Chapter VII

James’ POV

Sunlight trickled its way through the cracks of the venetian blinds, eventually causing my eyes to flutter open. Looking around the room, it took me a few seconds to process why my hotel suite had a sudden interior makeover whilst I slept. It wasn’t until the heat of another body pressed against mine alerted my attention to who my arms were wrapped around. Scarlett and I were lying on a couch in a naked entanglement of limbs and a thin cotton blanket. Reaching my arm over the side, I grabbed my jeans in order to check the time on my phone.

Cursing under my breath, the time read 7:03am. I had just under an hour to get from here to the university in the middle of rush hour traffic in order to get to my students in time. On top of that, I also badly needed to freshen up considering I smelt like sex.

“Scarlett. Wake up,” I whispered harshly, nudging her as best I could.

“Go away Franco,” She groaned, burying her face into the couch.

“I’m running late, and I need you to get up, you’re lying on my clothes…” I sighed, shaking her again, “Come on Scarlett.”“Okay okay, I’m up,” She nods groggily, clambering about on top of me and passing me my briefs all the while managing to get dressed quicker than me. As I was about to pull on my shirt, I caught Scarlett staring at me wide-eyed, almost looking mortified by something.

“What?” I asked, tugging my shirt down once I got it over my head.

“Don’t worry,” Scarlett says. Unsure of how to leave, I gave her a small nod as I raced out of the door.

Remarkably, I managed to show up before the lesson was over. It’s not like I was never on time, but I always told my students that if for whatever reason I don’t show up they were to continue on with their own work so they wouldn’t be wasting their time or their parents money, for that matter. Thankfully, they didn’t disappoint me. Once I entered the classroom, I was relieved to see that they had kept themselves busy, working on rehearsing for the short film I was directing them in.

I allowed them to carry on as they were doing just fine on their own, whilst I sat up the front of the room reading through their essays. During the small break they took from rehearsing, one of my students approached me and asked me if I’d just finished filming a fight scene. Confused, I told them I hadn’t.

Their surprised expression at my answer didn’t faze me at all, and she apologised in case she offended me before returning to her classmates. I was aware that I looked incredibly ruffled up, having missed the time to properly groom myself but by now they should know that I wasn’t always neatly presented as though I’d just come from a photo shoot.

I didn’t think much of what my student said until I got back to my hotel suite and stripped down for a shower. The red incisions on the skin of my back that I saw in the reflection of the glass panel stung as the water ran down my body, and a bruised area on my lower neck were both very clear indicators that last night really happened.

Scarlett’s POV

“Alright,” Dana says, “What’s going on with you?”

“Nothing’s going on with me,” I replied nonchalantly, filling my plate with pieces of fruit from the buffet. As we sat down at a table, Dana took a seat across from me and stared me down whilst I ate. At first, I focused my attention on my surroundings, watching people coming and going with plates of food. There were couples sitting together, holding hands, sharing food or laughing with each other which left a bitter taste in my mouth. Other people’s love makes me jealous. It’s an ugly trait, I know, but I can’t help it. Even on tour with my three best-friends in the world, there seemed to be a loneliness that followed me around wherever I went.

With a sigh, I chose to look anywhere but in front of me. I could feel Dana practically burning a hole into the side of my head. There was a family of four - the parents and two children - who were situated three tables next to us and causing quite a loud commotion that attracted the attention of many guests. The father was scolding his son, telling him to stop playing with his food. His scolding only aggravated the child who ended up tossing his food and beverages on the floor, both the plate and the glass smashing into hundreds of shards scattered across the wooden floor. Both the mother and the father looked incredibly humiliated, and started apologising non-stop to the staff members that rushed over to clean up. Second hand embarrassment was something I felt really easily, so I gave in and turned to face Dana, who looked like she was trying to shoot laser beams out of her eyes in order to melt my brain.

I ended up throwing a piece of watermelon at her to make her stop. “Seriously, you’re freaking me out!” I exclaimed. “What’s going on with you and James?” She asks. I took a deep sigh, poking my food with my fork as I formulated a way of explaining. Not even I know what’s going on with me and James. There wasn’t any point in lying to Dana about it though. All women have magnificent bullshit radars - especially when it comes to witnessing their friends going through problems concerning men they’re involved with. Dana seems to have a superficial sense when it comes to this sort of thing. Sometimes, I wondered if the woman is a psychic or something because she always seemed to sense relationship problems before they even started. Her bullshit radar must be sky-rocketing by now.

“We slept together,” I admitted so quietly, I almost didn’t hear myself speak. Dana raised her eyebrows as I continued butchering my fruit salad with the fork in my hand. “Twice,” I added. “He took me back to the hotel last night and we kind of just got carried away…”“Were you sober?”“Very,” I nodded, cringing slightly.

“Once in a mistake, twice—”“Is deliberate,” I finished, whilst delivering the final blow to a piece of strawberry in my bowl. What was once a gourmet fruit salad now looked like it had gone through a food processor.

“You two just can’t resist each other, can you?” Dana smirks, shaking her head, “I knew you didn’t hate each other.”

“It’s hard to hate him when he’s this charming, well dressed renaissance gentleman with a smile that is worth a million dollars.” Pushing my pulverised meal aside I suddenly felt rather bashful having admitted something like that. Dana leaned back in her seat pursing her lips, an action which indicated that she was about to say something that I wasn’t going to like. I watched as she opened and then closed her mouth, before shaking her head at herself. “I don’t know about this, Scar,” Dana suspired, after much silence. Before continuing, she twirled her hand around in the air as though it helped her think of what to say, “Just be careful, okay?”

I folded my arms and narrowed my eyes, “What do you mean?”“Well,” Dana hesitated, “I just don’t want…never mind.”

As Dana got up to leave, I grabbed her arm and pulled her back down. One of my biggest pet peeves is when somebody brought up something, and then the minute you ask them what it was, they promptly dropped the topic.

“No, tell me,” I insisted.

“I just don’t want you falling in love with him again,” She blurted out, her body language indicating she regretted ever saying it.

“What?!”

“Look, you’re staying here longer than everyone else is - we leave on Saturday. You’re still here for another three and a half weeks. I know you and James. You two can’t be friends again without it escalating into something else.”

“Dana…”

“I just have a bad feeling about this Scarlett. Have you seen the amount of women James has apparently been involved with lately? Or how many projects he’s been doing? He’s even busier now than he was when you were together. He’s was too busy to settle down with you back then, and now it’d be even worse! Whatever you two have going on, you need to break it off now, before you’re both in too deep,” Dana said firmly.

“Please, Scarlett…” She asks when I didn’t respond.

“Okay,” I sighed, throwing my hands up. “I’ll stop seeing James.”

Getting up out of her seat, Dana wraps her arm around me, “You know I’m always right.”I’m not in love with James, or going down the path of falling in love with him. Falling in love with someone takes more than a few weeks. There is nothing between James and myself. The only thing that draws us together is the physical attraction mixed with our loneliness. Like myself, James is one of those non-stop people with barely any time for simple, recreational pleasures and when it came to them he didn’t just settle for any girl on the street.

We were both only interested in the benefits, and if it were any different I would’ve made it clear for him to stay away from me.

Dana usually was right about these things, but this time she was wrong. I just didn’t say anything, but instead wrapped my arm around her a thanked her for being a good friend.