Page 79 of Hello Darling
Considering how rattled she was for a good fifteen minutes at Heathrow, Stella has maintained a refined Grace Kelly-like composure ever since we arrived in the French Riviera. I swear, she looks like a glamorous nineteen-fifties movie star, as befits her name, but she repeatedly insists that she needs a long hot shower after spending twelve hours on planes today. I’m fine with that, as long as I can join her.
I instructed my assistant not to use Richard Diver as an alias here at the Hotel Belles Rives. She dropped my name to get us the cottage here in the Cap d’Antibes for New Year’s, but instructed them to make the reservation under the name Robert Parker (Robert LeRoy Parker being Butch Cassidy’s real name). We will spend our treasured three days here, at the luxury hotel where F. Scott Fitzgerald wroteTender is the Night.
While it’s not a favorite novel for either of us, it was that first conversation with her, about this book, wherein I knew deep down that I was completely, irrevocably, fucked for life. Even in the depths of winter, the cove with its view of nearby islands and mountains is the perfect place for us to take walks on the empty beach and jetty. The art deco elegance of the hotel is the perfect place for us to dine on room service while ringing in the New Year naked and planning the year ahead.
For me, getting this woman to reveal more of her inner self to me will be a prize equal to or possibly greater than spending uninterrupted hours upon hours reacquainting myself with every inch of her flesh.
“I’m glad you changed your alias,” Stella says, as we lie in each other’s arms on the bed, still damp from our shower and breathless from the reunion sex. “You aren’t like Dick Diver at all, not really. You aren’t a fraud. You aren’t so lost.”
I raise her hand to my lips. “Not when I’m with you.”
That line earns me an eye roll. “Stop acting.”
“Stop managing.”
She thinks about that for a second. “Okay.”
All these little victories. My cup runneth over, but I want to know everything now. I run my fingers down her arm. “Does your skin get tan in the summer?”
“A bit. If I forget to put on sunscreen. Yours does. I’ve seen you look all golden and sun kissed in one of those movies of yours.”
“I want to take you to Bermuda. In season. I want to see you run along a beach in a bikini.”
“Do you now?”
“Yes. Are you hungry? Should we order food?”
She shakes her head. “I ate everything they offered me on the flight from Seattle and we had that whole meal at Heathrow.” She turns and looks out the window.
“I’m sorry that happened with the photographers.”
She shakes her head again. “It’s not your fault, I know.”
“What they said about Georgia and Braden being in London, I have no idea what they were talking about.”
She turns back to me, kisses my shoulder. “We don’t have to talk about it. I just feel bad that you have to deal with that sort of thing all the time.”
“Well, notallthe time. It doesn’t happen every time I’m at Heathrow. I usually don’t even realize they’re taking pictures of me from afar.”
She rolls over on top of me, swirling her fingertip across my chest. “What’s your flat like?”
“Come see it.”
She winces, almost imperceptibly, but I caught it. “Do you have pictures?”
“I don’t have pictures of my flat on my phone, no.”
“Should we be going out to explore the hotel? It’s so beautiful here.”
“Tomorrow.”
“Okay. You’ve never been here before, have you?”
“No. Not to this hotel. I’ve been to the Cannes film festival a couple of times.”
“Oooh. Course you have. You’re such a fancy actor.”
“Yes,” I say, propping myself up on my elbows to kiss her. “But I’m also just a boy, standing in front of a girl, asking her to love me…You probably don’t get that joke but it’s a line from—”
