Her Love Story

“Hurry up!”

She couldn’t wait to get back home. Marietta had been away from her beautiful husband for more than three weeks. She needed to feel his arms around her, his warm breath on her neck as he kissed her, and his caresses when they made love. Being with him every single day was like a breath of fresh air, a step closer to heaven.

When they met, she thought they were too different to be together. His ivory skin was a huge difference to her deep coffee color. His family fortune trumped the couple of dollars her mother left her when she died. His father was a huge part of his life, while her father played best to parts like, ‘Liar Liar’ and the ‘Invisible Man’. Plus, he was a reformed playboy, while she had only dated one guy ever since kindergarten. He was an expert in touch and go relationships, while she only knew one way of being with a person, the ever-after way.

Marietta only broke up with her long-term boyfriend when they realized they were going to colleges in different states, on different coasts. She wanted to study film, and going to film school in New York was where it would start. Chris was more interested in photography, and his dream school was in Los Angeles. That was the biggest relationship decision she ever made… until she met Tobias Harden. He was the son of an Oscar winner, and was desperately trying to make it on his own without his father’s legacy looming behind him. He wanted to be an actor in his own right. Toby was beautiful. His strong body left her broken and willing. His strong jaw shadowed by a heartbreaking smile, and his deep baritone voice was like a song in her ears.

They had only been able to see each other twice in the past three months. Their schedules wouldn’t allow it. Marietta was in the Middle East, overseeing the production of her new movie. She came up with the storyline and wrote the script. Because she and Toby didn’t have any children, each project was like her baby and so far, she was the mother of twenty successful children. Critics praised her work and pinpointed that her dedication to personally oversee her work was what made them great. In the past ten years, she had overseen four movies a year before she got married, and then had to reduce to it two.

Marietta and Tobias had been married for three years. They had met on the set of one of Marietta’s movies, ‘Guns, Blood, and Sex’, an action movie that revolved around the world of drugs and the illegal arms trade. Toby played a CIA agent, and as he played this hard role in front of the camera, he was a sweet romantic with her. Sure, she didn’t turn a blind eye when a female set assistant, stylist, or make-up artist disappeared and he was nowhere to be found, but she liked him, and second chances were her thing.

Tobias, at first, was shocked that Marietta didn’t submit to his charms, and was even more taken aback at her ultimatum. He had to choose every single skirt he laid his eyes on, or her. Surprisingly to him, it was a difficult choice. So, after the movie wrapped and everyone went their separate ways, he found himself missing Marietta. With the help of her assistant, he was able to track down Marietta in Mexico, filming a love story. After a year of dating, they were walking down the aisle, picking houses, and trying to make babies.

They were happy, even though they spent only three to six months together in a year. They both understood the commitments of their careers and how time was a big black hole. But they made it work, love was the glue to their relationship and technology covered the distance between them.

Marietta dragged her suitcase up the stairs, her assistant and a cameraman following behind her. She had a surprise for him, and she wanted to catch the genuine moment on tape. Her assistant had a bottle of champagne and two chilled glasses. Marietta was excited as her heart beat against its cage and her breathing quickened. Just a few more doors down and she would be with the love of her life.

“Are you guys ready?” Marietta asked, “Make sure the camera is on.”

“I know what I’m doing.” Sam, the camera man, said exasperated.

“Are you ready?” She asked once more.

“Yes, we are. You need to stop asking us every single second. I get you are excited, but you are getting annoying.” Jessie, her assistant, exclaimed.

“I just want to make sure everything is perfect.” Marietta said as she took in a deep breath.

She stopped at her front door and fished in her purse for her keys, and when she didn’t find them immediately Marietta started to panic. She tossed the contents of her bag to the ground and frantically searched. The other two stepped back and watched her, amused looks on their face.

“They were here,” she gasped.

Jessie reached down and grabbed the ribbon around Marietta’s neck, “You put them around your neck so that you wouldn’t forget them.”

“Oh...yeah.” Marietta slowly put the things she littered on the floor back into her bag. Standing up, she took a deep breath before putting the key in the keyhole.

Turning the key, she looked at her back up making sure they were ready. Sam had the camera hoisted on his shoulder and Jessie had the glasses and the bubbly in her hands. She wasn’t sure whether or not Toby would be in. She hadn’t called to let him know she was arriving today. But his assistant had made sure that his schedule was clear. Marietta took a deep breath and pushed the door open. Sam was the first to go in. Genuine reaction was what they were looking for. When they didn’t find him in the living room, Sam went straight into the bedroom.

Marietta rushed in after him. She was ready to shout surprise when she found something else that surprised her.

Four years earlier…

“I don’t want him.”

Marietta pulled her braids off her neck and into a ponytail. The sun was beginning to beat down on them. She wasn’t quite convinced that the big orange ball of fire wasn’t heading straight for them, crushing into Earth and disintegrating everyone. The sun was dropping out of space and landing in downtown Los Angeles. Her eyes darted at the little fan trying to do what the air conditioner proved not to be able to. The little engine that could, spinning round and round, and all it blew out was a whisper of cool air.

She loved making up stories in her mind and seeing them come to life on screen. Marietta’s life had been a story, a living nightmare that turned out to be a dream. She called it ‘the coming of age’ story. The characters were important to her, their struggles, and victories and how they all seemed to jell together. A perfect story, in her words, was not carried on one man’s back. She sized the man up, looked at his shoulders and wondered if he was just strong enough.

But it wasn’t just the heat or the fan’s inability to cool down the room that was bothering her. Marietta was staring at a five-foot-ten, well built, gorgeous, dark-haired, warm, brown-eyed man. He had everything going for him, his looks, and his acting ability. But that still didn’t manage to convince Marietta that he was the right guy for the job.

She leaned into the casting director hoping that the irritation in her voice wasn’t more than a whisper, she said, “I don’t want him.”

“What do you mean you don’t want him?” The bony woman pulled back and stared at Marietta like she had just dropped in from a different planet, “Everyone wants him. Every single woman and man, of a specific taste, wants him. He’s the best collaboration that Britain and America have ever made.”

“Suzy, I don’t care. I still don’t want him.” Marietta insisted.

“I have been meaning to ask you something.” Suzy bit down on her lower lip. “I understand being young in this business, not wanting to get distracted by relationships and all that. But I have never seen you with a guy before. You can’t be gay because I have never seen you with a chick either. “

“What’s the question?”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Suzy’s tone was elevated, drawing everyone’s attention, including the actor being judged in front of them.

“Nothing,” Marietta snarled. “You can go now.” She waved the actor away and then turned to Suzy. “I just don’t have the time to invest in trusting anyone who is going to let me down. I don’t have the patience to get disappointed.”

Disappointment when it came to men was all she knew. Her father wasn’t even in the business, but she knew him for his greatest roles, ‘Liar Liar’ and the ‘Invisible Man.’ He was never around. The deadbeat took off when she was just a child. Marietta and her brother had to get jobs at the age of nine and ten just to help their mother with the bills. They could barely make ends meet so when her brother got sick, things went from bad to worse.

Marietta could see herself sitting down on the front porch, Chris, her high school boyfriend, holding her hand as the neighbors came to pay their respects. It stung her that the old man couldn’t even show up to put his only son in the ground. Her mother held on for a while, but Marietta always felt rushed to grow up. She needed to get to a stable place so that her mother could stop holding onto life as hard as she was. So as soon as Marietta graduated, her mother choked back a bottle of sleeping pills and bathed in a pool of her own blood mixed with jasmine scented shampoo. The wait was over.

Marietta couldn’t hold it against her, the old girl had held on as long as she could. Life had become tough when her father left, and after her brother died it was unbearable for her mother. Breathing, living had become more of a burden to her mother than it was a gift. Yet again when Marietta buried her mother there was no sign of her father, but Chris was there, holding her hand as usual.

Chris, she thought. I wonder if I should give him a call.

“But at least you are getting laid, right?”

The sound of Suzy’s empathetic voice pulled her back to her latest problem, “Some.” And by some she meant not since her first time with Chris, the night before she left her small town in Minnesota, nine years ago.

Marietta feigned a smile and went back to staring at the picture in front of her. Tobias Harden was twenty-six and doing some of his best work. He was a Hollywood child, his father a great actor and his mother a British screenwriter. Two very talented people had come together and created a gifted actor and handsome, talented Lothario. This hadn’t been Marietta first casting encounter with the guy. The first time he refused to take a part in her movie, his exact words were, ‘I don’t do Indies, only box office, babe.’

Now, ten scripts and an eighty percent success record later. Marietta had a box office movie that he was dying to have. An action thriller bigger than James Bond and Jason Bourne, big budget with incredible set locations in the Middle East and Northern Africa. Her movie was like a hot cake that half of young Hollywood wanted to sink their teeth into. She had always pictured a six-foot -three guy with beautiful eyes, a genetic cross between Jesse Williams and Chris Pine to play the lead role of the CIA agent gone rogue. But they were taken. All she had left were fifty beautiful guys and Tobias Harden.

She wasn’t going to give it to him. She didn’t want to give it to him. The directors, the studio and producers couldn’t overrule her. This was her vision and only she could pick out the best guy for the job. It was pride that was delaying the already made decision. She wanted him to grovel and apologize for dismissing her and neglecting to see her creative greatness. But Marietta couldn’t outright ask him to do that. She could but her mother had raised her better than that. The rest of the cast had already been signed and put to work on their scripts and training regimen, she had to decide. Tobias Harden was the best that they had seen in two solid weeks of auditioning the known and unknown. It pained her but she had to face reality, he was it.

“Fine.” Marietta mumbled under her breath in defeat.

“What did you just say?” Suzy couldn’t help but gloat. She had been telling Marietta to cast Tobias Harden ever since the movie idea came up.

“You can call him back in.” Marietta tried to put her vindictive hat aside and put on her creative one. She had to look at Tobias with different eyes. She had to see him as Grayson, rogue CIA agent, fighting to take illegal guns off the market and bring down the big fish. When Tobias Harden walked into the room, she did just that. Mentally slapping on an imaginary suit and shades and tussling his slicked black hair a bit, she could see him transform. And that, she promised herself, was how he was going to continue seeing him.

Marietta stood up from her chair, walked around the table and extended a welcome handshake to the man. “Congratulations, welcome to ‘Guns, Blood and Sex’,” she mumbled and then walked out.

“You are going to be glad you picked him,” Suzy chanted.

“Picked who?”

Marietta sighed knowing her frustration level was going to increase. Jessie was just another voice in her head telling her to give men a second chance. She couldn’t wait to hear what her assistant would say about her not wanting to give Tobias Harden the part. She quickened her pace and tried to run away from them as fast as she could, without running.

“She picked Tobias beautiful Harden.”

From a distance she could hear the two women squeals. Everyone was getting on the SS Tobias Harden dreamboat. Maybe it was time for her to get on board too. She smiled as she walked outside the studio to her car. The next four months were bound to be interesting for her.