One Week, That's All I Ask

We'll Make This Work

The next few weeks had been the most amazing yet confusing days of my life. I didn’t really know what River was to me we had never cleared if we were dating or not. I knew it was stupid to not know but I didn’t want to assume something that wasn’t true.
We were kissing on his couch when I finally asked him,
“Are we a…you know…thing?”
“As in are we dating?”
“Yeah…”
“Is that what you want?”
I looked at him and smiled lightly with a blush rising to my cheeks.
“Yeah…”
“Well there’s your answer, girlfriend.”
“Okay then, boyfriend.”
We did all the silly couple things like taking photos in a booth at the mall and staying up on the phone all night. I felt like my life was a movie. And I couldn’t be happier.
I knew it wasn’t going to be easy being with him considering our short but very intense past. So I made a deal with him.
“If you can at least try to not…do the…you know…drugs…I can try to be a vegetarian.” I told him.
He looked at me with a slight hint of worry, but he then calmed his expression and said,
“I can try.”
“You wanna give this a try?”
“Yeah, we can make this work.”
A smiled played on my lips and he kissed me repeating himself,
“We can make this work.”
                                                                ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I felt like the happiest girl in the world. Knowing that I was finally happy and who I was happy with. We were gonna make this work. I knew he had jobs and movies to do but he always found a way to call me or see me. Every now and again, he’d take me out to dinner with some of his co-workers. I enjoyed meeting them and I got to know lots of new celebrities, it was more than I could ask for. We were gonna make this work, I could see it now. He would retire as an acting legend and I would still be here waiting for him at home knowing at the end of the day, Hollywood didn’t have his heart, I did.
It sounds cheesy I know, but I felt like it was all so real. That all my sweet little fantasies were true and my heart was getting what it wanted. We both had to give up some of our…habits for a lack of a better term. Some worse than others…but if we were going to make this work, we had to make promises that we could keep.
River had dyed his hair a jet black color for his new role and I had to say, it was pretty attractive. It was still long for now but he said they were gonna either cut it or attempt to slick it back. I would be sad to see his long hair go but at least it would be worth it. And it’ll grow back eventually.
So today was one of his days off and we were at a dinner with a few of his friends in L.A. It was late August and we had been together for 3 months now. But we hadn’t announced anything public yet. I couldn’t be happier. His friends were nice as usual and I got to catch up with Keanu a bit because I hadn’t seen him in a while besides a short phone call every now and again.
The guys of the party said they were going to go outside for a while for some chatting and smokes. I looked at River with concern. I know my anxiety was just trying to get the best of me but I couldn’t help but worry he was going to slip up again and fall into his old habits. I jogged over to him and took his hand before whispering,
“River…are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“It’ll be fine I promise.”
“You swear?”
“I swear, I made a promise to you. I’m not going to break it.”
He kissed me gently, giving me the same sparks as the first time. I weakly smiled at him before he left me. Part of me felt like I was losing him forever when he let go of my hand. But I ignored it.
I sat down and finished the dinner. After the night had ended, River took me back to my house and I invited him inside, like I usually did when we went out. It had become a bit of a habit of ours. Hannah wasn’t home so it was just the two of us. Although we had never really done anything overly romantic in our relationship (If you get what I mean). So being alone together was sparking new sides of us.
“Did you have fun?” He asked me.
“Yeah, it was nice.”
“That’s good. Why don’t you go change? And put on something loose.” He winked at me and I laughed.
I ran upstairs and I could hear him following not too far behind. I walked into my room and changed into a silky night gown that Hannah had given me a few years back. It had never gone to use but now it finally will.
I quickly ran to my door and gently swung it open. River turned around, now just in his pants and button up shirt that was half un-buttoned. He looked me up and down and smirked. He lifted me into his arms and passionately kissed me slamming me onto the bed gently lowering his kisses to my neck. He pulled away slowly, looking into my eyes.
“Are you 100% sure you’re okay with this?” He whispered already breathing heavily.
“300% sure.” I laughed.
He smiled and laughed a little too before continuing to kiss me.
And you already know what happened next…
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The next morning I felt a warm body beneath me and I looked up to see that River was fast asleep with his arms wrapped around me. I kissed his cheek, waking him up.
“Good morning.” He smiled.
“Morning.”
“That was a very interesting night if I do say so myself.” He laughed.
“I couldn’t agree more.” We kissed a bit before my door opened to reveal Hannah in her sweatpants and tank top.
“Hey El- AHHHHHH!!” She screamed covering her eyes and running straight out of the room.
“YOU COULD’VE AT LEAST TOLD ME HE WOULD BE STAYING OVER!!” She yelled from down the hall.
“Sorry.” I giggled.
I looked over at River who was laughing too.
“We should get dressed.” I sighed.
“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.” He chuckled gently lifting me up and putting on his underwear.
“I have some of your sweat pants if you want them.” I said going to my closet putting on a robe.
“Why?” He asked.
“I’m not really sure, they were just sitting in my closet one day and I thought, these are River’s aren’t they?” We both laughed as I tossed him the sweat pants and I put on a lazy day outfit and headed down to the kitchen to see that Hannah had made us breakfast.
“I’m utterly disturbed just so you know.” Hannah said as we took our seats at the table.
“Sorry about that…” River rubbed the back of his neck.
“I’m scarred for life River Phoenix.” She said as if she had been hurt.
“Hannah-“
“No, I don’t wanna hear it. Just eat the pancakes.” She sat down and pointed to her pancakes.
We both ate and eventually Hannah dismissed herself to go to the store. She said she would be back and that she didn’t want to come back to find us on the couch naked. WE promised we would do no such thing and she was off.
“What would you like to do today?” River clapped his hands together.
“Well, we should probably stop by your house to get you some decent clothing.” I said looking him up and down.
“True, well besides that, what would you be interested in doing?”
“Maybe we could go to the park. I could bring my camera and we could take some photos.”
“Sounds like a plan.” He smiled.
We headed out to my car and stopped at his house. He changed into some light clothes since it was hot day and then headed to a nearby park that I took my kids to when I babysat. It wasn’t overly full and there was a large tree that River insisted we take photos at. There was an old swing tied to a limb.
River ran over and sat on it, like he was a kid again. It was so cute, I wish we could spend every day like this. I took some photos of the surrounding trees while River talked to me.
“Do you like my dark hair?” He asked as I took some photos on the ground.
“I think it’s hot.” I laughed.
“Really?” He said playing with it now.
 I stood up and turned to him, I pulled my camera up to me and snapped a photo as I said,
“Absolutely.” I lowered my camera and winked at him.
The rest of our time in the park, we just chatted and talked about what we were doing for the next few months. River had started playing gigs with his band “Aleka’s Attic”. I’m not sure why they were called that but I just went along with it. They were really good and I loved his voice. I never really knew he could sing, aside from his movie “The Thing Called Love”.
I on the other hand had been hired for some higher experienced photo shoots for a small magazine that had just started out called Wired Magazine. I was pretty excited considering I had never really done much with my photography. I had gotten into it in high school, but I only did it as a hobby. I hadn’t done anything serious until recently.
“Can I ask you something?” River asked as we walked past the fountain and back to my car.
“Sure.”
“Do you think one week was enough?”
“For what?”
“For me to prove that actors aren’t as bad as you think.”
I laughed thinking back to when we first made the deal. I felt like that was a million years ago. And now here I was dating an actor. I knew that everyone knew about us now that the paparazzi had caught us together in several places, but I just never thought about how we ended up here.  The past 3 months of my life had been completely changed.
All because of this deal I had made with a silly boy I had met on the street. And I didn’t regret a thing.
“You were right. Actors aren’t half bad.”
“Fair enough.” He smiled pulling me into his arms and kissing me.

Fair enough.