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“So what did we just order you?” I asked curiously. “And how’s it different from what we were
going
to order you?”

This kid’s teeth should come with a warning label: Warning, will make grown men and women stupid as fucking hell. Should be flashed in small doses.

“Steak and lobster,” he said, sounding greedy. “Usually I just get the chicken sandwich—but, you know, the boss insists . . .”

I laughed a little. “I ordered a plain baked potato and a mineral water for years before Jillian told me she expensed all our meals.”

She shook her head. “Most actors can’t wait to eat on someone else’s dime—but not you and Vinnie. Gallant little assholes, both of you.”

My breath caught, and for a moment I wondered if Vinnie’s name was going to shut down all conversation. For the last week, whenever we’d gone out, I’d heard the name whispered as we’d walked into a place and heard it again when we walked out. But when we were actually
there
, I hadn’t heard anything. Everybody—hairstylist, personal shopper at Nordstrom’s, the sweet, flamingly gay kid who did my nails—walked around in a terror of dropping the one name that used to be my best and most favorite topic of conversation.

I guess I wasn’t the only one with magic teleporting psycho cows on the brain.

In this case, Noah cleaned up the social carnage.

“You guys were close?” he asked without hesitation. “Good friends?”

“The best,” I lied, grateful
for
the lie. At least I could talk about him.

“You must miss him.”

Like that, the new locale, this kid’s killer grin, the quaint restaurant with the weird fishing trophies, all of it, fell into the giant black hole that was my grief.

“Yeah,” I said, looking at my clasped hands in front of me. “Every goddamned day.”

Every goddamned minute of every goddamned day.

“Is that the reason you took the job up here?” Noah’s perceptiveness was almost my undoing.

“Yeah.” I glanced around. “Bathroom? My lease agreement on the coffee is up.”

I had a long talk with myself in the bathroom: things like, “You’re going to have to deal with it eventually!” and “Stop flirting with the chauffeur!” figured prominently, but so did, “Jesus, it’s nice to talk to someone who’s not afraid to mention Vinnie!” and “Jesus, it’s nice to talk to anybody at all!”

Yeah—it was true I’d pretty much withdrawn from Hollywood after Vinnie died, but it was also true that had been because nobody would understand how much his life had meant to me.

Talking to a complete stranger—one who was easy on the eyes and charming and just starstruck enough to make it so I didn’t have to work too hard—was like a refresher course in how to be a human being again.

I’d never really liked school until now.

That thought cheered me, and when I got back to the table they’d just served the fried pickles.

They were delicious—and that cheered me more.

There’s a thing that actors and writers do—sometimes it’s unconscious, but sometimes I think we do it in self-defense. It all comes from only having one life.

We want to live
all
the lives. We want to
be
all the people and
write
all the people—so much so that I know the weakest of us forget how to be ourselves. That’s why Vinnie and the drugs, he told me once. He had to learn how to be Vinnie, and when Connor wasn’t there to give him guideposts, he forgot. But with that weakness aside, the willingness to be other people makes us want to
talk
to other people, a lot.

Every person we’ve never met is a role we want to research or a character waiting to inspire.

The best part of this selfish, driving compulsion to be somebody new is that it makes us look like
spectacular
listeners—at least at first meeting—because we will flirt, cajole, and downright interrogate you like you are the most fascinating, fabulous person on the planet.

I used to feel guilty about this—the time I would spend at parties talking to the waitresses or the car valets or the maids. I would walk away never to see them again, but with somebody’s life experience tucked close against my heart, like a treasure stolen from a secret box, and I’d wonder what they’d gotten out of it. How exciting could it have been to talk to me for an hour? All of my best stories were usually in print or pixels already. I didn’t talk about my childhood, and as far as the public was concerned, I was a one-night-stand bachelor.

What did they get from me?

One night, lying on the bed next to Vinnie, I’d voiced the question, feeling silly and embarrassed, like I was overtaxing my amiable-beefcake brain with too much deep thought.

Vinnie didn’t think so, though.

I remember that moment clearly, because it was at my house and we usually spent the night at Vinnie’s. But every door and window in the house sat open, the white curtains blowing in with the breeze, the sound of the ocean sweetly singing in my ears.

And the sound of Vinnie’s voice as he told me,
“Yeah, but think about it, Con. When we were just starting out, how many dicks would you have sucked to get one person—just one—to listen to the story of your life and tell you that you were special?”

I grunted, thinking about it, and pulled the pillow I was lying on closer to my chin. Oh yeah—that gut-sick yearning for attention, for someone, anyone, to just look up and see
me
, Connor Mazynsky, and tell that kid he didn’t need his big break to be a star.

That kind of neediness was depressing, and I kissed a sly glance up at Vinnie to lighten the mood.

“Turns out I only needed to suck one.”

He’d laughed, low and dirty, and two dicks
did
get sucked, but after we swallowed, that moment stuck with me.

It wasn’t a parasitic exchange after all—for just ten minutes, an hour, maybe two, I got to give something to someone. I got to make them a star.

I spent the next hour in the restaurant and forty-five minutes outside of it on the way to the cabin making Noah Dakers the star of my very own Oscar Award–Winning Movie.

By the time he pulled down a rather long gravel road toward an ocean-side block of two-story houses, each about a quarter mile apart, I knew the following about Noah:

I knew he had three younger sisters, all of whom were cared for by his father and paternal grandmother.

I knew their mother had taken off and their father was a handyman in Bluewater Bay. He was a member of the handyman’s guild and everything, and if you needed anything from a weatherized house to a new driveway, Samuel Dakers was the guy you went to. The advent of the television show—now starting its third year—had been a blessing for Noah’s family, because their father didn’t have to look far for work.

I knew that even though Noah had worked his way through school—and the traditional mountain of debt still loomed—he’d jumped at a chance to come back to his family and work with the same film company that gave his father so much business. His father had gotten him the job, of course, but Noah had held it down for the past three months and he seemed to have impressed his bosses.

I knew that Noah’s grandmother and sisters occasionally did local work for the movie people too—his biggest coup was when his oldest sister, Viv, got a job as a set dresser. She would wait until a scene was over, then run around and put all the stuff that had been disturbed in the course of the scene back in its original spot. Apparently she was great at making beds and repositioning fake guns, and Noah said she was looking forward to college with a little less debt than he’d built up.

I knew that in spite of the complaints about the debt, he thought the degree in philosophy was enough, even if he never used it to work.

I knew that he was twenty-five and his youngest sister was fourteen years old, and he and his other sisters had been working really hard to show her a bigger world than northern Washington.

But that was a hard sell, because they all loved where they’d grown up, and they all wanted to stay there too.

I knew that Noah had been twelve when his mom left, and he and Viv were the only ones truly pissed at her for going. But he tried not to be too vocal about that, because the girls needed to think their mother was a better person than she really was.

I knew that Noah was gay, and his family knew he was gay, and not even his grandmother thought that was a bad thing.

And I knew his oldest sister kept trying to set him up with boys she knew, and that he had a date tonight, back at the ol’ Rockin’ Surf and Dockn’ Turf, and that it was his second time out with the boy.

That last one . . . Well, that last one left me stranded on the beach of my own intentions.
Just “researching” him, right?

Yes. Absolutely.

“So don’t forget your three-date etiquette,” I chided lamely as Noah turned into the driveway with an earth-brown house with yellow trim. I was abruptly distracted. “This is it? This is my house? Wait—the backyard overlooks the water, doesn’t it?”

We’d come down a rise as we’d driven in, and I’d been able to see that the “yards” had all been built out and built up, sod included, and they were all framed by wooden slats to keep the earth from tumbling into the water. The slats continued up, serving as a four-foot fence keeping the unwary from tumbling over the side.

“Yes, sir.” Amusement tinged Noah’s tone.

I didn’t care. I mean, I
abandoned
my game of “research” so I could hop out of the car while it was still braking and take a good look at what would be my digs for the next two to three months.

“It’s awesome,” I breathed. “Look, Jillian, isn’t it awesome? I think it’s awesome. Can you see? The top gable or turret or window thing—that goes all the way through? Is that the main bedroom? You can look out the one side to Mount Olympus and out the back to the islands on the water? Oh,
look
, Jilly—it’s got yellow trim! I mean, it looks just like a gingerbread house. Have you ever seen anything so fucking
dear
?”

I turned to her, heart thrumming from the sudden influx of enthusiasm. “It’s great, Jilly. I love it. Can we keep it?”

She raised her sunglasses and glared at me. “What, are you twelve?”

“Yes,” I told her sincerely. “I’m twelve, and I just got cast as Hansel in a place with fog. I fucking
love
this house!”

Noah pulled out of the car and laughed at me, and I glanced at him guiltily. I’d stopped, right in the middle of telling him to go out and get laid—how was I supposed to be a good listener if I didn’t tell him what every American youngster desperately needed to hear?

And . . . damned teleporting cows anyway! Starting up on
that
conversation again was
not
particularly social.

Well, hell. The best I could do was to dork out so thoroughly about the house that he felt like he could leave this aging geek in the dust and forget about the most boring part of his job.

“You love the house,” he said, laughing. “I get it. Here—let’s get the luggage out, and I’ve got the keys. I can show you around, and we can talk about your schedule for the next few days. You start filming Monday.”

“Oh.” I was suddenly brought short by the idea of reality intruding. “Oh. Oh yeah.” I smiled shakily. “I’d forgotten about that.”

“Well, don’t,” Jillian snapped. “But do help us get this shit inside. I picked the decorations out for you, and you need to be sufficiently grateful, okay?”

“You ordered furniture in a week?” I asked, baffled. How did someone
do
that?

“Yeah, genius—and I’m pretty sure Noah’s grandmother made the beds and stocked the refrigerator, am I right, Noah?”

That supernova smile made its appearance. “Yes, ma’am, she did. And my dad put together the furniture yesterday. Boy, that sure did arrive quickly.”

Jillian raised an insouciant shoulder. “Shopping. It’s a skill.”

“I had no idea,” I said, uncomfortably grateful. “I just sort of assumed we were getting a rental and rental furniture.” I looked at the house with longing. “Would be the best rental ever.”

Noah winked and hefted Jilly’s “shoe bag,” which must have weighed a ton. “I’m glad you like it—I picked the yellow trim.”

I smiled, like a child with a clean past and only Christmas in his future. “That’s the best part,” I said earnestly, and then paused to look at it one more time.

A beach house at Malibu, with a balcony with steps that led right down into the sand? No.

This was a different ocean. The sound was calm—I knew that from my time in Vancouver, but it was still the child of a meaner ocean, the deep, cold breath before the icy currents that swept down from Alaska and the still-frozen north blew chaos on the shore.

As we loaded stuff into the house I was only more charmed. The inside was paneled in waxed pine, floor and walls, and the kitchen and bathrooms were tiled in basic white. It
was
a rental after all, but a high-end one, so the décor was basic. Jilly had ordered a plain wood kitchen table and chairs, complete with a pretty blue tablecloth and floor mats. The front door opened into a living room with comfortable furniture—rich-blue corduroy—all arranged on a dark-brown throw rug with a sturdy coffee table in the center and a television set—of course—on the wall.