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With her eyes closed, Rocky is stretched out on the couch while a woman with tweezers and reading glasses sits above her head.
“I’m sorry, but what exactly is happening right now?” I ask from my spot in the leather chair across from the couch.
A boisterous laugh shoots out of Rocky’s lips, and I don’t miss the way her ever-growing belly bounces with the movement. The view makes me grin and I have the strong urge to reach out and touch her stomach, but a heavy sigh from the woman with the tweezers as she pulls her hands away from Rocky’s face deters me.
“Shoot.” Laughter promptly squelched and eyes still closed, Rocky apologizes. “I’m so sorry. Sudden moves while you’re working on my lashes is a bad idea, huh?”
“A very bad idea,” the woman answers without hesitation.
“Consider me a statue from here on out.”
“Perfect.” The woman smiles and gets back to work. “Thank you.”
“I’m not sure if you know this,” I say ironically, “but we already come equipped with eyelashes. Part of our genetic makeup.”
Rocky snorts again, but this time, she does it while remaining motionless. “These are eyelash extensions. Vera is gluing them onto my existing eyelashes to make them look long and luscious without mascara.”
“Very interesting. I had no idea that was a thing.”
“Oh yeah. Big thing. Not even just with celebrities. There are probably women you’ve dated before who had them, but you didn’t realize.”
“What other secrets do you know?” I ask cheekily. “I obviously have much to learn about the female grooming ritual.”
“Well, there’s a lot to it—more than I can teach you in a day, that’s for sure. But you should probably just question everything. If it’s tanned, it’s probably naturally white. If it’s curly, it’s probably naturally straight. If it’s smooth and hairless, it probably grows more than your nearest national forest.”
“Jesus,” I mutter through an incredulous chuckle. “Anything women aren’t faking for our sake?”
She laughs again, and Vera sighs more heavily. This time, though, Rocky doesn’t apologize.
“You know what? Not really. Hair, nails, skin, eyelashes, eye color in some cases, waist size trimmed by Spanx, boob size enhanced by bras, orgasms… We’re pretty much faking it all.”
I take a temporary hit to my pride—which is ludicrous—but I’m convinced it’s a part of the male psyche to panic at the idea that we might be less than stellar in our sexual performance.
Beyond that, I’m really troubled by the idea that I might not have seen to her needs on our only time together—on her first time ever.
“You fake orgasms?” I ask, and her giggle stops abruptly.
“Oh…uh…” She bites her bottom lip, seemingly embarrassed at having this conversation in a room full of other people, but I’m finding out very quickly that if we don’t have the conversation with an audience, we’ll never have it at all. I’m willing to work under these conditions for the greater good of her sexual health. “Okay, so, no. Not me personally. Promise,” she eventually continues. “I was speaking in a general sense, as in the majority of the female population.”
I raise an eyebrow. “If everything is fake, how do I know you’re not just padding my ego?”
“Cross my heart,” she says with a tiny smile, running her long red nail in an X above her chest. “About this, I do not lie.”
“Okay, Yoda,” I reply with a chuckle.
The subtle curve at the corner of her mouth travels farther into her cheek and makes a tiny dimple. It’s almost imperceptible, but I’m looking at her hard enough that I don’t think there’s anything I wouldn’t notice.
Which is probably why it’s a surprise when her manager Heidi and agent Ruth start loudly discussing the plan for something called the Screen Actors Guild Awards. I didn’t even know they were in the room, let alone two feet away and in the mode to start an actual conversation about this while Rocky can’t even open her eyes.
“We’ve coordinated with Ben’s team, and you’ll arrive together early in the hour to maximize red-carpet time—”
Rocky, despite not being able to see, has the verbal ability to object. “Maximize red-carpet time? Why in the hell would we want to do that? The longer we’re out there, the more questions we have to answer.” She lowers her voice to a breathy whisper—one that I’m just close enough to hear—and adds, “And the longer I’m on my freaking mad-dog, rage-barking, six-inch-heel-wearing feet.”
“Because it’s good exposure, Raquel,” Ruth responds. “For Ben, too. You’re not the only one involved here, and he’s got a role next year that could get him nominated if we manage the right face time to get the public behind him.”
“Are you guys working for him or me?” she says with a laugh, clearly joking. But Ruth and Heidi share a look that makes me narrow my eyes.
