push him away; he was crowding my air, breathing my oxygen. But gradually his slow words and the rhythm of his stroking took over the irregular gasping of my inhalation and I felt my heart rate begin to settle. ‘Sorry.’ I was exhausted. ‘Stupid.’ Couldn’t even stop to think why I’d got so stressed at the thought of the accident. Maybe I wasn’t as over it as I thought.

He was still standing very close and I felt him shake his head. ‘Nah. Perfectly reasonable. We all handle the trauma in our own ways. After my accident I didn’t speak for six months, some kind of shock, they said. Drove everyone completely insane, lot of them thought I was faking it for the attention.’ A high grunt of derision. ‘Yeah, ’cos everyone wants doctors and psychiatrists buzzing round them all hours.’

‘What happened?’

Jack flopped down onto the bed, drew his knees up against his chest and wrapped his arms around them. ‘Like you, car crash. I was sixteen. Ryan, my best friend, was killed; I got my arm nearly ripped off.’ Thoughtfully he flexed his muscles, pulling his hand up to his face and away again. ‘They reattached it, eight hours of microsurgery, and it’s pretty nearly as good as it was.’ He wiggled his fingers in my direction. ‘I’m a bit clumsy sometimes, don’t grip as well as I should, but it’s okay.’ He stared at his palm as though for the first time. ‘Yeah,’ he repeated. ‘It’s okay. Right. Now, you’re going to come to breakfast with me. Couple of cups of coffee and a plate of eggs, you’ll feel better. Then you can decide what you’re doing about this quiz.’ Long legs unfolded onto the carpet. ‘But reckon I’d better get dressed. This is my writing gear and not every restaurant appreciates genius out of its jeans.’

‘I’ll go and . . .’

‘No, stay there. I’ll just be a minute.’ He dragged open a couple of drawers, withdrew the contents of one of them and headed into the bathroom, half-closing the door behind him. ‘Where’s Felix now?’ His voice was muffled, the T-shirt coming off, probably.

‘Shagging Jared White, I think.’

‘Really?’ A head came round the door and I tried not to notice the exposed chest under it. ‘Good luck to him then.’ There was a thin white scar along the side of his rib cage that I hadn’t been in a fit state to notice last time I’d seen him topless, fading as it curved into the hair scattered down his stomach. He still wore the leather lace; it contrasted with his pale skin like a slash.

‘Oh, I think Felix is up to it.’

Another manic grin and the torso vanished. I could hear the rustling sounds of clothing removal, and desperately tried not to say anything which might call for an appearance. ‘What are the other prizes then? For the quiz, I mean.’

A momentary hiatus behind the door, then Jack emerged buttoning his fly. His chest was still bare, revealing that the scar tore across a nipple before angling down towards his diaphragm. ‘You really want to know? Okay. First is the part in the show. Second is a dinner date with Geth. Third . . . I think it’s some kind of memorabilia — one of the flight cruiser cockpits maybe, we’ve not really settled yet, depends what’s needed next series.’ He opened another drawer and pulled out a white shirt, sniffed it and held it out to me. ‘Reckon this’ll do another day?’

‘Looks fine,’ I said idly, thinking about that second-prize dinner date with Gethryn. If I could win that . . .

‘Hmm. You’re not fussy, I’ll add that to the list. Okay. You coming?’ And he yanked the shirt on, did up two middle buttons to hold it across his chest and opened the door, barefoot, pulling a pair of wire-framed glasses from his bedside table and poking them onto his nose as he went.

‘You call that dressed?’ I followed him into the corridor. ‘Don’t you ever wear shoes?’

‘Only if I have to.’ He closed the bedroom door, pausing to check his pockets for his key card. As he patted himself down, I saw Felix heading up the corridor towards our room. His jaunty walk stammered for a second when he caught sight of me and the partly clad Jack and he held a theatrical hand to his forehead.

‘Skye, Skye, Skye, I take my eyes off you for one night and you’re bonking the workforce; what am I going to do with you?’

‘I think it’s more what I’m going to do with you that you ought to be worrying about.’

‘Steady, darling, after last night I’m not sure I can take much more. I think I might be broken, actually. Certainly feels like it. Can I have the key, please? Or have you locked us out again for the dubious pleasure of having to invoke Antonio’s wrath?’

I held it out at arm’s length. ‘Felix.’

‘Ah. So. Ah. I think we might need to have a little chat.’ Felix took the key card, his eyes flicking from Jack to me and back again but, I must admit, mostly resting on Jack’s half-naked chest where his shirt barely managed to make contact.

‘Later.’ Jack said, firmly. He half-turned and gave me a gentle shove. ‘I’m taking Skye for something to eat. You can discuss this when she’s got something inside her.’

There was a looooong pause. Felix was bursting to add the obvious rejoinder but my expression must have put him off his stroke, as I didn’t think Jack looked in the mood for Fe’s speculation into our collective love-lives. ‘All right,’ Felix said, cautiously, after a second or two, obviously reluctant to let the double entendre go unentendred. ‘I need some sleep anyhoo. Catch you on the flip-side?’

‘No.’ I must have sounded unlike myself, because both men raised their eyebrows. ‘I’ll catch you in about half-an-hour. I am not just going to fall in line with your plans, Felix.’

Felix bit his lip, hard. I saw the skin split and wondered what he was trying to stop himself from saying, as he waved a casual hand in agreement, pushing his way into our room and falling on the bed with a groan which was audible as we headed towards the lift.

Jack and I ate eggs and drank coffee in the now open but still-deserted diner. There wasn’t much conversation between us; he seemed to have slipped into deep thought and I was more concerned with what I was going to say to Felix. Had he really brought me all the way out here just to try to win him a part? It seemed a bit of a long-shot, but then he wasn’t exactly meeting with huge success in Britain; maybe he saw this as his one chance. And I . . . was I happy to go along with it? To finally admit the death of my own ambitions?

---