by Virna DePaul
“Oh. Cool.” I breezed by them to the kitchenette, tore open the freezer, and yanked the Jim Bean from the top shelf.
"Whoa. Man, what's wrong?" Shane asked, finally finding his voice, probably glad for the shift in subject.
I debated whether or not to spill the beans as I twisted off the cap. Tyler beat me to it.
"It's pretty obvious to me. Something happened with Gwen. Nothing else, with the exception of getting fired, could rile him up this much."
"Shit!" exclaimed Shane, rounding on me. "You didn't get fired, right?"
I leveled him with a dour stare.
"Another fight?" Shane inferred in disbelief. He opened his arms, hands open and inquiring, and lifted his shoulders. "You hardly know one another. What do you guys even have to fight about? Did she not like your trunks, or something?"
"Oh, no,” I mumbled, voice gravelly. “She liked those," I murmured.
Shane went silent. Tyler looked up from his phone. They both stared intently, waiting for me to continue. I realized that this would probably devolve, quickly, into some chatty gossip session that I really didn’t want to be a part of. I contemplated locking myself in my room and hoarding the bottle to myself.
"Forget it," I silenced before either one could prompt me to elaborate.
Mercifully, neither one pushed me farther. "Why don't we go do something?" Shane suggested.
"Such as?" Tyler droned, attention once again ensnared by his phone.
"We could drive up to Sandia Peak, if anyone has a car. A bunch of people keep telling me to see it. Maybe Lyle would let us borrow one? We could take a six pack and chill for a while."
"The overlook would be closer," Tyler suggested in his this isn't a request voice. "I'll lose service that far up."
"No phones allowed, man," Shane countered, as if he had a death wish.
Tyler sank deeper into the chair, expression slack and disinterested. "I don't see why I need to put my agenda on hold for Garrick's emotional constipation."
He knew, I realized. Tyler had probably known from the instant I walked in that my secret feelings for Gwen had been actualized, and how much it dug at me.
Wow, I realized. This felt… strangely like… having friends.
"Erica has a car," Shane revealed. Fishing his phone out of the back pocket of his jeans, he pulled open his contacts and scrolled through them. "I'll shoot her a text."
The way he was talking about Erica, it seemed they’d become better friends than I’d realized. Were they just friends?
In many ways, Erica was basically a bro when it came to their crew.
I couldn't help but wonder if the recent developments between Gwen and myself would not only make it back to Erica, but also drive an awkward, uncomfortable wedge between all of us. Not that I particularly cared. Just because I had plans to ease my way into Gwen's life if she'd have me did not mean I suddenly considered these people on par with true companions.
Right?
Because… they weren’t friends. I didn’t have true friends with the exception of Liam; even his bandmates were more acquaintances, though I liked them the more I got to know them. Shane and Tyler and Erica…and Gwen…they didn’t actually care about me. Did they?
I shook it off, certain the booze ignited images, flickers, and hints of things that weren't actually there.
"Are we seriously going out?" Tyler said. "Because, if so, Garrick, please put on a shirt. I don't want to be mobbed by throngs of shrieking fan girls on the way through the parking lot."
"Tsh," I scoffed. Toting along the bottle, I escorted myself out of Shane's suite and across the hall into my own, but not before I had thrown a fleeting glance toward the opposite end of the hallways and Gwen's room.
Was she thinking about me?
Was she just as tormented as I was?
Shouldering my door open and barging inside, I sneered. What if this made her quit? What if she up and left without a word and I never saw her again? I remembered the way she looked at me before she left, as though she had just engaged in some taboo, unforgivable horror, such as human sacrifice or shopping at a thrift store. I wasn't that bad of a kisser, right?
Unable to bear the thought of not getting to kiss her again, I tore off my trunks and shrugged into some jeans and a sweater.
I'd spend tonight with the guys, drinking away my frustration and vexation, and the worry whirling through my mind that I had crossed a line from which there could be no backtracking.
To hell with everything.
I'd figure out what to do about it tomorrow.
Before making my way out into the hall to meet the guys, I grabbed a pullover and doused my neck in cologne. I could have used a shower, should have taken one, but that would have exhumed images I couldn’t think about without tenting my trousers, a luxury I didn’t have time to conceal if I wanted to tag along on this trip.
“You get us a car?” I asked Shane, pulling my door closed.
“Yep!” Shane grinned just as Erica’s door swung open a few paces away.
“Okay,” she said, nodding her hair out of her face and sliding her purse farther up her shoulder, keys jingling from the lanyard caught in her right hand. “If we’re going to do this, we’re going to make a night out of it, starting with a stop at Panda Express.”
“Wait,” Shane piped up, lagging as she breezed between us. “You’re coming?”
“Of course I’m coming, you idiot,” she called over her shoulders, wearing a look of mock surprise. “It’s my rental car.”
Shane threw a telling glance back to the left and broached the question I wanted to, but couldn’t. “What about Gwen?”
“She’s not feeling up to it tonight,” Erica explained, voice fading as she got farther away. “Said something about being behind on Monday’s scene. Are you guys coming or what?”
* * *
An hour later, we were hanging at a lookout point that afforded us a view of The Sandias, which Erica explained meant watermelon in Spanish, and that pretty accurately described what the mountains looked like at sunset. The sun had just barely begun to dip behind the horizon, splashing the sky in vibrant yellows, oranges, and pinks. I had heard New Mexico, referred to as The Land of Enchantment by some and The Land of Entrapment by others, was known for its sunsets… but I never expected to see anything like this. I wished to God Gwen had come. Sharing this with her would have been perfect.
We had hit Panda Express as well as the grocery store to grab some Coors Light. Take out containers littered the trunk of Erica’s car, popped open to create a storage space for the beer as well.
Shane had somehow managed to coax Tyler away from his phone with the cheap football we had found at Walmart. They passed to each other, Shane skidding in the dirt to try and catch Tyler’s objectively terrible passes. I had been spot-on in my first impression of Shane. His throwing, completely on point, totally gave away a history on the high school football team. Erica and I moseyed along the rim of the overlook, debating on finding a boulder to camp out on below.
“We’d totally get arrested if the cops showed up right now, wouldn’t we?” I laughed.
Swapping her orange chicken to her other hand, Erica cleaned the corner of lips with a crass sweep of her thumb. “Totally.” She nodded.
From inside my back pocket, my phone buzzed. I fished it out and thumbed through my notifications. I had a text from Liam, asking why I had called. Apparently, he had been passed out at the time. Shocker. It didn’t surprise me at all. Furthermore, I wasn’t in the mood to talk to him right now. Rolling my eyes, I stashed my phone.
“So,” I murmured after a swig of my beer. “Why are you really here? I think we both know Gwen isn’t behind on anything.”
“Oh, you’ve noticed her obsessive dedication too, huh?” Erica shrugged a shoulder. “Figured getting to know you outside of work would be a good idea. As an author, I’m a pretty good judge of character.”
“Shit.” I tipped the can up, downing a few more swa
llows.
“Don’t worry. I won’t tell her you’re not actually a terrible person.” She winked.
I snickered. “What a relief.”
After picking our way down an irritatingly steep and slippery path, we dropped down to sit on a rock, the top smooth and pitted as though used frequently as a perch for onlookers. Above, back on the overlook outcropping, the overhead floodlights came on.
“She told you, didn’t she?”
Erica smacked her lips, having the decency to feign ignorance of a truth I already knew. “Told me what?”
I rolled my eyes with a wry smile. “What happened in the sauna.”
Erica cracked a grin, her eyebrows jumping up. “Oh. Yeah.” She shoveled the last piece of chicken into her mouth.
With a grunt, I combed my fingers through my hair. “What do you think about all that?”
“You and Gwen?”
“Nah. Relationships in general. Are you single?”
Erica shook her head, jamming her fork into her empty Chinese takeaway box, folding it up, and setting it aside. “Man, at any given time I’ve got twelve conversations and five to six relationships going on in my head. I don’t think I need one in reality too.”
“So,” I interpreted, “it’s all bullshit to you.”
She assumed a mild frown and canted her head. “Not at all.”
I blinked in surprise. Draping my elbows over my knees, I waited for her to continue.
“I mean, why would I write romance if I didn’t believe in it?” Lowering her voice, she leaned closer to me. “Aside from exploiting the public’s insatiable thirst for literary porn.”
We laughed.
“No, seriously though. I think love and relationships… They’re kind of like driving to a new coffee shop, you know? It’s unfamiliar territory. It’s not a straight line. Sometimes you go left, or right or in a giant circle. Sometimes you have to stop altogether, or make a U-turn when you go down a wrong road. Sometimes you get so lost, you have to pull over and ask for directions. Getting there can be fun, frustrating, informative, and undeniably exhausting.”
“That’s a pretty damn good metaphor.”
“Yeah.” She grinned, snatched my beer out of my hand, and took a long pull. “I’ll bill you for my time later.”
“Are you one of those people like Gwen? Who thinks there is someone for everyone, and everyone is constantly searching for it?”
“No,” she replied honestly. “I think everyone has the right to choose to search, or to be alone, where some people are perfectly content to be. I think there are multiple someones for multiple people too. I mean…” She laughed lowly. “Can you imagine how much pressure that would be? To be searching and know that if you miss your chance once, or something goes awry with your significant other, you can never have it again?”
I swallowed hard. “Level with me, Erica. Is there any chance for me and Gwen?”
“Which you, Garrick?” she asked. “E-Hollywood Story you? Or this one?”
Tightening my jaw, I averted my eyes.
“Look, Garrick. I’m not going to pry into your past. Frankly, I don’t want to know. I’m sure you’ve got demons you’ve been dealing with for years. You fit a classic male character profile I’ve been using since creative writing in high school. And all I can say to you is the more you lie to the world to convince yourself you’re invincible, the more the truth will hurt, and the easier it’ll be for you to crumble inside. And what’ll suck the most is that in the end, you won’t be fooling anyone but yourself.”
I took a deep breath as she tucked the beer can back into my hand. “Speaking completely hypothetically, if one had a seriously shitty experience with an old coffee shop, how do you let yourself trust another? How do you move on?”
“Off the record?” she suggested, as if telling me that this would never get back to Gwen.
“Completely, if you please.”
“You start driving. And you don’t look back.”
Chapter Twelve
Gwen
"Gwen!" Alice called from the trailer a stone's throw away. "You're on in five."
"Okay!" I called back.
Returning my attention to the mirror, I took a deep breath and smoothed my hands down the denim fabric of my jean skirt. The blouse I wore breathed easily, layered with a mesh top and a tank underneath. Flattering, but not slutty. It had been several days since I kissed Garrick, and the past week had been a strange, awkward hell. Shooting Episode Two, every other scene placing Garrick and I together, made for a rough time. Garrick had tried to take me aside more than once during breaks, or in between cuts where we had stand-ins. I knew he wanted to talk about what happened between us, but I just wasn't ready. I still hadn't settled on an explanation for what happened in the sauna, and I wasn't ready to own up to my realization in the shower.
It made my heart clench and my stomach tighten just thinking about it.
Erica had broached the subject, delicately, a few times back inside Nativo Lodge, mostly during late nights when we settled in to watch something on Netflix. I had ignored her, doing my best to dance around the topic and waltz into another. Talking about it made it too real, and I was content at the moment to keep it more akin to a dream. I couldn't start seeing someone, not when I stood on such thin ice with my father. If he knew, he'd yank me out of Albuquerque so fast that Flash Gordon couldn't even keep up. His pride in me took one of the top tiers on my priorities list, partially because I feared his rage, sure, but mostly because of his identity as my father, provider, and role model.
After an hour alone that unforgettable Saturday night, while Erica had gone out with the guys, my senses had sobered up. The mad swarm of butterflies had died down and I sank comfortably back into my old, cool self. Erica’s presence and support and wry encouragement had lulled me into a schoolgirl fantasy. I could have kicked myself for allowing such ridiculous delusions now.
Too much was at stake to get wrapped up in a young, unbelievably sexy heartthrob in the middle of filming my very first network television series. But I didn't know what I would say when I finally did talk to Garrick.
Would I apologize? Would I choke on my own tongue? What if he hated the kiss? What if he was trying to pull me aside to tell me this wasn't going to work and he was no longer interested?
Despite my own strengthened resolve, that would burn like liquid nitrogen. Swallowing my dread, I ran a brush through my hair one last time, checked my lipgloss, and stepped out of my trailer.
I stopped when I saw Garrick at the bottom of the pull-down stairs.
"Hey," he said, flashing me the first uncertain smile I had ever seen on his face.
"Hi," I said back robotically, frozen on the top step. My mind reeled for an alternate route, another solution, preferably one where I flew over his head and sprinted for cover.
"Do you have a moment?"
"I'm on in less than five to begin shooting Episode Three,” I told him honestly. “I really should be going." I hurried down the short steps, but he caught me by the wrist.
"Gwen." His large hand slid into mine.
Feeling fire in my face, body and mind yanked back into the glorious heat of the sauna, I jerked my hand back like his touch was toxic and crossed my arms. I cleared my throat, inclining my chin to make sure no one had seen my slip into weakness. My father could have spies, informants, anywhere.
"What is it?" I asked, struggling to mask my emotions.
Don't bring this up here. Not here, I wanted to beg him. There are other people around.
Was this where Garrick showed his true colors, the colors I had known he wore all along and imagined away when he donned white swim trunks? Was he about to reject me in public as penance for the snide things I had said to him since day one? Was he about to take my dreams of love and trample them under his feet?
The look on his face morphed from indeterminate to dogged and before I knew what had happened, he had backed me up against the trailer. Eyes wide, I gulped and
stared at him, up into those sweet chocolate amber eyes.
"I can't stop thinking about what happened in the sauna," he confessed.
Oh, God. Here it comes. I fidgeted, searching for a way to escape.
"Gwen, look at me," he pleaded.
I did, albeit reluctantly. His brown hair hung in attractively disheveled waves. His lips dared a gentle smile at me.
"I'd like to do that more often. Is there any possibility you'd give me a chance to?"
Stunned, I blinked rapidly. "I—"
He frowned as I grappled with how to respond. “Why do you always get that look on your face? When I try to talk to you, you shy away. When I touch you, you practically have a heart attack. When I kiss you, you panic.”
“I’m easily flustered,” I said, trying to scrounge up a believable excuse. “I need to remain professional, Garrick. Our interactions, especially on set, need to remain professional. We’re vulnerable in the public sphere.”
The light in his face dimmed as though someone has snuffled out candle somewhere. “Can’t bear to be seen with me that much, huh?”
“That’s not what I meant,” I contradicted. “And it doesn’t matter. Why would you want to be seen with me anyway? I’m not a one-and-done type of girl. I don’t want to be just a picture on Google. Not for you, or for anyone. I thought I made that clear at the restaurant that night.”
“I know,” he assured me, sweeping my hands up to sandwich them between his. “I don’t want you to be that for me either.”
I drew in a breath to brace myself, needing the extra support to rally my confidence. “We’re clear, then.” He didn’t want me. “Whatever started, whatever happened… It’s over.” I gave a curt nod.
“Not for me.”
“What?”
“Gwen, we need you on set!” Alice called again, poking her head out from behind the trailer.
“I’ll be right there!” I called back to her with a sunny smile until she ducked out of sight again. For the second time, I tried to wriggle out of the cage he had created around me with his tempting body. “I can’t do this.”
