Graham devoted time to me late each evening, but he was otherwise engaged in being a dad to Cara and studying for finals. He warned me that he’d be busy reviewing for exams and finishing up final edits on research papers over the coming week, and then his mouth quirked adorably. “But as of Friday, I’m all yours.”
***
I’m content to have something to distract me, even if it means hotel rooms, getting up before dawn, and spending time with Reid, driving around LA and the surrounding areas. There are a lot of hours to fill outside of the hour or so I’ll spend each night, swapping life stories with Graham and asking him in whispers to compose his alternate stories of us—fairytale lives we would have had if we’d met under different circumstances, or if we’d never been actors at all.
The story he devises tonight, my first night back in LA, supposes that we’d met as regular high school students—something neither of us had ever been.
“I’d have been a senior at seventeen, instead of a college sophomore. And you’d have been fourteen—so, a freshman—wide-eyed and innocent. Though I guess that sort of describes you now, too.” His smile is teasing, but warm. “So maybe it isn’t so difficult to imagine.”
I lean my head in my hand, my eyes drinking in his face on my laptop screen. “You would have been popular, though. Why would you be interested in a freshman when you could have had your pick of any girl in the school?”
He shakes his head. “I would have seen you the first day, trying to get your locker open.” He’s referring to the first time he saw me, in the hallway of the hotel in Austin. “Immediately intrigued, I’d have walked over, acting all cool but shaking inside, thinking who is this beautiful girl? ‘Need some help?’ I’d say, and you’d look at me, all suspicious. I’d brush your fingers aside, gently, and say, ‘What’s your combination?’ but you’d be too smart for that.”
“I would?” I laugh. “I think maybe I’d just forget it on the spot, if you talked to me.”
He laughs, too. “Nah, you’d say, ‘But I’m not supposed to tell anyone my locker combination.’ And then I’d say, ‘Don’t worry, I’m safe.’” His smile is positively wicked. I’d have melted to a puddle on the floor if he’d said any such thing to fourteen-year-old me.
“After more assurances and against all better judgment, you’d give me the combination and I’d open the locker for you. Then I’d lean on the adjacent locker and say, ‘I require a small fee for damsels in locker-opening distress, you know.’ Your suspicion would come back full-force, your eyes narrowing, waiting for me to tell you this supposed fee. I’d tell you that you had to go out with me Friday, because there’s a mandatory orientation party. And since you have to go, so you might as well go with me.”
“Oh, smooth.”
“You’d get that little pensive frown you get sometimes, and you’d say, ‘Huh. No one said anything about a mandatory orientation…’” He taps his finger against his chin and I laugh at his reference to my favorite habitual word.
“So then I’d say, ‘Oh, it’s only for special freshmen—you have to be invited by a senior.’ Now you’re completely convinced that I’m full of crap. ‘Sounds like a hazing charge waiting to happen,’ you’d say. ‘No, no—would I lie to you?’ I’d say, oozing seventeen-year-old boy charm.”
“Were you this cheesy when you were seventeen?” I ask.
He grins. “Emma. I’m trying to tell a story here. And I plead the fifth.”
“Sorry.”
“So then you’d floor me. You’d say, ‘I don’t know. Would you lie to me?’ And I would look into your eyes and see everything I could ever want. I’d say, ‘Let’s skip the party. I’ll take you to dinner. And then I’ll take you somewhere private and kiss you until you tell me to quit.’ What would your answer be, Emma?”
I could barely breathe. “Oh… I think, for the sake of the story, I’d probably be okay with that.”
“You think?” His mouth turns up on one side and I can tell he’s watching me on his screen as closely as I’m watching him.
“I don’t know. I need more information about the kissing.”
He chuckles softly. “Let’s say you tell me yes, and we go to dinner. We talk, and we’re both surprised at how comfortable we feel. And then we get into my car and drive to a secluded spot overlooking our sleepy little suburban town. Totally private, dark but for a sky full of stars… and tomorrow, I’ll tell you what happens next.”
The noise that comes from my throat is half-growl and half-whimper, and he hmms. “I need to study a bit more tonight—if I even can, now—and you have to get up before five a.m. and be animated and personable on camera.”
I couldn’t care less about being animated or personable. “Mmm. More tomorrow? You won’t forget?”
“Hell no, I won’t forget,” he says, grinning. “At this point, I’ll be lucky if it doesn’t work its way into my essay on the Lost Colony of Roanoke during my final for Early Settlements of Colonial America. I can see it now: No evidence of what happened to the 114 colonists was ever found… but in my dream last night I took Emma parking and got to third base.”
“Graham!” I laugh, hands over my mouth.