The Real Thing

by Lizzie Shane

  Maggie’s eyebrows popped up. “You know Sunset Boulevard?”

  “Miss Lolly loved old movies. My favorite is His Girl Friday.”

  Lolly had loved the classics. Half her VHS tapes had been black and white. “Let me guess. You want to be a journalist?”

  “Nah.” The girl grinned, dimples flashing. “I just like the part where that one girl leaps out the window for, like, no reason at all. It’s crazy.”

  Maggie snorted a laugh, her hand going automatically to cover her face. She wasn’t sure she’d ever made that sound in public before. “Where did you come from?” she asked the odd little girl. Obviously she’d known Lolly—

  A pit sank into her stomach. What if the girl only came up with her family every few months? What if she didn’t know Lolly was gone?

  The girl waved up the beach path. “We live on the beach side. I’m Sadie. But my dad said I’m not supposed to bother you.”

  “You aren’t bothering me,” Maggie said automatically. And then the rest of what she’d said sank in.

  The beach side… my dad…

  Maggie's gaze rapidly took in the dark eyes, the thick lashes.

  Holy shit. Ian Summer had a kid.

  Chapter Five

  The girl didn’t look like Ian. She had delicate features, deep dimples, and mahogany curls spilling out of a ponytail at the back of her baseball cap. But the eyes, dark and so thickly lashed it looked like she had an extra row of eyelashes—those were Ian’s eyes.

  “You’re Ian Summer’s kid? Ian Summer’s your father,” Maggie said, just to confirm.

  “Yep.” The girl—Ian Summer’s daughter—nodded without looking up from Cecil, who was now sprawled on his back begging for belly rubs. She tipped her head to the side so she could see Maggie around the brim of her baseball cap. “What’s your name?”

  “Maggie,” she said, still feeling like she was trying to process the surrealness.

  Not that Ian Summer couldn’t have a kid. It had been fifteen freaking years. Of course he could have a kid. And a wife. A whole life. That was what people did when they grew up.

  “You’re Miss Lolly’s niece, aren’t you? The famous one? My dad won’t let me watch the Alien Adventuress movies. He says they’re too violent.”

  Maggie blinked, unsure what to say to that. “Ah…”

  “I’m Sadie. Do you really like the Dodgers?”

  “What?”

  “Your hat.” The girl—Sadie—jerked her chin upward and Maggie realized she was still wearing her “disguise,” as Bree had jokingly dubbed the baseball cap and sunglasses she used when she wanted to be incognito.

  “Oh.” Maggie tugged off the hat and pocketed her sunglasses, since she didn’t need them in the muted light slanting through the trees. “I don’t know.”

  “We’re Mariners fans,” Sadie announced. “True to the Blue. Though I guess the Dodgers are blue too. Different blue. Do you go to a lot of games? I bet you can get really good seats. Cuz you’re famous and all.”

  “Uh…I probably could,” she admitted, though she’d never used her fame that way. The hat was just a hat.

  “My dad always gets the cheap seats. Which is still cool and all, even if you can’t really see anything. Going to the games is the best. We get there super early for batting practice and they let you go all the way down to the first row—though you get in trouble if you lean over the wall to touch the field. Learned that lesson. But it’s still cool. I know all the players' names and Dad taught me to say please and thank you in Spanish and Japanese when I was like five so I almost always get a ball—or I used to. They always give them to the little kids, you know?”

  Maggie had never been around kids. Ever. Not even for a film. And she had no idea how to talk to this verbal whirling dervish, but luckily Sadie didn’t seem to need much help to keep the conversation going.

  “I enter a contest every year to be the kid who gets to say ‘Play Ball’ at the beginning of the game, but I haven’t won yet. But this one time, I got to run the bases. There were like a million kids around me so it wasn’t like it was just me being Dee Gordon for a day, but I ran on the actual field where they run. How cool is that? They let kids run the bases after every Sunday home game, but my dad said I could only do it the one time because otherwise it wouldn’t be special. But I feel like doing it again would just mean it was more special, you know?”

  “Well…um…”

  “It’s like if you won the Oscar once you aren’t like, okay, done that, it won’t be less special if you win again.”

  “I’ve never actually been nominated for an Oscar, so I wouldn’t know.”

  “No?” Sadie shrugged. “I wouldn’t worry about it. My dad says that stuff is super political.”

  “I get invited to all the after parties,” Maggie offered, feeling the odd urge to impress the girl. “And I did present once. Cinematography.”

  “Yeah? And would you want to do it again?”

  “Of course. It was exciting to be part of it.”

  “Exactly!” Sadie stood suddenly, abandoning Cecil who had been wallowing in her attention. “It’s not less special to do things twice! That’s such an excuse. I think he just doesn’t want to do it because it’s, like, a super long drive home and he doesn’t like to go to the games on Sunday when he has to work on Monday, so we only go to games on Saturday when we can stay over at my nana’s place. But if that’s the reason he should just say that instead of saying it wouldn’t be special because it would be special. And now he doesn’t want me to go to this game next Saturday with my friend Lincoln for, like, no reason. It’s like he thinks I’m a baby. My nana comes all the way down here every weekend to watch me so my dad can go out, but I don’t need a sitter anymore. I’m not gonna set the house on fire.”

  “Where’s your mom?” Caught up in Sadie’s drama, Maggie asked the question before it occurred to her that it was a completely inappropriate thing to ask a kid. “I’m sor—”

  “She died.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry,” Maggie repeated, though the little girl’s words were more blunt than wrenching. “Mine too.”

  “Yeah?” Sadie cocked her head, fascinated in a way that should have been macabre but was actually endearing. “How did she die?”

  Maggie hesitated—was it wrong to tell Ian’s kid about drug overdoses? Maggie had learned about them when she was eight, but she hadn’t had a choice. Normal kids didn’t know about that stuff, did they? The girl was almost terrifyingly sharp and incredibly matter of fact about just about everything, but there were limits about what you were supposed to say to other people’s kids, weren’t there?

  Still, she didn’t want to lie. “She, um, she was an addict.”

  “Ah.” Sadie nodded sagely. “The opioid epidemic.”

  Christ. Maggie blinked. Who was this kid?

  “I listen to NPR,” Sadie explained.

  “Of course you do.”

  “How old were you when she died?”

  “Eight.”

  Sadie nodded. “I’m nine. But my mom died when I was two.”

  Maggie thought of Ian saying he’d been staying at the beach house full time for eight years. Was that about the same time he became a widower and single father?

  “I don’t remember her,” Sadie went on with the force of a freight train. “Do you remember your mom?”

  “Not much,” Maggie admitted. “I didn’t always live with her.” Her mother had pretty much always been a mess. Which was something she hadn’t even told her publicist when they were creating the narrative of Maggie’s past. People were constantly asking Maggie how she felt about things and it had turned her into a compulsive over-sharer—when the world was endlessly fascinated by you, you started to lose your filters—but she never talked about her mom. What was it about this girl that had her spilling all her secrets? Or maybe it was being back here, at Lolly’s place.

  “Did you live with Miss Lolly?” Sadi
e asked, with a perfect lack of awareness that she might be touching a sore spot. “Did you know my dad when he was young?”

  “I stayed with Lolly sometimes,” Maggie admitted. “In the summers. And yeah, I met your dad when we were about your age. A little younger, I guess.”

  That first summer after her mother ODed. When her father had still been in the military. And the dream that he might come back and rescue her had still felt possible.

  “Was he a nerd?” Sadie demanded. “I bet he was a nerd.”

  Maggie blinked, bringing herself back to the moment, and smiled in spite of herself at the memory. “He was not a nerd. Definitely not.” Sadie groaned, visibly disappointed, and Maggie shook her head, grinning. “Sorry to disappoint, but your dad was cool.”

  “Not possible,” Sadie insisted. “You obviously didn’t know him.”

  A voice filtered through the trees, carried on the salty breeze. “Sadie?”

  Sadie cringed. “Dang it,” she muttered, looking over her shoulder toward the beach. “I gotta go. Bye, Cecil.” She bent, giving Cecil a final pat before turning and hurrying up the overgrown path with an unmistakable air of guilt. She was obviously trying to escape before her father knew who she’d been talking to, but before she got more than ten feet, Cecil bounced to his feet and barked—and Ian Summer stepped around a corner into sight.

  “Sadie.” His gaze tracked past his daughter to where Maggie and Cecil stood at the edge of Lolly’s yard, and his eyes tightened in a frown. “I told you to stay away from Lolly’s house.” He was still looking at Maggie, but his words were obviously for his daughter.

  “You said I couldn’t bother the people at the house, but I could never be a bother.” Sadie slapped on an exaggeratedly angelic expression, even going so far as to flutter her lashes.

  Don’t oversell it, kid, Maggie thought at her, though she kept her mouth shut as Ian swung his ominous frown to lock on his daughter.

  “You knew what I meant.”

  “I was investigating,” Sadie explained, all innocence.

  “After I told you not to.”

  Sadie opened her mouth to argue again, but Maggie beat her to it. “Why did you tell her that?”

  Ian’s gaze flew back to Maggie, his frown deepening and he started walking again, approaching until he stood at his daughter’s side where she’d frozen ten feet down the path when he came into view. “I didn’t want her bothering you,” he explained, resting his hand on Sadie’s shoulder.

  Bullshit.

  Maggie held his gaze long enough to show him she heard the lie—until Cecil broke the moment by scampering over to bark at Ian’s ankles, demanding attention.

  “This is Cecil,” Sadie explained, kneeling to spoil him, but Ian wasn’t having it.

  “Sadie, go back to the house.”

  “Why? Maggie’s nice—”

  “Sadie.”

  The girl groaned, rolling her eyes. “Fine.” She stood, making a show of reluctance. “Bye, Cecil. See ya, Maggie.”

  “Bye, Sadie.”

  Ian didn’t move, his gaze on Maggie as Sadie trudged up the path. Cecil watched her go for a moment before flopping onto his belly in the brush with a canine sigh. Maggie didn’t move, feeling uncomfortably like she was about to be taken to the principal’s office, and had to remind herself that she hadn’t done anything wrong as Sadie slumped out of sight. Still Ian didn’t speak.

  “Cute kid,” she said finally, but the words came out stiff with the knowledge that Ian had warned his daughter away from her. Like she was some kind of predator.

  He grimaced, apparently aware of the fact that he was coming across as a bit of a dick. “I’m not trying to offend you. I just… It’s my job to protect her.”

  “From me.”

  He didn’t rise to the bait, meeting her eyes steadily. “From anything that might hurt her.”

  “She seems pretty tough.”

  His dark eyes were hard. “That doesn’t mean I want to watch her get hurt.”

  Maggie nodded, folding her arms across her stomach. “And you think I would hurt her.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  But he hadn’t denied it.

  People had a lot of ideas about her. They thought they knew her because they’d seen her in the movies. They thought they had a right to touch her because fame had taken away her right to privacy. They thought she was trashy because of all the tabloid stories about her love life that seemed to pop up every three months like clockwork. But no one had ever acted like she wasn’t to be trusted around children.

  And Ian knew her. He’d been her best friend when she was eight. Her first crush when she was thirteen. She’d been three-quarters certain she was in love with him throughout her teen years.

  And he was acting like she was a monster.

  She knew she’d be hurt later, but right now all she felt was anger, burning away the numbness and filling her with pure, clean-burning fire. In that moment, Maggie snapped.

  “What is your problem with me?”

  Chapter Six

  Rage was a good look on Maggie.

  But then, everything was a good look on Maggie Tate. That was why she was Maggie Tate.

  She’d taken off the baseball cap and sunglasses. Her blonde hair was still gathered into a sloppy bun at the nape of her neck, but he could see her face more clearly now. And her eyes. She’d always had the most incredible eyes he’d ever seen. Turquoise. Seriously, who had turquoise eyes? But Lori had, and Maggie did, and they were shooting sparks at him now.

  “You’ve been glowering at me since the second I showed up. We used to be friends,” she reminded him.

  Yeah. And then you got famous. She’d gotten a taste of success and left everyone she cared about behind. Ian figured he had a right to have a chip on his shoulder about women like that.

  “What did I ever do to you?” she demanded.

  “Lolly was my friend,” he said, the words hard.

  “So because she and I disagreed about how I should live my life, I’m the antichrist now? You know me.”

  Ian didn’t know exactly what Lolly’s falling out with Maggie had been about, but he knew enough to get the broad strokes. And he knew enough to know that Lolly had been upset. Hurt. He didn’t want Sadie getting hurt too when Maggie left. Because she would leave. Women like her always left.

  “You said you were fixing the place up to sell. You aren’t sticking around and I don’t want Sadie getting attached.”

  “Is it really so horrible? Having a friend for a few weeks at a time? Most of my friends are people I only know for the length of a film shoot. Did it scar you for life when I left when we were kids? We always knew you were going back to Seattle and I was going back to El Paso, but we were friends, weren’t we? Was that so traumatizing?”

  God, she was just like Sadie and his mother. What was it with women and their incessant need to argue him to death today?

  “So you want to be friends with a nine-year-old now?” he asked, the words icy.

  “Maybe I could use a friend,” she snapped, and Ian had a feeling it was the most honest thing he’d heard her say as something vulnerable flashed in her eyes.

  The hunch that he might actually be behaving like an irrational dick began to creep up the back of his neck, but she was already holding up her hand like a stop sign.

  “I get it. I’ll stay away from your kid.” She turned, heading back toward Lolly’s house. “C’mon, Cecil.”

  The fluffy little designer dog Ian had forgotten about popped up from his place in the brush and scurried after her.

  “Lori…”

  “It’s Maggie,” she said, something about the words tired as she looked back over her shoulder.

  “Right. Sorry.” She turned back toward the house and her golden hair caught the sunlight as she stepped out of the shade.

  He remembered the first time she’d dyed it, the summer they were thirteen. She’d be
en blonde her entire career. How many people in the world even knew it wasn’t her real hair color? How many people really knew Maggie Tate?

  Ian shook off the thought. It was none of his business. He had enough to worry about without adding a rogue movie star to the mix. He turned back toward the beach house, pushing the great Maggie Tate out of his mind.

  * * * * *

  Maggie stepped back into the cool, dark cave of Lolly’s living room with the words maybe I could use a friend echoing in her head.

  She didn’t have many friends. Not for the deep stuff anyway.

  She had a thousand acquaintances. Co-stars she’d worked with and gotten along with. People she joked with and hugged with genuine enthusiasm on the red carpet. Crew members who were kind to her, whose kids’ names and birthdays she always tried to make a special point to remember. Directors who had been dicks to her in the name of making a better movie and would then turn around and pretend they were the best of pals after the cameras stopped rolling and they stopped snarling at her.

  Those people didn’t know anything about her life, really.

  Melanie knew. Mel knew everything. Well, everything about her life in Hollywood. Her manager hadn’t known about her father or Lolly. Melanie cared about her, Maggie genuinely believed that. And they were friends, in a way. But Mel was also an employee whose job was to keep Maggie functioning. To organize her life so it didn’t derail her career. And lately things with Mel had been strained. Or maybe that was just Maggie feeling the strain of living a life that no longer felt like it fit her quite so well.

  She did have one friend, Bree. Though that friendship always felt sort of fragile to her. Like she was going to mess it up and it would go up in smoke.

  A year ago Bree Davies had been Maggie’s decoy, a look-alike Maggie paid to pretend to be her to throw the press off the scent when she wanted privacy. Maggie had been engaged to Demarco then—who was quite possibly the nicest man she’d ever dated and who really hadn’t deserved the way things had blown up in his face. The way she had blown up in his face, like a scandal grenade he’d been holding when it suddenly went off.