Zoe didn’t care to be courted. When I left notes in her locker or under her windshield wiper, she asked if she had to respond in kind, and also why couldn’t I just text her like a normal person? And though she appreciated having an armful of carnations delivered from the Choir Cupid on Valentine’s Day, she paid little attention to the attached poem that took me a week to write.
Relatively sure that I was past such unmanly silliness by the time I met Emma, my feelings for her slammed into me, unexpected and inspiring. All of a sudden I found myself rivaling Keats and Rilke for romantic musings.
The first note I left for Emma was in Austin, after she told me about her mother’s death and we fell asleep watching television. That one was the result of several longer, more maudlin versions. I left the abbreviated edition on her night table, and threw the others away in my room. Since then, I’ve crafted poems to her in my head (discarded without being jotted down), written her two letters (put through the shredder in Mom’s home office), and tapped out multiple soul-baring texts (deleted without even being saved to drafts).
As I pull her door shut and it locks behind me, I have a two-second panic attack about the note I just left for her before I take a deep breath and head for my room. There’s no taking it back, apart from the fact that I don’t actually want to.
I round the corner and inexplicably, Brooke is standing in front of me. “Graham?” Her expression is bemused, head at an angle like a bemused puppy. She frowns at the ice bucket in my hand. “Are you… getting ice?” She points back to where the vending alcove is, which I’d have passed if I was coming from my room.
“Um. No?” My mind is blank. I have no idea what to offer as an excuse. Thank God I’m wearing pants.
She glances behind me towards Emma’s door, but thankfully, she doesn’t voice the question that flashes through her eyes, because I’d have to tell her it’s none of her business, which would answer her curiosity in any case. For some reason, she directs her best faux-smile at me. I seldom get the faux-smile from Brooke. “Are you about to check out?” she asks. Her Louis Vuitton overnight bag is slung over her shoulder, D&G sunglasses perched on her head, and I’m not sure what label the stilettos are, but I’d be willing to bet they’re the ones with the red undersides. She’s a walking LA-girl stereotype.
“Yeah. I’ve gotta grab a quick shower and then get a taxi to LAX.”
“I can take you.” She shrugs and turns to walk to my room with me. “It’s not like I have a booked schedule. And we didn’t get to hang out much this trip.”
I have been focused on Emma for the past three days. I didn’t consider that Brooke might want face time, too. “Oh. Okay, cool. Thanks.”
When we get to my room, I tell her to make herself at home while I shower. Twenty minutes later we’re crossing the lobby as Reid is coming in with his bodyguard. “You two leaving?” he asks, unnecessarily, since we’re both holding luggage.
I’m anticipating Brooke’s sure-to-be acerbic answer when she says, without a trace of condescension, “Yeah, I’m taking Graham to the airport.”
“Cool.” He shoves his mirrored shades up and sticks a hand out. “See you guys in three weeks, eh?” I shake his hand, and then he gives Brooke a quick hug as I begin to wonder what kind of twilight zone I’ve entered.
When he walks off, I’m staring at her, perplexed. Sunglasses in place, she says, “What?”
I shake my head. “Oh, I don’t know—possibly the hug and friendly banter with a guy I nearly decked in the middle of a nightclub for you a few months ago.”
She shrugs. “I guess we needed to get that shit out of the way. It was all a long time ago. I’m trying to move past it. Okay?”
I nod. “Sure. Okay.”
A valet pulls up with her black two-seater Mercedes, and I put our bags in the trunk while she tips him. I’ve barely clicked my seatbelt in place when she pulls into traffic. “So tell me… just how serious is this thing with Emma?” Her tone is very nonchalant.
“We’re not really revealing anything about it yet.” My attempt at being evasive earns me a smirk.
“Yeah, I figured that much. Because of the studio edict for Reid and Emma to look like a real-life love-match?”
“Who told you about that?”
She flips her hand off the top of the steering wheel. “He did, I guess. I don’t remember.”
This is more and more odd. So now they’re chatting? “Hmm.”
Glancing at me through her sunglasses, she says, “You can tell me, right? You know I won’t say anything to the freaking media.”
In four years of friendship, Brooke has never given me a reason not to trust her.
“All right. It’s semi-serious.”
She shoots me a look over the top of her sunglasses.
I shrug and look out the window. “And I want it to be more than semi.”
Her faux-smile is back, but she’s directing it out the windshield. “That’s new for you.”
Isn’t it though. “Yes.”
*** *** ***
REID
While I’m packing up, I text John to find out if he wants to go out tonight, and he calls me back while I wait in the lobby for the valet to bring my car around.
“Hell yeah, you know I’m game,” he says. “Any ideas?”
“I was hoping you had something. No clubs—I’ve got studio orders of exclusive coupledom until the premiere. Can’t risk taking anyone home if it could get leaked.” Not to mention the fact that Brooke will hang me up by my balls if I screw up this elaborate scheme of hers. “Any private parties?” John’s network includes plenty of the bored rich kids of LA’s most prominent cosmetic surgeons, Hollywood execs, and professionals like our dads. He’s even better connected for that shit than I am.