Emma,
I’m sitting next to you with a directory balanced on my knee, watching you sleep and striving to compose something profound and passionate that will express how I feel. Something that will make you breathless waiting for me to return. Instead, I’m the breathless one, recalling the feel of your mouth opening to me, the stroke of your fingertips everywhere you touched me, the perfect weight of you in my arms. The thought of time away from you is torture. I haven’t even left your room and I already miss you. Tonight, we’ll talk, and I’ll tell you a story of exactly what I plan to do to you in three weeks. Or perhaps you’d prefer to tell me what you want—like a list of resolutions, or a treasure hunt, or crumbs along a pathway… I’m very good at following crumbs. Or instructions, directions, entreaties…
Yours,
Graham
***
Reid: Are you still at the hotel?
Me: Yes, leaving for the airport soon
Reid: I’ll drive you and we can talk about the interview schedule on the way
Me: k
“Your car is really… yellow.” Yellow or not, this is the fanciest non-limousine vehicle I’ve ever been in. This even beats out Marcus and his Sacramento-rich-kid Volvo. I’m afraid to touch anything.
Reid’s eyes are invisible behind the sunglasses, but I can tell he’s rolling them. “Ugh! Don’t start, woman. I’m replacing it soon anyway.”
I click the seatbelt in place and he takes off. “Why? It looks brand new.”
Smirking, he says, “Because it’s yellow.”
I laugh, confused. “But didn’t you choose it?”
Shrugging, he looks at me and smiles. “Semantics.” Taking a sharp right at the corner, he says, “Hold on,” and I’m suddenly glad for the molded seat and multiple interior handles.
“Were you a race car driver in a past life?” I ask after he weaves through several cars like he’s James Bond.
“Too fast for you, Emma?” he asks, laughing. “Damn. I’m always going too fast for you. I’ve gotta learn to rein it in…”
Lips pressed tight, I glance at him, and he flips me a patented Reid Alexander smile, decreasing his speed and moving into the right lane, his hand smoothly working the gear shift between us. “I’m just teasing, you know.”
I shrug in reply, hoping we aren’t going to rehash what happened last fall, hoping he isn’t going to renew his request for another chance. Everything with Graham is too new, and I’m not ready to share it, or defend it to Reid.
He’s quiet for several minutes, tapping his fingers on the wheel along with the beat of the music. Finally, he clears his throat and says, “So, we have a few semi-local radio and TV appearances to do—something scheduled every day next week.”
I sigh, relieved at the change of subject. “I guess I’ll be back in LA Monday, then.”
He nods once. “Most are morning shows beginning at totally unacceptable times of day—starting with Monday morning at six.”
“Six a.m.? Crap.”
He shakes his head. “That word is nowhere near strong enough for anything that begins at six a.m. The first one’s at a local LA station, though. I’ll drive, or get a car, and pick you up at your hotel, so don’t worry about transportation. Actually I might as well handle that for all of them. We don’t want anyone talking to us separately if at all possible, what with our romantic charade.” He smiles at me again, but playfully. No reason for alarm.
The coming week will include lots of one-on-one time with Reid. Not long ago I’d have been euphoric over a chance like that. Now it makes me nervous in a whole different way. Though I no longer want a relationship with him, he’s still charismatic and curiously easy to be around—most of the time. I should feel more distrustful and wary. That’s the problem, really—I’m not totally on guard when every logical cell in my body tells me I should be. But then that’s the sort of thing at which Reid Alexander excels—faking trustworthiness.
The rest of the trip is filled with small talk. He asks what I’m planning to study in college, and I ask about his upcoming project—an action film opposite Chelsea Radin, small-town weathergirl turned hot celebrity. He doesn’t bring up last fall or our conversation in March. When we arrive at the airport, he hops out to retrieve my bag from the trunk. Pulling the handle up and out, he presses it into my hand, and before I can react, he leans in close and brushes my cheek with a kiss.
He’s sliding his sunglasses back on and getting into his car, calling, “See ya Monday morning,” while I’m standing on the sidewalk, blinking. The kiss was an unexpected shock, even if it wasn’t on the mouth and seemed oh-so-casual. But his mostly-harmless kiss isn’t what has me frozen.
On the other side of the multiple one-way lanes in front of my departure gate stands a girl with a camera aimed directly at me. This is no cell phone, and no touristy three hundred dollar Kodak. It’s a big, black, professional-looking piece of equipment. Damn. It. As I turn away, her face breaks into a happy, evil grin before she turns, too, quickly disappearing into the parking garage.
I know what just happened between Reid and me on the sidewalk: an innocuous kiss. I also know exactly how it will look on every celebrity gossip website to which that girl can upload and sell a photo.
*** *** ***
Brooke
I’m not as afraid of the paparazzi as some celebs. Very little of my life isn’t an open book, anyway. Aside from my one ginormous secret—that somewhere out there is a (most likely) blonde, blue-eyed, beautiful three-year-old with a mix of genes from Reid and me. (God help whoever’s trying to raise that kid if there’s any truth to the “nature” end of the nature versus nurture debate.)