Welcome dallas1990! Hopefully you're finding Malum enjoyable; if not, try giving Analeptic a spin. It helps make this boondoggle make a bit more sense. Questions, comments, concerns, general chat? Message me!
It took Meg a little over four hours to make it to the border between the US and Canada. She knew she wasn't crossing it; the lack of ID and passport made that completely infeasible and she wasn't willing to risk an international incident. However, small towns littered the border, so she settled on Blaine. 'Peace Arch State Park? Too busy. Crawling with families who want to let their kids run around after being trapped in a car. Blaine Marina Park? Cold, windy, and probably limited to boaters who aren't going to recognize him. Perfect. Now I just have to hope he...doesn't hate me. Will actually show up. His girlfriend won't nix the idea. Whatever.' It occurred to Meg, vaguely, that Randy hadn't mentioned his girlfriend – any girlfriend, really – the entire time they'd been around each other, and wondered if that was by accident or design, but pushed the thought from her head. 'Not the point of this, Meg. The point of this is the apology. The nine millionth apology that you owe him. Can you stop fucking up, so you can stop apologizing?'
Another hour later, in the parking lot of Blaine Marina, staring out into Semiahmoo Bay, she felt ready to dial Randy's number, to leave him voicemail.
It was unfortunate when he picked up; Meg hadn't prepared for that.
"Meg?"
Meg's voice caught in her throat; she forced a croak out but no words came. 'Meg? Come on! Before he hangs up!'
"Meg? Come on, Meggie. Talk to me."
She inhaled deeply and looked across the bay again, trying to find the mark where the grey sky met the grey water. There was no clear line. 'Is there ever, Meg? You always just dive.'
"Ran? I'm in Blaine. And he lied to both of us."
It was Randy's turn to sit in silence; Meg had more patience than he did and was willing to simply sit and watch the birds circle and dive for fish until he was ready to speak again.
"I don't...what do you...Meg, start over. Are you okay?"
"I started driving after your match. After Dave gave me the phone. But...I didn't remember how to use it. Like, what all the icons and buttons and shit mean. You left me a message, and I fucked up. I didn't know what the little envelope thing meant, so I didn't check it. I don't know why I can't remember." Meg's voice caught and she cleared her throat, hard, to keep her voice from hitching. "Anyway, I was upset. I thought you didn't call to say goodbye after the match. So I pulled over and called Dave. I called after midnight."
"Motherfucker."
"I know, Ran. I know."
"Look, Meg, you know I wouldn't just leave and not call you. I couldn't find my phone, it was in my pants from the arena, but I -"
"Ran, I'm sorry. It's my fault. I figured out my voicemail and listened to your message just now. And honestly...I think you didn't lose your phone. You looked so out of it when they were taking you up from the ring. It wouldn't have been hard for Dave to-"
"So when he said he talked to the apartment complex, he-"
"-Was really talking to me."
"Were you okay?"
"No. Well, yes, but no. I was trying to get him to tell me how to go to the airport. I wanted to see you before you left. I didn't – don't – know how to use the GPS thing on my phone."
Randy couldn't help the smile that crossed his face; for the first time in the week and few days since he'd arrived in Vancouver, he felt a genuine warmth in himself. 'She...missed me? Was worried? Whatever it was, she cared. She wanted to see me.' Somewhere behind him, a stagehand thumped on his door. Randy ignored it.
"Ran? Everything okay? It sounds like something's banging." Meg furrowed her brows.
"Yeah, no, it's fine. Did you make it to the airport?"
"No, for two reasons. Sorta three. One, no map."
"Fuck me, you were unprepared for something?" Randy laughed, loudly, his face beginning to ache from the smile.
"Yeah, yeah. Don't rub it in." Meg lit a cigarette; if she couldn't have a drink to steady her nerves, she could at least smoke. "Two, Dave wouldn't tell me how to get to the fucking airport." Meg exhaled, blowing a steady grey stream out the window. 'Like a whale in the bay.' "Three – and Ran, promise me something?"
"What, Meg?"
"Just be chill. Three, that was when he told me you were already on the plane and I needed to leave you alone."
The line went silent, and Meg waited again, smoking, patient, letting him think. 'We've both been screwed over, you're just not used to it the way I am. The way it feels to get fucked so many times.' The pause continued, seemingly endless, and it was only Randy's heavy footfalls in his trailer that told Meg he was still on the line.
"Meg, where did you say you were?"
"Right now?" Meg inhaled again, more smoke, the end of the cigarette harsh. She flicked it out the window, counted the rest of her pack, and took out another, trying to get her lighter to cooperate with her hands. "I drove up to Blaine. I packed my shit, took the money Dave left me, and booked it out of there. I still have the car, and most of the money left over from Jackson, too. I'm safe, I'm fine, and I did what I promised – I went to his apartment. I just...couldn't stay there. Not like that." She inhaled deeply, looking in the sideview mirror to be sure the cigarette caught.
"And you can't get up here."
"Nope." The birds were still circling, diving, Meg whaling smoke out of the window of her car.
"Okay. How about...I'm going to shoot for the day – we're ahead two days, I think – and come down. I'll figure it out. I'll see what the director will give me. Can you get a place to stay?"
"I'm good where I'm at. I kinda have a thing with this car. We get along."
"Meggie..." Randy's voice immediately went on edge; he didn't want her in a car in a strange town on the border of who knew what.
"Ran, look. I made it out here, didn't I? I'll be fine. We can meet here tonight, tomorrow, whatever. You call me, since you have a schedule and all I have is time."
"Where is here?"
"Blaine Marina Park. Straight down I-5. Can't miss, even for you."
"Shut up, Meg. Don't, I mean...but shut up."
"Just call me. I miss you. Don't fuck up anything for the film, though, okay? I'll be here. I'm sure as fuck not going back there. And hey?"
The thumping started again; Randy glared at the door, but ignored it a second time. "Yeah, Meg?"
"Don't say anything to Dave. If he calls you, play dumb. That should be easy, right?" The tease in her voice was obvious, and Randy wanted to reach through his phone to ruffle her hair.
"I'll behave, Meg. I promise. I'm just...thanks. You called. I was getting scared."
"Don't say that. I'm always fine. You know that. Get going. Sooner you're done, sooner you're here."
Randy whipped his trailer's door open, nearly knocking the crew member off the small set of steps just outside. Jabbering something about being there soon, in thirty minutes, as fast as possible, just needing to find one thing, Randy ran haphazardly from closet to bed and back again, packing as much as he could in the small amount of time he could give himself before he knew it would be too obvious that he was up to something. On set, he blazed through scene after scene with an enthusiasm that bordered on manic, not needing retakes, calls for lines, or prompts – until he had to get a bit personal with his female co-star. There, Randy balked a bit, his mind not letting him cooperate fully with what the director was telling him to do. 'I promised I would get through this, just kiss the bitch. Close your eyes.'
His end result was completing his portion of the shoot several days ahead of schedule on his scripted work, with a compromise of three days available to him for rest and relative freedom while they set for stunts. 'As long as they don't involve me or my back, they can set for anything they want.' After confirming he was free to go absolutely anywhere as long as he came back clean, sober, and in one piece, Randy called for a company car and took off down I-5, certain he would eventually end up in Blaine. 'Meg would have told me if I needed any other roads besides that. She knows I can't navigate for shit.'
Shockingly, the drive was only 45 minutes. Randy almost didn't realize he was at the border crossing until he nearly plowed into the car ahead of him. Slamming on the brakes, he steered into a lane and waited for his turn at the booth, praying he'd brought the correct paperwork with him and that the entrance to the marina would still be open. 'And that she's awake, she still wants to meet me, we actually have a place to go, I can find her because it's starting to get dark...this can turn into a giant mess...it's me and Meg, it's probably supposed to turn into a giant mess.' The border agent raised an eyebrow at the high-speed entrance, but Randy's sheepish grin and shrug charmed his way through to stateside. He swooped to the side of the customs area as soon as he was released, hoping he wasn't acting suspicious or blocking traffic, and called Meg. Trying to add to the authenticity of his plight, he dug for a map and spread it out across the dashboard, thinking it might make him look desperate.
"Ran? That was quick. What, five hours? Six?" She yawned; he could hear seabirds in the background and could tell she'd been napping, wherever she was.
"Let's say I was highly motivated. Where am I going?"
"Depends on where you are."
"Smartass. I'm sitting at the border. Do I stay on I-5?"
Meg shuffled a map of her own; Randy chuckled dryly. "Oh, you can't navigate either?" He almost regretted saying it; directions were a point of pride with Meg and he didn't want to upset her. 'I need to call Remy. Meg might not be ready to see those reports, but I am. Something's still not adding up with her.'
"I can navigate just fine. Most of the time. I just want to get you here. Stay on I-5 til you hit 276 South. That's the only road change. 276 turns into Marina Drive. Then you're there. Once you run out of road, you're either sitting in the bay or parked next to me, your pick. Shouldn't be more than 15 minutes. If you go past 548, it's too far."
"You know I didn't write any of that down. Can you text it to me?"
Meg sighed, heavily, and Randy knew he made a mistake in asking. 'You're out of practice, Orton. Try again.'
"Er, Meg, how about if I text you, you can reply with the directions? That'll be easier. Stuff should just pop up on the screen."
"Yeah. Okay, yeah. I can do that." She rubbed her temples. 'Please, just get here. I need someone I can talk to. Even if you can't really stay.'
A quick text message later, a brief wait, Meg's fingers nearly rubbing the finish off her medallion, Randy finally pulled up next to her. Before he managed to put the car fully in park she had flown out of her driver's seat and into the parking lot, tearing at the handle of his passenger door as though the outside air were poison. Hurling the door open so hard it bounced shut behind her, Meg literally leaped into the passenger seat of Randy's SUV, then past it, then was somehow nearly entirely in his lap, hanging around his neck, holding on to him in something well past a greeting and bordering on thorough desperation.
Without knowing how, his arms were around Meg, his face ducked next to hers so her could whisper to her, tilting, turning, cursing at the seatbelt and fumbling for the release so it would stop digging into his hip, trying to show her everything was fine, push her right leg out from under her so she wouldn't aggravate it, tell her he was here and nothing else could go wrong. If he had to swear to never open the doors again, he would.
After a few minutes of struggle, Randy gave up – 'And don't I always let her win?' - and let Meg simply burrow into him, waiting for her to settle herself and hoping it would be enough to just still his arms around her. It seemed to work; Meg slowly relaxed her grip and let her arms slide down his chest, resting her hands against the sides of his neck and turning her face down, into his shoulder. Randy felt his skin chill under her palms, could smell cigarette and caramel and roses surrounding her, and buried his face fully in her hair, breathing deeply. 'This is such a bad idea, Orton. What are you doing? Stop. Dave doesn't have to be right. You need to stop.'
"I didn't mean for you to come down here if you were seeing your girlfriend, jackass. Let's just get coffee and then you should go back up." Meg's eyes were half open, and she was rubbing her thumb idly across his neck while she curled in his lap.
"My...what? Meg, the fuck are you talking about?" Carefully, he tilted her away from him, trying not to put any pressure on her shoulder that might also aggravate her collarbone.
"You smell like perfume. Strong perfume. And," she held her left hand up, fingers covered in a sticky red gel, "She has good taste in lipstick." Meg offered up a wan smile, and moved to slide away from Randy, suddenly feeling hotly embarrassed for asking him to see her at all. 'See, Meg? You're still here, fucking up his life. You can't get anything right. Even dying. Try it again, Meg, maybe the second time's the charm."
Randy's mind spun, unable to place why he might have lipstick on his neck and perfume on his clothing, and then it occurred to him – the last few scenes before he'd left, the actress he was supposed to woo, romance, love, whatever – it must have been hers. He'd had to cringe his way through kissing her; his mind was entirely elsewhere. And now he couldn't suppress his laughter, pulling Meg back against him, refusing to let her slip out of his lap.
"Wow, Meg, really?" He grabbed her hand and rubbed it against his shirt, smearing the lipstick away. "Really? First of all, just...no."
"You just wrecked your shirt, dumbass." Meg looked thoroughly unimpressed.
"I don't care. Second, there is no girlfriend, here or anywhere. You know I'm not seeing anyone...don't you?" Meg looked at him blankly. "Okay. Maybe not. Anyway," Randy continued, "The perfume and whatever else, that's all from filming today. I rushed through the last shit we did, and I didn't change before I left, and-" Randy caught himself, stopping abruptly.
"What?" The look on Randy's face was odd; Meg couldn't figure out where he was going.
"I don't know her name. The actress, or whatever. I've been up there, what, a week or so?" His face read somewhere between amused and perplexed.
"Would it make you feel better if you did know her name?" Meg's hands went back to Randy's neck.
"It'd make me feel better if she didn't wear shitty perfume."
Meg gave a vague, dry sounding chuckle, but tucked the top of her head back under Randy's chin and leaned into him again, both watching the bay as the birds circled and dipped, turning cartwheels in the air.
Slowly, Randy's head tilted further and further down onto Meg's, and he drifted into a warm, comfortable sleep. Meg allowed herself the luxury of relaxing, daring a slight adjustment or two in his lap to prevent the pain in her leg and side from worsening. They stayed there for far longer than they should have, stars visible through wispy clouds when Meg finally forced herself to begin to wake him. 'I don't want to move, but we can't stay here all night, either. What are we going to do? We have three days...does tonight even count? He didn't tell me.'
As if reading her mind, Randy tightened his arms around her and mumbled incoherently down into her hair, only to have to lift his head back, try to disentangle her hair from his lips – 'Fucking – did I drool on her head? Please tell me I didn't just drool on her head.' – and repeat himself. "It's okay, I took care of a hotel. Three days starts tomorrow; tonight is a freebie."
"Hey, Ran?"
Meg turned as much as she could, winced, and then forced herself to turn further, rotating her hips under her, forcing her body to cooperate with what her mind wanted her to do. She slipped her arms over his shoulders, brought her face up next to his, and hovered there, terrifyingly still, for seconds that stretched out alongside the miles of horsetail clouds over the parking lot before she began, quietly. "I'm sorry, for everything. For not calling, for Dave lying, for being such a pain in the ass," Meg whispered, "And thank you. You always – just – thank you."
Randy, too asleep for intelligence and just awake enough for coordination, shifted underneath her, dropping her further down in his lap. 'Stop, Orton. This is a really good bad idea, but don't do this to her.' His hands, warm, still ring-rough, ran up her arms, his right settling at the nape of her neck, his left using her shoulder to ease her fully in front of him, then continuing upward, his thumb finding her cheekbone and running along it, back and forth, fingers curling under her chin. His right hand began a slow dance away from her neck, across the top of her shoulder, the line of his thumb lightly crossing the scar under her collarbone. Randy's eyes never left hers, both he and Meg so drowsy that neither was sure if they should be concerned about what they were doing. Eventually, her hands slipped up to cover his, then her fingers were between his, stilling his movements. 'Or it was just a really bad, bad idea, Orton. Look what you did.' He closed his eyes and sighed, his frustration audible.
Meg's smile was gentle, drowsy. "No, not for that. Security's behind us." As if on cue, the SUV behind them flashed its lights, and Meg slid from Randy's lap, releasing his hands as she moved into the passenger seat. Randy groaned and opened the driver's door, trying to carefully extricate himself from his seat, grab his wallet, adjust his pants without Meg noticing, and pray that the security officer wouldn't make an issue about Meg or her lack of ID. Turning on the charm and leaning into the officer's window, Randy tried his best to concoct a story that would make their presence seem innocent and not get either of them arrested.
Nearly twenty minutes later, he came back to his SUV, rolling his eyes as the officer honked his horn twice and turned around in the lot, driving away from them. Randy waved politely, then knocked on the window for Meg to help open the door. Meg, who had her feet up on the dashboard, leaned over as fast as her ribs would let her and grabbed the handle, trying to get Randy in and seated as quickly as she could, her face full of worry. "What happened?"
"Nothing. I had to sign, like, forty fucking autographs, though. My back is locked up from leaning over the window. I got you a pass to leave your car here overnight, so we can drive together. I don't -" Randy hissed, and grabbed his back. "Yeah. Why did I have you open the front door?"
"Because you're going to move to the back, lay down, and let me drive?"
"Right. Here, go put this on your car and get your shit." Randy tossed her the parking pass, and leaned across the driver's seat to wait for Meg to come back. Her suitcase in tow, Meg tossed it in next to Randy's luggage and limped around to the driver's side, gently edging him back toward the passenger door.
"You need help, or you okay to get in?"
"Like I would let you help anyway?" Randy elbowed at her, but Meg could see the pain in his face.
"C'mon, Ran. Lift up with me. I can work on you when we get there. Actually..." Meg paused, midway through guiding him up into the seat, "Where is there? You never said where we're going, and I swear, if you booked something ridiculous I'm going to -"
"It's just around the bay. You've been looking at it all night, I think. Or if you walked to the ends of the piers. That thing." Randy gestured west with his head, not trusting his back to allow him to lift his arms and point.
"That thing? That thing looks like a goddamned boathouse mansion. What the fuck did you do?"
"Semiahmoo Resort. I thought you'd like the name?"
Meg snorted. "I do! I do. I just...you do too much sometimes, you know?" She shut the door, then paused to put her hand on the window before turning to move toward the driver's door, knowing it would take her a minute to climb up.
Inside the empty SUV, Randy shook his head and muttered to himself. "It's not too much, Meg, it's for you."