A Tom Hanks movie was running on the television but Hazel wasn’t watching it. Sure, she was sitting in the right place on the sofa, had the lights turned down and an obligatory bowl of microwave popcorn on her lap but it was one of those nights where she just didn’t feel it. Some other day, she might have been on the edge of her seat. But that night, the acting felt obvious and almost insulting.
Her eyes moved around the living room of her small apartment. The fairy lights were still up, as was the small, plastic tree and the string of Christmas cards that went from the window to the bookcase. Christmas was gone and leaving the decorations up felt like pointlessly holding onto something that’d abandoned her. Although, the opposite was true. Christmas hadn’t abandoned her. She’d abandoned it. After all, it was easier to take shifts at the hospital rather than face the inevitably problematic family Christmas.
And that was what she’d done. The 24th, the 25th and the 26th, twelve hours from eight until eight, doing routine, monotonous work on the wards. Some of the patients had guests on Christmas Day. Most didn’t. It was depressing as hell to see them in their beds, pale and thin and no-one but each other for company. They had Christmas dinner. They watched movies. They slept. Death seemed to crawl closer.
The few doctors on duty were miserable. Hazel didn’t know why. They were making three times what she was. But then, money didn’t mean very much, did it? She knew it, but it still felt nice to see the monthly payslip, to know that there was more to save for a rainy day. A rainy day. Could that be a British thing? Surely not. It was always raining.
She stood up, left the movie playing while retrieving her phone from where it was precariously balanced to charge on the bookcase edge. She opened her email and then her work schedule. She was working New Year’s Eve and New Years Day too.
Weekends were always good money but so were nights. Though nights sucked. The neighbours always seemed extra noisy when she was trying to sleep through the day. As if on cue, an atrocious cover of Last Christmas began echoing through the walls. It took Hazel a few seconds to realise the students upstairs were having a karaoke night. She turned the volume on the television up. Tom Hanks was in full emotional mode. Actors, she thought and rolled her eyes.
Hazel dropped down on the sofa. Too early to sleep. Too late to go out, if there was any damn place to go. Outside the window, the city was bright and alive but it was raining, the neon lights blurred and bleeding. She had a sudden urge to get out, to go someplace, get the hell away from all of it. But then she remembered her last vacation. LA, almost six months ago now. Jenna, one of her old school friends and her had flown out and spent two full weeks soaking up the sun and chilled-out vibes out on the west coast. And there was Lane.
She glanced quickly at the stack of canvases on the top of the bookcase as if afraid they might have disappeared. He was goddamn obsessed with the paintings. Maybe she should have been flattered. After all, he owned an art gallery somewhere near Hollywood. Maybe that was the problem. Hollywood sounded cheap. Glittery. Obnoxiously so. Who sold real art next to movie studios? And it wasn’t even real art. It was a pastime. It was amateur. God, even she hated her work.
Lane had spent hours trying to convince her to let him sell her paintings. Half of her genuinely believed it was a ruse to get her into bed. Which he’d achieved. Many times. She let out a long breath, trying not to reminisce, though it was hard. He smelled like warm sand. He was maybe the most handsome man she’d ever seen. Her heart skipped a beat the first time she saw him. For a good ten seconds, she hadn’t been able to speak coherently. Stupid, right? But then, he was tall and tanned and had broad shoulders and the warmest, most beautiful smile the word knew. God!
He hadn’t even looked at her. His shadow had fallen over her canvas out on the beach and he’d just stared at the half-finished painting. Hazel didn’t get it, and she wasn’t being modest. At school, her best grade in Art had been a resounding C. But then again, that was years ago. Nobody had seen her newer stuff. Nobody knew about it and she liked it that way.
She liked painting whatever the hell she wanted. After all, it was a side-line. It was for her. No-one else. So it could be clichéd and obvious and goddamn crap but it didn’t matter one bit. The paint wasn’t too expensive, neither were the brushes, or the canvases. But then Lane arrived. And he looked at her half-assed painting of what she would later pretentiously describe as ‘the real version of Los Angeles’ and wouldn’t stop looking at it until he’d looked at her and then seemed torn between her and the painting.
His eyes were brown, but almost yellow in the sun. He wore a brilliant white button down shirt, though maybe two of the buttons were actually done up. Bare feet. Beach shorts. Sunglasses in his pocket. A hundred percent Californian. He could’ve been a screenwriter, a surfer, a musician, a bartender, a goddamn lifeguard.
She didn’t remember much of what they’d said. It was all meaningless when the sex began happening. Sex. Proper sex. So much different to the lessons at school, to the awkward teenage peer pressure, to the almost depressing nights with her one ex-boyfriend.
Maybe the sun had gone to her head. Hazel knew people, she knew bodies, knew the intricacies and was smart enough to know when a fling was just that; a no-strings-attached amount of fun. No strings. It had ended the day the holiday did. And then it was back to London and back to real-life. Six months. No contact. How could there be contact? They’d only ever been together in the flesh; hadn’t exchanged numbers, addresses, anything of importance.
Sometimes she wondered if he was married. She wondered if he wondered the same about her. Or did he even think about her? Maybe he’d moved on. Maybe? Definitely. How could a man like that not move on? And here she was, cheating on Christmas, practically a workaholic.
She eyed the canvases again. There were more in her bedroom, hidden under the bed. And some in her wardrobe. And in her storage spot in the basement downstairs. How many? Fifty maybe? Interpretations, she liked to call them. Of London mostly, because that was where she usually was. And then LA, of course, though she’d been so preoccupied with Lane, that only three paintings had come out of the trip, two of them having been done back home.
There was Paris, from last year. A lot from there. And then Tokyo from two years before. It was harder, the further you ventured. Being new to a place dazzled her, gave little time for a clear view of what was really going on. London was easy, overdone yes, but still inspiring. There was so much to see, delve into, criticise.
She was thinking about going to Kensington again, maybe taking some photos this time, when the doorbell rang. It startled her, only because she hadn’t heard the buzzer for the entrance door downstairs. Someone must have got the wrong apartment. It happened all the time. She stood up, walked out into the narrow, cold hallway and opened the door.
It was Lane. Lane. Outside her apartment. She was dreaming, surely. He wasn’t really there. It was only because she’d been thinking of him. It was a lookalike maybe.
“Hey,” he said. The same voice. She remembered it in her ear, low and deep and so American and warm. Everything he ever said to her sounded sexual.
She stared. She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. She swallowed hard.
“What are you doing here?” It was the most sensible question of the many that were racing around her mind.
“I wanted to see you. Can I come in?”
Hazel stepped aside automatically. He was wearing a jacket. She’d never seen him in a jacket. He moved into the apartment. The hallway seemed very small, all of a sudden. He shut the door.
“It’s raining,” he said.
She blinked. “It’s always raining.”
He smiled. She didn’t. He waited for her to lead the way into the living room. She didn’t move.
“I would’ve called,” he said, finally. “Only I didn’t have your number.”
“But you had my address?”
He smiled again.
“Aren’t you pleased to see me?”
There was something dark beneath the sunny surface of his voice. Something that reminded her of those long, urgent, sleepless nights. Something that made her legs feel a little weak and her hands a little shaky.
“I’m – shocked,” she said weakly.
The movie was still playing on the television. She felt out of her depth, even though they were in her own home. Her territory. Hundreds and hundreds of miles from the beachside hotel in Los Angeles.
Lane hadn’t moved. He wasn’t speaking. He was just waiting, half a smile on his face, still as goddamn beautiful as ever. Her whole apartment seemed inadequate; too small, too homely, not light or pretty enough. It was like seeing a Rolls-Royce parked outside a McDonalds. He didn’t fit.
“I really don’t know what you’re doing here,” Hazel finally said.
His smile got a little wider.
“You don’t?”
Two words. Two goddamn words. If sex was a language, he was speaking it. She wondered how many women he’d used that voice on.
“No. I don’t,” she said, as firmly as possible.
He stepped a little closer to her and she backed away instinctively.
“You know, since the day you left, I’ve thought about this. About what you’d say if I showed up. What you’d do.” He was still moving, forcing her to step back into the living room. His eyes flicked around the furnishings before settling briefly on the top of the bookcase.
“You’re still painting?” he asked.
“Sometimes.”
He stopped walking and looked at her.
“Can I see?”
“No.”
He smiled. He always had a smile ready, always seemed to know he’d be able to wear her down. She imagined how wonderful it would be to have such self-assurance. He could have anything he wanted. She didn’t try to tell herself she’d ever be able to give him a real ‘no’. Maybe that was why she hadn’t wanted him to be more than a one-off.
He changed everything, rubbed out lines and redrew them where he pleased. Lines. Limits. She wasn’t even sure if she could see them anymore. It wasn’t that he disagreed with her, but more that he knew her better than she knew herself. Sure, she protested in all the conventional ways but it was thrilling to have someone take control, to make those decisions that she’d always secretly been afraid of.
Lane looked at the television. He watched it so blankly, that Hazel craved to know what was running around his mind.
“I think about you a lot,” he said finally. His eyes didn’t move from the TV screen. She could see the lights reflected in his irises.
“I’m flattered.”
His mouth curled at the corner, but he still didn’t look at her.
“I don’t know,” he mused, “Maybe it’s because it was so quick. I didn’t have time to figure out exactly what I wanted. I mean, usually, I make decisions. End things. It’s easy. Calculated. But then you weren’t planned or ended in the right way and it feels like – unfinished business.”
“So you’re here to end it officially?” Hazel felt as though she should be insulted.
“No.” He still didn’t look at her. “I had this mastermind plan. I’d come and you’d be over the moon and then I’d steal your paintings and you’d have to chase me back to LA. And by that time I’d have sold them and maybe you’d be happy enough to not be upset if I broke things off. But then I thought, what if I don’t want to break things off?”
“Things?” Hazel shook her head. “There is no ‘thing’, Lane. We live very far apart. We had a fun time, and it ended naturally. There doesn’t have to be an official end. Think of it as a one night stand. You even showing up here is crazy.”
“But I couldn’t stop thinking about you. And your paintings.” He was indifferently watching Tom Hanks cry. “I just can’t stop, Hazel. I’m sorry. I can’t. I knew it was ridiculous to come out here, to be so forward but what the hell. You only live once, right?”
Hazel watched him, her eyes narrowed. She felt as though he was putting on a front.
