An older woman passes me a tissue with a sympathetic smile. “Whoever he is, he’s not worth it, honey.”
But that only makes me cry harder.
Because once I might have agreed with her. He was too selfish, too shallow, too irresponsible. An arrogant player jerk. The flashes of more that I’d seen in him were obviously wrong.
Except they weren’t.
That version of him that I fell in love with—affectionate, caring, driven, protective—that Eric did exist. Just not for me.
And somehow, knowing that I was right, but just not the right one, makes it hurt that much more.
8
ERIC
I wait at the gate, watching the bathroom door. They’re calling for first class to board, and Calista hasn’t reemerged. Any second now, they’re going to start boarding groups in coach.
“… and then my eighty-six-year-old grandmother says, ‘That’s what the shotgun is for!’” Katie laughs. “Can you believe that?”
I smile automatically, my attention fixed across the corridor.
“Hey.” Katie nudges me. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m just…” I jerk my head toward the bathroom.
She follows the gesture with a frown. “Do you think she’s in there getting high?” she asks in loud whisper.
“What? No.” I shake my head. “It’s just been a crazy couple of days is all. She just needed a minute, I think.”
Is Calista going to miss the flight? Refuse to get on? It seems entirely possible after what just happened. Though I’m still not quite sure what happened.
Just Callie looking up at me, hurt, with her eyes shiny with tears, asking me about getting married.
Fuck. Fuck!
This should not be possible. She had … feelings once, I knew that. But that was years ago. Before.
“Please tell me you didn’t go through with calling her mother, at least,” Katie says, drawing my attention back to her. She’s now watching the bathroom door with me.
I shift uncomfortably. “I didn’t have a choice.”
“Really?”
“It’s the only way Callie would agree to it.” I jam my hands into my pockets. “She’s so damned determined to hide.”
But now I’m wondering why, exactly. Her mother sent her away to try to clear the slate, taking advantage of the notoriously short half-life of most scandals. But Calista wanted a new life, something far away from Hollywood and her mistakes.
And me?
I don’t know anymore.
“Maybe that says something, then,” Katie says. “If you have to bully people into this project, maybe you’d be better off—”
I look at her sharply. “It’s important to me.” I don’t want to have this argument again. Not here, not now. Katie and I rarely fight about anything, but the Michigan Plan, as she calls it, is responsible for a lot of escalating tension lately.
“And it’s not bullying,” I add, shifting my attention back to the bathroom door. I’ve seen several cycles of women come and go. It’s not the line that’s holding her in there. “I’m trying to fix things.”
Katie raises her eyebrows. “By twisting her arm into doing a show she doesn’t want to do?”
It’s hard to explain. I know Callie. She does want to do the show. Or she would, if everything hadn’t gotten all messed up. Except now, I’m not sure about that. About any of it.
I hurt her so badly. How can she possibly still care what I do or who I do it with? And yet she seems to. Everything is suddenly very confusing. And absurdly, I feel a spark of anger at Calista for making it all muddled.
“Come on,” Katie says, looping her arm through mine and tugging gently. “Let’s get our seats. Overhead bins are going to fill up fast, and you have Calista’s bags, too.”
I resist.
“Eric, if she’s not coming, you can’t exactly drag her onto the plane,” Katie points out, amused. She nuzzles in next to my chin. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but there are other actors who can play that role,” she reminds me. “Lots of them.”
“Maybe,” I say, even as a voice screams inside me that no one is as right for Evie as Calista. Plus, we would miss out on the Starlight effect.
But Katie’s right—I’ve used the one card I had to play, and that’s it. If Callie decides to stay, then she does. The money I’ve already given to Lori will majorly screw with my budget if I have to hire another actor. But maybe that outcome would be for the best. I don’t know.
“Or,” she added hesitantly, “you could always just…”
Cancel. Close up shop. Quit before you even start.
Katie is convinced that I’ll never be whole, that I’ll never truly be better, until I’m away from everything that made me the dysfunctional wonder I am—Hollywood, fame, show business, and even California in general.
Katie’s dream is to move back to Michigan where she can be near her family and start her own veterinary practice. And I’ll do … something. What exactly, she’s never been particularly clear about, though she’s mentioned more times than coincidence allows that her dad is looking for a good right-hand-man at his real estate firm.
No. This industry may be desperately beyond-measure fucked up, but it’s all I know, all I’ve ever wanted.
Katie must see it in my expression. “Okay, I’ll stop,” she says, pressing a kiss against my bruised cheek.
For now. She’s supportive … to an extent. Pleased that I have direction, though less pleased with the direction I’ve chosen and hopeful it will change. Soon.
I let Katie pull me away and onto the plane.
Katie, always self-sufficient, stows her bag and then helps with Callie’s. Maybe I should have left the bags with the gate agent if Calista’s not coming. But the thought of handing it over to the flight attendant makes me tighten my grip on her backpack and the battered laptop within, like having it here will summon her to follow.
Once we’re settled in our seats—Katie on the aisle and me next to the window—Katie pulls a magazine out of her bag and starts flipping pages. “Calista didn’t seem to know anything about your life now,” Katie ventures. “Not about Bitsy or how we met.”
Or that we’re engaged.
I tense, warning bells going off in my head. Katie is not crazy dramatic, emphasis on crazy—she’s not an actress, after all—and that’s one of my favorite things about her. But I can feel the subtext here bubbling under the surface. “We haven’t talked since the accident,” I remind her.
“Until yesterday.”
“Yeah.”
She looks at me expectantly.
“It just … didn’t come up.” That sounds like an evasion, I can hear it, like the words are sliding sideways off my tongue, but it’s the truth. “Honestly, I was so focused on getting her to sign on that we never really talked about what was going on with me.”
She frowns. “Really?”
At the time, it hadn’t really occurred to me how strange that was. Calista hadn’t asked a single question about my life now, except as it related to the work. Okay, and my dad. And Chase. That made sense if she hated me, was only tolerating my presence because I forced her to via Lori.
But then she has the nerve to give me the big wounded eyes like I was hiding Katie? Like I somehow hurt her by having a life? And why the hell do I feel guilty?
That spark of anger returns. Why does she have to make this so confusing?
“Yeah, I don’t know,” I say curtly to Katie.
“Ladies and gentlemen, just a few more minutes and then we’ll close the door and be on our way,” the flight attendant says over the intercom.
No sign of Calista. Shit.
“Breathe,” Katie says, without looking up from her magazine. She reaches over to squeeze my knee.
I grit my teeth to keep from snapping at her. She’s just trying to help.
Because this isn’t a big deal. I can totally hire someone else in the next twenty-four hours without hosing my entire produc
tion schedule.
Right.
A few seconds later, I catch a glimpse of Calista’s bright blond hair as she rounds the corner onto the plane and steps into the aisle.
My shoulders slump with relief.
Callie moves with her head up, gaze firmly fixed on some point in the distance, and for a moment, I think she’s going to breeze past us without a word. But then she waves at Katie.
Katie waves back. “Hey. Are you sure you don’t want to switch—”
“Oh, no, this is fine,” she says, already stepping past us, without as much as a word or a glance in my direction.
But even with as quickly as she’s moving, I can see the faint signs of puffiness around her eyes. She’s been crying. It’s not as noticeable as it might have been, but Callie knows all the tricks around that. I don’t know how many times I walked into her trailer to find her with her head tipped back and her mother applying cold cloths or those eye-pad things.
Sharp-toothed guilt returns to gnaw on me. And irrationally, that makes me even angrier. I reach for my seatbelt.
“What are you doing?” Katie asks, putting her hand over mine to stop me.
That is an excellent question. What am I doing? Preparing to have an argument on an airplane with my former … friend? Co-star? It feels like there should be a stronger word for whatever Calista is to me, but there isn’t.
“She might want her laptop,” I say. “She has homework that’s due.” Which is true, and sends another wave of that guilt through me. She was trying to make a life for herself, and I showed up and messed that up for her. I knew those facts before, but now, knowing what she might still feel …
During our Starlight days, I hadn’t been aware of how deep those feelings went, not until she showed up at my trailer one night, about a month after we filmed that damned AU episode.
A knock sounded at my door as I was scrubbing the makeup off my face.
“Yeah. Come in,” I shouted, without bothering to check. Or think.
“Hello?” a voice called uncertainly.
Calista. My heart sped up in spite of myself. I’d been trying to keep my distance, avoiding situations that left the two of us alone. Because every time she walked by, she left a wake that smelled of vanilla, even underneath the various scents of hair products and makeup, and it instantly transported me to that shitty blanket and fake grass and the feel of her warm and moving beneath me.
But she was barely eighteen, almost five years younger than me, and beyond that, so sheltered that she actually believed I was a good guy.
I wiped my face off on a towel and stepped out of the bathroom. “Yeah, hey. What’s up, kid?”
She winced.
I frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I just … I need to ask you something.” Her gaze flicked down, her cheeks flushing as she realized I wasn’t wearing a shirt.
I felt the heat rise in my skin, as if she were touching me instead of just looking.
Shit. Nope.
I backed up a step, grabbing a shirt from the floor. One of Byron’s that was due back at wardrobe, as it happened, but it didn’t matter. “Come in, sit down.” I yanked the shirt on as she settled on the couch. “I’ve got a few minutes. Did your mom say something?” Chase and I helped her move out after she fired Lori, but Lori still found ways to interfere, like bringing her housewarming gifts—rugs and shit—along with healthy portions of guilt. Zinnia needs braces. Poppy needs a specialist for her asthma. And you can’t expect Dahlia’s earnings to cover all of that—she’s just a baby! I’m not asking for handouts, Calista. Just let me do my job. You need me.
That kind of crap.
“No, no, it’s not anything like that.” Callie hesitated, pulling her knees up to her chest. She had already changed to her own clothes: yoga pants with a long loose shirt over them and white Converse. She twisted a loose thread from her shoe around her finger until the tip turned purple.
“Callie…” My phone buzzed on the coffee table impatiently, flashing a photo.
“Angelica?” Calista asked, her face carefully blank.
“Yeah, she’s on her way.” Angelica and I had been friends (who occasionally fuck each other) for years. Her father was a big-time agent, and we ran in the same circles. “There’s a party tonight that’s supposed to be—”
“I thought you had that thing with your dad tomorrow,” Calista says.
“Another awkward lunch so he can tell me how disappointed he is in me one more time, while introducing me to assistant number four who is probably going to end up being wife number three? Yeah, I think I can skip that.” More likely, I wouldn’t even wake up until it was already over, which, as far as I was concerned, was the ideal scenario.
She shakes her head at me. “It’s only going to piss him off.”
“What, like you and Lori are super tight?” I snort.
“At least he’s trying,” she says.
“It’s better when he doesn’t. You and I both know that.”
After a moment, she nods.
It was the one thing we had in common that others didn’t understand—Calista and I were orphans. We just happened to be orphans who had parents somewhere in the world. Callie’s mother was more manager than mom, too busy treating her daughter as an investment to ever stop and think of her as a kid. And these days, my dad preferred to pretend I didn’t exist unless I forced the issue.
Sometimes I did, just to prove that I could.
Callie didn’t say anything, just kept twisting that thread around her finger. “Do you ever think about what’s next?” she asked.
“What, like, after death?” I grin at her.
“No, I mean, after this.” She gestured around my trailer. “No one is saying, but they haven’t picked us up for next season and the ratings are—”
“—in the toilet and buried under four feet of shit,” I finished. “Yep.” I dropped into the armchair across from her, trying to figure out where she was going with this. “Are you worried about getting another job without your mom? Because no matter what happens, you’re going to be better off without her.” If I’d been the worrying type, I might have been a little concerned for myself, given that most people still seemed to think that all I had to do was ask my dad for work. Which might have been true if we could stand to be in the same wing of the house long enough to have a civil conversation.
Not since I was about fourteen.
And because I had that reputation among others, getting callbacks wasn’t always easily accomplished. Casting directors rarely took me seriously.
Fortunately, I was not the worrying type.
“No, it’s not that,” Calista said so softly I could barely hear her. “I just … this is the longest I’ve ever worked anywhere.”
“I know,” I said, trying to school myself into patience as my phone continued to buzz. This had to be important or Calista wouldn’t have sought me out at the end of a very long day.
“And my family is … my family,” she said, her mouth tightening.
Yeah, if I thought mine was bad, at least we had the good sense to avoid each other most of the time. Easy to do when Dad was always working and Mom now lived on another continent most of the time. Callie was not so lucky.
“I didn’t go to high school,” Calista continued. “I don’t really have friends, not outside of work.”
Ah, now I was getting it. When work was your entire existence, your family and your social circle, what happened when work went away? It wasn’t just the paycheck, it was her actual life she was worried about.
I reached over and wrestled her hand away from the loose thread before she cut off her circulation for good. “You’ll get another job. You’ll find other friends. You’re going to be fine, Callie.” I squeezed her cool fingers and then let go before I was tempted to linger.
She nodded but seemed unconvinced.
“And if you don’t?” I shrugged. “Who needs more friends?” I asked. “You’ve got me and Chase.” br />
“Do I?” she asked.
“What do you mean?” If I were a smarter person, warning bells should have gone off then.
“I’m just afraid everything’s going to change. And maybe I’m not going to find people that I feel the same way about.” She lifted her shoulders in a shrug, then slowly raised her gaze to meet mine. “Or people who feel the same way about me.” Her chin tipped up defiantly, as if she was daring me to deny something. Bright patches of color stained her cheeks.
Uh-oh. I suddenly had the sensation of falling, like gravity wasn’t working as it should have been. It made me a little panicky. Surely she wasn’t talking about what I thought she was talking about.
But if she was …
I stood in a burst of nervous energy mixed with frustration. “Cal, I think you’re worrying too much about something that’s not going to be a problem, and I have to go—”
“I’m not, though,” she said. “Worrying.”
I just looked at her.
She blushed. “I mean, yeah, I am. But not like that.” She takes a deep breath. “I want … I need a favor.”
Fuck. “Calista…”
Before I could say more, she unfolded herself from the couch and moved to stand in front of me.
Too close. I could feel her, like I was standing at the edge of an energy field. Her energy field. Like one of those auras Stepmother Two had always gone on about. I was caught between wanting to step back and push forward. To touch her, to bury my face in the softness of the skin where her neck met her shoulder and bite gently. To see if she’d react like she had that day on set, pushing her hips against me with a moan.
“There are things that I haven’t…” Her face turned a deeper shade of scarlet. “Next year at this time, we don’t know where any of us will be, if we’ll still be as close. And I don’t want to lose … this. My chance.”
This is a bad idea. I should back away. I should just leave …
“What are you saying?” I asked instead, my voice gone to gravel, daring her to specify.
But her chin went up, responding to the implicit challenge. “I’ve never slept with anyone. I want you to…” She hesitated, and then rallied. “I want us to.” She folded her arms.