A Star is Born Read online




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  Harmony Ink Press

  5032 Capital Circle SW

  Ste 2, PMB# 279

  Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886

  USA

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  http://harmonyinkpress.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  A Star is Born

  Copyright © 2012 by Robbie Michaels

  Cover Art by Anne Cain

  [email protected]

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Harmony Ink Press, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Ste 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA.

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  ISBN: 978-1-61372-730-0

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Edition

  September 2012

  eBook edition available

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-61372-731-7

  This book is dedicated to Elizabeth and Lynn, without whose help it would never have been possible. Thanks to Elizabeth for believing in me even when I didn’t believe in myself, and thanks to Lynn for helping me to understand and be calm (okay, more calm) each step of the way through the long publication process. You are both stars to me.

  Chapter 1

  A Day Off

  IT WAS Sunday morning, the second morning in a row that I had been able to sleep in rather than haul myself out of bed at zero-dark-thirty to get to either work or school. I could not remember the last time I’d had two days in a row such as this. I liked it! Given my choice, I would build more days like this into my schedule. And with any luck, I would be doing just that relatively soon.

  I was able to afford this rare luxury of sleeping in, not just one day but two days in a row, because I had just finished final exams from my second quarter as an undergrad at UCLA. And now I had an entire week with no obligations. What a glorious feeling. I wasn’t going to answer the door, the telephone, or anything other than the call of a nap for the next week.

  If only it was more than a week, I would have been so happy that I might have imploded. But, to get more than a week I had to get through one more quarter of school, and then we come to the all-hallowed summer vacation.

  My boyfriend, Bill, and I had journeyed out to the great state of California the previous summer to get ourselves settled and find gainful employment before school started in September. All had gone great the first quarter. But then it all went to hell in a heartbeat, and it had taken months to begin to get back to a steady state where life might once again be a little more manageable.

  Somehow, through all the turmoil and chaos of the last quarter, I had managed to work full-time and ace all my classes. When I finished my last final exam, three days earlier, I had done so with great confidence that I knew the stuff backward and forward and had done well.

  And to celebrate—I had worked a double shift at Starbucks. I hadn’t planned it that way. I had planned to work my usual eight-hour shift and then come home. Unfortunately, though, a couple of people called in sick (yeah, right!), so my boss had practically begged me to stay on and help him through closing. Never one to refuse someone who was begging, I had agreed. Reluctantly, I called home and informed my boyfriend that I was going to be delayed. We were both disappointed, since we had been planning to veg out in front of the TV and do absolutely nothing, a very rare treat for both of us.

  When I finally crawled home that night, I was absolutely wiped out. Totally. There wasn’t enough energy to do anything. In fact, I made it inside the door of our apartment, dropped onto the couch, and promptly fell asleep with my coat still on and my book bag still on my shoulder. My sweet boyfriend had kindly awakened me and taken my coat. In an effort to keep me awake for five minutes, he moved me to the table and placed some kind of food in front of me. Don’t ask me what it was—I couldn’t tell you.

  Sometime after eating, I made it to bed—I’m sure with Bill’s help once again—and started my long-awaited and much needed rest. The last months had been tough. No, “tough” doesn’t begin to describe the experience. The last few months had been just plain hell. They had been draining. They had been torturous.

  But that no longer mattered. Those days were over. Those days were but a memory now, albeit it a fairly fresh memory. It was time to move those bad memories even farther aside and replace them with something that was better, something fun, something relaxing. At least I hoped to, if I didn’t sleep away my entire week’s break.

  Even if I did, I knew it would be because I’d been working like a big dog and had earned a break, even if it was only a break spent sleeping. At least, for the first time in weeks and weeks and weeks, I wouldn’t be working flat out at the equivalent of two full-time jobs.

  But I’m getting off subject. Where was I? Oh, right, I was in bed, waking up at a civilized-person hour. And even better? I was in bed with my boyfriend. Now, if you’d seen the last few months of our lives, you would understand why this was noteworthy. It seemed that when I was up, he was down. And when he was up, I was down. When I was awake, he was asleep. You get the idea. We seemed to be cosmically out of sync, which sucked, big time.

  With our inverse relationship over the last few months, we’d sort of not had time (or the inclination) to have sex until just recently. Of course, once we got back to it, we couldn’t keep our hands off each other, and we’d been going at it night and day since we’d rediscovered how nice it was to be together again. This probably also helped by taking a few quarts of testosterone out of each of us, which made us easier to live with than we had been for the last few weeks.

  So that morning, when we finally crawled out of bed to shower and forage for food and try to rehydrate, we were faced with the big issue: what should we do with our day?

  Since we both thought better while running, we decided to clear our heads and get a little exercise at the same time by going for a run. I had been running more recently than Bill, but, once I got him back on track, he was doing pretty well himself. We were both now running at pretty much the same pace and for the same duration. Finally, something about the two of us was once again in sync.

  Chapter 2

  An Unexpected Trip

  AFTER a wonderful run, we walked back down the driveway toward our apartment. Sitting outside our door was the unmistakable little sports car driven by our friend, one of Hollywood’s favorite bad boys, Mr. Derrick St. James.

  We met Derrick shortly after we arrived in Los Angeles. Thinking back, it was probably our second or third day in town, so it was almost immediately after moving to town. I guess it would be fair to say that he was one of our longest-term friendships on the west coast.

  While I’d had my ups and downs with the man, he was a good man and a good friend. When Bill had been so sick earlier in the year and almost died, it was Derrick who stayed with me at the hospital night after night. We kept a vigil in the ICU during the days when we weren’t sure if he was going to live or die.

  We didn’t have plans with him today, so I wasn’t sure what he was doing at our place, nor how he had gotten inside, for that matter. But however he did it, he had done it, and was sitting inside on the sofa talking on the telephone when we walked in the front door.

  “No, I don’t know where he is. I haven
’t seen him. Yes. I’ll be sure to give him the message, but I think he might be out of town. Yes, of course. Bye.” He looked at me, smiled, and said, “You’re welcome.”

  “Thank you?” I said, not sure why I should be thanking him.

  “I just saved you from being a responsible adult. Now, to make sure that you don’t prove me to be a liar, you two need to get out of town.”

  “Why? What have you done now?”

  “Saved you.”

  “Thank you?”

  “Go pack a bag, guys. You’re going to Hawaii for a couple of days. My house over there is sitting empty, and I’m afraid that if you stay here that eventually Mark will pick up one of those calls like the one I just took.”

  “And who was that on the telephone?” I asked.

  “You going out of town?”

  “We really can’t afford to do anything so extravagant right now,” I tried to protest.

  “Oh, hush,” he said, grabbing his cell phone. He looked through his contact list, pressed something, and a moment later was talking with someone he clearly knew well. “Keiki? This is Derrick. I need two tickets on the next flight from LA to Maui.” He held the phone to his ear, obviously listening to someone doing something. He muttered a couple of one-word answers at a couple of points before giving the person our names.

  “Thanks, doll. You’re the best.”

  He disconnected the call and turned back to us. “You packed yet? You better hurry. Your flight leaves LAX in a couple of hours. Oh, and Mark, the first call was your boss wanting you to come in and fill in for someone who is going to be out sick all week. And the last thing you need right now is something like work getting in the way of you two bonding and getting to know one another again. So you’re going to Hawaii. The tickets are purchased and paid for and waiting for you when you get to the airport. I’ll call the person I have caring for the house on Maui and have him get everything ready for your arrival. He’ll pick you up at the airport and get you back and forth when you’re ready to leave. You leave this afternoon, and you’ll come back in four days. Does that work?” He didn’t wait for us to disagree, but simply said, “Good. Now go pack!”

  We were both a bit startled by this sudden development, but giving it thirty seconds of thought as we threw a few things into our backpacks, neither of us saw a problem with Derrick’s plan. We’d had a good time at his place in Hawaii before, and he was right that if we stayed here, I would be guilted into going to work. I was such a pushover for people calling me when someone else couldn’t work.

  Ten minutes later, we were as packed as we were going to be. Derrick put us into his car, even though we didn’t fit especially well since he drove a trendy little sports car. With a quick stop at the ATM, where he got some cash which he handed to us—I protested loudly and forcefully, but it did little good—Derrick drove us directly to LAX.

  Traffic at the world-famous airport was always busy. An advantage of traveling with a VIP or on arrangements made by said VIP was that we got to bypass all of the main lobby chaos. Derrick drove us instead to a separate gated entrance where his face was instantly recognized, his name was checked on a computer, and we were readily admitted.

  He couldn’t leave his car, so we said good-bye in the parking lot and were escorted inside the building by someone who was waiting for our arrival. We waved to Derrick and saw him drive away. Check-in, for us, was painless. Our boarding passes were printed and handed to us, and we were escorted to and through a separate security checkpoint.

  After we easily passed through security, we were escorted to a separate lounge area that was apparently designed for VIPs who wanted to remain out of the spotlight as much as possible while traveling. After spending some time with a celebrity over the last nine months, I could seriously understand why they would want to remain as private as possible. The life of a celebrity was not necessarily easy when they were in public.

  We were offered a drink, which we passed up, instead opting for bottled water to try to head off the inevitable dehydration that came with flying long distances. Before it seemed possible, we were notified that our flight was ready for boarding. Our ever-present escort guided us to our plane, again using hallways that the average traveler never saw. We walked up the stairs outside of the gate and were greeted at the door of the plane by a very pleasant flight attendant, who guided us to our seats at the front of the plane. Seriously, I could get used to this treatment.

  While others came on board the plane, we got settled in and started reading. We had both carefully managed to pack only noneducational reading material so that this trip wouldn’t be connected with school for me in any conceivable way.

  We ate, we talked, we read, and we napped. And then there was still another hour to go, so we talked some more, read some more, and ate some more. Finally, though, our flight was on final approach into Kahului Airport on the island of Maui. At that end of the trip, we didn’t have the same VIP treatment that we had received at LAX.

  After being trapped in our seats for so long, it felt good to be up moving around, so we were not rushing but were leisurely walking. As we were walking from our gate toward the main baggage claim area we both noticed a man walking fairly close behind us. When I turned once to look at him, I noticed that he was staring intently at us. It was a little freaky.

  We stopped to use the restroom before hitting the road, which was a good thing because what happened next would have scared it out of me if I hadn’t just taken care of business. With no warning whatsoever, the man who had been behaving so strangely earlier came rushing up to us and started to shout, “Sodomite! Devil! Spawn of Satan! You will burn in the everlasting fires of Hell!” and other equally insulting and confusing things, all of course in the loudest voice possible.

  Absolutely everyone anywhere near us stopped to look our way, trying to figure out who we were and what was happening. We were both mortified to be the subject of this crazy man’s vitriolic harangue. Almost immediately, airport police came running and descended upon the guy and escorted him away. Even as he was being led away, we could still hear him shouting about how he’d seen Bill lying with man as with woman and how he was going to burn in the everlasting fires of hell and damnation.

  We were both simply stunned. “Well, it appears that they have a new way of greeting guests from when we were here last,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

  But Bill didn’t respond. He was more freaked out by the encounter with the crazy person than I had initially thought. When he didn’t speak, I said, “Come on, let’s get out of here.” He remained silent but did walk along with me.

  Our driver was waiting outside of the security zone, right where we expected. We immediately piled into the car and left the airport to head to Derrick’s house.

  Chapter 3

  Stalker

  SINCE we had stayed in the house once before, we already knew our way around the building and the grounds. Bill remained quiet while we unpacked what few things we had brought with us. Given his mood, I thought it better to keep him moving, to keep him occupied, rather than let him sit and stew in his own juices, so I suggested that we go out for a walk on the beach.

  That particular stretch of beach was relatively quiet that day, so I was able to take Bill’s hand in mine as we walked. After about twenty minutes of walking, he finally seemed to relax a little bit. However, all too soon, that relaxation was wiped away. As we approached the house to settle in, lie in the sun, or something equally decadent, our peace was disrupted.

  Before we even reached the house we could hear someone shouting. We couldn’t tell what they were shouting, but their voice was very loud and sounded very angry. Curious, we went around to the front of the house to investigate. And, oh, crap. The same angry little man who had shouted at us at the airport was standing in front of Derrick’s house, holding a book and preaching and screeching up a storm about the horrors of the homosexual menace and the blight visited upon mankind by the homosexuals. Hey, that was m
e he was talking about! And he certainly wasn’t endearing himself to me, that was for sure.

  Bill’s relaxed attitude vanished in a heartbeat. I immediately grabbed the telephone and called the police to report a crazy man ranting in front of our house. While someone who lives in a big city might be accustomed to dealing with homeless people wandering around them, in Hawaii it was more unusual. In Hawaii there were lots of places back in the hills to hide out, to live off the land in ways that one couldn’t somewhere like New York City or Los Angeles.

  The police arrived on the scene very quickly. I told Bill to remain inside the house while I went out front to talk to the police and figure out what was going on with this guy who was stalking us. Much to my surprise, he did as I asked and stayed exactly where he was, simply watching out the window with his arms crossed over his chest.

  I went out and talked to the cop about chasing our stalker away. The guy was apparently well known to the local PD. It seemed that he hung out at the airport, watching for recognizable people to arrive so that he could harangue them about some violation or other to some biblical code that hadn’t mattered for several thousand years.

  The cops chased him away, but warned me that the guy would most likely be back. Now that he had found us, he was not likely to simply go away and stay away.

  “Guys, what do you recommend I do? I’m getting a little scared now. What do I do if this nutcase comes back? What if he comes onto the grounds? Or chases us on the beach? Or breaks into the house? It sounds like he’s a few bricks shy of a full load.”

  “If you can, the best thing to do would be to hire private security that would be here on the grounds with you 24/7.”

  “Can’t afford that. I don’t live here. A friend just loaned us use of his house for a couple of days, since we really needed a break.”