The Sweetest Summer

Chapter Thirty - Seven - Better

Eli -

"Elijah! Elijah! Look this way! Are you and Sky together? Are you in love?!" The paparazzi were as relentless as ever as their cameras fucking blinded me. I ticked my jaw and pressed my lips together with my hands in my pockets, staring into their flashes in the brooding way they fucking loved. The flashes came quicker now and I smiled widely, pretending like I was happy to be here - possibly developing epilepsy.

"That's enough, boys. Thank you." My publicist Rachel held up her hands and the flashes slowly came to a stop. "You could at least act like you're having a good time." She kissed my cheek to hide her frustration. I liked Rachel, she was my mom's age and from Los Angeles, so she had this maternal instinct - with an edge.

"I'm not that good of an actor." I grinned and she slapped my arm a little as we walked into the venue. I didn't know if I could sit through another screening of The Last Great Love. I was proud of the film, but staring at myself for another showing was starting to feel unbearably narcissistic.

"Want a Redvine, West?" Sky Simmons, my costar asked beside me, her eyes buried in her phone like always. I accepted the licorice rope and studied her profile as the opening credits rolled. She was absolutely stunning. Her mother was Puerto Rican and her father was African American, giving her skin a deep Carmel glow that offset her light hazel eyes. In another lifetime I would've tried to woo her into my trailer and finish off filming with a bang, but I wasn't that guy anymore. Not since that night a year and a half ago.

Bright green eyes flashed in my vision and I stole another Redvine, recalling how her full lips looked rapped around the licorice as we sat in my parents' movie room back in Malibu. How good she tasted when I slid down her body and her back arched up deliciously. My dick stirred in my pants and I shifted a little. Just thinking about her made me hard. Harder than anyone else could. Hell, I hadn't even fooled around with anyone since that night she found me with Denise.

Denise Leibovich. I gagged a little on the candy. Fuck. How could I've been so foolish? How could I have slept with her when I had something so much better? Repeating my same mistakes I made all through high school. I was too in my way to see what was right in front of me, and now she was gone.

I tried to refocus back on the screen, to the movie I had all but memorized, but my mind couldn't help but wonder where she was. In this city of millions of people, we were breathing the same air, and looking at the same stars, but I couldn't see her. The thought was maddening.

I was now making love to Sky on the silver screen and I shifted uncomfortably. I always thought this scene looked forced, but Rachel had told me it was beautiful and authentic. As authentic as it could be between two actors that were nothing more than trained professionals.

"I'm going to the bathroom." I announced to no one in particular. I wandered aimlessly through the foyer, studying the gold plating on the ceiling and the odd built-in ash trays on the walls. My phone buzzed in the recesses of my black tuxedo jacket and I fished it out, trying to see past the background that was my beach in Malibu. The beach where I'd laid her down and made sweet love to her that early morning in June....

The phone buzzed again in my hand, and I unlocked it with my face. Leisha the text message read and I opened it. I knew she would be gone this evening at a fashion week event, but didn't expect to hear from her. We'd been inseparable these past few months between filming A Dangerous Game and her joining The Last Great Love as our makeup artist for press events.

Leisha : Guess who fate brought me tonight....

This girl and her belief in the cosmic universe.