The Redemption of Love

Author's notes: This story was not supposed to be about a moviestar. The celebrity could had been any pretty, successful woman. But a friend of mine asked me for a piece of fan-fiction involving this particular beauty. And I think it turned out pretty well. This is one for you who enjoy a bit more background to your reading than just "we met, we did it." So be patient, I think it'll be worth it. Oh, and don't try to find the town or the movie being shot. It's purely fictional. Enjoy! /Icingsugar

-------------

"Hey, Jimbo!" i shouted. That, if anything, ought to get her attention.

And it did. She stopped dead in her tracks. Slowly she turned around, her eyes searching the crowd on the street. Her beautiful, big, dark eyes rapidly scanning the hundred-or-so fans that had gathered to get a glimpse of one of the handful of Tinseltown stars that had blessed our little town with their presence.

Hollywood, or rather, a New Line Cinema crew had landed in town a few days ago for a movieshoot. Apparently, the movie was some sort of high-profile Sci-Fi drama in the same category as Contact, or Close Encounters. The main part of the story was supposed to take place in a quiet, nondescript, typical Small Town. Well, they couldn't have picked a better place. That was after all why I moved there in the first place.

I hadn't cared that much about the whole freakshow though until I read about the cast lineup in the local gazette. It was an all-star team of top of the line silver screen talent, with names like Ed Harris, Claire Danes, Elijah Wood and Christian Bale in the most prominent roles. Further down the castlist there were still lots of interesting names. I idly browsed the namedropping article. When I saw her name, I almost ripped the newspaper in two.

Hate is a dangerous word, and one should use it carefully. But I hated her. I had reason to.

First I had planned on locking myself up in my apartment and ignore it all. Stick my head in the sand and wish her away. But when I saw her slender, toned body and her radiant face come walking down my street, escorted by two buff bodyguards, smiling, laughing and signing autographs left and right, I knew I had to do something. She was so beautiful, so successful, so happy. All those things that she didn't deserve to be. I wanted to take her down, to get back her some way. But first, I had to get her to notice me.

"Up here, Jimbo!" I called out from my second floor window. And then she looked at me, and spoke to me, for the first time in over seven years.

"Matt? Matt, is that you?"

"Sure is!"

"How...what are you doing here?" she asked, baffled.

"I live here! What's your excuse? Hey, don't go anywhere, I'm coming down."

I moved away from the window and hurried down the stairs. Right before I went out into the street, I had to calm myself down and take a few deep breaths. There was no turning back now. The ball was rolling and there was no way for me to stop it.

"You can do this, Matthew. Just play it cool. Be nice. This is your chance." i thought to myself. Chance to do what? I didn't know yet, the only thing I was sure of was that if I didn't go out there and say hello I'd probably never get a chance like this again. Somehow, I'd make her pay. Bracing myself, I entered the street.

And there she stood, the all-American girl next door, the jerk-off fantasy of countless teenage boys, the moviestar sensation that is Jennifer Love Hewitt. Of course, she wasn't all that to me. I knew her before the hype exploded, when she was just another unnoticed teen actress with a handful of so-so appearances on her resume. And from even further back, when she was just that cute girl down the block. For a second I dreamed myself back to those days of childhood games and adolescent crushes, before it all went wrong.

But whatever I felt there was no denying the striking effect she had on everything around her. She made everything else fade away. I had to admit it, Jennifer was a wet dream walking. Her straight hair was in a shorter style than I had seen on her in magazines and movies recently, but it still framed her face perfectly, ending just above the shoulders. It was a hot summer day, and she wore a classic sleeveless thin pale blue dress with minimal shoulder straps and a deep cleavage. So deep in fact that you could see the top of the matching blue laced bra she wore underneath it. Small gusts of wind tugged the dress back and forth, making the thin fabric cling either to her back and her buttocks, or to her breasts, belly and crotch. The dress ended about halfway up her thighs, showing enough of that pair of downright flawless legs of hers to arouse any man alive. Any man except me. She may be sexy, but I hated her.

Anyway, it was time to act.

"Hi, Jen."

"Matt...wow. Matthew...how long has it been? Six years?" she said as her eyes met mine.

"Seven years, almost on the day. You ran away and broke my heart, remember?" I replied..

She flinched, and her smile was instantly wiped away. I seemed to had hit a nerve there. Could this coldblooded...bitch actually have a conscience?

"Oh, yeah. That." she mumbled.

I quickly gave her a big grin to assure her that I was just joking. "Hey lighten up, Love. That's way past, ok? I'm not holding any grudges."

As if.

She beamed back at me and reached out to touch my arm. I had to clench my teeth to stop myself from backing away. Her touch felt like heaven, at he same time it burned like acid and hellfire. I still longed after her. Her tender touch, her warm breath, her soft, sweet lips. But the hate was stronger. Somehow, I managed to pull myself together enough to keep the cool, smiling mask on.

"So," I said as gaily as I could manage. "welcome to my street. It's good to see you again."

"Matthew Davies. God, it really is you. Hey, any busy right now? I'm on my way back to the hotel. If you want to, we could have a coffee, or maybe a drink, and yap about the good old days. I wanna know what you've been up to. Whaddaya think?"

"Sounds fine to me. Lead the way, Jimbo."

"Don't call me that."

"Sorry, Jimbo."

"Stop it!," she laughed.

"Ok, Jimbo."

She stuck out her tongue at me, and turned around to face one of the two huge monoliths in suit and tie that had trailed along after her.

"Robert?"

"Yes, miss Hewitt?"

"This is Matthew. He is not a deranged fanatic freak who wants to kill me or marry me or something. He is an old friend of mine. So if he wants to see me on the sets, or at the hotel, you let him in, ok?"

"Fair enough, miss Hewitt."

"Oh, and if he ever calls me Jimbo again, you have my permission to slap him silly."

"As you wish, miss Hewitt."

"Good boy!"

"Will that be all, Jimbo?" the tower of a man said, without the slightest trace of a smile. His partner however couldn't help but emitting a short laugh. Jennifer just looked from one to the other, and then at me.

"You guys are hopeless, you know that? Oh well, let's go."

-----------

For a two horse town in the middle of the great North American Nowhere we had a pretty decent hotel. No four star palace, but modern and comfortable, with good service, a terrific kitchen and a bar that that felt far more metropolitan than this place really deserved. Since the arrival of actors and production crew a few days earlier that bar had become the obvious place for the guests to hang around, have a drink or just take it easy after finishing shooting scenes for the day. Naturally, it then also became crowded with clusters of star-struck locals trying to spot some of the famous faces. Jennifer and I agreed that we'd want a bit more peace and quiet, so we headed over to the much less crowded cafeteria and took a corner table. Her two stone-faced gorillas thoughtfully kept their distance, ordered at the desk and sat down in the other end of the room. A waitress came by and took our order. After the usual "Ohmigod, you're her, aren't you?" directed to the girl beside me, she walked away, an autograph and an order for juice and Pepsi richer.

As we waited for our drinks, Jennifer nudged me and directed my attention toward the bodyguards' table. Their coffee had arrived, and it seemed that the one called Roger was a bit of a connoisseur, as he had ordered a small cup of espresso. Now, Roger was a huge guy. 6"5 and built like a brick. His arms were trunks, and his hands were like baseball gloves. Seeing him lift that tiny piece of china and carefully take a sip was one of the most surreal things I'd ever seen. We both broke out laughing. It was the strangest feeling. Here I was, sitting with the woman I hated, and having an absolutely delightful little moment.

"What's up with the gorillas anyway?" I asked her.

"Oh, I had some weird creep calling me, like hundred times every day, showing up outside my house, and my parent's house. He sent me tulips, white chocolate and..get this...stuffed doves!"

"You're not serious! That's creepy as hell."

"Yeah well, you almost gets used to it. This isn't the first weirdo either. Some years ago there was this guy who proposed to me, once every week for over six months."

"Now that's love, baby."

She laughed. Then suddenly, Jennifer looked up at me, all serious.

"Look," she said. "I'd really want to know. Where do I stand with you? I mean, we didn't exactly part ways on an up-note, if you know what I mean. I was going to call you, and to try to set things straight, but with my life spinning so fast those years it never seemed to be the right moment. And when I finally came around to, you were no where to be found. I wanted to apologize for running away like that, I guess. "

"Girl, you really need to wind down. That happened ages ago, and we're both different persons now. You know, thinking back, I realized that I wasn't the only one with a major crush on you."

She tilted her head. "What do you mean?" she asked with prying eyes. Didn't she know? How the hell could she not had noticed?

"C'mon, don't act all innocent now," I said with a wink. "Back in school, you had more admirers than all the other girls put together. You were pretty, you were popular, and you loved every minute of it. And although you had only been in a few TV shows, we had our very own moviestar to worship. You wouldn't believe the schemes I heard back then for getting into your pants. Of course, they were all pretty dumb, and would never had worked. You weren't exactly the kind of girl who would put out. Or were you, Jimbo?"

"Damn sure I wasn't!"

"Aww don't look so shocked. You do know the effect you had on the rest of us kids, don't you?" i teased her.

"Well, I guess. But..." she left it hanging. Then she thought of something else. "Hmm, I guess I ought to pay you back those two thousand. Or was that you dad's?"

"Don't worry about that. I have more money than I know how to spend."

"Well, good for you. But it was still wrong, and I feel bad about it. I just hope it didn't cause your family much trouble."

My family. That stung like hell. Right there and then, my mask almost broke. I wanted so badly to just reach over, grab her chin and punch her pleasant little smile into a mess of blood and teeth. I clenched my jaws and gripped the arm of my chair to compose myself. Calm, composed, charming, witty, don't screw this up now! She didn't seem to notice, as I took another drink, and finally felt my pulse slow back to normal.

"Trouble? Dad was pissed at me for being careless, and pissed at you for taking off with his savings. But hey, he couldn't stay mad forever."

"Glad to hear that. But you know, I'd feel a lot better if I could make it up to you some way."

"I see. A quickie in the ladies' room is out of the question I guess?"

..."fraid so," she smiled."I still don't put out...that much."

"Well then, unless you can deliver Denise Richards in her birthday suit and a collar, I think I'll pass."

She made a face at me and laughed. "Pervert."

"Hey, I'm a guy. What did you expect?"

Damn, I was witty. Slowly I did what I could to make her comfortable with me, to make her like me and trust me. So we sat there and talked. We talked about her career and life as an actor, we talked of common old friends from all the yesterdays we had shared, I asked her about the current movie, and she asked me question after question about my life for the past seven years.

There were things I couldn't talk about. The aftermath of her betrayal, and the pain she had caused. This was not the time nor the place. But I told her the basics of pretty much everything else. I told her about my pretty uneventful college years, i told her about my two years in Europe and my career as a copywriting consultant in London. And how I later had come back to settle down here, in the middle of nowhere for a year of peace and quiet.

"Since I have all the money I need, I decided to do what I really wanted. I write some tech articles and assorted essays, mostly too keep in touch with the business. But what I really do here is trying to write a novel. A UK publisher liked my first draft so it just might get printed. With luck I'll have it finished before Christmas."

"Wow, that is great. You said you always wanted to be a writer. What is it about?"

"It's a bit hard to sum up. You could say it's basically a love story, with some...odd twists. Really, it's difficult to explain. I'll tell you what, I'll drop by tomorrow with the latest edition so you can read it for yourself."

"That would be awesome." she said.

"Hey, Jennifer." said a voice behind my back. I looked up, and there stood a hobbit. Or well, not really. It was a tired looking Elijah Wood with his eyes deep into a manuscript.

"Hi Elijah!" Jennifer replied. "You look like someone ran over your cat and FedEx'd you the remains. Whats wrong?"

"I just got the details on the radio show scene, the interview you know? It's just gonna be one shot and no cutting, so I got to get the whole dialogue into my skull by lunch tomorrow. And however I try, I just can't get it right. I suck at this. Who's this guy?"

"Elijah, meet Matthew, the mysterious writer. Matt, meet Elijah, the - according to himself - terrible actor." We shook hands.

"She is right." I said. "You sure look like you could do with a break. Or a week's sleep."

"Uuh, yeah. You're probably right. I need caffeine. Lots of it. Are you two having a very private moment here?" he asked.

"Not really. Get a cup and join us." said Jennifer.

The young actor slumped away with a step that seemed to belong to someone well over their fifties. He returned minutes later with a a big mug, boarding on bathtub, of steaming black-as-hell java.

"Ah, the real black gold." he exclaimed. "This place has the best coffee on the planet."

"Really?" I said. "Personally I think all coffee tastes pretty much the same - like baboon piss."

"You don't know what you're missing." he said, and took a large gulp.

"See, that's the point. I'm not missing it."

From the direction of the bar, two young women came walking up to our table. One was a short, curvy girl with a latin look. Pitch black wavy hair, olive skin and a cute, almost childish face crowned with piercing eyes and an eyebrow piercing. The other was her complete opposite. Pale, blond and very slender. A sophisticated beauty, but with a youth and liveliness in her face that gave it a certain warmth. It took me a few seconds to place her, but then it dawned to me that the blond girl curiously eying me was Claire Danes, the leading actress of this whole circus. I should had known. I wasn't that much interested in the silver screen and their icons, but Danes performance and radiant beauty in Baz Luhrman's Romeo and Juliette version a few years back had had me completely mesmerized. She handed Jennifer a sheet of paper.

"Congratulations, we've got our lines changed - again. Not very much this time, but I wish Rob could make up his mind."

I guessed this Rob was someone higher up in the food chain, the screenwriter, or maybe the director. Jennifer eyed the note.

"Yeah, well this wasn't too bad. When are we scheduled?" she asked.

"Sometime around ten tonight, as soon as it's dark enough. Do you have an hour after dinner? I'm gonna need some rehearsing."

"Sure."

"Then I have two questions for you: First, who is the tall, handsome stranger? And second, why does Elijah look like someone killed his cat?"

After introductions the two girls joined us at the table, and we engaged in the intricate dance called small talk, the polite chit-chat that strangers use to probe each other personalities with. Topics flowed from the weather, to mine and Jennifer's schooldays, to sports, current news and of course, movies. Having the head hobbit nearby our conversation was bound to at one point of the other turn to Lord of The Rings, or rather, the filming of it.

"Yeah, a three hour movie sitting is a bit of a stretch, but not when it's that good a flick." I said. "Although it was really embarrassing to watch at one point. Not that that is your fault. You know that scene where you're hiding beside the road behind a tree, and a ringwraith is sniffing around trying to find you?"

"Yup. What about it?"

"I recognized that tree instantly. You see, I lived in Wellington as a kid..."

"Really?"

"Yeah, I'm not a native kiwi though. Love and I are both Texas kids. Anyway, I used to play in the park where that scene was shot. I remember this one day in the park. I was seven, maybe eight years old. I'd been drinking way too much lemonade, so nature was calling. And what do you do when you are in the middle of the woods and that happens? I'm pretty sure that I took a leak exactly where you guys were sitting."

Jennifer became a fountain of Pepsi, as she exploded into uncontrollable laughter. Claire and the third girl had also doubled over in their chairs. Elijah just stared at me.

"You're shitting me! You can't be serious!" he said.

"You'd better believe it. It was actually the preferred tree for the local bums for that kind of thing. That's why I chose it, it stank already."

"Hah! Sean actually mentioned it reeked. But we thought he was just his whiny old self."

My mood was beginning to lighten up. Sitting there, in a comfortable atmosphere, sipping a cold drink and chatting the afternoon away with some friendly faces, was actually the most fun I'd had in months. The fact that two of those faces belonged to two of the most desirable women in the world was of course a bonus. And the latin girl, her name was Janine and she was a makeup artist, was just as striking. In fact, had I the opportunity to bend one of them over the table and fuck her brains out, I think I would had chosen her. She had an aura of mischief and wicked humor around her that hinted that sex with her could be an interesting affair indeed.

Looking up I could see that the girls were still in their laughing fit, and Jennifer finally managed to pull herself together.

"Hey, Jimbo. You're drooling."

"What? Oh shit!" she blurted out as she saw what spewing Pepsi all over a thin blue dress did to it. Wet brown stains were evenly distributed all over the front. A drop of the dark drink had also landed on her upper chest, and was slowly traveling down into the luscious valley between her slightly pushed up breasts. The sight was simply hypnotic, and I wished I could lean forward and just lick that little wandering drop off her skin.

"I really need to get out of this dress." she murmured.

"Hey, don't let us stop you, baby." Elijah said with a broad grin.

"My thoughts exactly." I volunteered.

She gave us a blank stare.

"Men! Look, I need to change and take a shower anyway." she said, directed to me. "I'm due for a rehearse in just about an hour. We'll get together tomorrow, ok?"

"Yeah, I need to get home and finish an article, before my editor sends a hit-man after me. Just drop by my place, or give me a call. I'm listed."