Real Person // Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock // Hold On (Two)
Title: Hold On (Part Two)
Fandom: Real People
Characters: Keanu Reeves & Sandra Bullock
Prompt: 39. Burn
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,971
Summary: Last night of Speed with Keanu.
Author's Note: Ah, I don't know them. This is just how I think it should be.
Sandra recounts a life with Keanu for her biography.
Alex sits at the dining room table in Sandra’s house, flipping through the papers he just spent the past half hour reviewing and signing. He has gotten her to agree to talk about Keanu, and for that he is grateful. It has been two weeks since their lunch meeting and he was starting to get nervous. It had occurred to him that Sandra might pull out from the entire project because of his inquiring after Keanu. Luckily, though, she has agreed to telling their story and Alex’s editor couldn’t be happier about it.
The down side is this thick packet of rules and agreements. The basic gist is that no matter what she says, he can not vocalize or write it outside of the manuscript. Even if the sections get put in the book, Alex can still not speak of them to anyone. It is Sandra and Keanu’s personal story, he should be lucky she is telling him, and that any whiff of him speaking of it will automatically terminate his biography contract with Sandra.
“Is it ready to go?” she asks. She feels a little like a bitch for having her lawyer draw up the silent agreement, but she knows it is for the best. Sandra is married, and Keanu does not need any aggressive media attention. What she is about to tell Alex happens in the past; if it is mentioned now people would think it is a present issue. It is not. If she does allow him to put it in the book (she is still worried it will overshadow the rest of her life) Sandra has made a pact with herself to end with a story that clearly shows her and Keanu are over.
“Yeah you can take them.” scooping up the papers, Sandra slides them into a manila envelope postmarked for her lawyer. She sets them on the kitchen counter and gestures for Alex to come out to the sunroom where they can talk. As she pulls the sliding door close behind her, Sandra glances back at the innocent envelope and wonders what she has agreed to.
“Lemonade?” she pours herself a glass and then one for Alex when he nods. He is fumbling with the tape recorder, hands shaking slightly, visibly more nervous than any of their past meetings. He doesn’t know what Sandra is going to tell him, but has an idea. A secret but torrid love affair potmarked by conflicts in the form of outside girlfriends, boyfriends, fiancés, husbands, and the two’s whirlwind careers.
Taking a seat opposite Alex, Sandra’s back is to her spacious acreage. She knows from past experience that if she was to face the backyard and all its overwhelming nature, nothing would get done. She’d be too distracted, her eye catching a rabbit dodging between the flowers, a squirrel skittering up a tree, the grass where she lay with Keanu and confessed not another day …
“Sandy? Are you ready?” Alex is privately excited by the gloss over her eyes, knowing it signals she is someplace far away. He hopes she takes him there.
“Um, yeah,” she says softly, though she knows she has to speak much louder for the recorder to pick up. His finger slides over and presses the bright red button. Leaning back in his chair, his eyes tell her to take her time. There is a long silence. “Where should I begin?” she whispers.
The nervous feeling clutching her stomach is new in this circumstance. Normally she has a full list of stories and anecdotes to share, quotes she thinks should dote the beginning of a new chapter or section. But last night Sandra did everything to not think of today. She took a swim in the pool, watched pointless TV, cooked two dinners and ate them both, listened to Jesse as he explained the latest trouble in a series of mishaps over a new bike construction. Despite her best efforts, though, Keanu was there, drawing back old memories, coaxing forward feelings she thought were left in the back of a closet.
“Whatever story you want to say.”
Sandra is a sucker for chronological order. She wants to start at the day everything changes for her and Keanu, the moment she looks at him and sees more than a costar.
---
Though I would miss seeing the cast and crew everyday, blindly steering a bus and wearing the same drab dress, I was ready to move on. The buzz around an as yet unreleased movie was so strong that three scripts had been sent to my agent for consideration. I was excited, I was nervous, I was praying every night that I might finally burst onto the Hollywood scene that for so long I had been tiptoeing around.
I didn’t know what Keanu was thinking or feeling about it all. Even as I got to know him better, he still appeared to be a seasoned actor, well prepared, unflinching about box office numbers, all about the work. He had even spent weeks rehearsing a stunt Jan didn’t want him to do, then performed it anyway. Everyone was amazed and the danger he had put himself in by flinging himself from one moving vehicle to the next was dismissed. But there was also the sensitive, quiet side, the one that left me notes and various bakery in my trailer, made jokes which took a moment to configure (much like a Rubik’s cube), and didn’t publicly mourn the loss of a very close friend.
Over the months we prepped and filmed Speed, there were a million and one funny, serious, dangerous stories I could tell over and over as if they just occurred this morning. One of the best movie sets I’d been on, the crew was unofficially committed to balancing work and play. Keanu and I stood out, not just as the leads but as two people from vastly different worlds that bonded -- not immediately, but after a couple weeks when he saw I wasn’t just another smiling sidekick bimbo and I realized he didn’t have the massive ego head I so often saw in Hollywood and pinned on him. People whispered about us when Keanu picked me up as I screamed with laughter, when he dotted me with small cheek pecks, when I leaned against him after a long shoot, exhausted, his arm around me. The whispers became almost fervent hisses when Tate or Jennifer dared to venture on the set. We were young -- well, what seems incredibly young now -- and were friends. Keanu and I had a close relationship which didn’t include sex or any other sexual favors, and for me, that was a first.
Looking back now, I could see how incredibly foolish we’d been. During filming you live in your own world, sort of like drug addicts or anorexics who go to rehab. It’s so easy during that period to give up heroin or begin eating again. But once you are declared ‘healed’ and go back home, the pressure and social norms that landed you in rehab rear their ugly heads. Sets are much the same, which is why so many people fall in love with their costars. There’s no one else around! And seeing the same person everyday causes a false sense of chemistry and soul mate. With Keanu and I, we enjoyed our close friendship without a thought to the reality of our respective girlfriend and fiancé.
---
“But I am getting way off course,” Sandra laughs suddenly, breaking the enchantment and wisdom of an actress who has fallen in love many a time on set. “I meant to talk about our last night together.”
---
The cast party was not intended for family members or significant others. It was a chance for us all to group one last time, have a good laugh and wish each other farewell. I was in tears by the end of the night, a bad combination of good-hearted compliments and expensive champagne. The idea that I would never see Joe, the second camera man, again was enough to bring tears to my eyes and throw an arm around his neck.
Alarmed and slightly amused by my condition, Keanu escorted me out sometime either very late at night or very early in the morning. He had planned to simply drop me off at the home I shared with Tate, leaving him deal with me in my sensitive and slightly drunk state. But the hidden fear I’d held back for the past weeks of not seeing him again bubbled to the surface and I began to blubber uncontrollably in the front seat of his rented car. Keanu drove around the city for awhile as he waited for me to calm down, the streets fairly empty except for the occasional group heading home after a night spent at the clubs. We didn’t say anything but he reached across the console to touch my knee at some point and I let it rest there. When the tears finally subsided I admitted, not my deepest fear, but that I didn’t want to have a two second goodbye at the house before Tate came outside. He agreed to pull over at a beach so we could have a proper goodbye.
I hold a somewhat dim and highly romanticized version of that beach. We tripped along the cool, dark, sand hand in hand, the rolling waves the only sound for miles. The night was clear, with stars scattered in patterns against the heavy black. I had my eyes closed, the salty wind brushing relief against my tear stained cheeks. My hair was still in that awkward, girlish bob that I always felt made me look like I should be at college registering for Philosophy 101. Keanu released my hand at one point but I stayed still, staring up at the sky and trying to keep the nausea at bay.
“You okay?” he called to me from farther down by the water. He was wearing gray dress pants and a white button up, the sleeves rolled to his elbows. The waves crashed around his ankles but I remember more vividly how he smiled at me and how it was enough for me to kick off my heels, carrying them until I dropped them next to his own abandoned shoes and socks. I ran at him, tossing away the nausea as I stumbled squealing next to him, the wet sand sucking at my feet, spraying on my legs and the hem of my dress whenever I kicked up a foot.
“Hellllloooo,” I drawled laughing. He just continued to smile at me, brushing back my hair. I was out of breath from my quick run, which was embarrassing.
“Are you drunk?” a redundant question, but I think he wanted to see if I knew I was.
“Yes!” I exclaimed with all the enthusiasm of a game show contestant. Standing there next to him, I was feeling much better, even if the smile was beginning to fade off his face. He had to get home to Jen, I to Tate. It was time to say goodbye.
Now looking back at it, I don’t understand my intense need for a serious, lasting goodbye. We were meeting up in a mere six months to begin promotion. Surely I could have held out that long and didn’t need to drag out a simple ‘see you later’ into a scene from a movie. Maybe if I had realized that then, or if Keanu had chalked my tears up to the champagne and taken me home, maybe things wouldn’t have taken the course they did. Whenever I remember that beach, I have a lot of doubts and questions about fate and if it was that which began the long journey of Keanu and I. Maybe it had already begun.
Neither of us had to say anything. We would later recount our affection and admiration for each other during interviews for Speed and, though we didn’t know it then, for The Lake House as well. We hugged, good and long. I buried myself against his chest, promising myself to remember this feeling, this hug, this man if it was the last thing I did.
Keanu is a few inches taller than me, although I rivaled him tonight in my heels. Now that they were gone, though, I felt small and protected against him. I broke the hug, staring at his somber face, wondering if I would ever be so privileged to, it not work with him again, then work with someone like him. I ran my hand over his shoulder and down his chest. Without even trying I could feel the strong thump of his heart as my palm passed over it. I knew my own was fluttering as fast as a hummingbird’s wings. Neither of us wanted to break the silence that wound us to each other so tightly. To speak would be to break the spell that tonight held over us. When Keanu’s lips did part, I panicked with the thought that he would suggest we go home.
“Sandy …” my name trickled off his lips as he leaned in, eyelids starting to fall, and it was all I could do to lift my face and meet him halfway.
Keanu and I kissed before. But kissing on the beach at night with a cool breeze is a far cry from kissing in a subway car, cramped from being curled up, wrists aching from the clench of handcuffs, sweaty, dirty, exhausted and pressed against someone else who is the same. This time no one was squatting over us with a boom mike, peering beside us with a camera, yelling from a director’s chair to begin. It was just us, and we did it for no one and nothing save ourselves and the unknown desire that had simmered within us.
Keanu’s lips were soft, not dried and cracked as they had been the first time. There seemed to be less push and more pull this time, as if he was trying to extract everything I felt for him. His fingers danced down my neck, along the strap of my dress, and I leaned against him, urging him to take the next step. I wanted him. I could feel the need pulsating at my throat, hammering in my heart, pooling deep in my groin. My fingers whispered along his short, Army cut hair, the strands spiking against the skin, and when he gently brushed against my breast I went weak at the knees. His touch exhilarated and doomed me without an intention for either to happen.
“Jesus Christ,” he wheezed when he abruptly cut the kiss off. There was an awkward moment where his blasphemy hung in the air. Shamed, neither of us looked at the other. I didn’t have to touch my lips to know that they were swollen and red. My cheeks felt flushed as well, and I saw that Keanu’s were. The engagement ring suddenly felt painfully tight on my finger. I didn’t know how I’d explain any of this to Tate, who had already become suspicious of us. I felt guilty but also exhilarated from the kiss. I had no inclination that I, let alone Keanu, felt that way. It was a moment that should have been exciting but instead I felt sick with the worry that we’d never bounce back from this. I envisioned monosyllabic interviews and serious face premieres, with the world wondering how two people who were stiff as boards in real life could exhibit such chemistry on the screen. I wanted to say something, anything, but before I could think of a phrase that wasn’t as cheesy as ‘I don’t regret it’ Keanu was already heading up the beach for his shoes and socks.
I followed him in silence, and the car ride was the same. Scared of repeating the kiss at the beach, I exchanged our normal cheek pecks for a muttered goodbye when we arrived at my house, closing the door behind me before Keanu replied, if he had wanted to.
---
Alex checks the recorder to see how much tape is left and sits for a moment in silence. His lemonade sits untouched on the table, sweating with condensation and forming a pool beneath it. Sandra isn’t saying anything either, but she’s been talking for the past forty five minutes and now sits quenching her parched throat. Writer’s curiosity to blame, the question lodged in Alex’s throat emerges.
“Did you ever talk about it?” he leaves the recorder on.
“Not for a very long time. When we came for the promotion six months later, it was as if it never happened. Tate and I had called off the wedding, and you think with the rumors circling about Keanu and I we would have kept our distance. But the media so happily ate up the fact that we were close friends, confirmed by our clicking dynamic and Jan’s own profession that nothing happened between us, that we continued as before.”
“When did you talk about it?”
“When we were corresponding, in one of the letters I wrote I mentioned it. I had started going out with Ryan, and I asked him why he thought he and I never did anything about us, even after the kiss and my break-up with Tate.”
“And?” Alex leaned forward, eager for a confessed regret on the part of Keanu.
“He never mentioned it in his next letter. I didn’t bring it up again.”
It is a deep, terrible lie, but with the little red light glaring at her Sandra can’t say the truth. It was a rainy night in Australia, she and Keanu had come back from a whirlwind day of promoting, soaking wet with the memory burning inside them like a fire that wouldn’t die …
Fandom: Real People
Characters: Keanu Reeves & Sandra Bullock
Prompt: 39. Burn
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,971
Summary: Last night of Speed with Keanu.
Author's Note: Ah, I don't know them. This is just how I think it should be.
Sandra recounts a life with Keanu for her biography.
Alex sits at the dining room table in Sandra’s house, flipping through the papers he just spent the past half hour reviewing and signing. He has gotten her to agree to talk about Keanu, and for that he is grateful. It has been two weeks since their lunch meeting and he was starting to get nervous. It had occurred to him that Sandra might pull out from the entire project because of his inquiring after Keanu. Luckily, though, she has agreed to telling their story and Alex’s editor couldn’t be happier about it.
The down side is this thick packet of rules and agreements. The basic gist is that no matter what she says, he can not vocalize or write it outside of the manuscript. Even if the sections get put in the book, Alex can still not speak of them to anyone. It is Sandra and Keanu’s personal story, he should be lucky she is telling him, and that any whiff of him speaking of it will automatically terminate his biography contract with Sandra.
“Is it ready to go?” she asks. She feels a little like a bitch for having her lawyer draw up the silent agreement, but she knows it is for the best. Sandra is married, and Keanu does not need any aggressive media attention. What she is about to tell Alex happens in the past; if it is mentioned now people would think it is a present issue. It is not. If she does allow him to put it in the book (she is still worried it will overshadow the rest of her life) Sandra has made a pact with herself to end with a story that clearly shows her and Keanu are over.
“Yeah you can take them.” scooping up the papers, Sandra slides them into a manila envelope postmarked for her lawyer. She sets them on the kitchen counter and gestures for Alex to come out to the sunroom where they can talk. As she pulls the sliding door close behind her, Sandra glances back at the innocent envelope and wonders what she has agreed to.
“Lemonade?” she pours herself a glass and then one for Alex when he nods. He is fumbling with the tape recorder, hands shaking slightly, visibly more nervous than any of their past meetings. He doesn’t know what Sandra is going to tell him, but has an idea. A secret but torrid love affair potmarked by conflicts in the form of outside girlfriends, boyfriends, fiancés, husbands, and the two’s whirlwind careers.
Taking a seat opposite Alex, Sandra’s back is to her spacious acreage. She knows from past experience that if she was to face the backyard and all its overwhelming nature, nothing would get done. She’d be too distracted, her eye catching a rabbit dodging between the flowers, a squirrel skittering up a tree, the grass where she lay with Keanu and confessed not another day …
“Sandy? Are you ready?” Alex is privately excited by the gloss over her eyes, knowing it signals she is someplace far away. He hopes she takes him there.
“Um, yeah,” she says softly, though she knows she has to speak much louder for the recorder to pick up. His finger slides over and presses the bright red button. Leaning back in his chair, his eyes tell her to take her time. There is a long silence. “Where should I begin?” she whispers.
The nervous feeling clutching her stomach is new in this circumstance. Normally she has a full list of stories and anecdotes to share, quotes she thinks should dote the beginning of a new chapter or section. But last night Sandra did everything to not think of today. She took a swim in the pool, watched pointless TV, cooked two dinners and ate them both, listened to Jesse as he explained the latest trouble in a series of mishaps over a new bike construction. Despite her best efforts, though, Keanu was there, drawing back old memories, coaxing forward feelings she thought were left in the back of a closet.
“Whatever story you want to say.”
Sandra is a sucker for chronological order. She wants to start at the day everything changes for her and Keanu, the moment she looks at him and sees more than a costar.
---
Though I would miss seeing the cast and crew everyday, blindly steering a bus and wearing the same drab dress, I was ready to move on. The buzz around an as yet unreleased movie was so strong that three scripts had been sent to my agent for consideration. I was excited, I was nervous, I was praying every night that I might finally burst onto the Hollywood scene that for so long I had been tiptoeing around.
I didn’t know what Keanu was thinking or feeling about it all. Even as I got to know him better, he still appeared to be a seasoned actor, well prepared, unflinching about box office numbers, all about the work. He had even spent weeks rehearsing a stunt Jan didn’t want him to do, then performed it anyway. Everyone was amazed and the danger he had put himself in by flinging himself from one moving vehicle to the next was dismissed. But there was also the sensitive, quiet side, the one that left me notes and various bakery in my trailer, made jokes which took a moment to configure (much like a Rubik’s cube), and didn’t publicly mourn the loss of a very close friend.
Over the months we prepped and filmed Speed, there were a million and one funny, serious, dangerous stories I could tell over and over as if they just occurred this morning. One of the best movie sets I’d been on, the crew was unofficially committed to balancing work and play. Keanu and I stood out, not just as the leads but as two people from vastly different worlds that bonded -- not immediately, but after a couple weeks when he saw I wasn’t just another smiling sidekick bimbo and I realized he didn’t have the massive ego head I so often saw in Hollywood and pinned on him. People whispered about us when Keanu picked me up as I screamed with laughter, when he dotted me with small cheek pecks, when I leaned against him after a long shoot, exhausted, his arm around me. The whispers became almost fervent hisses when Tate or Jennifer dared to venture on the set. We were young -- well, what seems incredibly young now -- and were friends. Keanu and I had a close relationship which didn’t include sex or any other sexual favors, and for me, that was a first.
Looking back now, I could see how incredibly foolish we’d been. During filming you live in your own world, sort of like drug addicts or anorexics who go to rehab. It’s so easy during that period to give up heroin or begin eating again. But once you are declared ‘healed’ and go back home, the pressure and social norms that landed you in rehab rear their ugly heads. Sets are much the same, which is why so many people fall in love with their costars. There’s no one else around! And seeing the same person everyday causes a false sense of chemistry and soul mate. With Keanu and I, we enjoyed our close friendship without a thought to the reality of our respective girlfriend and fiancé.
---
“But I am getting way off course,” Sandra laughs suddenly, breaking the enchantment and wisdom of an actress who has fallen in love many a time on set. “I meant to talk about our last night together.”
---
The cast party was not intended for family members or significant others. It was a chance for us all to group one last time, have a good laugh and wish each other farewell. I was in tears by the end of the night, a bad combination of good-hearted compliments and expensive champagne. The idea that I would never see Joe, the second camera man, again was enough to bring tears to my eyes and throw an arm around his neck.
Alarmed and slightly amused by my condition, Keanu escorted me out sometime either very late at night or very early in the morning. He had planned to simply drop me off at the home I shared with Tate, leaving him deal with me in my sensitive and slightly drunk state. But the hidden fear I’d held back for the past weeks of not seeing him again bubbled to the surface and I began to blubber uncontrollably in the front seat of his rented car. Keanu drove around the city for awhile as he waited for me to calm down, the streets fairly empty except for the occasional group heading home after a night spent at the clubs. We didn’t say anything but he reached across the console to touch my knee at some point and I let it rest there. When the tears finally subsided I admitted, not my deepest fear, but that I didn’t want to have a two second goodbye at the house before Tate came outside. He agreed to pull over at a beach so we could have a proper goodbye.
I hold a somewhat dim and highly romanticized version of that beach. We tripped along the cool, dark, sand hand in hand, the rolling waves the only sound for miles. The night was clear, with stars scattered in patterns against the heavy black. I had my eyes closed, the salty wind brushing relief against my tear stained cheeks. My hair was still in that awkward, girlish bob that I always felt made me look like I should be at college registering for Philosophy 101. Keanu released my hand at one point but I stayed still, staring up at the sky and trying to keep the nausea at bay.
“You okay?” he called to me from farther down by the water. He was wearing gray dress pants and a white button up, the sleeves rolled to his elbows. The waves crashed around his ankles but I remember more vividly how he smiled at me and how it was enough for me to kick off my heels, carrying them until I dropped them next to his own abandoned shoes and socks. I ran at him, tossing away the nausea as I stumbled squealing next to him, the wet sand sucking at my feet, spraying on my legs and the hem of my dress whenever I kicked up a foot.
“Hellllloooo,” I drawled laughing. He just continued to smile at me, brushing back my hair. I was out of breath from my quick run, which was embarrassing.
“Are you drunk?” a redundant question, but I think he wanted to see if I knew I was.
“Yes!” I exclaimed with all the enthusiasm of a game show contestant. Standing there next to him, I was feeling much better, even if the smile was beginning to fade off his face. He had to get home to Jen, I to Tate. It was time to say goodbye.
Now looking back at it, I don’t understand my intense need for a serious, lasting goodbye. We were meeting up in a mere six months to begin promotion. Surely I could have held out that long and didn’t need to drag out a simple ‘see you later’ into a scene from a movie. Maybe if I had realized that then, or if Keanu had chalked my tears up to the champagne and taken me home, maybe things wouldn’t have taken the course they did. Whenever I remember that beach, I have a lot of doubts and questions about fate and if it was that which began the long journey of Keanu and I. Maybe it had already begun.
Neither of us had to say anything. We would later recount our affection and admiration for each other during interviews for Speed and, though we didn’t know it then, for The Lake House as well. We hugged, good and long. I buried myself against his chest, promising myself to remember this feeling, this hug, this man if it was the last thing I did.
Keanu is a few inches taller than me, although I rivaled him tonight in my heels. Now that they were gone, though, I felt small and protected against him. I broke the hug, staring at his somber face, wondering if I would ever be so privileged to, it not work with him again, then work with someone like him. I ran my hand over his shoulder and down his chest. Without even trying I could feel the strong thump of his heart as my palm passed over it. I knew my own was fluttering as fast as a hummingbird’s wings. Neither of us wanted to break the silence that wound us to each other so tightly. To speak would be to break the spell that tonight held over us. When Keanu’s lips did part, I panicked with the thought that he would suggest we go home.
“Sandy …” my name trickled off his lips as he leaned in, eyelids starting to fall, and it was all I could do to lift my face and meet him halfway.
Keanu and I kissed before. But kissing on the beach at night with a cool breeze is a far cry from kissing in a subway car, cramped from being curled up, wrists aching from the clench of handcuffs, sweaty, dirty, exhausted and pressed against someone else who is the same. This time no one was squatting over us with a boom mike, peering beside us with a camera, yelling from a director’s chair to begin. It was just us, and we did it for no one and nothing save ourselves and the unknown desire that had simmered within us.
Keanu’s lips were soft, not dried and cracked as they had been the first time. There seemed to be less push and more pull this time, as if he was trying to extract everything I felt for him. His fingers danced down my neck, along the strap of my dress, and I leaned against him, urging him to take the next step. I wanted him. I could feel the need pulsating at my throat, hammering in my heart, pooling deep in my groin. My fingers whispered along his short, Army cut hair, the strands spiking against the skin, and when he gently brushed against my breast I went weak at the knees. His touch exhilarated and doomed me without an intention for either to happen.
“Jesus Christ,” he wheezed when he abruptly cut the kiss off. There was an awkward moment where his blasphemy hung in the air. Shamed, neither of us looked at the other. I didn’t have to touch my lips to know that they were swollen and red. My cheeks felt flushed as well, and I saw that Keanu’s were. The engagement ring suddenly felt painfully tight on my finger. I didn’t know how I’d explain any of this to Tate, who had already become suspicious of us. I felt guilty but also exhilarated from the kiss. I had no inclination that I, let alone Keanu, felt that way. It was a moment that should have been exciting but instead I felt sick with the worry that we’d never bounce back from this. I envisioned monosyllabic interviews and serious face premieres, with the world wondering how two people who were stiff as boards in real life could exhibit such chemistry on the screen. I wanted to say something, anything, but before I could think of a phrase that wasn’t as cheesy as ‘I don’t regret it’ Keanu was already heading up the beach for his shoes and socks.
I followed him in silence, and the car ride was the same. Scared of repeating the kiss at the beach, I exchanged our normal cheek pecks for a muttered goodbye when we arrived at my house, closing the door behind me before Keanu replied, if he had wanted to.
---
Alex checks the recorder to see how much tape is left and sits for a moment in silence. His lemonade sits untouched on the table, sweating with condensation and forming a pool beneath it. Sandra isn’t saying anything either, but she’s been talking for the past forty five minutes and now sits quenching her parched throat. Writer’s curiosity to blame, the question lodged in Alex’s throat emerges.
“Did you ever talk about it?” he leaves the recorder on.
“Not for a very long time. When we came for the promotion six months later, it was as if it never happened. Tate and I had called off the wedding, and you think with the rumors circling about Keanu and I we would have kept our distance. But the media so happily ate up the fact that we were close friends, confirmed by our clicking dynamic and Jan’s own profession that nothing happened between us, that we continued as before.”
“When did you talk about it?”
“When we were corresponding, in one of the letters I wrote I mentioned it. I had started going out with Ryan, and I asked him why he thought he and I never did anything about us, even after the kiss and my break-up with Tate.”
“And?” Alex leaned forward, eager for a confessed regret on the part of Keanu.
“He never mentioned it in his next letter. I didn’t bring it up again.”
It is a deep, terrible lie, but with the little red light glaring at her Sandra can’t say the truth. It was a rainy night in Australia, she and Keanu had come back from a whirlwind day of promoting, soaking wet with the memory burning inside them like a fire that wouldn’t die …