Grainy Love
Anna is shaking. She's falling apart.
Those godawful pictures finally came to surface. It's quite common really, when you're a poor struggling actress trying to make it in the big city. Anna knows all the cliches about the lifestyle, but she never really tried to defy them. She had the pictures taken; it was quick cash. Anna tries to rationalize it as she heads towards Will's.
"The house with the blue door. It's mine."
But there is no rationalization. The pictures are there, they're sold. Someone filmed her so it looks like a movie, as well. They're in every magazine just like she always is and they're there forever. And what's worse of all, is they're real.
It wouldn't be so bad if they were fake, because that happens all of the time. Actresses being pasted on young, nubile bodies. Tabloid readers always hungry for a scandal, a couple clever lines to sell a newspaper. But when they're real, that it is you, it's different.
"I don't know where to go."
She would go to Will. The press, that a pack of wolves, is waiting at the hotel door, but nobody knew of that little house in Notting Hill with the blue door. She would go through the thicket, to a place where a world famous actress wouldn't really be likely to visit. Perfection.
"I have thought about you."
Anna thinks about Will constantly. On the set. 'Will would find that funny'. In her hotel room. 'I'll have honey-soaked apriocots to room 218 please.' Even when she was with her boyfriend, which is quite pathetic, but Anna knows that Hollywood relationships are cold and last for a couple days, so she doesn't feel that guilty.
"None of those childish kebab stories you get in so many travel books these days."
He makes her laugh, even with stupid jokes about honey-soaked apricots. She wants him to feed those to her now, and let her recline into his chest, hidden from the glare of the spotlight.
"Surreal but nice."
Her mind is flooded with images of Will, of orange juice soaked shirts and messy flats. Things that are real - not glitz and glamour like everything that surrounds her. Two entirely different worlds, and yet, they met.
I mean, I'll tell myself sometimes but... don't worry-- I won't "believe it."
He doesn't treat her like an object, like a prize. Never wears the airs of 'Look at the modest shopkeeper with the famous actress on his arm.' Her boyfriend does. 'I don't want to be the big actor with the fat girlfriend.' As if she'd eat more than a couple bites; she's been starving for ten years.
"I think goodbye is traditional."
But she doesn't want goodbye. She knows she crushed Will, leading him on, like they were such a good thing. They are, but her boyfriend just..showed up. But they're over, and now all she wants is Will.
All she wants is the house with the blue door, the reporters nowhere to be seen, and Will, waiting for her, holding apricots soaked in honey.