Famous in Love (6 page)

“Um, sure. What should I sign?”

The girl looks at me like she doesn’t get the question, and Rainer hands me a napkin.

“Will this do?” he asks her.

She nods emphatically, and I take the napkin, pressing it down on the counter. At this point it feels like every single person in the restaurant has swiveled to look at me. I feel a little like one of those mannequins in the windows at department stores that are between outfit changes: naked and completely on display.

Except, you know, they’re not alive.

I swallow and then scrawl my name. It looks messy, and you can barely make out the
T
in Townsen. I don’t really have a signature. I never even signed my name,
I don’t think, until a few years ago when I had to get a passport. We were supposed to go to Vancouver to visit my dad’s brother, who moved there like five years ago to start this woodchopping business, but we never did. We tried again a few years later, but it was right around the time Annabelle graced us with her presence and after that, travel… Well, it wasn’t diapers, so it was out.

I hand the napkin to the girl, and she’s beaming. Serious Christmas-morning smile.

“Thank you so much!” she says. “I’ll take your orders. On the house.”

“That’s sweet,” Rainer says. He hands over a hundred-dollar bill with a stack of twenties curled underneath. He cocks his head behind him. “Will you buy these people in line lunch, on me?”

The girl blushes fuchsia and nods. Rainer looks at me. I can feel my eyes go wide. “What?” he says. “I pay it forward.” He orders and people start to talk again, the lunch-hour sounds resuming. Somewhere someone takes a picture and a little girl comes up to Rainer and asks for his autograph. He accepts and bends down, scooping her into a big hug. Her tiny little cheeks turn Pop-Tart pink. He signs one for the cashier, too.

We get our food, and I shove a twenty-dollar bill into the tip jar.

The restaurant is all community-style, long wooden
tables with benches on the sides. Rainer takes our tray, and we head over to an empty portion of a table in the corner. I sit down. A stranger just recognized me. Someone I have never met before knew who I was.

“You feeling okay there?” Rainer leans forward, so I can see a few freckles on his nose.

“Yeah, fine.” But the truth is the whole experience is surreal—like a dream. I keep expecting to snap back to reality.

“You’ll get used to it,” he says. He takes my hand up lightly, lets his fingers curl through mine just for a moment. “I don’t want you to worry.”

“Do you ever think it’s strange?” I say. I have to swallow to keep my voice even.

“What?” he asks. He uncurls his fingers but lets his thumb glide over my wrist before he returns his hand to his side of the table.

“That people you’ve never met know your name?”

Rainer picks up his burger. “Yes,” he starts. “Well, I’m not sure.” He pauses, takes a bite, and chews thoughtfully. “It’s always been this way for me. I mean, I was acting when I was a kid. I guess I don’t know any different.”

I nod and bite into my burger. It’s delicious.
The Real Maui
was right: These things are incredible. Although it could just be that I haven’t had a real hamburger in months. Jake is a vegan, of course, and is constantly trying
to get me to consume the cardboard tofu crap he buys. He even convinced my parents to switch over, which royally sucks because now my mom serves soy dogs at our house.

We eat in silence for a few minutes, momentarily lulled by our food. We still get a couple of sideways stares, but for the most part everyone seems to have gone back to their meals.

After lunch we pull into the windsurfing beach. I read about an overlook where you can park and walk out to some rocks that hang over the ocean. If it’s windy, chances are the windsurfers will be out. And at Ho’okipa, apparently, it’s always windy.

The wind zips and howls around us when we step outside. But it’s still warm, and the sun beats down strong and steady on my back.

Rainer squints into the sunlight and tosses me a baseball hat from the backseat. “Careful of that skin, PG. August is pretty pasty.”

I roll my eyes and jam the Lakers hat down over my forehead.

“Looks cute on you,” he says, giving me an approving nod.

My chest stumbles right along with my feet.

“Easy,” he says, putting a hand on my back. “C’mon.”

We climb through the railing, then walk down to the
rocks. They make a shelf along the cliff, prime seating, like they knew people were going to want to watch the show. We take a seat, and as soon as I look out over the water, my breath catches.

Windsurfers are everywhere, but they don’t look like humans. They look like little butterflies. Tiny, colorful butterflies that dip and sway and fly across the ocean.

“They’re beautiful,” I breathe.

Rainer nods beside me. “Yeah. It’s pretty tough, too.”

“Have you been?” I ask.

“Once,” he says. “It was part of this pub shoot I did for
Wild Things
.”

I remember
Wild Things
. It came out when I was in sixth or seventh grade, I think. It was about these young competitive surfers. Rainer played the lead guy, the one who gets injured the week before the big competition; they think he’s going to have to sit it out, but at the last minute, he changes his mind, races into the water, and wins gold.

“Do you surf?” I ask him.

“I’d like to think I do,” he says. “But no, not really.” He places his hands in the sand, palms down. “You?”

I shake my head. “I haven’t, but I want to. Everything about the water fascinates me.” I’d have gone surfing the first day I was here if there weren’t all this stuff in my contract about not getting injured and the “prohibition of
impact-based sports” while filming. I asked the producers exactly what about surfing was “impact-based,” but I never got a response.

The wind is picking up, and I tuck my arms around me. All of a sudden my skin has goose bumps. The sun has hidden behind a cloud, and the drop in temperature feels like twenty degrees.

“Here,” Rainer says. He’s brought out this lightweight gray cotton hoodie, and he slides it over my shoulders. His hand brushes my skin. Is it my imagination, or do his fingers linger there?

“Thanks,” I say.

He clears his throat. “No problem.”

Rainer rests his elbows on his knees and gazes out over the water. “Things feel so distant here, huh?” he says.

I thread my arms through his sweatshirt. “What do you mean?”

He keeps his gaze on the ocean. “What you were asking me earlier, if it’s weird when I get recognized? It is, but I don’t think because of what you meant. I think because it becomes your norm and that—” His voice breaks off. When it returns, it’s softer. “That’s a strange way to live.” He looks over at me. His eyes have changed. They’re darker somehow, stormier. They have more depth. “I want you to know that you don’t have to go through any of this
alone. Whatever is coming, whatever happens, you’ll have me. I promise.”

I can feel my heart hammering in my chest. I swear he can, too. “Thank you,” I say.

He keeps looking at me, and I think he’s going to say something more, something about what it’s like where I’m headed—where we both are. The moment stretches, and the air seems to pause around us. Even the wind stills.

But he doesn’t say anything, and after a bit I follow his gaze back to the water. There is one windsurfer in particular who catches my eye. He has a blue sail and is farther out than the rest of them. So far, in fact, that it’s hard to see whether he’s moving at all. The only way I know for sure is that he gets smaller and smaller. By the time we stand up and walk back to the car, his blue sail might be the ripple of a wave.

I didn’t swim
this morning, and I’m lounging around in my condo, still in my pajamas and, yeah, thinking about Rainer. Listen, I don’t think he’s into me. Not like
that
. I get that he’s a full-fledged movie star and I’m a total newbie. But something about our day yesterday makes me feel like my crush isn’t completely unwarranted. God help me. I have a total crush on Rainer Devon.

A loud knock on my door jolts me back to reality. Two knuckle raps. When I swing it open, Wyatt is on the other side. My stomach instantly pulls back, like someone has socked me.

“Paige,” he says. “We need to talk.” He’s wearing a Sex Pistols T-shirt and black pants, and his hair is standing up every which way.

“Fucking wind,” he says, catching my gaze.

He follows me into the kitchen, and I take out some of the Evian water bottles the craft service people keep stocked in my fridge. They asked me what I liked to eat the first day on set, and since then coleslaw and peanut butter crackers have been showing up in my refrigerator and cabinets.

“So,” I say. My hands are shaking so badly I can’t even open my water bottle. “What’s going on?” Wyatt has never visited me in my condo, ever. He sometimes goes to Rainer’s but that’s usually only when Sandy is there. This is bad. I know it is.

Wyatt shoves something at me. It’s his iPad. And on it are grainy photos of Rainer and me from yesterday, splashed across a tabloid website.

I see pictures of Rainer and me driving with the top down, holding hands at the Fish Market. Snapshots of him putting his sweatshirt around me at the overlook and even ones of us talking, so close it looks like his forehead is pressed up against mine. And a stupid headline to top it all off:
L
OCKED
C
OSTARS
A
LREADY
G
ETTING
C
OZY
.

I suddenly become intensely aware of the crescent moons on my pajamas.

“Oh,” I say.

He turns his face to me. He doesn’t look pleased. “Yeah.
Oh.
Want to tell me what’s going on?”

“Nothing,” I tell him. “They were taken completely out of context, I swear. We were just exploring the island—” But I stop talking when I catch the look on Wyatt’s face. It seems to say that any explanation I give him is only an excuse.

“I don’t really give a shit what you do with your personal life,” he says. “But I will not have my movie go up in flames because you two can’t keep your hands off each other.”

“Hey,” I say. Anger flares up in my chest. “That’s not what happened. This hasn’t affected—it won’t—we’re not even—Rainer—” What I want to ask is why he isn’t bringing this up with Rainer. Why this is suddenly all
my
fault.

Wyatt holds his hand up. “You might think this is just some teenybopper fantasy, but do you have any idea how much thought and attention and time has gone into this project? How many hundreds of millions of dollars? People’s careers?”

“I know,” I say, but I can’t continue. My chest feels tight. I’m afraid I’m going to start crying.

Wyatt flicks his eyes across my face. “You think I’m hard on you,” he says. “You think I’m unfair. You’re wondering why I came to you and not him.”

I don’t blink. He continues.

“Rainer is who he is, but you’re just getting started.
There are things you don’t know yet about the way this business works.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that he’s the producer’s son, but you have a shot at actually being an
actress
. Do it right. If not for yourself, then definitely for me, because I will not settle for anything less than the best. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

Wyatt takes off his glasses and tilts his head, the way he does right before he sets up a scene. I know he’s picturing things in his mind, trying to figure out the best angle, how to get the truest version of the moment he’s trying to capture. When he speaks again, his tone has softened, like a piece of plastic in front of a hot flame—it starts to melt at the edges.

“You know this is just going to get worse,” he says.

I don’t answer, just stuff my hands down into the pockets of my pajama bottoms.

Wyatt takes an Evian bottle and rolls it across his forehead, then twists the top and flicks the cap down on the counter. “I don’t think you realize your responsibility yet.”

“I do,” I say. I’m fighting back tears because I don’t need to hear this, not again, not now. “All I do all day long is think about the responsibility.”

“Show me.”

“What?” I just stare at him.

His eyes are fierce, just like they are on set. He’s challenging me.
“Show me you get it.”

I want to ask him how, but I know that would make it worse. I should know how. I should
act
how.

“I will,” I say. I stand with my hands on my hips.

“This is your life,” he says. His tone is still strong, clipped, but his features have softened. “Once you put something out in this world, you cannot take it back. Do you understand me?”

“Yes.”

Wyatt takes another swig and sets the Evian bottle on the counter. He doesn’t say anything as he moves toward the door, and then he turns around. “We may have found our Ed,” he says. “I’m bringing him over to test with you later this week.”

I open my mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. Last I heard, Ed wasn’t expected on set until the very end of filming. He doesn’t have a ton of scenes in the first movie, or a very prominent role in the first book other than in flashbacks. Mostly he comes into play at the beginning and then at the very end.

Wyatt eyes me. “We’ll see how you chemistry-test, but barring some kind of repulsion”—his eyes flick briefly to his iPad—“he’s the one.”

“Who is it?” I ask. Not that it matters. I always get
celebrity names jumbled and anyway, I think they were considering another unknown for the part.

Wyatt looks at me, and I can swear his eyes twinkle. It’s the strangest thing to see. “Jordan Wilder,” he says, before disappearing out the door.

As soon as he’s gone, I feel my eyes start to burn. My stomach feels sick, too. Did he just accuse me of trying to sabotage this movie? With an affair I’m
not even having
? The exhaustion of the last few weeks—my insecurities about the movie—all come bubbling up to the surface. This time I don’t hesitate: I pick up the phone and call Cassandra.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me!”

Cassandra’s voice charges through the phone, part high-pitched shriek and part baritone boom, before I can even get in a hello.

I melt onto a barstool at my kitchen counter. I should have known she’d already have seen them. I think she has a Google alert set on my name. “It’s not true,” I say.

“Have you seen these pictures?”

“Yes,” I say. “And that isn’t what happened.”

I didn’t think I’d have to defend myself to Cassandra like I did Wyatt. I suddenly have the intense desire to hang up and crawl back into bed.

“Pictures don’t lie,” Cassandra says. Her tone is indignant, and I imagine her on her landline (she talks less on
her cell phone now—unlike me, she listens to a lot of what Jake says), twisting the cord around her wrist the way she does when she’s nervous or really focused on something.

“Neither do I,” I say. My words are edged, and I know she hears them.

“I know,” she says. Her tone softens. “But how do you fake that?”

I run a hand across my forehead. I think back to yesterday and try to explain what I couldn’t to Wyatt. “Rainer grabbed my hand for a second to pull me out of the way and then later I was cold, so he gave me his sweatshirt. Those pictures are totally out of context. They just look real.”

I hear her sigh, imagine the cord going slack. “Sorry,” she says. “I wasn’t accusing you of anything.”

“No?”

Her voice gets quiet. “I feel like I barely know what’s going on in your life—”

“I know,” I say, cutting her off. I swallow. “It’s just been really busy here.”

“Apparently.”

She laughs, and so do I. More out of relief than anything else.

“I miss you,” she says.

“I miss you, too. How is everything?” The line goes silent for a moment. “Cass?”

“Yeah?” Her voice is quiet.

“What’s going on at home?”

“Oh, the usual,” she says. “Sit-ins. Protests. And I’m just talking about what’s been happening in Mrs. Huntington’s speech class.”

We both laugh. It feels good. Familiar.

“How is Jake?” I ask. I bite my lip as I say it. Cassandra knows what I’m asking—does he miss me? Is he seeing someone?—but she doesn’t really like to talk about it. Me and Jake, I mean. Cassandra makes a small grunt, and I imagine her nodding slowly, her blond hair rising and falling on her shoulders.

When we were younger, the three of us had a “three musketeers” pact. We’d put our arms into a triangle—hand to shoulder, hand to shoulder, hand to shoulder—and repeat the slogan “all for one and one for all.” No one without everyone. There was a clubhouse in Jake’s backyard and a rule book Cassandra made. We decorated the book with glitter and leaves and named it Bob, although I can’t for the life of me remember why.

When Jake and I kissed, I told Cassandra, of course. I thought she’d be thrilled. She was always talking about how much she thought he liked me. But she wasn’t happy. Not even a little bit. She said we didn’t understand our own slogan, that we were breaking all the rules. It had just happened. The kiss, I mean. It was the night my sister ran
away. She was always doing things like leaving for long weekends to go up to Seattle or stealing money from my parents and disappearing for forty-eight hours. Usually it was just to visit one of my brothers or something, but she never told anyone where she was going or how long she’d be gone for. It used to make my parents panic. Every single time she didn’t come home for dinner they were convinced she was dead. I never understood it. She had pulled the same thing last weekend; odds were she was alive. But they never saw it like that. They were always terrified. Like this time would be different.

This was just a few weeks before she got pregnant, or at least before we found out. She had taken off on one of her sojourns, and my parents were furious with fear. They had called the police and were pacing our living room. Both my brothers were accounted for, and she wasn’t with either of them. And I hadn’t seen her in school that day.

Jake was over, and we were studying for something. It was probably geometry—I always needed help with geometry.

Jake and I were in the living room when my sister finally came home. She was drunk. Like stinking, stumbling drunk. You’d think my parents would have been pissed. They certainly would have been had it been me. But they weren’t. They were relieved. Their little Joanna was back. The star soccer player, the first girl after two
boys. The golden child. I know I sound bitter, and it’s not that exactly. It was just this moment where I realized the supreme unfairness of life. I didn’t get upset about it or anything. I don’t think I felt it at all. It’s more that I
thought
it, realized it. Like a date in a history book or a number on a math test. It was a fact. No matter what I did. No matter how many stage roles I got or how good I was in school or how well behaved, they’d never really worry about me like they worried about her.

Jake hung around for a little while after the commotion calmed down, a tearful Joanna going up to her room unpunished and laden with water and coffee. I watched the whole thing from the living room, and when it was over I remember Jake taking my hand in his and sliding the pencil out from under my knuckles. There were large red dents on my index finger.

“Are you okay?” he asked me.

I don’t remember what I said, or what he said after that, but I do know that when he put his hand on my cheek and then his lips on mine, I let him. And it felt good. Because I knew Jake was on my side. Whatever side that was, he was on it. And I guess that was Cassandra’s problem. There was a side after that.

She didn’t talk to us for a month afterward, and we never called ourselves the three musketeers again. Not even jokingly.

That was almost two years ago.

“He’s good,” she says now. “Busy. We both are.” Cassandra is silent for a moment, and I wonder if she hasn’t seen much of him since I’ve been gone. A wave of guilt hits me—what if I was their glue? “Have you spoken to him?” she asks.

“Just a few e-mails,” I say. “But you know Jake and the phone.”

Cassandra laughs. “Ugh. Totally. So when are you coming home?”

I spin around on my stool. The sunshine and ocean greet me. “Isn’t a better question when are you coming to visit? You do know I’m in Hawaii, right? And your favorite movie star is here?”

She laughs. Cassandra’s laugh reminds me of twinkle lights at Christmas: bright and soft and a little bit magical.

“Clearly Rainer is more interested in you than me,” she says.

“I was talking about me.”

I’m almost sure I can hear her smile. “So you’re calling yourself a movie star now, huh?”

“Only to you,” I say, and when I do, I’m hit with just how much I miss her. Like the emotion is a stone thrown hard into a pond. It sinks, but the ripples keep on spreading. I wish she were here. Pulling at her long blond curls
and wearing some crazy, colorful ensemble and making us dance around the living room to Madonna.

“Come visit,” I say. “You and Jake. Next weekend. What do you say?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “There’s school stuff. And I spent all my babysitting money on those new ocean underworld DVDs.”

“I’d pay,” I tell her.

“Oh.”

“It’s not a big deal,” I say, all at once, the words knocking into one another. “It would mean a lot to me. You could see what the set is like, and we could spend some time together. The three of us.”

Cassandra’s tone brightens. “Yeah, good luck getting Jake on a plane.”

“Please,” I say, because all of a sudden I need her here. Both of them. It’s like if they visit, if they see this, maybe I will feel more like myself. Maybe this will become real.