by L. A. Witt
Brian turned serious too, and he put his hand on my forearm. “I’m glad you didn’t go home.”
“Yeah. Me too.” I couldn’t resist and leaned across the armrest to hug him again. He hugged me back as the audience awwed and applauded, and it was once again a struggle to contain my emotions. There was just no conveying how much this man had changed my life with one little comment and a seemingly silly gesture.
We let each other go, and I pulled myself together enough to make it through the rest of the show. They only had us on for another ten minutes or so, and as soon as they went to commercial, we were herded backstage. Once we were clear of the cameras and out of the audience’s sight, I released a long breath. Okay. We’d done the thing. Now maybe we could sit down one-on-one and—
“Adam, we gotta go!” Vanessa grabbed my arm and steered me toward the door
“What? Why? What’s—”
“You’re flying out, remember?”
“Yeah, but not for—”
“Honey, it’s LAX. We need to get there so you have time to get through security.”
I looked around for Brian. “Give me a second. I just need—”
“We’re already cutting it seriously close.” There was a note of sympathy in her voice, but not in the firm grip she had on my elbow. “The only other flights out today are booked solid, so we gotta make this one.”
I blew out a breath and quit fighting her. I knew the drill. A missed flight meant a missed appearance, not to mention needing to reschedule the flight to the next appearance, and people got bitchy when that happened. Hell, I got bitchy when it happened.
But couldn’t we slow down just this one time? So I could spend a few minutes talking to the man I’d wanted to reach out to for half a freaking decade?
I glanced back, hoping to catch a glimpse of Brian before we turned the corner, but he was gone.
Damn it.
Chapter 6
Brian
I probably shouldn’t have been surprised that Adam took off the moment we’d left the stage. I’d stepped backstage, paused to get my bearings, and when I looked up, he’d been gone.
Apparently everyone wanted me gone, too. The kid with the clipboard handed me off to a bald guy who didn’t say much, and minutes later, I was in the backseat of an SUV en route to my hotel. By the time I walked into the lobby, breakfast was still being served and I’d only been gone for maybe two or three hours.
And they were already done with me.
I’m spending three days away from my dog for this?
I tried not to take it personally. This was how show business worked. I had a few friends who’d tried to make it here, and some who’d been moderately successful, and most of them had eventually walked away jaded and with no desire to see Hollywood again. To the people running Los Angeles This Morning, I was a prop, and I really hadn’t expected any more than that.
I just wish I’d been a little more than a prop to Adam.
Oh well. At least I’d gotten to see him again, and the conversation we’d had onstage had been really nice. It wasn’t a bad experience, just a bit disappointing in the end. And over too quickly.
My flight home wasn’t until tomorrow, and I had the entire day in front of me, so I texted my parents in Orange County to see if they were busy for lunch. Then I took a cab to the airport, rented a car, and drove out to the old familiar house.
“Oh, honey! It’s good to see you!” Mom opened the rickety storm door, hugged me, and kissed my cheek. “All our friends were watching this morning!”
Heat rushed into my face, but I tried to laugh it off as I released her. “I hope I didn’t sound like too much of a dork.”
She snorted and waved a hand as she let me into the house. “No, you two were adorable. I don’t think I’ve seen you smile that much in years.” She glanced over her shoulder and grinned. “Can’t imagine anyone not smiling with a boy that cute sitting beside him.”
“Mom!” I laughed. “Really?”
“Oh, come on. He’s gorgeous and you know it.”
“I’m not arguing with that, but you’re not supposed to ogle him too!”
“Pfft. I’m old, but I ain’t dead.” She paused and called up the stairs. “Hon, are you ready to go?”
“Just a minute,” came Dad’s reply.
“Always just a minute,” she muttered, shaking her head. “You’re not in a hurry, are you?”
I laughed. “Nah. I grabbed something on my way out of the hotel so I wouldn’t keel over.”
“Didn’t you eat breakfast? I guess you must’ve been out of bed at the crack of dawn to be there. I hope they fed you.”
“Yeah, they had food.” She didn’t need to know I hadn’t had the appetite for any of it.
She studied me. “I’m a bit surprised you went on that TV show. I never thought you’d do something like that voluntarily.”
“Neither did I. But…” My cheeks were so hot they had to be glowing.
Mom laughed, nudging me gently. “Well, to meet up with him, I don’t blame you. That face? That sexy beard?”
“Mom. Oh my God.”
She just chuckled.
“Anyway, yeah. It was nerve racking. And it was seriously early too. Hell, they were…” I sighed, and my shoulders sank under an invisible weight. “They were done with me by eight.” All of them. Including Adam.
She tilted her head. “What’s wrong?”
There was no point in trying to convince my mom that I was fine, so I admitted, “I guess I was hoping to actually, you know, talk to Adam for a few minutes. I didn’t even see him until we were onstage, and as soon as we were backstage, he was gone.”
Mom frowned. “That’s a shame. They brought you all this way just to talk to him for ten minutes?”
“Apparently so.” I sighed again and rolled my shoulders. “It’s disappointing, but I mean, at least I got to see him again. It was short, but it was really cool.”
Her smile came back to life. “Well, you certainly can’t say you didn’t make an impression on him. Not after that speech he gave and how he was getting choked up this morning.”
My heart sped up. So that hadn’t been my imagination. “Yeah. True. I guess I just wish I’d gotten some more time with him. Going on TV was terrifying and I had to really push myself into doing it in the first place. And it was cool. But it would have been a lot more worthwhile if he’d actually talked to me for a few minutes afterward.”
“I don’t blame you, sweetheart.”
A moment later, Dad came down the stairs, stuffing his wallet and keys into the pockets of his cargo shorts. “So how was the TV show?”
“Early.”
He grunted in amusement. “Good thing they never saw us trying to get you out of bed as a teenager.”
I laughed despite my heavy heart. “Hey, I’m better about getting up early these days. Just… not that early.”
“Nobody should be getting out of bed that early.” He shook his head. “Especially not for a damn TV show.”
Especially not to see someone who’s going to hightail it out of the room as soon as the cameras turn off.
I tamped down on the bitter thought. Adam hadn’t been obligated to do more than meet me on the show. I was disappointed, but there was no point in wasting energy being pissed at him. We’d had a moment five years ago. We had a moment today. That really should be enough.
So why is it so hard to accept that he just walked out without so much as a parting goodbye?
Probably because I was sleep-deprived and coming down off being terrified to the point of nauseated. Everything was bound to seem bigger and worse now. Once I’d had some food, and once I’d had some sleep, then maybe I could be more rational about things. I hoped, anyway.
When my parents were ready to go, we went out to the garage. I climbed into the back of Dad’s car, and while he and Mom got situated, my phone vibrated. I took it out of my pocket, expecting a text from one of my friends in Seattle who’d seen the show, b
ut no—it was a direct message on Twitter.
From Adam.
Hey, sorry I had to take off this morning. Had to catch a flight. Would have really liked to have coffee or something.
I blinked. Was… was that real? I actually rubbed my eyes, blinked a few more times, and read it again.
Yeah, it was real. And from the same Twitter account we’d used to go back and forth after the awards show.
I wrote back, It’s ok. I hesitated, finally decided to grow some balls, and added, Happy to take a raincheck on that coffee! ;)
Hopefully he’d take that for the invitation it was. I didn’t have the nerve to be more direct than that.
A reply came through as my dad was pulling out of the neighborhood and onto the main road.
I’m traveling a lot the next 2 wks. After that, I have some time off. I could meet you in Seattle?
I almost squealed like a little kid. Really? I mean, I’d love to see you, but that wouldn’t be too much of a pain?
Not at all. You flew down here to spend 10 min on camera with me. I can fly up there for a cup of coffee.
Holy shit. I was dizzy now. Adam Jacobsen was… we were really… I hadn’t had a stroke and died or something, had I?
Grinning like a dork, I wrote back. Name a time and place. Looking forward to it.
Chapter 7
Adam
Between a bunch of appearances and premieres, a wicked cold, some photo shoots that hopefully made me look like I wasn’t dying of said cold, and three round trips to Europe for interviews that totally could have been done via Skype, it was a solid month before I finally had some time to myself.
But now that I did, I was finally on my way to Seattle to see Brian.
And oh my God, I was nervous. Like, the same kind of nerves that had kept me from sleeping on a flight to London a couple of years back. I’d been on my way to meet with a powerful and eccentric producer who’d made noise about wanting to cast me. I’d been terrified that when I got there, he’d take one look and dismiss me from his sight. He’d done that to people before, so my fear wasn’t exactly unwarranted. I’d twitched and fidgeted and tried not to puke for the entire twelve-plus hour flight, and in hindsight, all that anxiety had been worth it. Because in the end he’d totally loved me and cast me in the role that really put me on the map.
In the moment, though, it had been miserable, and I had that same anxiety right now. What if Brian and I didn’t get along when it was just the two of us? We’d texted and DM’ed quite a bit over the last month, and we’d even talked on Skype a few times before my voice had crapped out thanks to my cold, but those were little snippets and sound bites. Ten or fifteen minutes at most. What if we sat down for coffee or dinner or whatever, and realized we actually couldn’t stand each other?
I shifted in my seat for the umpteenth time and wondered if I should have gone for first class after all. At least then I could be comfortable while I mentally turned myself inside out. Except, no. I was trying to fly under the radar. I’d already had three people at LAX ask me if I was Adam Jacobsen, and I’d done my usual “oh, I wish, I get that all the time.” Normally I adored meeting fans and I still kind of got a thrill out of people recognizing me, but I didn’t want the press catching on that I was on my way to Seattle. The last thing I needed was some paparazzi lurking around and interrupting my chance at connecting with Brian.
As it was, I’d taken a million precautions to keep them off my scent. I didn’t bother with the hat-and-sunglasses routine. Nothing said something to see here like that particular ensemble. Instead, I’d hidden in plain sight. Styled my hair a little differently (which basically amounted to finger-combing it wet instead of spiking it with seventeen different hair products), carried a cheap old duffel bag instead of the triple-armored designer monstrosity I usually traveled with, and wore a pair of white Apple earbuds instead of the noise-canceling top-of-the-line headphones I preferred. Weirdly enough, subtle shit like that was all it took to convince people I was just an Adam Jacobsen doppelgänger or take me off their radar completely.
I hoped, anyway. I hadn’t done an interview in weeks without someone asking about Brian, and it was obvious they were digging for something. There’d been a number of articles after the talk show where people had speculated that there was a “connection” between us. That we had “chemistry.” No one knew if Brian was gay or straight, but I’d been out from day one, so any time I gave a man a second look, everyone assumed I was into him. Which, okay, to be fair… I totally was into Brian. Whatever they thought they’d seen in my eyes on that stage? Oh yeah. They had. I just had no idea if Brian was into me, and I didn’t want a bunch of cameras showing up and ruining my chance to see if that connection or chemistry actually existed.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the captain’s crackly voice startled me. “We’re about to begin our descent into SeaTac International Airport.” He kept talking after that, but I didn’t hear any of it, and that was only partially because my ears were starting to pop.
I closed my eyes and took a few slow breaths. Almost there. The way my heartrate was skyrocketing, you’d have thought Brian would be waiting when I stepped off the plane. Except he wouldn’t be. Instead, I’d pick up my rental car and head to my hotel, and we’d meet up for dinner later. He’d fallen all over himself apologizing that he couldn’t get the day off work. Not if he wanted tomorrow and the weekend to spend with me. But really, I preferred it this way. Airports were full of people with cameras. Paparazzi lurked around LAX all the time, and for all I knew, there were some at SeaTac too. Even if I didn’t manage to slip away from the airport undetected, no one would know who I was meeting.
Rubbing the bridge of my nose, I sighed. I loved my job and wouldn’t trade it for the world, but admittedly, I still longed for the days when I could go to the grocery store or walk through an airport without someone noticing me. You’d think I’d be used to that after growing up in a town of five hundred. Everyone knew me in Kleinsville, but being famous wasn’t like having to stop every ten feet at the grocery store to talk to my old English teacher or say hi to my Aunt Renee. Those were people I knew. These were strangers with cameras who believed I’d signed away my right to any semblance of privacy the day I stepped onto a film set. And, whether or not that was true, I wasn’t about to compromise someone else’s privacy just because he was willing to meet up with me.
The plane touched down, and moments later, pulled up to the gate. Heart beating wildly, I pulled my carry-on out from under the seat and down from the overhead bin, and followed the slow-moving line up the narrow aisle. I cast a longing look at the cushy first class seats, but didn’t let those thoughts linger. It had been a fairly short flight, and flying coach had kept me on the down-low. Good enough.
SeaTac was an easy airport to navigate, and it wasn’t as enormous as others I’d been through—or maybe my gate was just in a really good spot—and before long, I was settling into my rental car. The girl at the rental desk had looked at me like she’d recognized me, and she’d definitely given my name a second glance, but she hadn’t said anything. Most people at those places were pretty good about not suddenly tweeting “OMG Adam Jacobsen totally just rented a silver Prius from the SeaTac AVIS and is probably getting on the I-5 as we speak,” so hopefully she wasn’t broadcasting my location while I sat here in the parking lot trying to figure out the unfamiliar car.
The shiny Prius had a million bells and whistles, but after a few minutes of fiddling, I had the seat where I wanted it and my hotel’s address in the GPS. When the map appeared on the screen, I wasn’t surprised to see the estimated travel time at forty-five minutes. In fact, I chuckled—Brian had warned me that Seattle traffic was no joke, and that it would probably take me longer than that to get through downtown and up into Everett, where he lived. As if anyone who lived in LA ever believed a GPS when it said you could go forty-five miles in as many minutes.
I found a radio station that apparently played techno and dance music, a
nd I hummed to myself as I left the airport. The GPS guided me through the tangle of ramps and merges, and finally I was on the I-5 and headed toward Everett.
I was still a nervous wreck and probably would be until I’d been in Brian’s company for a while. Now that I was on the ground, though, I was better. Which was no surprise. Flying seemed to be when most of my anxiety came out. Vanessa guessed that it was because there wasn’t much else to do while flying. Once we were on the ground, there were actual tasks like driving and navigating, and those could pull my focus away from how seriously fucking nervous I was. Made sense. When I went to see that producer in London, I’d settled down a lot just walking from the plane to baggage claim (which, to be fair, is like fifty-eight miles at Heathrow, so that’s bound to take care of some energy). I’d still been a mess, but I hadn’t been powerless anymore.
So as I drove up the I-5 and Seattle came into view, I was doing okay. Tapping my thumbs on the wheel in time with some Europop song I would seriously have to download later, glancing at the map occasionally, and grinding through the thick midafternoon traffic—yeah, I was doing okay. If it weren’t for that snug knot twisting in my stomach or the restless feeling in my limbs, I might’ve even been able to forget I had a reason to be nervous at all.
Except I did.
Because Brian.
I was going to see Brian tonight. In just a few hours, we’d be together. No talk show hosts as a buffer. No cameras to make us think twice about what we said. Just us.
I swallowed hard. I stopped tapping my thumbs and gripped the wheel, which only served to remind me how sweaty my palms were getting. Christ, major auditions didn’t stress me out like this anymore. What the hell was wrong with me?
Exhaling slowly, I shifted in the driver’s seat. It would be fine. Even if we never saw each other again after this weekend, there was no reason to think this visit would be a disaster. But what if we didn’t have anything to talk about? What if all our “connection” and “chemistry” started and ended with the conversation we’d had on Los Angeles This Morning or the brief chats we’d had since? I supposed I could always take an earlier flight back to LA. Or I could show myself around Seattle.
