Eternal (26 page)
Authors: London Saint James
It was painful to watch Cayden leave for the
interview. Every fear of losing him plagued my thoughts. This fear was a deep
seeded part of me. No way to get rid of it.
couldn’t watch it. The photographs taken at the premiere did not lie. I
believed the interview to be a wasted effort and had no doubt the press would
only hound Cayden and me further. I would come to accept the press and even
accept their hounding me, if I had to, but it hurt me for Cayden. He already
suffered great loss from their constant coverage of him.
Sadly people believe fame, money, and a life in
which Cayden lives is somehow ideal. They truly believe Cayden has no worries,
never understanding, making sly or hurtful comments.
“Cayden, don’t complain about all the press
coverage, man. It’s part of your job, and it makes you all the coin you spend
so get over it, pretty boy.” This comment came from a morning disc jockey. I
listened to his wisdom over the radio while taking a shower one morning.
I even heard one commentator say to his co-host
while discussing Cayden, “So how hard could it be to be adored and have women
scream your name while throwing their hotel keys and underwear at you?”
But imagine the fevered frenzy of a crowd as
they scream so loud you can’t hear yourself think. The sound becomes one loud
surge of screeching, piercing through your ears, continuing nonstop. You feel
trapped, boxed in by the sound as if it wants to destroy you. You physically
experience the sound, almost taste it. The crowd becomes a mob, losing any
thought of the individual, only becoming focused as one living breathing entity
with one solitary goal, to reach the object of their lust and affection. The
energy, the emotion, the sheer force of the writhing crowd mixes into the
sounds then against you. It overtakes your senses.
The mob moves, twist, sways toward the object of
its desire. It has to reach its object at any cost. Those mobs of frenzied fans
leave themselves behind. They push so hard against the others in the crowd that
people get hurt and knowing if they reach you, you could be hurt. Even with the
bodyguards, Cayden has come out of the swell of crowds with his pocket, the arm
of his shirt, the collar of his coat torn from place.
Cayden’s been cornered in parking garages,
elevators, hotel hallways, and in public restrooms. He truly understands what
it is like to be stalked, watched, and spied upon. He’s had women try to kiss
him, women try to lick him, and women take off their clothes in public trying
to gain his attention even if it’s for a fleeting moment in time. He’s had
boyfriends cuss him for their girlfriend’s attention toward him. Men spit at
him, throw drinks at him, and some come on to him, offering him a taste of what
he’s been missing in the heterosexual world. One guy even offered to suck him
off in the dressing room where he was being fitted for a tux.
I thought about the press, the fans, the overall
belief that holds Cayden has nothing to complain about because he is rich, handsome,
and can date anyone, buy anything, go anywhere and do anything he wants. Cayden
is living a glamorous life without a care in the world. How wrong everyone is
in their assumptions.
I thought about how simple things cannot be
done. Cayden is unable to go into a store to shop without people swarming him
and hordes of photographers showing up. Bodyguards are a necessity. If Cayden
wants to acquire something, he has people shop for him. And yet with all his
money, what do you buy when you are trapped by the items you obtain? The house
he bought is beautiful but Cayden is secluded behind walls, gates, hi-tech
security, trying to keep the world out. He purchased a Porsche; it is a
beautiful sleek black car that he can’t use so it sets beneath a sheet in the
garage. It is impossible for Cayden to go for a ride in his own car without
causing a stir, but even if he went, where could he go? Everywhere he would go
someone would recognize him.
Cayden loves music, but he cannot go to a
concert, stand in the crowds and enjoy the concert like everyone else. Cayden
would need to make special arrangements and sit secluded in hiding if he wanted
to attend. Cayden loves books so he created his own personal collection, but
the sad fact of the matter is it became impossible to go into a bookstore to
read without causing chaos to breakout around him. Nothing as simple as going
for a walk through the park, putting gas in his car, buying underwear, or
getting a haircut can be done like anyone one else in the world.
Cayden has people who give him his itinerary,
where he will be going, who he will be seeing. He runs over his schedule with
Melissa on a daily basis. If Cayden wants to do something just for himself, it
is scheduled in and around all of the other meetings, interviews and other
press related events he attends. Cayden told me once all of the press junkets
are in reality just a sales pitch, and he hates it, but he does it because it
is part of his job. I can hear his words play out in my head saying, “
I’m selling a product, selling pieces of
myself.”
Cayden gets no real downtime as he has worked
nonstop for the past five years. He can’t wake up one morning and make a
decision to do something or go somewhere because it would interfere with his
already booked schedule. He has celebrated his own birthday on location with
the cast and crew only to work until one a.m. before going to an empty hotel
room. He’s left events and flown across the country without sleep to attend
another scheduled event. Cayden tried to spend last Christmas with his aunt
only to fly nonstop to
spend one day with her then flew right back to
himself in secluded room, recording commentary for his last DVD release on
Easter and filming over his brother’s birthday only spending forty-five minutes
with
Cayden travels to different cities and countries
to promote his films, complete interviews, do photo shoots but he doesn’t get
the chance to see any of the places he travels, being locked behind walls,
gates, and doors. Security becomes the focal point not scenery, monuments or
special places of interest. He squanders a lot of his time inside hotels, but
not because he wants to. In fact, he spends more time in hotels than in his own
home. Cayden went to
interviews where complete due to the crowds gathered to see him. In
were over twenty thousand people gathered. It becomes easier to stay in than to
go out. Easier to pull far inside yourself; hide yourself from the prying eyes
of the world.
Cayden went to
it took five bodyguards to get him through the airport, carrying him in order
to keep him safe from the mangle of people who wanted to touch him. Cayden went
to
countryside. Once the shoot was over, he boarded a plane and headed back to
spends hours in cars and planes to go places he can’t enjoy. He only sees the
landscape out the windows of his hotel, the plane and from behind the tented
black glass of his limo or SUV. Cayden is trapped by his fame.
Yet even worse than all of that, he is not free
to love. And while he feels he is free to love me, he is in reality just as
trapped. We are entrenched behind enemy lines, creating distractions to keep
the press at bay, hiding our lives behind closed doors, stealing time to be
together but never fully liberated. The tangles of lies we have allowed in
order to be together are just spinning finer and finer webs, connecting one lie
to the other. Soon, we will have a room full of cobwebs only to find somewhere
caught in the middle will be the reality of our relationship. But he would say
the lies do not really matter because he is trying to safeguard me from his
world. I have thought about that quite a bit since meeting Cayden. And both of
us know the truth whether we want to admit it or not. Within this truth you
ask, how do you shelter someone from something you yourself are not protected
from?
Making my way to the pool, I pondered all of
these things. Once at the edge of the blue water, I sat on the side of the pool
and gazed out onto the city. What a different world I saw from this
perspective, gazing out into the distance of that world below. A conversation I
had with myself when I first realized
a much younger version of me I would push the sphere of my world into
That is what I have done. Pushed the sphere of my world into Cayden’s and
walked in. Here sat Winter Perri, an older but perhaps none the wiser
rendering. She was on the inside looking out on the world she left. That world
had become a strange world, vaguely familiar. But then I may have to enter the
strange world I left in order to ensure Cayden’s world, however different, no
matter how confining, went on.
I splashed my feet in the water of the pool
tilting my chin up to look into the large blue sky. The sun bright and shining.
The sky was tattooed with white long wisps of clouds. The clouds appeared
fragile, almost breakable, as if the blue sky could not hold on to them in fear
of their destruction. The sky was larger than life, the clouds weak. They were
trying to cling within a space that could not contain them or protect them. I
understood the skies fear so I closed my eyes unable to see it.
I pulled the clip out of my hair, setting it
free. It fell as a slight breeze sweep through it, brushing intermittent pieces
of long caramel strands across my face. I heard the wind combing through the
palm trees that dotted the property. The sound reminded me of another distant
memory. The night
at
whooshing sounds through the reeds and tall spiky grass up on shore. That was
the sound of this breeze on this day that rustled through the palms.
I had the feeling I was no longer alone. I felt
him. The connection. The pull of my love. Cayden was near so I opened my eyes
and turned around. He was standing at the far edge of the pool, watching me. I
smiled at him, and he smiled back. We did not move from our designated spots.
We stared at each other for a long moment, under the sun, in the breeze,
standing in Cayden’s world, silent.
Chapter Fifteen
Under Lock and Key
I met Race on the plane back to
older man with silver hair and dark almost navy blue eyes. He sported a short
graying well-groomed beard. He dressed casual, wearing cargo pants and a
buttoned-up white linen shirt. He had a deep voice, almost bass-sounding and
seemed to carry himself with a sense of assurance, not rudeness. He sat with
Jayden and Langdon on the plane, plotting out the coming week in
Cayden’s film shoot in the city along with my stay at the estate. It was as if
he was the higher-ranking officer here, so everyone else would fall into line
without question.
We were halfway through the flight when my
stomach attacked me again. I got up and made my way to the restroom on the
plane. I needed to be quiet. I turned on the water in the sink in an attempt to
hide the fact I was evacuating my stomach. I must have stayed in the restroom
too long because I heard Cayden knocking on the door.
Tap, tap, tap.
“Winter, baby,” Cayden called.
“Just a second,” I returned.
I glanced at myself in the mirror and combed
through my hair with my fingers
.
I had
to tell him about the baby soon. I rinsed out my mouth twice before turning the
water off. My face looked too pale. I started pinching my cheeks, trying hard
to gain some needed color. When my cheeks were rosy, I straightened my shirt,
took a deep breath, and opened the door.
Cayden stared intently at my face, brushed his
finger down my cheek then smiled. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I assured, taking his hand in mine,
finding our seats.
He
watched me pull some mints out of my bag, popping two into my mouth. I handed
the mints over in offer. He took one.
“Baby,” he said after a few minutes of silence.
“You would tell me if there was something wrong.” He wasn’t asking he was
speaking as though he were convincing himself of the fact. I did something I
had never been able to do before. I looked into his clear blue-gray eyes and
lied.
“You know I would tell you, there is nothing
wrong.”
Cayden studied me for a minute with questions in
his eyes and on his face. Sure I was caught; I started to divert my eyes, but
stopped when he smiled at me. “Winter, you know you are my life. You know I
love you more than life itself. You know there is nothing I would not do for
you. You know there is nothing you could not tell me.”