Chapter Five
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The sunlight harassed his mind. His head felt as if it were splitting in two directly down the middle. He kept his eyes closed and began to feel his surroundings. He wasn’t quite sure where he was or how he got there, but by the sound of the breathing beside him he wasn’t alone. Stumbling to the window he pulled the shades, breathing in the darkness cast across the room like he’d been suffocating. Slowly he opened his eyes. That’s when the memories came. They flooded his senses.
The bathtub, the water, Paula, Paula naked, lots of champagne, dancing, flashes of everything that had happened in the last twenty four hours invading his mind. He cast a fleeting glance at the bed and saw her, his breath of fresh air in the form of a beautifully nude Paula Abdul.
Her chest rose and fell slowly with the timing of her breathing, her hair spread out above her head like a halo. Her naked flesh exposed, the white linen sheets discarded to her waist. She looked like something out of his many fantasies. He was about to climb back into bed and nuzzle in as close to her as he could when the distant ringing of his cell phone distracted him. He walked downstairs in search of his phone. He found it discarded by the door ringing continuously.
“Ello?”
He sounded as if he’d been through hell, which to him seemed odd. He knew what happened last night was pure heaven.
“Simon, where’ve you been I’ve been calling you all day.” The cheery tones in Seacrest’s voice made him wince.
“All day? Fuck what time is it?”
“It’s three in the afternoon buddy, where are you? I’ve been knocking on your hotel room door all morning.”
“Paula and I checked into the Playboy suite last night. Do us a favor and grab all our stuff and come over to the Palms, will you?”
“Sure… Umm.. you need to see something too.”
“What?”
“Nothing Cowell, I’ll show it to you when I get there.”
Simon had no idea what he was talking about, shaking his head he clicked shut his phone.
“Si…?” She was calling him.
He scaled the stairs as quickly as he could, only wanting to get back to her.
Ryan tapped on the door afraid of how this day was going to go. Randy, who knew nothing of the news Ryan was about to spill to the two “love birds” in the next room, had caught an early flight home with the wife, Erica and business he had to do as the excuse. With a rolled up copy of the Enquirer in his hand, Simon and Paula’s luggage behind him, he waited.
A terry cloth robe clad Paula opened the door.
She had dark circles under her eyes, but the smile that she was wearing on her face was never bigger or brighter.
“Hey Paula…” Ryan started as he walked in trying to lug in her bags with him. Simon came to the door quickly to help.
Once everything was situated and Ryan had gotten a drink, everyone sat down in the living room to see what Ryan’s big news was.
Simon sat beside Paula, opposite Ryan, his hand around her shoulders.
“So, you guys have fun last night?”
Paula’s face turned a slight shade of red and she adverted her eyes from Ryan’s knowing glances. Simon, who always felt he had nothing to hide, simply nodded, barely suppressing the cheeky smile he really wanted to flash at Ryan.
“Well don’t spare the details, actually you don’t have to. I read all about it in the Enquirer this morning.” He tossed the copy he had with him onto Simon’s lap and waited for the shock to settle in.
On the cover in bold red letters was the phrase “Marrying Idols”. The picture below was of Paula, a beautifully embellished ring on her most important finger, kissing Simon outside of the god forbidden Little White Chapel.
“What the fuck? They doctored this.”
Paula’s eyes were as big as the bottom of her Idol Coke glass. She’d seen that ring before. She had taken it off when she woke up, wondering where it came from.
“Did they Simon? You guys were together all night, presumably drunk. Do you even remember what happen?”
Simon began to rack his brain.
Hotel.Sex.Club.Sex.Sex.Sex, and a lot of drinking, but no marriage that he remembered.
“It’s fake. It has to be we were here all night.”
Paula, who’s quietness went unnoticed, had opened the dirty gossip rag and was fingering through the article. There were pictures of them leaving their first hotel, arriving at the Palms, in the club, in the casino, stumbling to their room. It was as if the scum bags had followed them all night.
“Simon, thank god this is the only magazine that’s picked up the story, but I’m sure more will follow, E called and asked me to confirm. That’s how I found out.”
“Well it didn’t ha-“
Paula got up and quickly made her way upstairs. Both the men looked confused, sharing glances of disbelief at the paper until Paula returned with two items in her hands.
One was a piece of paper and the other too small for them to see.
“Simon, look at this.”
She handed the paper to him, her hand slightly trembling.
His eyes took in what was on the paper. His signature, hers as well, and then he realized what he was looking at.
“This is a marriage certificate. Fuck! This actually happened.”
Tears welled up in her eyes. She felt awful, sick to her stomach with pure hate for what she’d just done. Paula Abdul and another failed marriage, this one before it even really began. Inwardly she was already beating herself up over this mistake.
“You two actually got married?” Ryan’s voice seemed to go up an octave in pure surprise.
“Apparently we did.”
“Well what now?” It was only the second time she spoke since Ryan had told them the news of their fateful night.
“Well damage control right? We’ll have Ryan go on E and deny the claims saying it’s a fake picture, I’ll sue or something we’ll take care of it.”
Paula could feel herself breaking inside. He wouldn’t even look at her, he just stared blankly at the piece of paper, pure hatred in his eyes. This was everything he had never wanted and she knew it. She didn’t want it to be this way, but she felt she couldn’t say anything.
“So what? Divorce?”
“No, darling we don’t have to, we just have to do this.”
Simon took his lighter off the coffee table and lit the binding contract on fire knowing full well if it was never filed, to the public and the law it never existed.
She watched it burn, paralyzed by the feeling of abandonment he didn’t know he was inflicting on her. With each flicker of the flame she felt herself giving up on love for good. With each orange flame that coated the paper and turned it to ash she built a wall around her heart, never to let anyone in again.
Simon threw the remainder of the flaming mistake into the fire place. He finally turned and looked at Paula, watching her turn the ring over in her hand. He had to say that he had good taste in jewelry even when drunk. The ring was beautiful and had a rather large stone. It was a yellow diamond that didn’t even really look like a diamond and defiantly didn’t look like a stuffy old engagement ring.
Paula looked up realizing she was being watched and reached her hand out to Simon, giving the ring back to him.
“Keep it.” He said gruffly.
She would and every single time she wore it she would break a little more inside, remembering the pure rejection she felt from him that day.
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She could barely stumble into her bedroom to pick up the phone and dial her savior number. She called it her savior number because he’d always been there through every bad relationship she’d ever had and was one of the few that even knew about the alleged affair between her and Simon.
“Daniel… he’s gone. He left.. can you come over?”
She walked downstairs and poured herself a glass of wine and curled up on the couch waiting for Daniel to come and save her as he did so often, so well. She didn’t nod off, but rather finished her glass and poured another. Half way through her second glass she tipsily walked over to the stereo and pressed play. She knew it was there, he’d given it to her so long ago. She was surprised she hadn’t wore the CD out, she played it so often. The smoothness of the singer’s voice always seemed to surprise her, making her tingle. He use to kiss her so softly, so sweetly as they listened to the docile tones. This was their song, a song that made them feel as if with each other they were home. It made them feel that they alone were the only one the other needed, even though they had proven it wrong time and time again. Neither one had ever been completely faithful to the other, though it had never been pressured to be that way. They understood that they made each other happy and that was that.
By the time Daniel had made his way to Paula’s house, she was sleepily lounging on the couch, her second glass of wine completely empty, her cheeks covered by the tracks of her tears. Daniel rushed over to her and scooped her up in a warm hug.
“Paula, you’re all wet!” he exclaimed half talking about her hair, half talking about the tears that had run down her face.
He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and let her cuddle in close to him.
“What happened?”
Paula couldn’t really put any of it into words. She just sobbed into his shoulder.
Daniel knew it was bad because she was playing the CD, listening to ‘Home’ on repeat, she’d had more than one glass of wine, and she was wearing the ring.
“Paula, honey, use your words. Talk to me.”
In between sniffles she managed to get out one sentence.
“I told him.”
Daniel’s eyes grew wider, for he knew that exactly what she was talking about. She’d been so afraid of saying those words, whether in return to him or in the throngs of passions. She always swore to herself she would never say them.
“Why?”
She turned to look at him and stated it as simply as she could.
“Because I couldn’t keep lying to him.”
“So you love him?”
“Yeah, Daniel, I do.”
She’d never admitted to anyone, all this time, that she really loved him.
Now he was gone, flying away to London, and she was finally ready to say she loved him.
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