Bittersweet

by Domingo, Sareeta

  Hold on, am I just using her as an excuse for it not to seem weird if I turn up to see him tomorrow?

  Greg pulls up his shirt a little to get at an itch, and I swallow hard as I stare at his perfectly defined stomach muscles.

  The answer to my question is clearly yes.

  “Sounds good,” he says, and my eyes break away from his stomach and back up to meet his, which are twinkling dangerously. “I’ll see you then.”

  *

  “Mmmmnnnfff,” says Max as I gently but firmly pull back her covers for the third time in fifteen minutes.

  “Why lie here dreaming about Johnny Lincoln when you could be watching him flex his actor-ly muscles in the flesh, huh?” I try. Part of me, the reasonable part, wants to abandon this whole idea of going to the set this morning. It turned out that I’m not due to start my shift until after the breakfast rush, in some new scheduling thing my dad’s trying out at exactly the wrong time. My aim to seem totally nonchalant and swing by the set on break has gone out the window, and so now I’m planning on a casual amble past the set on my way into work (an hour early so that I’ll catch Greg while they’re filming). But Maxine’s not complying.

  I’m being too desperate, I can feel it. I mean, I just saw Greg yesterday. And it’s not like he offered to hang out then, or finish our run together or anything like that. Maybe he was afraid of us being seen together? I frown as I sit on Max’s bed. Now that I think about it, me and Greg have only ever really hung out when we were out of town, or late at night at the restaurant with nobody—especially not Bethany—there to witness us.

  Oh, hi, paranoia.

  “OK, OK,” Max groans. “I don’t get why we have go today though. Like, surely they’ll be filming around town all the time until the show airs, right?”

  She’s right. Darn it. And I just know she’s going to add up the pieces and say—

  “Wait, this is because you want to see Greg, isn’t it?” She suddenly sits up in bed, her eyes narrowed in full-on interrogation mode. “Of course!”

  “Well…” I sigh. “Maybe. So sue me.”

  Max’s eyes roam the room until they alight eagerly on the cup of coffee I’ve set by her bed. It must be going cold by now, but she still gulps down half of it before speaking again. “OK,” she announces. “I have decided that I’m cool with this. With you having the hots for—”

  “I don’t have the hots for Greg. What are you, fifty?”

  “Well, whatever you’ve got for him, I will allow it.”

  “Why, thank you,” I say, shaking my head in irritation.

  “But I mean it. He breaks your heart, I break his face.”

  “It’s not… We’re not even…”

  “Uh huh.” Max finishes her coffee. “You may be claiming friend-zone for now, but it’s written all over your face—and his, from what I saw at the restaurant. And now he’s got this additional knight-in-shining-armor thing going on—”

  “Uh—no. No rescuing. He helped out and I’m grateful, but let’s just get that straight.”

  She nods emphatically. “OK, good. Well, in that case give me twenty and I’ll be ready to ogle—I mean, observe—the filming for purely edifying reasons.”

  *

  I’m relieved that we need to pass Joe Johnson’s anyway to get to where they’ve roped off Main Street for the filming, so I get Maxine and me some coffees and even bag up a couple of the pastries for the added authenticity of seeming like I just stopped by on my break. I balance the bag in the crook of my arm as I check my hair before we approach the cordon. Max looks over at me and smiles, but says nothing.

  I head tentatively over to one of the tanned twenty-somethings holding walkie-talkies and keeping back the small crowd who’ve come to watch the filming start.

  “Uh, we’re here to see… Um, I mean, Greg Moran said we could come and visit the set this morning?” I say, feeling idiotic and eager at the same time.

  The blonde girl’s walkie crackles, and she holds up a hand and turns away to murmur into it without saying anything to us. A moment later she turns back to me and Max and nods, waving us under the line of tape. “Go right ahead,” she says, giving us a dazzlingly white, fake-looking smile.

  “She could stand to learn a thing or two about Southern set-visit hospitality,” Maxine murmurs, but then her eyes brighten as she looks down the street at the temporary fake storefronts they’ve put up for the show. We both crack up at their interpretation of small-town stores, but then we’re shushed, and I spot Greg a little way up the street, being powdered by a tall thin guy with an array of brushes in a belt around his waist. My heart stutters just at the sight of him, and I silently berate myself for it.

  “Wow, he’s not playing around,” Maxine says, eyeing the makeup guy’s weaponry admiringly. “I should get one of those bad boys.”

  “Mmmhmm,” I say distractedly. I finally manage to catch Greg’s eye, and he smiles broadly and waves—but then the redhead director lady calls for the actors to take their places for the scene. I see Bethany stride over to Greg and whisper something in his ear, then lean back to look at him and smile. He’s still looking over in my direction and only breaks away reluctantly to speak to her. When she notices me, she turns and grabs Greg’s hand, pulling him over to where the cameras are set up for their next shot.

  “OK, quiet, please. Scene Four, take three—action!” the director shouts, and Maxine grips my arm excitedly. We watch the scene from a couple of hundred yards away, but even so we can hear strains of the dialogue, and I realize with increasing horror that it’s the scene I was reading with Greg the other night. Except this time he doesn’t stop when it gets to the kiss part.

  He leans his mouth down to Bethany’s and she presses herself into him, giving the kiss everything she has. I feel my jaw tighten as he wraps his arms around her waist and tilts his head—moves I remember having felt first-hand myself.

  “Hmm,” Maxine mutters next to me, and I look over at her quickly.

  “It’s cool,” I say, flicking my eyes back over to Greg and Bethany. “Acting, right?”

  But it feels like an eternity, and they still haven’t broken apart. Cut! I will the director to shout. Seriously, cut! They’re pretty goddamn convincing. I can practically feel waves of passion coming off both of them, and I’m suddenly finding it harder not to believe that, even if he didn’t want a relationship with Bethany, something didn’t happen between them. Their chemistry points to something more than a colleague-to-colleague relationship, that’s for damn sure.

  “Cut!” the director shouts at last. “We’ve got that one. Let’s prep for the next set-up. Quickly, people, before the light changes!”

  I breathe an audible sigh of relief that the make-out session is over.

  “Yeah,” Max says, pursing her lips. “You seem totally cool with that.”

  I elbow her and she giggles, but then sobers up when she spots Johnny Lincoln off to the side of the set, flirting conspicuously with the walkie-talkie girl from earlier. Max narrows her eyes at them and I chuckle. She looks over at me and shrugs.

  “Whatever. Unlike you, I really am happy to just be buddies with my actor man-candy. I’ll be getting my ya-yas from Todd later.”

  “Ya-yas? Jesus, Maxi, you’ve been watching too many eighties romance movies on Lifetime again, haven’t you?”

  She ignores me. “Uh, heads up. Nine o’clock.”

  I look to my right.

  “That’s six o’clock, you dummy,” she mutters under her breath, and I turn the other way just in time to see Greg striding toward us. Having just seen him passionately making out with a woman who, in my mind at least, is rapidly turning into my nemesis, I really have to struggle to force a nonchalant smile onto my face.

  “You made it,” he says, smiling back like he’s genuinely pleased to see me. God, that mouth…

  “Yeah—well, Max here really wanted to check out the first day,” I say, glancing over at Maxine with pleading eyes.

  “Totally
. This is really freaking cool,” she says, and I know it’s not taking too much to muster her enthusiasm. She starts asking questions about the storyline and makeup, and I stand there like a moron, saying nothing.

  “What do you think, Cathy?” Greg asks, turning to me and seeming to try and read my expression. I drain the last of my coffee from my take-out cup and force my smile wider.

  “Um … it’s interesting,” I say through it. Great. Definitely convincing.

  Greg lowers his voice. “Yeah, I forgot this was the scene we’d be shooting today.” His mouth quirks up on one side. “I think I preferred the rehearsal a little more.”

  Instant goosebumps. Damn it, how does he always do that?

  “Oh yeah? You seemed to be pretty into the real thing,” I retort, while Maxine pretends not to hear our conversation and instead seems completely fascinated by the guys messing with a camera nearby.

  “It’s my job,” Greg replies, looking down at me earnestly.

  I nod my head and straighten my back, avoiding his eyes. “I know. Of course, I just…” I peter out pathetically. “I can see why they hired you. You guys were pretty believable.”

  I don’t mean it to sound like a jab, but I know it comes off that way. And from the way I notice Bethany shooting me the side-eye over Greg’s shoulder, it’s probably best if I don’t come off as quite so obviously jealous or I could end up making (more of) an idiot of myself.

  “Well, thanks, I guess,” Greg replies, the little crease returning between his brows.

  I’m grateful when Maxi steps in with more questions, mainly involving how she can be reintroduced to Johnny Lincoln. Greg gamely offers to make it happen, but then one of the assistants bustles over to him.

  “You have a call, Mr. Moran. Just over at your trailer, OK? Back on set in five,” she garbles quickly, then scurries away again clutching another walkie.

  “Sorry,” Greg says, his eyes lingering on me. “I’ve been waiting to hear back from my agent about something, I better go take the call.”

  “Oh, yeah, of course. I should be getting back to the restaurant anyway,” I say. “And, Max, you’ve got to be opening up The Salon, right?”

  She nods vaguely, still eyeing Johnny Lincoln, and I smile apologetically at Greg. “I’ll … um … see you around then.” I wish I could nail down a time and date. Or just a date, period. “Thanks for having us.”

  Greg tentatively reaches up a hand to rest on my shoulder. “My pleasure.” His touch seems to make my senses hyper-aware. I notice Bethany looking at us again, and the side-eye has turned into a full-on glare. I look up at Greg through my eyelashes with added flirtatiousness, but stop short of my instinct to get up on tiptoes and kiss his cheek. He looks at me a moment longer, his expression kind of unreadable, then turns and heads toward the trailers. He really is bad at saying goodbye. I stare after him as he goes.

  Maxine shakes her head and chuckles. “You two couldn’t be any cuter if y’all were holding a basket of puppies and kittens,” she says, linking her arm with mine as we head back to the barrier further down the street.

  “Oh, please,” I murmur, but can’t help smiling back.

  “I did feel an arctic wind coming from the direction of Ms. Keeler though,” she adds in a whisper. “Did you ever figure out what the deal was there?”

  I pull a face. “Well, apparently they’re not, or weren’t, in a relationship. But that kiss looked pretty convincing to me…”

  Maxi squeezes my arm into her side. “A little competition is healthy. Makes you want it more,” she says.

  “Uh, I think that makes you want it more,” I retort, but then I spot Greg pacing in the narrow space between two of the trailers they’ve set up off to one side of the street, and damn it if my heart doesn’t skip a beat again at the sight of him even though I just left him. I need to get a grip. I notice he’s frowning though, and although I can’t make out what he’s saying at first, as we get a little closer I can tell he’s struggling to keep his voice down. Guess the call with his agent isn’t going so well. I try to catch his eye and wave goodbye, but he stops his pacing and I finally make something out.

  “How many times do I have to tell you? Don’t call me again, I’m serious.” He ends the call just as he notices me watching him, and his expression flickers between worry and then into a forced smile. I wave quickly, and then wait for the blonde girl to hold the tape up again for me and Maxine to duck under and head away from the set.

  Huh. That was kind of odd. Phones and Greg are clearly a bad mix—but at least this time I know it wasn’t Bethany. I doubt he’d tell his agent not to call him though… I swallow down a hard knot of concern. What is Greg really hiding? Just when I think I have a bead on him, something else comes up that reminds me he really is a stranger after all. The scary thing is—I’m not sure that matters to me. If anything, it only makes my need to know him even greater.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I pulled a double shift all day and into the evening after the set visit, so I didn’t have too much time yesterday to dwell on the weird phone call I overheard Greg take as we were leaving. I did still manage to fit in a few daydreams about that kiss on my doorstep … and other kisses too… But tonight I’ve agreed to come look after Carl, who’s managed to come down with the flu in the height of summer. Dad wasn’t too keen on leaving him on his own while he was at the restaurant overseeing Ray Miller’s sixtieth birthday celebrations, and when I let myself into the house and find my little brother curled up in a ball in bed, I know he really must be sick. I fully expected to find him glued to his PlayStation, but he almost reminds me of the little guy I used to look after when he had some icky cold back when I was in high school.

  “Hey, Carlito,” I whisper, sitting gently on the edge of his bed. I wave the bag of medicine I stopped off at the pharmacy to pick up. “I brought drugs. Now it’s a party, huh?”

  He smiles weakly at me, but I know it cheers him up that I’m not treating him like a little kid, even though he sure looks like one all tucked up under his Spidey bedspread. I look around at the walls covered in posters of semi-clad chicks and hip-hop artists, and can’t help feeling a wash of nostalgia—maybe even longing—for the time before I really had any responsibilities. Of course, to really go back to that time in my memory, I’d have to think back to before my mom left. And any happiness then would be built on pretty shaky foundations. I see an old photograph of the four of us all together when Carl was just a toddler pinned to his noticeboard, and sigh. Smoothing back his hair to check his temperature, I can’t help noticing how much we both look like her, and I sort of wish we didn’t. Sour memories, etched into our DNA.

  I stand up and take a deep breath. “OK, champ. I’m going to go get you some water so you can take these meds, and then we’ll see if you can manage a little chicken soup,” I say. “Bobby made it special.”

  “Cool,” Carl says hoarsely, and I can’t help leaning down to kiss his forehead. He grimaces and manages an “ew,” so I know he’ll be on the road to recovery soon.

  After he finishes his soup and takes the meds, Carl drifts off to sleep, so I go clean up the kitchen and living room some—I can’t help myself; he and Joe leave things in such a mess—and then settle down to watch a couple of their dumb action-movie DVDs until my dad gets home.

  It feels pretty weird being back babysitting Carl and hanging out by myself, daydreaming. Although admittedly when I let my mind wander to some guy back in senior year, it was Jeff while he was off at an away football game or something, not a still-sort-of-mysterious actor guy from New York. I focus hard on the explosions on screen and manage to get through another hour without letting my memories drift to Greg … kissing me … kissing me down there in his hotel room… Whoa, whoa, definitely not that—especially not while I’m watching my dad’s TV on my dad’s couch with my little brother in the next room.

  I shake myself, but even keeping it clean, I can’t stop thinking about his smile, about him talking about him
self as a kid and why he got into acting. I think about how at ease I feel with him, this man I supposedly don’t know.

  A few minutes later, my cell buzzes from the coffee table and I reach down to read the message, assuming it will be Maxine checking in on me. Or even Carl, trying to get my attention from his bed—he’s lazy like that, though I guess it would be OK seeing as he’s sick.

  But when I look down at the screen, my heart almost skips a beat.

  Hey.

  Just one word. But I know straight away who sent the message, even though I don’t have his number programmed in.

  I try to control a goofy-ass grin, and type something back.

  Wow. So not only did you check my schedule, you cribbed my number too, huh?

  What was that you said about not being a stalker?

  As I hit “send,” I think I’m going to look like a pretty big idiot if this turns out not to be Greg.

  Guilty.

  I picked up a trench coat, hat, shades, and binoculars too, so I’m good to go now.

  I chuckle, but I’m a little unsure of why he’s getting in touch. I debate for several minutes what to write back, or whether to just ask him what he wants, even though that would sound rude. Eventually I decide I hate text messages anyway—you can’t really get a read on what people really mean, and I have a tough enough time reading Greg anyway. I save his number into my phone, and then, even though I know he’s got a bad track record with phone calls, I hit call, squeezing my eyes shut and cringing as soon as I do. It rings once.

  “I thought I’d creeped you out and you had the cops on their way,” he says. His voice sounds even more delicious over the phone, deep and rich and…

  I laugh breathily and bite my lip. “Uh, no, I just thought I’d call. Seeing as I have your number now.”

  “Cool. How was your day?”

  I frown and smile at the same time. Is he seriously just, like, chatting to me? “It was … busy. Real busy, but at least now I get to relax a little. I just got through watching a speedboat explode out of a yacht in a high-speed chase.”