The concern that sat heavy and unfamiliar in his stomach slowly faded. He’d never dealt with anything like this with Naomi. A woman who was self-sufficient to a fault. The last time he remembered worrying about her was when she’d insisted on getting her tongue pierced on the Venice Beach Boardwalk.
After about fifteen minutes of uneventful cruising by the ocean, a familiar cluster of palm trees gave Josh an idea. “Hey, how would you feel about a little detour?”
“You mean a chance to get out of the car?” Clara laughed tightly. “Yes, please.”
“I know just the place.” Josh directed her toward the next exit and then down a few streets until they found themselves pulling into the empty parking lot of a high school.
He raced to help Clara out of the driver’s seat, mostly because he didn’t want to risk her getting a case of jelly legs and face-planting on the pavement. While her color had returned, she still had a sheen of sweat across her forehead.
When she put her tiny, clammy hand in his, he tightened his hold on impulse. She sighed as her feet met solid ground. “Please tell me it gets easier?”
His body, betraying all instruction from his brain, buzzed from the contact with her skin. “I’m pretty sure it has to.” He wasn’t positive whether he was talking to Clara or himself. As soon as she stood up, Josh backed away, out of the pull of her orbit, as she took in their surroundings.
“How did you even know this place was here?” Clara shook out her hair.
“This was my high school.” Josh greedily inhaled the scent of fresh-cut grass. “My family moved here from Seattle right before ninth grade. You wanna look around?”
When she nodded, he guided her around the building. “So, what was Josh Darling like at eighteen?”
He watched, momentarily mesmerized as her long dark hair whipped in the wind. “Well, Josh Darling didn’t exist yet, but Josh Conners was your classic fuckup. I cut class so much they almost held me back.”
“Ah.” She took two steps to keep pace with every one of his. “A rebel.”
“That’s one word for it. I think the law prefers truant. You see, over there”—he pointed to a set of corner windows—“is where I served a month’s worth of detention. It took a lot of sweet-talking to get the principal to agree to let me graduate on time.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad.” Clara tilted her head back and offered her porcelain skin to the dying sun.
“You’ve never met Principal Carlson. I tried to spin my life into a sob story, but there wasn’t much to work with. Only child, on the light side of latchkey. My parents worked all the time to pay the bills, but they’ve always been good people who loved me and I guess I never figured out how to hide that.”
Josh swallowed the lump of guilt in his throat. He hadn’t seen his parents since Thanksgiving two years back. Ever since, turkey made him nauseous.
Clara stopped walking and looked up at him. “The principal didn’t buy it?”
His chest burned as he remembered the assessment sent to his parents, left carelessly on the kitchen table waiting for him when he got home from school. Underachieving, pleasure-seeking, lazy, reckless to the point of endangerment.
That had been almost ten years ago, but he knew not much had changed. If he saw Principal Carlson again, she’d probably add to the list. Defensive, closed off, hopeless.
With a hand on her back, Josh guided Clara around a pothole. “She didn’t buy it.”
What was he thinking, spilling his high school woes to someone with a doctorate? Josh could picture her at eighteen. One of those golden girls with all of the privilege and support he’d resented his whole life.
When Clara walked into a room, people respected her.
When Josh walked into a room, people wondered why he was wearing so many clothes.
“Don’t feel sorry for me.” The words came out rougher than he’d meant them.
“I wasn’t.” Clara actually crossed her heart.
The sun slipped below the skyline and the stadium lights around the baseball field came on.
Clara wandered in that direction. “What about extracurricular activities? Did you play any sports?”
“No, but I did stay active.” He pointed to a patch of trees and a well-worn bench. “Had sex over there.” He gave a fond wave to the dugout. “Went down on Olivia Delvecchio there. Found out about squirting—”
“Okay, okay, I get it. You’re a stud.”
“Even back then I knew where my talents lay.” He pictured his last meeting with Bennie. “Although I guess that might have been wishful thinking.”
“What do you mean?”
He lowered his chin to watch the grass grow. “Black Hat, the studio I work for, gave me a real lowball offer recently when my agent asked to renegotiate my contract.”
She’d shown him her weakness, and now he’d revealed his own. For all his big talk and his “viral” video, no one who mattered considered him worth opening up the old checkbook.
“Really? I’d think they’d jump all over the chance to keep you on the books.” She sat on the bleachers. God, everything she did looked so polished and proper.
Josh sat down next to her. “It’s my fault. I signed this terrible contract a few years ago. Didn’t even read it. I got drunk off the idea that someone thought I could do something, anything, well. The loss of revenue from merchandise alone . . .” He buried his hands in his hair.
“Merchandise?” Clara’s voice had gone up an entire octave.
Her discomfort broke through some of his self-pity, lightening his mood. She was a good sport, his new roommate. “Don’t worry, Wheaton. Any time you ask, you’ve got the real thing.”
Clara gasped as she took his meaning and pulled the edges of her cardigan closer together. “What will you do about this contract situation? Get a lawyer?”
He admired her determination to change the subject, but the mention of lawyers went down like a bitter pill. “Nah. I can’t afford a lawyer, at least not one good enough to go up against Black Hat. I assume you know that parts of the porn industry deserve the bad rap. That there are some not-so-nice people with skin in the game?”
“Until I met you I didn’t think there was anything worthwhile about porn.”
He’d figured as much. “As a performer, you’ve got very little say in what gets made. The producers and studio heads pull the strings. I’ve got a solid fan base but not much sway. Believe it or not, women aren’t the primary audience of most pornos.”
“Is that why so much of it is gross? Why don’t the major studios invest in female audiences?” She wrinkled her nose. “Sounds like bad business to me.”