Movie Star By Lizzie Pepper (6 page)

W
e arrived in Cannes the afternoon before our first event—the premiere of
Fisherboys
. Our villa was nestled in the hills right above the center of the city. In the distance, the Mediterranean stretched for miles. Between the sea and the landscaping at the edge of the pool, I could see a bit of the harbor, and the rooftops of the stores that lined La Croisette. I felt the pull of the town—the house was relaxing and beautiful, but, looking below, it seemed like I was missing out. Then Rob said, “Come here, I want to show you something.” He led me up to our bedroom. It was white and airy, with a big sliding glass door opening to a balcony above the pool.

“Close your eyes,” he said.

I complied, and felt his hands drape something heavy around my neck. He turned me toward the mirror, then said, “Now look.”

It was a diamond-encrusted heart-shaped locket, and it practically blinded me.

“Rob—” I started to protest.

“You can wear it tomorrow, on the red carpet,” he said.

Oh, right. This necklace wasn’t just for me. It was also for show. ACE had put him up to this. “Is it a loan?” I asked.

“Only if you don’t like it,” he said.

Aurora had always been a diamond girl. You wouldn’t think it to meet her—she worked at a nonprofit and always wore jeans and her wild hair back in a tight bun. But she’d been planning and replanning her engagement and wedding since high school. The engagement ring alone had evolved from a simple round diamond solitaire to a vintage deco design. (I had to be kept up-to-date in case a boyfriend—though currently nowhere in sight—called me for advice.) To me, diamonds were like red roses and champagne and strapless dresses, and, for that matter, expensive purses. They were overrated, impractical, and, in the case of champagne and strapless dresses, not particularly good at doing the job for which they were intended. Diamonds were so clear and cold. They seemed almost cruel. I mean, if you were going to spend thousands of dollars on a jewel, shouldn’t it at least have a little bit of color? Those were the arguments I made to Aurora, who desired nothing more than a two-carat rock on her finger. But if I admitted it to myself, the real reason traditional images of romance made me uncomfortable wasn’t just because they were cliché, but because I was afraid they would never be mine.

Rob, standing behind me, leaned down to kiss my ear.

“Elizabeth, don’t make this complicated. I love you. This is no big deal. It’s a shabby representation of my love.”

“Did you pick it yourself? I mean, was it your idea or did they come up with it in the boardroom?” I had to know if he was imitating his movies, or—even worse—taking advice from the agents. Rob was so . . . perfect. I still couldn’t believe he was for real.

Rob looked hurt. “That’s harsh.”

“I just need to know.”

“It’s me, Elizabeth. Nobody tells me what to do. Period. And my advisers know that my love life is out of bounds.”

It wasn’t—I’d been at that meeting—but I knew what he meant. There
was a line, and he was the one who had drawn it. Reassured, I looked in the mirror, and the multiple stones in the necklace caught the light of the sun, casting little rainbows all over the room. I gasped. Now I saw it. Diamonds hid their colors like secrets, ready to spill at the smallest provocation. They contain and reflect. They absorb their surroundings and throw them back, transformed. Maybe I’d been wrong about diamonds. I looked up at Rob. His eyes shone, and I decided that I could wear a heart of diamonds after all, because wearing it meant believing in him.

But not in front of everyone. Rob and I were going to be all over the press. What I wore would be scrutinized. Was I really going to parade down the red carpet with Rob Mars, wearing a new one-of-a-kind bauble? This necklace was a statement that I didn’t want to make.

“It’s beautiful,” I said. “Thank you.” I leaned over and gave him a kiss. “Can we walk through town first, before the red carpet? Tomorrow morning? In jeans?”

This fairy tale we were living, which all seemed too good to be true—I wasn’t ready to flaunt it. I’d seen that roomful of advisers meticulously plan out every last detail of our unveiling. I was now proposing that we upend all of that. What would my boyfriend say to the idea? There was a pause—a tiny pause, but a pause nonetheless—before Rob grinned. “Let’s do it.”

Tomorrow, I knew, everything would change. I walked over to the balcony door and looked down at the town below. I’d always liked to live and visit places where you didn’t need a car. To go for a run and see people in the midst of work, dogs snuffling at street corners, children twirling at the end of parental arms. To stroll to a restaurant for dinner and afterward, best of all, to walk home in the darkness so the evening’s conversation wasn’t halted by the slam of a car door but was allowed to flicker out in the quiet night like a spent candle. Tonight, maybe, I could stroll through Cannes. Certainly not with Rob, but maybe alone. I could
eavesdrop on the sounds of the village, get lost on the unfamiliar streets. After tomorrow . . . never again. I remembered, back in L.A., how one night at my apartment I’d popped out while Rob was napping to surprise him with frozen yogurt when he woke up. When I told him what I’d done, he’d said, “Enjoy it while you can.” I was just beginning to realize what he meant. Privacy required hiding from the world. And as soon as we let go of that, we would live in a fishbowl. Either way, we were trapped.

“This is an incredibly fancy jail, isn’t it?” I said.

Rob walked over and stood behind me, looking at the same view. His body felt like a solid wall behind me. Then he reached forward and traced my faint reflection in the glass door.

“See yourself, Elizabeth?” he said.

I nodded.

“You’re beautiful. But the woman I love goes deeper than that. They can capture your image as much as they want, but they will never have you.” He hugged me tightly, and I felt his strong body soften into mine. “You are always free.”

“So can we go for a swim?”

He glanced up at the hills to the right of the window, and I knew he was evaluating the security issues.

“Not until tomorrow.”

I remember feeling light-headed when our car dropped us at La Croisette, the shop-lined boulevard that runs along the waterfront in Cannes. Rob and I loved each other, and there was no reason to hide a moment longer. We started to walk down the street together, and for a few precious moments I had what I wanted: I was strolling in a charming French village with my lover on my arm. Just an anonymous couple being quiet and boring and happy.

How many minutes passed? Three? Maybe five? I don’t think we had time to say a word about the weather (which was gorgeous) or to glance in a shopwindow. All I remember is Rob bending down and whispering in my ear. “Brace yourself,” he said, “it all starts now,” and tucked my arm firmly under his elbow.

The landscape around us, a moment earlier shaped by the white rectangles of buildings, triangles of blue sky, the long slope of the beach, and the graceful lines of palm trees towering over the boulevard, was suddenly a seething block of bodies, each face obscured by what looked like a gas mask. Cameras. The paparazzi had found us.

“Lizzie! Rob! Over here, over here!” I slid my hand down Rob’s arm, finding his fingertips. I thought we would stand there for a moment, posing and smiling, but Rob suddenly strode forward, directly toward the crowd. I scurried to keep up with him. The flashes came continuously now, and I forced a smile. Why wasn’t Rob pausing? I wanted us to pose for the photos and be done. But instead we hurried down the street.

Revealing our relationship on the red carpet had one benefit that was now all too clear. The red carpet was always lined with rope to hold the paparazzi back. Now, with no such restraints, the men in the front of the swarm surged forward, planting themselves maybe five feet in front of us to get their shots. But the photographers behind them continued to push forward. The front cameramen struggled to stay standing, and for a moment it seemed like the mob would bear down on us. Rob stopped abruptly, putting his arm around me protectively. I huddled into him, anticipating the crush.
We didn’t think this through,
I thought.
I shouldn’t have interfered. We should have stuck to the original plan
. Then, from nowhere, two huge men appeared in front of us, arms spread wide: a barricade.

“Back, everyone, back. You’ll get your shots.” The crowd responded instantly, seemingly as relieved as we were that by some miracle these
two bodyguards had taken control. A radius emerged around us; the sky reappeared; I realized that I’d been holding my breath, and exhaled deeply.

Half a block farther, Rob took me around the shoulder, gave me a tight half hug, and whispered, “This way!” He steered me in a sharp right turn, and there, idling next to us, was a limo with an open door. Our car. The “miracle” bodyguards slid in after us. The door slammed, and everything was quiet. I leaned back into the leather seat. Rob winked at me and smiled. “Perfect, Elizabeth!” He held up a hand for a high five. I’d been wrong. Rob knew this turf far better than I. He had made sure that the casual appearance I’d asked for was as planned as the red carpet would have been. It was choreographed down to the minute. I just hadn’t been in on it. But instead of feeling belittled or betrayed, all I felt was gratitude. It was as if the karmic universe had said, “Let’s let Lizzie get her way just enough to see that she was wrong, and she won’t question us again.” And it worked.

Sitting in the car, I knew that even as we caught our breath the photos of us were traveling through virtual space, being sold and distributed to news outlets across the globe. With every passing second, websites, blogs, producers, former costars, family, friends, the bizarre but undeniable universe of hundreds, no thousands, of people who cared that Rob and I were an item was expanding. For once I was kind of excited. Sure, I hated the paparazzi. It was no fun being photographed with a wardrobe malfunction at the beach, and it had been unpleasant to see the pictures of me and Johnny in a fight at the Red Sox game. (Why must my face get so blotchy whenever I cry?) But I was happy to be with Rob, and, now that I thought of it, I didn’t yet have any pictures of us as a couple. I wanted to see what we looked like together. I might even want copies!

When we got home, Rob and I hung out by the pool. (According to our respective reps, if the paparazzi found us now it didn’t matter so much. Because we’d controlled the news release. Or something like that.) Anyway, I couldn’t really relax. I kept reloading TMZ on my phone. So sue me for caring. Aurora and I were texting:
any minute
, I told her.

calling my mother the minute it’s out
, she wrote back. Then another text came in from Aurora.
don’t sweat it, pepper. the web people are lowest common denominator
. Uh-oh. I tapped a search into my phone:
lizzie pepper rob
.

Search results immediately came up on my phone. Lots of them.

Lizzie Aims High, Shoots for Mars

Lizzie Pepper Cast as Rob Mars Costar: It’s All an Act

Liz and Rob: Love or Money?

Rob’s Tin Lizzie: Fake Love at Last

What the hell was this? I looked up at Rob. He was reading a newspaper, so nonchalant.

“Babe?” I said. “It’s out.”

He nodded. “Okay.”

“I haven’t looked yet . . . but I think they’re saying we’re a sham.”

“Yeah, because I’m gay, right?”

“It’s so . . . mean.”

Rob put down his paper. He smiled and my heart took a roller-coaster dip. I couldn’t help smiling back. He came over and sat straddling the foot of my chaise, facing me. He set my feet on top of his thighs. “Who cares what they say? We have each other.”

He leaned forward and gave me a long, deep kiss. My phone dropped out of my hand to the patio. I started to pick it up. “To hell with that,” he said, pulling me back toward him.

I left the phone where it fell. Still, we went inside to have sex. We weren’t idiots.