![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
This little interlude belongs in the middle of Part 4. It was originally linked as a private post on tumblr to preserve continuity and surprise, but that's not really relevant any longer and here is where I want the archive. (Also fuck tumblr. But if their latest screw-up actually leads to a resurgence of simmer activity on the blog sites, I'm kind of excited for that.)
(Also mea culpa, on the off chance that anyone happens across this particular post: I just re-upped the tumblr'd images without resizing, so they're huge. On resolutions lower than 1920x1080, you may need to lower the percentage in browser view.)
Stella sat quietly in the back of the town car as they pulled off.
She didn’t expect Red was still watching and that was a good thing. She wanted her last impression to be flirty and free, not…captured.
“How was Monte Vista?”
“Oh, shut up.” Harry always had to be sarcastic. “Did you miss me?”
“Can’t say as I did, Miss Daisy,” he said in his regular accent, which was more annoying to her than the sentiment because if
you’re going to imitate the movie do it right or what’s the point. “You’re a right lot of work, you are. I appreciated the downtime.”
Whatever. It was Harry’s day off, she had remembered that, but it’s not like this was her fault.
If Frankie had only called him up himself like she asked instead of having her freaking father send him to retrieve her…
“Seatbelt. Put it on, please.”
“Where’s my car?”
“In the shop.”
“I thought you were going to fix it. You said you were going to have it like brand spanking new for me when I came home.”
“Well, you’re early, ain’t you. And what all you did to it turned out to be more than a match for Harry Barnes,” he said. “Seatbelt.”
“I’m in the back. And you’re not even wearing yours,” she said, tilting her head to check and he did have a solo band strapped at his lap, “well, you’re not wearing it right.”
“But I am wearing it. And I’m not the precious cargo here. Put your seatbelt on, Stella.”
Instead she’d turned and swung her legs up onto the seat and crossed her arms in a huff.
Harry mumbled something about her being a brat but otherwise left her to it.
Stella dropped her head back against the window and sighed.
“So who’s the guy?”
“What guy?” Harry glanced at her in the rearview. “Oh, that guy?” She shrugged. “Just a guy,” she said.
But she really did hope Red called her, like, tonight instead of playing it cool. She had a lot left to get off her chest with that guy.
As he rounded the outskirts of the commercial district, Harry asked her “No luggage? Do I need to be stopping off somewhere to pick up your stuff?”
“I don’t know how long I’m staying.”
“So that’s a no?”
“Yes. No.”
“What the—!”
Stella slipped out of her seat and lurched forward when he stopped short behind the car that stopped short in front of him.
“Fucking dumbbell!” he said, not sure himself whether he were directing it more to the jerk in the lemon who couldn’t drive right or the idiot pedestrian he slammed
on his brakes to let cross in front of him. Or to watch cross in front of him. Didn’t he know chivalry was wasted in a Tofunda—because you’re in a fucking Tofunda!
“You okay, Stell? What’s goin’ on with your melon? You bumped your head? Stella?”
“I’m fine,” she said. But she’d about had her fill of humiliation for one afternoon. Like, okay already.
He reached a hand to help her but Stella pulled herself up onto the seat again, halfway convinced that he did that on purpose for not listening to him before.
Harry scratched at his ear that way he did, like a flop-eared puppy…or a hound dog, barely hiding his smile once he knew that she was all right—Stella caught him in the mirror.
“I told you to put your seatbelt on.”
Ha! She knew it.
Stella popped her head up and took a look around. “What are we doing here?” He didn’t need to drive down any seamy side streets to get to the house.
“Shortcut.”
Wha-a-tever.
“Traffic on 4th at this time o’ day? No way.”
‘K, that was probably true but what was the freaking hurry? She would rather sit in traffic. Much rather. And maybe climb into the front seat
with him to find a way for her impatient, idle hands to pass the time and see how many people noticed in the bumper to bumper crawl.
It sounded like he was simpatico when he said “I, uh, I didn’t want to say—you know I’m never rude—but I couldn’t help noticing you’re still
rolling commando whenever the mood hits ya. Guess you and buddy boy had a pretty good time of it before I showed up to cramp Miss Stella’s style.”
“Not even.”
“I mean, palling around with the Mashugas? That’s something. You’re moving up in the world,” he said, ever the sarcastic ass. “Guess that was a fair price of admission.”
“You’re an asshole. And dead wrong,” Stella told him. “Sometimes a girl just likes to feel the breeze.”
He laughed and she started to give him a complimentary flash in the mirror, it was one of their games, but she was sick of playing around. Because she was sick of losing.
Stella crossed her legs coyly and leaned forward. “Listen, what’s the rush, it’s not like anyone was expecting me so why don’t we act like
we got caught in traffic and you take me to one of these seedy motels around here. You know, the kind where you have to go get your own ice from,
like, a vending machine. One of those cheap nasty places where they only charge by the hour. And you can pay,” she said. “You’ll have to pay,
I’m like a pauper right now, not a penny on me, but that’s even better. You should be the one to pay. I want you to treat me like your - “
“Knock it off.”
“Aww,” she simpered, unaffected by words alone. “Whatever you say, mista. I’ll do whatever you say while it’s your dime and your hour.”
“I said knock it off!”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Look, I’m nobody’s backup plan.”
“Since when?”
“And I’m sure as shit not your bought and kept boy-toy. You’re still hot for that actor guy or whoever he is, why don’t you ring him up when you
get in and the two of you can put on the next act of your play or whatever kinda fantasy you’re in. But I’m no man’s stand-in, ain’t gonna be
nobody’s whatchacallit—understudy, not that guy’s. Not nobody’s. So I’m gonna do what I really get paid for and that’s drive your highness home.”
Was he fucking for real?
Stella wasn’t, like, uncouth and scrappy, but she had slapped a bitch or two in her life and it felt really right, especially because they cried and didn’t hit back,
so if she thought she could take him she would’ve been so all over that! Even if they crashed. It would be so worth it to smack that smugness off his stupid face.
She really, really wanted to hit him. And she was actually trying to calculate the risk. Unless it was, like, a reflex, she didn’t think he’d hit her back but
he might, like, stop and drag her out of the car or something to have to walk the rest of the way by herself with, like, only one shoe on or something. Ugh.
Fuck him.
Eventually, they turned onto a quiet tree-lined street.
Not only was Stella not speaking to him, she refused to look in his direction at all.
There it was.
“What are you doing?” she snapped when Harry turned in here instead of heading straight to the garage like usual.
“We are a front-door service, Miss. Deliveries, you see. We aim to please.”
“Yeah. Fucking. Right.” Stella shoved open her own door since he didn’t seem to be in a rush to do the
chauffeur honours now and she stormed off to the fucking front door while he drove around to the back.
Home again, home again—who the fuck wanted to be here.
Stella headed straight for the stairs, not expecting any kind of welcome.
Not that the voice that came out of nowhere and called her name was any kind of welcoming to her ear when she heard it.
“Hello, Mother. Funny seeing you here,” she said, without bothering to actually look her way.
“I could say the same except I’d received the most bizarre call from your father telling me that you were not in Monte Vista like we thought. If you ever were.
Weirder still, he told me that you were here in the city and were recently caught trespassing on a movie set? Stella, are you listening to me? Come back here while I’m talking to you.”
“Yeah right,” she said, not missing a stride.
“Very well. Since you are too irresponsible to be trusted and too immature to explain yourself, I guess we’ll just go ahead and cut you off and let that be that.”
“Oh my god, are you going to kick me out?!”
Sally Chesterton was vaguely horrified by the pained look of fear on her daughter’s face as though they would ever—they would never—but she
couldn’t squander a negotiating ploy. Certainly not when it was the only thing that had so much as elicited eye contact from Stella.
“If you’re willing to talk terms then we can talk terms. Now. In my office,” she said.
So fine, Stella followed. What choice did she have?
At least she wasn’t here to rub it in with, like, her mere presence. Mallory Chesterton would never do anything so reckless, she would never have
the guts to find a dream of her own and go after it full tilt. Mallory Chesterton would never do anything but what a Mallory Chesterton should do.
Stella sneered at her sister’s image as she passed by the one picture where they finally managed to wrangle
those ugly glasses from her face for 30 seconds and she didn’t look half bad so, of course, it got pride of place.
“Have a seat, Stella.”
Stella slumped into the chair and kinda forgot that she wasn’t wearing underwear.
That reaction was really over the top, though. Embarrassed and disappointed she could handle but it was pissing her off that her mother was so offended, like she’d
been flashed by a random two-bit tramp instead of having simply caught an unflattering view of the body that not that long ago came from the very same place on her.
Besides, whatever kind of tramp she was she came by it naturally. Thanks Mumsy.
“I don’t even want to know.”
Yeah, that sounded about right, exactly like the kind of mother she was. “Good, because I wasn’t going to tell you,” Stella said. “I’m an adult now, if you recall.”
“And you intend to foot your own bills?” Sally challenged as she sat down and dropped a GoldCard on top of her date book on the desk. “That’s yours, by the way,” she said.
“I discovered it when this arrived a little while ago.”
“My bag? Goopy brought it by already?”
“Who? Never mind, I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know what that means and if that’s some manner of person, all I can say is you had better be
keeping up with your birth control. What I do know is that this came by courier moments after I had hurried home after your father’s frantic call.”
Frantic? Ri-ight. “And you went through it?”
“How was I to know what it was? And once I did know, absolutely. We don’t know anything
about that courier company and it was a tempting opportunity for one of them to rip you off.”
“Obviously, they didn’t,” Stella said and held out her hand for ‘Mumsy’ to fork over the goods.
“No, this stays with me. You may keep the others, you won’t get far gallivanting your way around the world with them. The terms that we are negotiating
are whether I take the scissors to the GoldCard and freeze your account outright or whether and what are the conditions you could earn it back under.”
“Oh fuck me.”
“Stella, please.”
Stella rummaged through her purse on her way upstairs when she was finally released from their ‘meeting’ and all
her stuff was still in there. She dropped it straight on the floor by the door as soon as she got to her bedroom.
It figured that Goopy was too chickenshit to bring it back to her in person but she wasn’t done with him yet. Not by a long shot.
Stella had no intention of being beholden to her parents’ social calendar, like at all. Even if she was beholden to their money, at least for a while,
until she could make new plans and new moves. And fuck college, too. She wasn’t going back but they didn’t need to know that until they needed to know it.
One thing they definitely needed to re-establish, like, right away…boundaries. Sally needed to keep her hands out of her stuff and stay out of her room. Who did
she think she was all of a sudden, June Cleaver, trying to dress her and stuff for this lame-o party that Stella was absolutely, definitely not going to with them.
But the dress was pretty cute. Of course, that wasn’t her mother’s doing, she would’ve had Millie pick out some things for her. Well, whatever, she still wasn’t going.
Everything else looked basically the way she left it. The staff knew she didn’t like them moving stuff. Clean up. Don’t rearrange. It wasn’t hard.
So, okay, Stella did not actually get crowned queen of the snow ball, not even close—those losers—but a picture can be worth
much more than a memory. Pictures can immortalise what never was and rewrite the story better. She liked pictures.
And Stella did manage to muster a smile for her younger self. Girlie was hot! It was, what, three years ago? Four? Her first boyfriend turned out to be the artsy-fartsy type and he
painted those to memorialise her. Wow, was he whipped! She couldn’t have lost all that already. No. No way. But what a really stupid day this became when it could’ve been so great.
Right now, all she wanted was a shower.
She didn’t feel dirty, didn’t get the chance to be dirty, she just felt…unclean.
Well, that was better. Sort of.
A bubble bath would’ve been majorly depressing, like if she was sinking down into all the stuff she didn’t want to think about and let it wash over her before it washed away
and down the drain. Nope, a shower kept her on her toes, at least, ready to figure out how on earth she was going to transition into Stella Swank now. But to figure it out later.
She reached for her favourite Forbidden Pleasures lotion. Seemed like it might end up being the closest she was going to get to that sensation.
She eased over to her sofa to moisturise and afterward spotted the red colour of her car rolling by.
Looked like Harry was putting himself to some use, finally, and went to get her car from the shop.
Meh. Too little, too late. Mostly too little.
Stella dug out the TV remote from under the sofa pillow hoping to distract herself from the sinking feeling.
It seemed like it was welling up to bring her down despite her best efforts to avoid it.
TV didn’t help.
All it did was remind her.
Stella clicked off the set. She didn’t need to see girls like her living the dream. How was it possible that she was always so close—so close!—and yet so far?
She heard scratching at her door, just like a dog. A hound dog.
“Stell?” Harry scratched her door again and thumped lightly with the pads of his fingers. “It’s me. Stella?”
But he wasn’t who she was looking for now.
“Come on, Stella, I know you can hear me,” he whispered at the door.
Thane Chesterton was the youngest Chesterton, but he was also the long-awaited and only son—that is, he was
the permanent Chesterton, the one tasked with protecting their name and all that it meant, which meant protecting all
that bore his name, including his older sisters. He couldn’t tell what was going on here but he didn’t like the look of it.
He had also learned the hard way about getting high and mighty with Harry. Plus he didn’t like it. He would much rather be friends.
Yet, innocent as it might be—and it really might be—Thane did not approve of Harry hanging around his sister’s bedroom.
“Okay. Only came to say I brought your car back. It’s got a nice new spit-shine and it’s, uh, all ready to ride whenever you wanna take it for a spin.”
Too little…too late.
Stella tuned him out altogether and kept digging for what she wanted and found what she was looking for.
Poor little rich girl. That’s what some people thought sarcastically and said sarcastically about her, she knew that. But they didn’t know
how hard it really was—it was hard being the only one in your corner. It was harder when everyone else assumed you already
had everything you could need or want and couldn’t fathom that you really were the only one in your corner so they weren’t going to help.
One of the happiest days Stella could remember was the day that she stumbled upon a Veronica Swank film. She was about 14 then and
she kinda knew they existed but she’d never seen one so it was, like, the happiest coincidence when she realised what she was watching.
She didn’t really start seeking them out until more recently and she’d found a few but she didn’t have many ideas about how to track her down.
Stella hadn’t seen her Aunt Vera since she was really little so she only barely remembered her. Nobody ever talked about her even though she was
her mom’s only sister. She was basically banished from the family and the family story, although that didn’t stop Stella from learning that it was all because
she slept with her dad. But who the hell didn’t sleep with James T. Chesterton? Maybe the real issue was her sister acting like a selfish hypocrite about it.
Sometimes Stella thought that the animosity ran so deep for a much deeper reason. The two of them were the only blondes in the family, after all. She didn’t really
believe it, not really, but it made a kind of sense. And it gave her a kind of comfort sometimes and also a kind of charge to think that maybe Aunt Vera was her real mother.
In fact, the idea first crystallised in her mind when she received a birthday gift out of the blue with this photo included in the package. Like, why would she do that?
One thing that Stella did believe totally and absolutely was that because this was sent to her specifically and because it was signed Vera, her real name,
and not Veronica, that the words she wrote weren’t throwaway words, they were meant for her. She was trying to live by them. She really was.
If she could only just find her, Stella knew that she would understand her. That she would support her, in, like, the ways that
mattered more than money. That she—birth mother or probably not—would still see herself in her…That she would love her.
~
Notes:
- Obviously, I created the siblings for Stella, but they—Mallory in particular—inherited more of the Face One-ness from James than I remembered because Stella fully believed that she herself was the pretty one. Mallory wouldn’t contest that either as looks weren’t something she cared about or paid much attention to, so while there are a lot of reasons Stella’s jealous of her sister that isn’t among them.
-Stella had indeed reached the age of consent but not the age of majority so financially she was stuck, stuck, stuck!
-In case it’s not visible, the message to Stella on Vera’s picture says: Dare to Dream. Dare to Dare!
Anyway, I really hope you enjoyed this deeper insight into the life and times of Stella Chesterton.
2 comments | Leave a comment