I feel like she just fed me a pretty load of bullshit.
But… five-year financing, Lana, just do as the business lady in the nice suit tells you.
“I understand,” I say.
“Do you remember how to get to Christian’s trailer?”
“I’m sure I can manage.”
“Very well.” Samantha gives my arm a gentle squeeze. “I’ll have someone bring you a copy of the script.”
By the time I find my way back to Christian’s trailer, Penelope is already there waiting for me with a stack of papers in her hands. And it’s honestly good to see her again. I missed her dry sarcasm and bubbly personality. She unlocks the door, gives me a copy of the script, and leaves me alone.
Inside, I give the trailer a quick once-over. No bed, but there’s a couch that could host two comfortably if they were lying one on top of the other while—
Whoa.
Let’s not go there.
Nothing is going to happen here, no matter what fantasies my dirty mind comes up with. Christian wants to be friends. The worst offense possible in the ex book. I’d prefer he felt a raging hate toward me, a feeling strong enough to mirror the passion I thought we shared. But what’s friendship? It’s like saying, I like you and respect you as a person, but I have for you the same desire I feel toward an expired yogurt cup.
I sit at the small, foldable table and stare at the bundle of paper in my hands:
The Descendant of Dawn
Screenplay by Adrian J. Moore
Okay, Mr. Moore, let’s see how much of a science moron you are. And if I hurry, I can be out of this trailer before Christian comes back and never have to see him again.
Twenty-two
Christian
“Did you have to keep me on set so long?” I complain to Samantha, walking out of the “green wall” room. “Lana has left already.”
One head shake from Penny warned me of Lana’s departure as soon as we finished shooting.
“Not my fault,” Samantha says. “That woman is a machine.”
I walk to my trailer while Samantha and a costume designer follow me. “So, how did it go with the screenplay?”
“Lana found all the mistakes we planted, plus a few more that we didn’t. Really, I should thank you for bringing her on board, regardless of your personal agenda.”
At my very specific request for a certain female UCLA professor to join the team, Samantha became suspicious, so I had to fess up and tell her the truth.
“So, what’s Lana’s next assignment?” I ask. And to get rid of the costume designer, I take off the leather jacket I’m wearing and hand it to her. Precious jacket secured, the young girl leaves me and Samantha alone.
“Chris, that girl isn’t stupid,” Samantha protests. “Already today she caught me lying to keep her here as long as I could. I don’t think we can—”
I stop in front of my trailer and turn to interrupt Samantha. “I don’t care what you have to do, if you have to ask her for a list of good buzz words to make the movie sound science-y. Or if you have to ask her to write fake equations for space travel. I want Lana here every day.”
“Calm down, stallion,” Samantha says. “I’ll see what I can do. But whatever big, romantic gesture you’re planning, I suggest you get on with it.”
“You make sure Lana keeps coming on set, and I’ll take care of the romance.”
Lana
Seeing Christian becomes a drug. I know he’s no good for me, but I can’t stay away. I need my daily fix. When I arrive on set each day, my eyes immediately scan the room to find him. When I’m working in his trailer, my ears strain for the telling sounds of him approaching—like I’m doing right now. And when he’s nowhere to be found, all my mind can think about is him.
It’s like the universe is conspiring to prevent my heart from healing. I’ve tried to get away from this production, but the more quickly and efficiently I solve any problem they throw my way, the more absurd the next task becomes.
And the worst part is that being around Christian is almost too easy. We’ve fallen back into a sort of intimacy. We talk, we make jokes, and if I wasn’t the wiser I’d say we flirt—with words, stares, and the occasional unintentional touch that sets my skin on fire.
It drives me mad every time it happens, especially because I can never tell if Christian made contact by mistake or accidentally-on-purpose.
The only mercy I’ve had is that Olivia Thornton never appeared on set. Neither have more pictures of her and Christian surfaced in the news. And I don’t subscribe to any gossip magazine, but scanning their covers whenever I pass one has become a small obsession. Same as my new mania of marking the passing of time.
I’ve circled on the calendar the days until the crew moves to Vancouver. And where I couldn’t wait for the time to fly by at the beginning of shooting, the more squares I cross off, the more an irrational fear mounts in my guts.
What will I do when he’s out of my life for good? What then?
I honestly can’t say what the worse torture is: to spend time with Christian in a look-but-don’t-touch way, or to not see him at all.
Guess I’ll find out soon enough.
“Lana!” The small radio sitting on the foldable table in Christian’s trailer comes alive, startling me.
I grab it, fumbling with a few buttons before I find the right one, and press it. “Yeah.”
“You’re needed on stage four,” Samantha’s distorted voice informs me.
“I’ll be right there,” I say, settling the radio back on its charger column.
I exit the trailer with a sigh. What now?
***
When I enter the building that contains stage four, I wonder for a second if I went to a different set by mistake. The place is dark and empty. But when I peek back out the door, a plaque on the wall reading “Stage 4” confirms I’m in the right place.
Inside, the almost absolute darkness is broken only by the flickering light coming from a projector hanging from the ceiling.
“Hello?” I call.
In response, a white fabric screen is lowered from above, turning the light from the projector into a galaxy. My eyes follow the star system as it moves on the screen until it settles on a particular constellation.
And I’ve spent enough nights staring at this particular slice of the sky to immediately recognize the Christiana sitting in its center.
“What…?” I ask the darkness.
“Hey,” a familiar voice calls from behind me.
I turn to find Christian walking toward me still wearing his pilot costume—dusty, worn-out jeans, leather jacket, messy hair.
Not fair, he’s practically irresistible like that.
“What is this?” I ask.
“A romantic setting.” He stops a few feet away and looks at the fake sky. “What do you think?”
“Is this a joke? Because it isn’t funny.”
“No joke,” Christian says, coming a step closer. “You like it?”
“I’m not sure your girlfriend would approve.”
Or maybe she’s one of those confident women who don’t worry about exes.
“My—” He frowns slightly in confusion. “You mean Olivia?”
“Yeah, whatever her name is.”
“You sound jealous.”
“Am not.”
Christian’s lips curve in a warm smile.
What the hell does he have to smile about?
“Because if you were jealous,” Christian says, “you’d have no reason to be.”
A slow burning starts in my belly and my throat goes dry. “Why not?”
“The relationship with Olivia was fake.”
What is he talking about?
“What do you mean, fake?”
“A business arrangement.” He takes another step toward me. “You said you wanted the press off your back, so I fed them a different story to obsess over.”
“You what?” My knees threaten to give way. “None of it was real?”
“No.”
“But the pictures…?”
“All staged for the benefit of the paparazzi.”
I sway under the weight of this new information, but Christian is there to catch me.
I look up at him. “But I believed it.”
“I’m so sorry,” Christian says sincerely.
“I wanted to call you the next day, tell you I’d made a mistake, but then I saw the pictures…”
An expression of genuine regret crosses his face. “I’ve been an idiot.”
I want to hit him, but I can’t because he’s holding my wrists to his chest. So I lash out with words. “You tortured me for weeks.”
“I’m sorry,” he repeats.
“Why tell me now?” I push back to get away from him, but he doesn’t let me go. “I’ve been here for days; why wait?”
“I wanted to remind you first.”
“Remind me what?”
“That you laugh at my jokes, that you like to flirt with me, that your skin burns at my touch…”
So it was all on purpose. “Is that why you made the studio hire me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
His gaze is unfaltering as he says, “Because I’m in love with you.”
BOOM!
This time there’s a whole Big Bang happening in my belly.
I close my eyes and a single tear slides down my cheek. Is this real? I don’t trust my senses.
I blink a few times, then ask, “You never said it before…?”
“’Cause I’m an even bigger idiot.”
My heart breaks and heals at the same time.
“You love me?”
“I do.”
I look at him, still not able to believe what he’s saying. The doubt must show in my eyes, because Christian says, “I love you, Lana, so much that if you suffered from short-term amnesia and forgot me every night as you went to sleep, I’d make you fall in love with me all over again the next day.”
What?
“I don’t have amnesia,” I say.
“Okay, then, I love you so much that I’d run after you in the snow wearing only tiny knickers.”
“It never snows in LA.”
“Doesn’t matter, I’d do it anyway. And if we were ever on a sinking boat in the middle of a freezing ocean, you could have my wood plank.”
“Nothing of what you just said makes sense,” I say, smiling and crying a little at the same time. “But I’ll take it.”
“How about this?” He cups my face with one hand. “I love you, all the way to the stars and back.” Christian points at the glittering sky surrounding us. “And I know nothing has changed, that my life is probably still too much for you—”
“Shhhh.” I press a finger to his lips. “The day after we broke up, I also wanted to tell you I don’t care about any of that. That all I want is to be with you.”
I lower my hand from his mouth, and let him ask, “You don’t care anymore?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“How can you be?”
“Because this past month without you has been the worst of my life. Because leaving you broke my heart and gave me palpitations. Because every night, even when I thought you were dating someone else, I spent hours staring at our star.” Christian’s face lights up at my words, so I give him the last missing piece. “And because I love you, too,” I say. “To the stars and back.”
Twenty-three
Christian
Two Years Later
“And the Oscar goes to…” Julia Roberts pauses to open the envelope. “…Christian Slade, The Man by the Sea.”
I don’t trust my hearing at first, but Lana’s little hand squeeze confirms that it’s really happening.
Best actor. I won the Oscar.
Head spinning, I turn to stare at my wife, and the smile she gives me is worth a thousand golden statuettes.
I kiss her and then stand up.
The short walk to the stage seems to last forever and makes me glad I’m not a woman in heels. Now I get Lana’s fussing and fear of falling whenever she has to wear heels—like tonight.
I hop up one, two, three, four, five, six, seven steps, and then I’m on the main stage walking toward its center.
Julia, looking resplendent in a shiny black gown, hands me the statuette. As my fingers close around the cold metal, I feel like the luckiest man on earth—although, tragically, no longer the sexiest. I haven’t won the title for two years now, snatched away from me by the new guy on the block: Diego O’Donnell, just as Samantha had predicted.
Also, as an older—in Hollywood years—happily married man in real life, I’m no longer directors’ number one choice to play the romantic hero. So my life, alongside my career, is finally transitioning in the direction I’ve always wanted it to go. And all thanks to the love of one extraordinary woman.
I grab the mic and clear my throat before launching into my acceptance speech.
“Thank you to the Academy, to my director, producers, and fellow cast members. Thank you to my wife.” I pause to point at Lana. “Not only for making my life special every day, but also for picking this screenplay out of the stack for me.”
Lana watches movies now, but I swear she still prefers reading the screenplays to seeing the stories on screen. She devours all the scripts I receive, even those that Penny discards, and she’s become my number one advisor on what movies to make.
“We’re both very passionate about the environment,” I continue my address to the theater. “So this movie had a special meaning for the both of us. And as better actors have said before me”—I nod at Leo, sitting in the first row—“Climate change is real, and it’s happening right now!”
I pause again to let the applause die down.
“The Man by the Sea is a dystopian movie about life on a wasted planet Earth, but while we were filming, our entire crew couldn’t help but wonder how much of what we were portraying was fiction and how much was prophesy. My wife and I, we’re helping to shape the leaders of tomorrow, fostering a better education system so they will lead humanity on the right path one day. But while we wait for future generations to do a better job than us, we have to take responsibility for today. It’s a minute to midnight. The clock is ticking, and if we want our children to see the dawn of another bright day on our beautiful planet, we need to take action now.”
Wow, I might’ve gotten a little carried away. I can already imagine Penny teasing me, saying I’ve finally earned my Greenpeace cap. But it’s all worth it, because Lana is smiling at me so widely, with such overwhelming pride, that it feels like a balloon is threatening to burst in my chest.
“Thank you,” I conclude.
I lift the Oscar to the sky, then lower the statuette to kiss its head and point it at Lana, mouthing, “Love you.”
Lana
I listen to Christian’s acceptance speech with tears shining in my eyes. He’s worked so hard to win an Oscar, and I’m so proud of him and the message he’s sending to the world.
A lot has changed from those first rocky months of our relationship. Now that we’re a married couple and old news to the press, the paparazzi aren’t so keen on following us everywhere we go. Even if tailing us—with Christian’s reduced car fleet—would be much easier.
I’ve convinced my husband to auction off eighteen of his twenty cars and donate the proceeds to different WWF projects—re-forestation, the cleaning of the oceans, and wildlife preservation. Now we only have two cars, a Tesla and a Ferrari—the hybrid model.
Fewer cars are not the only change I’ve brought into Christian’s life. Since I moved in with him, our home is less white and a lot messier. We’ve also made it a self-sustaining house powered entirely by solar panels.
Cengel and Boles love living in a mansion and havin
g a private chef. They almost completely refuse cat food now and only eat our scraps.
Chef Jeff is still teaching us to cook, and I’ve also asked him to host a few elective classes in our charter schools. Every year, he awards a scholarship for a student to go to culinary school.
Hey, we can’t all be rocket scientists.
As for me, I quit my job at UCLA to become the full-time head of Christian’s foundation, Teachers Without Postcodes. There’s so much more I can do from this position, so many more kids I can bring better education to. The new role also gives me the flexibility to teach science classes when we’re here in LA, but also to follow Christian to whatever filming location he’s headed to around the world.
We’re happy, and there’s only one thing missing in our lives right now.
I gently caress my belly.
We started trying for a baby a month ago, and from his words, I can tell Christian is as eager as I am to grow our family. And this speech—wow!—he didn’t write one, said it’d be bad luck, so he’s talking off the cuff and really hammering down on the environmental cause.
“… we need to take action now. Thank you,” Christian finishes, and the room explodes with applause.
I join in and clap until my palms hurt, beaming at my husband as he kisses the Oscar and then points it at me, mouthing, “Love you.”
And only he can read the answer on my lips, “To the stars and back.”
Note From The Author
Dear Reader,
I hope you enjoyed To the Stars and Back. If this is the first book in the First Comes Love series you’ve read, cheer up, there are many more stories for you to binge read.
Save and get all three previous books in this special box set edition: First Comes Love, Books 1-3. Or check out each individual title.
Book 1, Love Connection, follows the story of how Richard ended up being a single British bachelor in New York.
Book 2, I Have Never, will have you laughing out loud as Richard and Blair fall in love, with the added bonus of meeting Chevron as an adorable puppy.
To the Stars and Back: A Glittering Romantic Comedy (First Comes Love Book 4) Page 18
