HDU (23 page)

“My sister Holly.
 
She lives in a neighborhood called Park Slope with her
husband and their son, so I thought I’d stay close to them if I could,” he
said.
 
Amanda cooed inwardly at the
simple explanation because she knew how much he adored his four-year-old nephew,
mostly from interviews and paparazzi shots of them in the park.
 
You
are a grade-A creeper
, she told herself.

“That sounds so nice.
 
I wish I had family here too.”

“That’s right, you’re not from here,” Dylan
recalled.
 
He then scratched his
head and actually blushed a bit.
 
“I’ve read a little about you in the newspapers,” he admitted.
 
“Which is probably why we haven’t done
introductions yet, because I already know your name.”

Amanda’s heart fluttered and she giggled something
fiercely girly.
 
“Oh, well… I know
yours too,” she said, practically delirious with glee.
 
“And I’m a big fan of your movies,” she
felt compelled to admit.
 
Her giddiness
was beginning to rear its head.
 
“I
actually saw
A Beautiful Rush
in the
theater a few weeks ago, on the day it came out,” she added, though she immediately
regretted it and turned a beet red.
 
 

The recently released dramedy was about a tumultuous
love affair, but the film itself had come to be known for only one thing after
Dylan famously admitted to having trouble shooting his role – mostly
because of his shyness to do nudity for the very first time.
 
According to his interviews, the
director had allowed him a few swigs of brandy before filming the scene in
which his rear took center stage for a full two minutes.
 
Since his admission and the film’s
premiere, newspapers had redubbed the movie
A
Beautiful Tush
and no one could speak of it without thinking about Dylan’s
“superior posterior,” as a reviewer called it.

The case was no different in the cab as Dylan’s
cheeks flushed furiously.
 
“Well… I
hope you enjoyed it,” he said through his shyly pursed smile.
 
It collapsed into laughter when he
noticed Amanda’s equally red face.
 

“I enjoyed it a lot,” she said.
 
“The
movie
,” she clarified.
 
“I mean, not that I didn’t also – ” she caught herself, in
disbelief of where her sentence was headed.
 
“Oh wow, so I’m just going to stop talking now,” she decided,
covering her mouth with her hand.
 
Dylan laughed hard.

“You know what, why don’t we change the subject? I’m
sure we both wouldn’t mind that.”

“Yes.
 
Please.
 
I’m kind of mortified right now,”
Amanda said, her voice muffled as she shielded her burning face.

“Don’t be,” he chuckled, trying gently to pry her
hands away, but in vain.
 
“Well,
why don’t I confess something then?” he asked.
 
She nodded and he continued, his smile audible in his voice.
 
“Your performance tonight was the only
reason I didn’t run screaming for my life from that room.
 
I’m terrified of fire.”

Amanda peeked out from behind her hands.
 
She hadn’t known the particular
fact.
 
“Really?”

“Sadly, yes… along with filming nude scenes, I am
absolutely terrified of fire,” he said, laughing when Amanda blushed again.
 
“But I was inspired to stay when I saw
you get on stage because you made it look like fun.”
 
He cocked his head as he seemed to recall a memory.
 
“I especially enjoyed the… little dance
you did? Or what was that?”
 

“An embarrassment, mostly.”

“No! It was fun.
 
It was like how those little hula dolls move on the car
dashboards.”

Amanda let out a snort.
 
“Thank you, I guess?”

“It’s a compliment,” Dylan assured her, though after
a bit of a pause, he laughed and said, “I can’t really dance either.”

“So you
admit
I can’t dance!”

“No! Well, yes.
 
But see, I’m joining you in solidarity! And you’re still much
better than I am – I mean, I couldn’t even get into a taxi properly.
 
That’s how uncoordinated I am.”

“You’re just trying to save it now.”

“No, please believe me,” Dylan insisted, adorably
serious.
 
“I had a dance scene in
one of the first films I’d ever been cast in and after five weeks of ballroom
training, they wrote out the entire sequence to save my dance partner the agony.”

Amanda guffawed.
 
It was what Liam called her “ugly” laugh, but she couldn’t
even help it.
 
It was an adorable
story that as a super fan, she had already known, but hearing it from Dylan’s
own lips was infinitely better.

“The worst part was that I thought I’d done really
well, too,” he lamented.
 
  

“Okay, that is very sad,” Amanda said.
 
“You win.”

“A dubious victory, but I’ll take it so you don’t
have to.”

“Thank you,” she giggled as they pulled up in front
of the hotel.
 
Dylan tilted his
head curiously to gaze out the window.
 

“Ah.
 
The
Crosby Street Hotel.
 
Very nice.”

“Oh, I didn’t choose it, it was… Liam,” Amanda said, realizing
her reluctance to mention his name.
 
In Dylan’s presence, it was a total buzzkill.
 
But it was too late.
 
She wondered if she was imagining the sudden quiet it caused.
 
“Yeah.
 
He chose it,” she said in a murmur to break the awkward
silence.

“Ah, right.
 
Forgot you’re his girlfriend,” Dylan responded, looking down at his
hands with a little laugh.
 
When he
turned to face her again, he smiled.
 
“Well, I think Liam’s made a very good choice.”
  

Blog #2:
FIRE!

Sunday, January 17th

12:12AM

Posted by Amanda Nathan

Almost died last night.

If anyone were weird enough to have a fire-related death caused
mostly by embarrassment, it totally
would
be me.
 
Here lies Amanda Nathan
.
 
She was too self-conscious
, my tombstone would read.
 
“She was always remembering embarrassing
things that happened a really long time ago,” a friend would write in my
eulogy.
 
An old high school teacher
would say, “She was never tardy.
 
Her biggest fear was going to class late and being stared at
while trying to find a seat.”

And that’s all true.
 
Not only that, I was the queen of un-tagging Facebook pictures because I
thought I looked bad in pretty much all of them.
 
Whenever I saw friends with nearly a thousand public photos,
I’d envy how they had so many that they actually liked enough to share.
 
There were only a handful of pictures
of me that I allowed onto my profile, and I still agonized over the fact that the
ones I un-tagged remained available for viewing on my friends’ pages.

These tendencies were things I probably should have thought about
before moving to New York with Liam.
 
But I was too excited about my new life to think about how many more
opportunities there were to be self-conscious here.
 
Now, when someone takes a picture of me that I find hideous,
I can’t un-tag it, and it’s not just on someone’s Facebook feeds, it’s on the
front page of Pop Dinner or some other gossip page that gets over a million hits
a day.
 
And they’re not from
friends (who might judge you silently), they’re from anonymous strangers who’ll
comment with the meanest thing they can think of – or even worse
sometimes, the plain truth.

I know I’m not a supermodel, or even a model, or even a person
that Urban Outfitters would hire to work for them.
 
But I should probably just remember that I’ve gotten to meet
the coolest people and do the most amazing things in my life this past week (dancing
with fire in front of hundreds at a burlesque bar is actually fun once you get
past it being terrifying), and I probably shouldn’t waste my time feeling
insecure since these opportunities could end for me at any second.
 
So, that means no more second-guessing
everything I do and no more reading comments on the Internet, because they make
me go through absolutely batshit stages of insecure craziness (“I HATE THE
WORLD!” “No, they’re right.
 
I
should dye my hair and lose twenty pounds.” “BUT FIRST I NEED TO DROWN MY
SORROWS IN OREOS!!!” “But I shouldn’t be eating ever again.”).

I know I can’t change overnight, but recognizing the problem is
the first step to fixing it, right? Please say “yes.”

Xx

Amanda

The following week was devoted to rest and
relaxation.
 
The morning after
Roué, Amanda slept in until 2PM, missing a call from both Ian and Casey to join
her for respective brunches.
 
She
found the energy to write and publish a blog post that night, but then passed
out for most of the day on Sunday, her loopy sleepiness the likely reason for
why her blog post ended up so candid once again.
 
She had truly never been so out of it.
 
Amanda figured it was her body
reminding her not to get too cocky, that she was still very much a foreigner to
the party scene.

“Well, running on adrenaline only lasts for so
long.
 
But the good thing about
crashing is getting to start all over again,” Ian said, jabbing a fork into his
steak frites.
 
Amanda finally went
out for lunch with him on Thursday, revisiting his favorite French bistro.
 
As predicted, he acted normally and
they spoke nothing of Natalie or what happened the night at Roué.
 
Amanda reasoned that the incident could
just have been one of those drunken, Friday night dramas that she had never
really experienced and therefore took way too seriously.
 
Maybe Ian was just a sad drunk and it
was totally normal.
 
Everything
could very well be perfectly fine with him.
 
Right
?

Amanda observed him as he drank his champagne
pick-me-up in his yellow-framed Ray Bans.
 
She couldn’t tell if people were staring because they recognized him or
because he was wearing sunglasses indoors.
 
She decided it was a mix of both.
 
On Monday, he and Casey had run into each other on Wooster
Street and gone to grab coffee afterwards, prompting rumors of their romantic
attachment from less reliable websites.
 
Though the stories didn’t catch on with mainstream gossip news, they
were enough to provide a significant boost in Ian’s web traffic and Twitter
following.
 
One blog had even
identified him as “filmmaker” Ian Marsh, no doubt because they’d seen the label
on his own website.
 
Though rather
than be ecstatic about his slight gain in fame, Ian acted blasé about it
all.
 
Amanda figured it was a part
of the new persona he had adopted since Monday to impress Casey.
 
It included posting philosophical quotes
on Twitter, acting totally unfazed by paparazzi, and apparently, wearing
sunglasses inside restaurants.
 

“So was it
only
coffee that you got on Monday?” Amanda teased, sipping her mocha.
 
Ian snorted.

“Sadly.
 
She had to run,” he said, referring to Casey.
 
“But I
did
get an
invitation to the
What Was Left
premiere, so if you’re going on Friday, we can head over together.
 
Unless you’re going with Liam.
 
I’m not about to third-wheel.”

“You won’t have to,” Amanda laughed.
 
“He isn’t coming.”
 

She had asked Liam if he would want to make an
appearance with her at the premiere, especially since their appearances had
been scant the past week, but he declined.
 
His audition for
A
Soldier
was scheduled on the day of the premiere, and he had spent a week
in solitude to prepare for the reading.
 
Amanda had seen him but once in the period of time, and only for a twenty-minute
coffee break so they could share a peck on the lips in front of paparazzi.
 
His grown-out facial hair tickled her
to the point of nearly sneezing, which was good for a few genuine laughs.
 
The brief moment was all that was
needed to provide the gossip world some new material to analyze.
 
According to the blogosphere, their
relationship was still going strong and full of joy in its second public week,
and it was something to be impressed with considering the alleged models that
still threw themselves at Liam on a daily basis.