Famous in Love (12 page)

He shrugs. “Luck,” he says. “I’m glad I was there.” His eyes meet mine, and we hold our gaze like that, not even blinking. I wonder if he feels it, too. I wonder if he wonders.

“Same,” I say, softly.

Then he drops his head, tucks his arms across his chest, and turns to go. I watch him walk down the hallway until he vanishes around the corner. Even then it takes me another beat to pull out my key card, to not keep standing there watching the space where he once was.

I’m reading some scripts
my agent has sent over. The thought of doing another project is really exciting. It helps me remember that August is a moment—a big one—but a moment. There are plenty of other characters to play. There is a script about a mean girl who gets pregnant, one about a mermaid based on another bestselling book series, and then a period piece where I’d play the daughter of the male lead. It shoots in Seattle, so I’d be close to home, which I have mixed feelings about. I’m almost through it, and the script is pretty brilliant.

I set the pages down next to me and stifle a yawn. It’s chilly outside, cooler at night than it was when we first got here, and I tuck my feet under me, readjusting myself
on the lanai chair. If I close my eyes, I’m back in Portland in the winter. I imagine Cassandra and me trekking through the pouring rain to the Saturday Market, our umbrellas up, feet sloshing. Or drinking hot chocolate at Jake’s, his mom rolling her eyes at me as Jake lectures us about the ramifications of cane sugar burning or the ill effects of some bacterial strain spread by seagulls.

Cassandra. Jake. They flash like photo negatives.

Something is happening out here, something I didn’t expect. I’m forgetting who I was. It’s becoming normal to be on a film set, to hang around with the crew, to have someone else cook all my meals and have my favorite snacks show up in my refrigerator without a Post-it or follow-up with Mom. I don’t think twice about the fact that my hair and makeup are always done or that my inboxes—e-mail and voice mail—are constantly being clogged by handlers. I have a million messages from my agent about everything under the sun. I thought acting was just about acting, but I was wrong. There is so much more to all this—so many ins and outs I feel like I’ll never learn.

I can’t shake what Jordan said this morning, about keeping some things private. But I have no idea what in my life to keep hidden. What in my life is sacred? I thought my friendships were, but I haven’t spoken to Cassandra or Jake since they left. And my family doesn’t even understand
what I’m doing, what my new life is. Perhaps my dream, this movie, is sacred. But isn’t it also the very thing that has made me someone people are going to want to pull apart? And how do I know if Rainer is sacred when all I can hear is everyone’s voices in my head, weighing in on us?

“Knock, knock.”

I look up to see Rainer leaning into the lanai doorway, his aloha shirt blowing in the night breeze, a plumeria tucked behind his ear. The interruption makes me jump. It’s freaky that he has appeared just as I’m thinking about him, and after this morning’s near death I’m also feeling a little off. “Is that your idea of knocking?” I ask.

He nods slowly. “Yes.”

“How did you get in my door, anyway?”

He smiles. “I wanted to see you.”

My heartbeat speeds up. “Doesn’t answer the question.”

He walks toward me and takes a seat in the chair next to mine. “I have some friends in high places. Specifically the front desk.”

I laugh. “So now you’re flirting with the receptionist?”

“All in your name, PG,” he says.

I won’t tell Rainer about this morning. I’m not sure why except I know it has to do with Jordan. I just know Rainer wouldn’t like us sharing something. Even if that something is mostly me not dying. Talking about Jordan seems loaded, too loaded for tonight.

“How was your day?” Rainer asks.

I loop my arms around my legs and tuck my head down on my knees. “Fine,” I say.

“Why are you hiding then?”

“Not hiding,” I say, turning my head to the side. “Just tired.”

Rainer and Jordan had off today. We had to film some scenes where August is alone on the island. It was just me and Wyatt and the crew, and I can barely keep my eyes open right now.

“Come here,” Rainer says. He puts an arm around me, and I feel myself being lifted out of my chair and into him, into his arms. It feels so good to be here. Some of the tension of today begins to drain out of me.

He settles me in his lap, pulls back, and puts a hand on my cheek. Then he leans in close, and I half expect him to kiss me, but instead he plucks the flower from behind his ear. He holds it out to me.

“For you.”

“Thanks.” I take it and run the stem between my thumb and forefinger. I put the petals up to my nose and inhale. It’s sweet and spicy, like real vanilla.

“What’s going on?” I ask him slowly, carefully, my eyes trained on the plumeria petals.

He shrugs. “I watched some TV today, grabbed a sandwich. It was nice to have some time off.” I feel his
hands on my back, traveling up my spine. I suppress a shiver.

I set the flower down. “That’s not what I mean,” I say.

He cocks his head. “What are you referring to, then?” His voice is light, singsongy. Flirtatious.

I knock him lightly on the shoulder. “Us.”

The corners of his mouth turn up in a smile. “Us?”

I feel ridiculous. I’m sitting in his lap and his hands are on me, and I still don’t even know what that means. “Yeah. Um, you kissed me.”

“I’m aware of that,” he says, still half-smiling at me. “Why do you think I’m here?”

The soft fluttering in my chest turns into full-on eagle-flapping wings.

He leans closer to me, but this time he doesn’t hand me a flower and he doesn’t pull back. “I’m here because you’re smart.” He leans closer. I can feel his eyelashes brush my cheek. “And funny.” Closer. His nose grazes my jaw. “And beautiful.” He hovers right above my lips. “And I really like kissing you.”

My pulse is racing. It feels like it might run away from me. “Okay, but…”

“What else?” he whispers.

I inhale, try to keep my voice level. It feels like I have to struggle to get each word out. “What do you want?”

He sighs and places one of his hands on my knee, on
top of my hand. It’s soft and warm. “I thought that was pretty obvious,” he says, threading his thumb through mine. “I want you.”

“Rainer…”

He lifts my hand and puts it in his, right up against his heart. I feel it beat—strong and steady. “Just relax,” he says.

I suck my bottom lip in. “Okay,” I say.

“Good.” He takes both his hands and grabs the sides of my face, and then he’s pulling me toward him. He kisses my nose, and then my forehead, and then right over the creases of my eyes. When he pulls back, he is breathing hard. “You’re so gorgeous,” he says.

“You’re kidding.” I exhale.

“I’m not.” He kisses the side of my neck, right below my ear. It’s getting almost impossible to think clearly.

“Why me?” I ask. I clear my throat. I push him back. I think about what Jordan said, about how he dates actresses because he likes being in the spotlight. But how could that be true? I’m nobody yet. “Besides the obvious point that I’m the only girl you know on this island.”

“Not true,” he says. He threads his fingers through mine. I look down at them. “You forget about the receptionist.”

“And Jessica,” I say, keeping my gaze down.

Rainer nods. “And Jessica.”

“So?” I untangle our hands and rest mine in my lap. I have to hold them together to keep from sticking my fingernail between my teeth right now and biting.

“Why you?” Rainer asks. “That’s what you want to know?”

“Yes.” I pick my gaze up to meet his.

He shakes his head like I’m the one who’s missed the point. “That, right there,” he says. “You have no idea how people see you. You’re incredible.”

Then he kisses me. For real this time, right on the mouth. I want to say something, but it gets caught up in our kiss. Tangled in his hair and fingertips and the strong beat of his heart.
You’re incredible.
With his mouth moving against mine, his hands on my waist, they seem like the only words that matter. The way he sees me. The way he feels about me.

His hands are everywhere—my back, my waist. He presses me against him. I reach forward and knead my hands into his shoulders, feeling the muscle there. I feel him sigh into my mouth, but he doesn’t break our lips apart. He keeps kissing me, and slowly I start to feel it, too. That maybe he’s right.

“Are you with
that boy?” My mom’s voice is staticky through the phone. She always calls me on her cell because we don’t have a long-distance plan at home, and the signal is never any good in our house.

“Since when do you read tabloids?” I ask. I’m standing in the condo kitchen, looking at an article with the headline: R
AINER
D
EVON AND
P
AIGE
T
OWNSEN
A
RE
L
OCKED
IN
L
OVE IN
H
AWAII
. They’ve reused the photo of us from the Fish Market—me and Rainer, foreheads pressed together. Didn’t that run weeks ago? How is that still relevant?

“Since my daughter ended up in them,” she says. Even through the not-so-great connection, I can hear the shortness in her tone.

“Do you really believe all this?” I ask. I don’t think
about what has actually changed since then. The fact that Rainer and I have now kissed. A few times.

“I don’t know, honey,” she says.

I put the magazine down. “Did you actually subscribe to
Star
?”

I still don’t believe her. My mother wouldn’t know how to locate a tabloid if it were the only book in the school library. Which, obviously, tabloids aren’t. She shops at the local co-op, not the supermarket, and the only magazines there are
Yoga Journal
and a bunch of pamphlets on astrology. I have another theory.

“Cassandra called you,” I say.

My mother sighs. It comes out in a crackle. “Please answer my question, Paige.”

“She did, didn’t she?”

There is a suspicious pause in our conversation. Then: “She really cares about you.”

Cares about me. Right. That’s why she’s been so busy calling me since she and Jake came to set. “She just wants
information
,” I correct her.

“Honey, I think if she wanted information she’d call you. It’s very unlike you to doubt Cassandra. What’s going on?”

I imagine my mom standing in our kitchen where she always uses the phone, her elbows on the counter, or fussing in the refrigerator, and I think about how long it has
been since I’ve seen her. The longest since I was born. I should tell her something. That I love her. “It’s not something I really want to make public,” I say instead.

“It’s Cassandra and your mother,” she says. “Which one of us, exactly, is public?”

“She’s dating Jake,” I blurt out.

I don’t hear a sigh or a gasp or even the silence of stopped words. “I know. I’ve seen them,” my mom says matter-of-factly, like I’ve just told her I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch.

“So you knew?”

I imagine her pausing in the refrigerator, putting the milk back and sticking her hand on her hip. “Honey, you have all been friends for a really long time. Things change.”

“She’s dating
Jake
,” I say, slowly. Like if I place the words one at a time this will make sense to her.

“But don’t they have a right to be happy, too?”

I inhale. “Of course,” I say, “it’s just—” My mom doesn’t know about the times Jake and I kissed and how mad Cassandra got. “Cassandra always said it would ruin things if two of us got together.”

“And what do you think?”

“I don’t know,” I say. I run my palms along the cool marble of the countertop. “It was just weird, having them out here and seeing them like that. I kind of freaked out.” I
sit down on a stool and swivel outward, toward the ocean. I don’t usually talk to my mom about this kind of stuff, but it comes tumbling out. Seeing Cassandra and Jake on the couch. The dinners with Rainer. How awkward our good-bye was.

She doesn’t answer right away when I finish. “Mom?”

I hear her inhale, the slow sigh of her exhale. “I understand, honey,” she says. “But I think you need to give them a break. I don’t think you’re upset because they’re together; I think you’re upset because they moved on, too. Things change, sweetheart.”

“I didn’t think we would,” I say. There is a lump in my throat I didn’t know was there.

“You can’t blame your friends for carrying on life without you.”

“But did they have to carry it on
together
?”

I hear the slight jingle of her laugh. “Well,” she says. “I think the better question is whether it’s worth losing both friendships over.” She changes the subject to my sister and Annabelle, then says, “I gotta go. I love you,” and clicks off. I set the phone down on the counter. She’s right, of course. And I miss them. I miss both of them. I want to call Jake and tell him about the Clean Ocean Initiative that Wyatt just started to offset any environmental impact the film might have. I want to call Cassandra and tell her
that Rainer finally kissed me, listen to her squeal and ask me what it’s like, whether his hair is soft, what he says to me when we’re alone.

But I’m due at rehearsal, and I’m supposed to stop by the editing room this morning and look at yesterday’s dailies. Yesterday we reshot the first scene of the movie, the scene where August washes up on the shore, bloody and broken. It felt better doing it this time, and I think Wyatt agreed. He actually asked me to take a look at the footage. He’s never asked me for my input before, so I want to make sure to be on time. Hair and makeup is in twenty minutes.

Editing is located in conference rooms on the first floor of the condos. The blackout curtains are always drawn, so I feel sorry for the editors. They’re stuck staring at these screens all day long while we’re in Hawaii. At least we get to work outside pretty regularly.

Gillian, the special effects editor, greets me when I get there. She’s incredibly tall with henna-red hair and multicolored wire-rim glasses. I’ve never told her this, because I don’t really know her too well, but she reminds me a little of home.

“Hey, kid,” she says. She puts a firm hand on my shoulder. “We got the whole thing set up for you. My office.” She kicks the door closed with her foot and leads me into
a room with gray walls and a large plastic desk with four computers and three keyboards on it. A frozen picture of the beach is on the screen.

“Sit.” Gillian rolls a desk chair toward me, and I plunk down into it. She leans over and starts typing on the keyboard. “I’m glad you’re here,” she says. “Rainer joining you?”

“No,” I say, craning around to glance at the doorway. “I don’t think so, anyway.”

Gillian flips a desk chair around next to me and sits, her chest pressed up against the back. “You ready?”

I smile to say yes. Give her a thumbs-up.

We go through the takes. It’s strange to see myself on-screen like this. I have before—in commercials, and a few community theater plays that were filmed, but this is totally different. The special effects aren’t even in yet, but there is no pretense of a stage or a set. It’s just us, like watching a home video of yourself except it isn’t you, exactly.

“It’s raw,” Gillian says. “But pretty cool, right?”

“Very,” I say, nodding.

She winks at me, and clicks through to another take. Wyatt is always talking about matching shots, how my hand has to hit the same point in space when I say a certain word, so that later, when they slice the film together, they’ll be able to match things up. I sort of got it, in theory,
but now it actually makes sense. A movie is like a giant puzzle—pieces scattered on the living room floor. It’s only later, after it’s together, that you realize it makes one single story.

Gillian’s cell phone blares. “Dancing Queen” by Abba.

“Favorite seventies song,” she says. “I’m old. Don’t tell anyone.” Gillian snaps the phone open. She nods a few times, then covers the receiver with her hand. “I’m gonna go grab footage from set,” she says. “Can you hang for five?”

“Sure.” I should probably head out, but I want to stay. It’s fun spending time with Gillian. She reminds me of the cool aunt character from the movies. The kind that lets you drink wine at dinner, and helps you “borrow” your parents’ car to sneak out on the weekends. Both my parents are only children, so I never had that. One time my brother offered to buy me and Cassandra vodka for a sleepover we were having. We said okay, mostly because we were trying to look cool, I think, but he ended up not following through. What happened was that I asked about it, my parents overheard us, and we were both grounded for a week.

I’m not saying Gillian would encourage underage drinking, exactly, but there are some adults who just don’t seem to have the same reverence for rules. Generally they’re the ones with no kids.

She leaves, firing some directions into her phone, and I’m left alone with me on the screen. It’s a close-up shot of my body, still as silence, on the beach. I’m bloody, and my hair is splayed out like a spider web that’s still being spun. I feel like I’m bleeding to death, or she is, which is ridiculous because (1) August doesn’t die, and (2) it isn’t even blood. I was there when they mixed the hair gel with the chocolate syrup and food coloring, told me to lie down, drew an
X
on my abdomen, and started pouring the mixture right over it.

But still.

There’s something about watching my body like this—my legs scissored out, my hand unfolded, the fingertips still reaching—that reminds me of the act of death. This is how it happens. You float up, above your body, and watch yourself like you’re in some kind of movie.

“Strange, huh?”

I didn’t hear him approach, but now I can feel Jordan’s voice at my ear. It shocks me twice as much as what I’m seeing on the screen.

I brush my hair back and turn around to look at him. “A little,” I say, trying to keep my voice level.

Jordan nods. He’s watching the screen, his eyes flitting left to right. I’m incredibly aware that it’s me lying there, that it’s my half-naked body he’s looking at. I want to throw a blanket over the girl at the beach, and one over
me now, too. Because I can’t separate us. It feels like he’s not staring at the screen, but at me. When his eyes graze over her abdomen it makes me suck in my breath, and when he looks up to her still face my cheeks flush red, and when he reaches out and gently touches the screen I can feel his hand on my shoulder—like a spark plug.

“How come you’re not at rehearsal?” I ask. My voice comes out hoarse, and I clear my throat.

“It’s just you and Rainer today,” he says. He turns from the screen to look at me, and I wonder if he’s seen all those stupid magazines, too. I have the intense desire to tell him it’s not true. To lie.

“Got it,” I say. “What’s up?”

Jordan turns Gillian’s chair around and sits down. “I like to come in here and see how things look up there.” He gestures to the monitor. “You?”

“Wyatt wanted me to take a look,” I say. “I’ve never seen dailies before.” Embarrassing. I should be in here. I should be taking advantage of every learning opportunity being on this set has to offer.

Jordan keeps looking at the screen. “I think it’s interesting to see the process, you know? There is so much that goes into it.”

He turns his head to look at me. “I’ve always liked watching how things come together. It’s probably the thing I love most about acting. How collaborative it is.”

“I guess,” I say. “But acting itself isn’t really collaborative.”

He scans his eyes over my face. “Of course it is.”

“I don’t know,” I say. “It doesn’t feel that way.” I have no idea why I’m being contrarian. All I’ve wanted is for him to talk to me, to not treat me like a leper. And now it’s actually happening and I’m pushing back at him.

“This is the thing I can’t understand about actors,” Jordan says. “How you don’t see that what you do is impossible without the help of dozens of people. No art takes place in a vacuum.”

“But when you act, shouldn’t it just be for you? I mean, does it matter who watches your play or movie or whatever? Don’t you just do it because you love it?”

Jordan leans back in the chair and hooks his hands behind his head. “No,” he says. “At its best, art is a dialogue. You do this thing so people can see it, and enjoy it, and engage with it. It’s
for
other people.”

I can see from the way he speaks—carefully yet easily, fluidly—that this isn’t the first time he’s considered this. It’s an opinion developed through years of being thoughtful about his process. It makes something inside me tighten—a combination of admiration for his commitment, and disappointment at my own lack of the same.

“You’ve thought about this a lot.”

He looks at me and squints, like he doesn’t fully
understand the question. “It’s my life,” he says. “Of course I have.”

He has an ability to make me feel off-kilter, like the things I thought about the world—what I believed in and knew to be true—are all just a smoke screen for other things, bigger things. Talking to him makes me feel like I’m pulling back a curtain and I’m not sure what’s behind it.

I’m trying to figure out how to respond when Gillian comes bursting back in. “Hey, J,” she says.

He smiles at her. It’s the first time I’ve seen one on him, and it changes his entire face. It’s like how his eyes turned from black to brown—the smile softens him. “And I jacked your chair.” He stands, and she waves him off.

“Sit. This one has to go, anyway.”

“Me?” I ask.

“Wyatt’s waiting, kid. We’ll finish up later.”

I mutter under my breath, and stand. I don’t want to leave. “Well, thanks,” I say. “I’ll come back.”

“They always do,” she says, and winks at Jordan. She sits down in my chair, arms crossed. Jordan grabs the keyboard. The images on the screen move, my body coming back to life. He starts flipping through shots like Gillian did.

“Bye,” I say. I expect him to keep his head down, to ignore me, but instead he looks up. “Bye, Paige,” he says.
“Nice talking to you.” I try to find a hint of sarcasm in his tone, but I can’t. It’s possible he actually means it.

“You’re late, babe.” Rainer greets me as I walk into the hair and makeup trailer. He’s dressed as Noah, and he looks amazing. He’s shirtless, and his skin is perfectly tan. What you’d imagine those Greek gods would look like, come to life.

“Don’t worry, hon,” Lillianna says. “We’ll make up the time.” But I’m not worried. I don’t feel like I need to scramble right now. After all, Wyatt was the one who wanted me to spend some time with Gillian.