DISCLAIMER:I do not own, or have anything to do with Orlando Bloom or anyone/anything associated with him. Somara, Raina, Sarina, Kaila, Debbie, and Charlie belong to me.
Learning to Live Again
Disclaimer: I do not own Orlando or anything associated with him, but I do own Kaila, Debbie, and Charlie. Enjoy! ;) I do not own Ra or their AWESOME song "On My Side"; I also do not own Garth Brooks or his songs "Learning to Live Again" or ìEvery Now and Then.î NOR do I own SEETHER ((Don't I wish!)) or their BEAUTIFUL SONG ìThe Gift.î GO GET THE NEW ALBUM, it ROCKS! Also: This is my dreamland version of LAÖIíve never been there, nor do I know a thing about it. This story is just for fun. ;)
Summary: He's lost himself in a sea of fame. She's lost everything she's ever had. Can a woman from his past and down on her luck make him remember who he really is and get back on her feet at the same time?
Rating: PG-13.
Part One:
Lost and Confused
Present Day
Okay...so who was he? He didn't know any more. He was lost as to who he had become over the last few months, and couldn't even remember who he had been before all of this. He hated fame. Wasn't it what he wanted before? He could swear it was, but now...three huge movies later, and he was wondering who Orlando Bloom really was. He used to be someone that was always surrounded by friends, now he was just some poor wanker that had lost himself in the flow of Hollywood.
Screw Hollywood, Orlando Bloom wanted his life back.
The only problem was he didn't know how to go about it, so he usually wound up moping around his condominium feeling sorry for himself or griping to Elijah Wood about how lonely his life had gotten since Kate, his girlfriend, had left him for some other actor guy that Orlando just knew had to be gay. The only thing was that he couldn't understand why he was so upset about it: he hadn't even loved her. At all. Perhaps Kateís leaving made him realize who he wasn't...and who he could never be. Kate was beautiful, a successful actress herself, maybe she deserved to be with someone who would have her type of lazy schedule.
Fuck that.
No she didn't. And he sure as hell didn't need her. Orlando pushed himself off of the couch and shut off the television in one swift motion before bounding up the stairs of the condo and into his bedroom. He shuffled through his closet for something to wear, and finally settled on a long-sleeved, pink-checkered button-up shirt with a black sweater vest to go over it. He simply grabbed a pair of dark jeans from his closet before running off to the bathroom to shower and get ready for the day.
He let the hot water stream down his back, relaxing tensed muscles, and invigorating his soul. Maybe today would work out after all.
...
Four Years Earlier
Kaila Morgan awoke to the shrill ringing of her alarm clock on her bedside table at 8:15 A.M. Damn Mondays. Mondays meant meetings, and stress, and everything else that went with being a successful author. She slammed her fist down onto the ugly contraption that had ruined the best sleep she'd had in the last two months. Damn alarm clocks. Damn that hideous tone. Damn Mondays. She whimpered and pushed herself out of bed slowly and shivered when the cool November air enveloped her bare shoulders and legs. She made a mad dash to the thermostat, her dark brown hair breezing behind her, and cranked up the heat ten degrees. She could always turn it down later. Kaila made a mental note to herself to turn the thermostat down before leaving the house for her weekly meeting.
She rubbed her biceps thoughtfully as she pondered her clothes for the day, trying to warm herself up. As she made it back to her bedroom, she decided on her gray skirt-suit with the tiny black pinstripes and a black button-up tank top to go under the blazer. She pulled a pair of black pumps out of her closet nonchalantly, accompanied by a pair of sheer panty hose and undergarments that followed suit from her dresser drawer. She sighed as she set foot into the shower and let the hot water drain her weariness away.
An hour later, and she was out of the shower, and twice as cold as she had been when she had woken up. Surely the heater would have heated up the house at least a little by now. Kaila wrapped a navy blue towel around her wet hair, her skirt and tank top hardly helping to keep in her body heat. She meandered over to the thermostat and frowned. It was already up on eighty degrees.
"Damn thing! You just had to break today of all days, didn't you?" Kalia whimpered before banging her small fist against the crËme-colored walls of the hallway. "It's a bad day...I can feel it...Already, a fucking lovely day..." She muttered to herself before pulling the towel from her head and toweling her golden hair somewhat dry as she walked back to the bathroom as a shiver climbed up her spine, all the way from her toes.
Kaila took her time blow-drying her hair and doing her makeup: she wanted to look delectable. Kaila was going for all or nothing today in that meeting. Today, she would find out whether or not she would be retaining her job, or losing it all together. It had been a while since she'd released a new novel, two long years in fact, and her publishing company was just about at its wits end with her. She had turned in a series of chapters and various snippets from tiny ideas that she had turned into scenes which she would write her next novel around, but she had gotten the sinking feeling that the company had been seriously disappointed in her vignettes.
She hoped her feelings were wrong.
Kaila checked herself in her mirror. Her hazel eyes, doused with spots of blue and brown, were lined with black eyeliner and brushed with a light gray eye shadow. Her olive skin was glistening softly beneath the light layer of makeup she had adorned her face with. She traced the tiny scar on her hairline right above her right ear absent-mindedly with her French-tipped nails and sighed. She had no clue how she was going to do today, but she couldn't delay any longer. Kaila took in one last look at herself, brushed a bit of pinkish blush over her the apples of her cheeks, and ran to her thermostat. She turned the heat down to seventy and rushed out the door, fingering her keys as she ran, bound and determined not to be late. She couldn't be late, not today.
...
Kaila should have taken this morning as a sign: a sign telling her to go back to bed and sleep today away. First the heater, the heater she could deal with, but this? This was just too low. Kaila had lost her job with the publishing company and she knew that she'd have to scrape the bottom of the pail to get any inspiration at all to get up off her butt and seek out another job. Kaila felt like crying her eyes out at the moment, but kept herself from it as she drove home at twelve in the morning. To top off everything else, she was starved. Kaila hadn't even had time to eat breakfast this morning, and her stomach was about doing flip-flops out of protest. Kaila resigned herself to pulling her powder blue Mitsubishi Eclipse into a McDonald's parking lot the first chance she got. She parked and raced up to the door, her head pounding, and stood in line to order a Big Mac, fries, and a coke.
Shortly after, she seated herself in a solitary corner of the fast food restaurant to eat her meal and cry where hopefully no one would notice. All her life, Kaila Morgan had wanted to be a writer. She had taken up Creative Writing and Journalism classes in high school, and then again in college. Her senior year of college at the University of California, she had gotten her big break with Harcourt International Publishing Company, and she hadn't looked back since. Her first novel was called The Fallen and was about the trials and tribulations of the 'first' twelve vampires. Since then she had published two others, but none had seen the same success of the first one, and the publishers had grown weary that maybe her talent was fading...and that was exactly the line that the company's executives had given Kaila that morning.
*
"Miss Morgan, I am terribly sorry," spoke an old man, likely nearing his seventies, with gray hair, matching eyes, and a crooked nose, "...but we must let you go. We have feared for quite a while that your talent in this field has beenÖwaning. Your latest stories do not pack as much of a punch as your first did, and we cannot chance another flop. We know that you have loyal readers that live and die on your every word, but you must see our reason in this. We cannot, and will not, support a floundering author. We will, however, give you six months' paid leave for you to work out another story worthy of publication. If that doesn't work out for you, I suggest taking up journalism. We will see you back here in six month's time." With that, the man and the rest of the members of the council departed, leaving Kaila to her misery, her tears, and her anguish at failing her dream.
*
"Bloody...SODDING...hell!" A smooth British accent floated back to her ears and woke her from her daydream. A man sat at the table in front of her, leafing through a stack of papers that looked to Kaila like a script. She couldn't help herself but to laugh at the ferocity with which he was searching through the pages. "Where in the bloody hell is it?" He grumped again, his soft voice becoming more distraught and a bit rough. The sound of that voice made Kaila wonder anything and everything her devious little mind could ever think to ask. By some odd chance, she happened to look down amidst the man's incoherent ramblings and noticed a piece of paper lying on the floor just underneath her dining table.
"PJ will NEVER forgive me...bloody hell, where is that PAGE?!"
Kaila picked up the paper and scanned over it, letting the names register in her mind: Aragorn...Gimli...Legolas. Her eyes drifted up to the top of the page where she read something which confirmed what she already knew. This was a page to the script of the first Lord of the Rings film, The Return of the King. Her eyes shot up to the man before her, and she took in his dark brown hair and mismatched clothes before coming to one conclusion. He had to be the one and only Orlando Bloom.
"Bollocks!" The voice came again, and Kaila smiled. He was definitely Orlando Bloom. Kaila cleared her throat, a smile threatening to spread her pursed lips. He didn't turn around immediately, but semi-hesitated as he turned slowly. Kaila sucked in a breath at the sight of the man before her: the unruly dark brown curls, the lips that just begged to be kissed...those chocolaty eyes that just seemed to draw her in and take her under with him...DEFINITELY Orlando.
"You, eh...dropped this, hun," Kaila spoke and handed over the missing page of the script. Orlando's eyes squinted at her as he took the page from her hand before looking down at it reluctantly. Immediately his shoulders sagged and his head dropped.
"Thank you, luv." He whispered softly.
"No problem, Orlando." Kaila grinned and picked up another French fry before popping it into her mouth. Orlando's head shot up quickly.
"You...you know me then?" There was a look of disbelief in his eyes.
Kaila shrugged. "Yeah," She laughed. "I didn't miss one of your performances at Guildhall in the two years I lived nearby." Her eyes flickered with something akin to sadness, and she shook her head.
He couldn't believe it. He had a fan...already.
"Congratulations on the Lord of the Rings gig, by the way. I always knew you'd hit it big, you're a major talent, Mr. Bloom." Kaila laughed again. "Hopefully I'll hit it big again one day."
Orlando picked up his script and food and moved across from Kaila at the table and gazed at her thoughtfully. "Do I know you from somewhere, Luv? You seem...familiar."
"Not unless you've read The Fallen," She grumbled. Orlando raised an eyebrow.
"The Fallen. The vampire novel? I love that book! That was...that was yours?! You're Kaila Morgan?" It was Kaila's turn to raise an eyebrow.
"Yeah, it's mine. You really liked it?" She replied excitedly as she toyed with her food.
"Really! When's your next one coming out? I can't wait to read more of your stories..."
Kaila let out a sardonic laugh. "I may not get a fourth one out anytime soon. I got fired today."
"They FIRED you?! Wait - a FOURTH?!" Orlando sat up straight in his chair, bracing one arm against the table and the other against the chair back. "When did your other two come out?"
"Um, my second, What Is The Night? came out two years ago in June, and my third, One Wish, came out the following November." Kaila re-arranged the fries on her burger wrapper slowly, not daring to look up and meet Orlando's curious gaze.
"I never heard of any new releases from you, Kaila. Not one. I kept an eye out for them, but I never heard of ONE..."
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