“Okay,” I said, appearing as if nothing was wrong. I went into my room and shut the door. I looked at my cell phone. I had one new voicemail, five missed calls and two text messages. Great.
I listened to the voicemail first. Unfortunately, I could never seem to delete a message without listening to it. I held the phone away from my ear so that I didn’t have to really listen. It was from Will and was mercifully short, something along the lines of his being back at the hotel and wanting me to call. I then looked at my text messages.
The first one was around eight o’clock my time and said, “Missing u. Call me when u get home.”
The second one, from about 11 o’clock my time, said, “Getting worried. R U OK?”
Concerned that I would get a call in the middle of the night on the home phone that would wake up Kelly, I decided to respond via text message.
“Saw ur pix 2day in mag w/girlfriend. Don’t call. Going 2 sleep.”
A few minutes later, my cell phone rang. I didn’t answer it.
I received another text almost immediately.
“PLEASE pick up the phone.”
I responded, “No.”
The next one said, “PLEASE talk 2 me.”
I responded again, “No. Going 2 sleep. Turning off phone. Don’t call house phone or u’ll wake Kelly.”
I turned off my phone and lay down on my bed. I think I finally cried myself to sleep at about 2 a.m.
Chapter Nine
The next day was very painful as I was tired and upset, and was not looking forward to a long difficult evening at home alone. I returned home late that afternoon after my classes and practice for my upcoming mock trial final with Nell.
Kelly got home around six-thirty and, while I was microwaving my dinner, asked me what was going on. I told her. Her reaction was more impressed that I had dated a movie star than sympathy for my situation. She had actually seen both Midnight movies released so far and owned the DVD of the first.
“The movies were good, but the books were much better.” In light of the vast amount of reading I did for school and work, I didn’t generally read for fun anymore like Kelly did. Kelly convinced me to watch the DVD with her while I choked down my diet chicken fettuccini. I should have been studying, but I couldn’t help myself.
“When you said you were dating Will MacKenzie, I had no idea you meant this Will MacKenzie,” she mentioned as we started the movie.
In this romantic movie, Will was supposed to be one of the most beautiful men on the planet with a dangerous secret, dating an ordinary Midwestern girl. It was a huge stretch to call Katherine Sullivan, who could have been a supermodel but for the fact that she was so petite, an ordinary girl, but that’s the movies for you. It was an uncanny parallel as to what was happening in real life. I truly was the ordinary girl. For me, there would be no happy ending though.
Early on in the movie, Kelly mentioned, “I think I read somewhere that he and Katherine met on this movie and have dated ever since.”
Leave it to Kelly to be so dense as to not know that her words were killing me. I then thought about how upset I was considering I had only known Will for a few weeks. How did I get so invested so fast? It was completely unlike me. The anger at myself for being so foolish was starting to match my anger at Will for lying to me and using me.
When I finished all that I was going to eat of my dinner, I grabbed a sofa pillow and leaned back on the couch to watch. I shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was that he was such a skilled actor. Had he not been lying to me for the past few weeks, making me think that he was actually interested in someone like me? Then again, if he and Katherine were really in love, the role probably didn’t take much acting on his part.
We stopped the movie intermittently to clean up dishes, take restroom breaks, and get more sodas. Our mom called at one point to see how my spaghetti dinner had gone over. I didn’t want to get into what was going on, so I just responded, “Great, Mom. Thanks.”
By the time the movie was over it was well after nine o’clock.
I studied for a little while and then couldn’t help myself. I decided finally to turn on my cell phone. I had three missed calls and a text message from Will from this morning. “B home 2nite. Can I come over?” I turned my phone off again.
I grabbed my Constitutional Law II textbook again and started reading. About a half-hour later, I heard the doorbell ring. I froze. I was pretty sure who it was at this late hour. I could hear my sister’s footsteps headed toward the front door since her room was on the opposite side of the apartment from mine and close to the front door. I didn’t have time to stop her. I wanted to hide. I could hear Kelly let him in and say, “Nice to meet you” fairly enthusiastically.
Will knocked on my door. As I was saying, “Go away,” he walked into my room and shut the door behind him.
I stood up defiantly on the opposite side of my bed from the door. He walked toward me, but stopped when he noticed that I was backing away from him and couldn’t go any further. I then got a good look at him. He looked like a male fashion model, although a little haggard from what was probably a long day and a long flight. He was wearing black pants, a white shirt and a red crushed-velvet jacket. He appeared to have had his hair professionally coiffed and to be wearing some makeup.
“Listen to me,” he pleaded. “I don’t know what you read, but I only have one girlfriend: you.”
The fact that he looked particularly perfect didn’t sway my anger. “Why should I believe you when you’ve done nothing but lie to me?” With that, I sat down on the bed facing away from him and started tearing up.
“Because I’m telling you the truth. The tabloids have been inventing a relationship between Katherine and me for years. We go out in public together from time-to-time to various events to promote our movies. We have our third film together opening soon and the final one in the series starts shooting this autumn. But we never dated. When I met her, she was still a teenager, and I wasn’t. We are like brother and sister. Besides, she’s had a serious boyfriend forever.”
I was unmoved.
“Do you want to talk to Katherine? She’ll tell you.” Will took out his cell phone and made a call.
As I said, “No,” he spoke into the phone, “Katherine, I’m so glad you picked up. I need you to talk to Shannon for me . . . yes, she’s the one I told you about . . . she read one of those stupid tabloids and believes it . . . I know . . . can you tell her that?”
He placed the phone in my hand and moved my hand to my ear. “Shannon, are you there?” I heard over the phone.
“Yes,” I said, more than slightly embarrassed. I recognized the voice from the movie I had watched only about an hour before.
“Will’s telling you the truth. I’m here with my boyfriend, Mark. Say ‘hi,’ Mark.” I heard, “Hi,” in the background. “Will and I are just friends. He’s like my big brother. We see each other because we’re friends and we work together. That’s it, I swear. From what I’ve heard, he really cares about you.”
I merely said, “Thank you,” not knowing what else to say and handed the phone back to Will.
“Thanks, love. Speak to you later.” He hung up the phone.
Will’s eyes bored into mine. “Do you believe me now?”
“Then why all the lies?” Katherine had only dealt with one of my reasons for being upset.
Will sat down on the bed next to me. “They were more omissions than lies. I’m so sorry that you had to find out this way. I was going to tell you, eventually, but it was just so nice to be in a normal relationship for a while. I didn’t want that part to end. My life hasn’t remotely resembled normal for so long no matter how hard I try. You have no idea how happy I was that you didn’t know who I was.”
“You mean you liked me because I didn’t know who you were?”
“No, I . . . like you because of who you are and still would have even if you did know what I did for a living. But it was nice to know you liked me for me and not the
movie star.”
“That’s really why you didn’t tell me?” I asked incredulously.
He looked down. “For the most part. I also didn’t want you to have to deal with the bad part of my job.”
“The bad part?” I couldn’t imagine what he meant.
“Yes. Well, you saw the results of some of it. The paparazzi follow me around from time-to-time and the tabloids make up stuff all the time. At one point, the paparazzi even followed Kate and Gemma around, thinking they were my girlfriends. Once the paparazzi figured out they weren’t and they weren’t going to get any juicy pictures, they went away, but not before the girls’ pictures were published along with articles saying I was cheating on Katherine with them.
“I try to minimize the impact by not hanging out at ‘Hollywood’ sort of places anymore unless Katherine and I are doing it for publicity. I was going to tell you about me soon though because, when my new movie gets released before Memorial Day Weekend, the photographers will start stalking me again. As much as I would love to show you off to the whole world, I don’t think you would appreciate the lack of privacy.”
“So you were going to continue to lie to me until you had no choice?”
“I’m sorry, yes.” He looked down, realizing that I wouldn’t like the answer. “I wanted you to get to know the real me and for us to be a normal couple for as long as possible. I know you’re angry with me but, if you can forgive me, you will understand soon why I did what I did.”
“So that’s all of it - all of your reasons?” I was still skeptical.
“Yes. Will you please forgive me?” he asked as he put his hand on my left leg and leaned in for a kiss.
Everything he had said had made sense and I couldn’t resist him when he touched me. I responded, “I guess, but you have a lot of making up to do.” I then let him kiss me.
There’s nothing like makeup sex. I think it’s the relief from not being in a fight anymore and the high after such a huge low that makes it more powerful. As we were spooning afterward, I heard him say very quietly in my ear with a little bit of fear in his voice, “I love you.”
I was surprised by his declaration. I thought my heart had stopped beating and I’m sure I stopped breathing. At that moment, I realized with certainty why I had been so upset and why I had been so invested in the relationship so fast. I was in love with him too. I turned around to face him and looked deeply into his eyes. “I love you.”
We just lay there facing each other for a while and stared at each other, probably both in shock over what we had just said to each other.
Chapter Ten
If there was ever a day that I wished I could blow off class, this was the one. But I had to go since there was only a little over two weeks of school and work before finals.
I tried desperately not to wake Will as I got ready. Will told me that he hadn’t slept at all the prior night, first worried when he didn’t hear from me and then upset over my unwillingness to take his calls and his inability to come see me right away to straighten things out. Then, he had a magazine photo shoot that next day before getting on a plane home and coming directly to my place from the airport.
I left him a note asking him to call me at work after my classes ended at noon and a key to lock up when he left.
Between classes, I checked to see if I received a text message. There were two messages. The first said, “Meet u at SC at 12. Miss u.” The second one was even better: “ILY.”
I replied, “ILY2. Can’t w8 2 c u.”
I exited my Criminal Procedure classroom to find Will leaning against the wall across from the doors. As always, I sat in the back of the class so I was one of the first out the door. My professor was popular and the class was large so the numerous students stared as they came out the door to see Will greet me with a long kiss. I was embarrassed because I knew that I was going to hear about it the next day at school. I imagined that the news would spread like wildfire through the law school and would be the major topic of conversation within the hour. I winced. I really didn’t like being the focus of attention.
When he leaned away from the kiss, he said, still holding me, “I’ve never been here before. It’s nice. Doesn’t seem like we’re near Downtown. Where can we have lunch here?”
“Are you sure you want to? It’s a pretty big school. There’ll be a lot of people out and about at noon.” I wasn’t sure whether he had shied away from crowds in the past because he didn’t like them or only because he was trying to hide his profession from me.
“It won’t bother me if it doesn’t bother you. I don’t have to worry about you finding out anymore and I don’t think paparazzi hang out here so I think we’re good.”
“But what about fans?”
“It’s okay. It’s L.A. and most people are pretty cool. If they even notice me and recognize me, they just stare mostly. Sometimes I get asked for an autograph or a photo, but that’s okay so long as it’s not aggressive.”
I was glad. It would be nice to spend time with Will on my turf.
Will clearly had gone home to change as he was dressed down like the other students. Other than his stunning good looks, he managed to blend in for the most part.
I decided to take Will to the Campus Center for lunch. Will looked around him at the red-bricked buildings, perfect landscaping and beautiful fountains on the way. Will smiled as if impressed as he took in his surroundings.
As we continued to walk through campus hand-in-hand, I realized that Will had been right. Most people just walked right by us, not paying any attention to us or even their surroundings for that matter. For those who noticed Will, there were some stares and a few girls with camera phones. We made it to the Campus Center with a minimum of fuss. We grabbed some lunch and a table at the very end of the room with Will facing away from the crowd. It was private enough for me to get answers to some of my burning questions.
“So now you have to answer the questions you’ve avoided since we met. First, you have to tell me what you’ve been doing these past few weeks when we’ve been apart. Also, what’s with Stephen and Colin? You dodged questions about them too.”
It took a moment for Will to answer. “I’ll go with your second question first. It’s easier to answer. Stephen and Colin both work in my industry. Stephen is a Second AD – Assistant Director – and Colin is a Gaffer, basically, the head electrician responsible for the lighting. I met Stephen on the first Midnight film and I met Colin on a smaller film soon after. We dodged your questions because I didn’t want to get into the subject of the movie industry. I wanted to be normal.
“Your first question is harder to answer because I did various things. I don’t have a regular nine-to-five existence and, although I’m on a break between films, there are still other things I have to do. I’ve started to do interviews and photo shoots for magazines that will be published around the time Midnight 3 is released. That’s why I was in New York. I had an interview on Monday night and the photo shoot for the article was Tuesday. The Wednesday before that, I attended a movie premiere with Katherine to start generating buzz for the movie and provide red carpet photos for the various magazines. I’ve also had to meet with my agent about future projects and with the publicist to get ready for our upcoming Midnight 3 promotional tour.”
“Promotional tour?”
“Yes. At the end of May, I’ll be doing marathon interviews, attending the premieres in L.A. and New York and doing chat shows, some alone and some with the cast. Then we do the same in the UK, Europe, Australia and Japan. I’m lucky that this time it’s not that long – about three weeks. The promotional tour for the first film took months.
“Midnight has become quite a franchise. Midnight 1 made multiples of what they thought it would, almost as much as the big action blockbusters, more than many in fact. With Midnight 2 and 3, they’ve added merchandising and then there are the book sales as well. So there is a lot of money at stake, not to mention that we start shooting Midnight 4 in September.
> “Midnight has dominated my life for the better part of the last four years. I’ve managed to do a few other things, smaller parts in big movies as well as a few smaller films, but it has been hard to do a lot other than Midnight.”
He had given me a lot of information to digest. Since he talked about the Midnight films, I thought that I would tell him what I had done before he saw me last night. “I have to admit something now,” I said as I bit my lip. “I watched the first Midnight film last night with Kelly.”
“Really?” He seemed genuinely surprised. “I thought you were angry with me. Why would you watch it?”
I couldn’t look at him as I said, “I wanted to see what the fuss was all about, I guess, and to see how you interacted with Katherine. It really upset me that you looked at her the way you sometimes look at me. It convinced me that you were faking it with me.”
“No, I was faking it with her.”
I felt uncomfortable as I added, “I also thought it was ironic that it was about a perfect man falling in love with an ordinary girl. Katherine is not so ordinary, but I am.”
“Would you stop it with that? I’m not the only one by a long shot who thinks you’re gorgeous. Stephen and Colin agree, and I remember that the O’Neills were pretty impressed as well. And we won’t get into your friends at work.”
He was definitely overstating things. “Now, you stop it. They’re just friends. They think of me as their little sister.”
“If it makes you feel more comfortable to think that.”
“So are you saying that from personal experience, like maybe when it comes to Katherine?”
“That’s different.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Trust me on this. It is,” he said seriously.
Will and I strolled slowly hand-in-hand through campus after lunch to my car. I really didn’t want to go to work and was trying to draw out our time together.
When we arrived at my car, Will asked, “What are you doing after work?”
Away From the Spotlight Page 7
