She Went All the Way

by Meg Cabot

  “Yes,” Barry said. “I had it on the plane on the way to the Cayman Islands. That’s where we’re honeymooning, Greta and I. You know what the Cayman Islands are made up of, don’t you, Lou?”

  Lou knit her brow. “Offshore banking accounts?”

  “No,” Barry said, with a laugh that revealed all of his even, capped white teeth. “Volcanoes, Lou! The Ring of Fire. And that’s when it hit me. An idea for a project that would make Hindenburg look like Airport ’77. And the minute I thought of it, I told myself I have to tell this to Lou. Because she’s the only person I know who could pull it off.”

  Lou smiled at him weakly, afraid she knew what was coming. “Really.”

  “Really,” Barry said. He held out both his tanned, manicured hands—hands that had, for ten years, roamed over just about every part of Lou’s body at one point or another, but had never once managed to make her feel the way Jack had made her feel in one night. “Are you ready?”

  Lou thought longingly of crawling between the cool white sheets she was sitting on and going to sleep. “Ready,” she said.

  Barry made a little movie-screen shape out of his hands. “Pompeii,” he said, dramatically.

  “Pompeii,” Lou repeated tonelessly.

  “Right!” Barry leaped up from his chair and spread his arms open wide. “There’s never been a movie about the destruction of Pompeii. Picture it, Lou. A cultured, sophisticated people—artisans, really—unknowingly living on the mouth of a volcano. They are going about their normal, artisan business when all of a sudden—POW!—the mountain explodes, sending molten lava through the cobblestoned streets of their town, destroying everything in its path. Will our two young lovers—you’ve got to have two young lovers, see. Two young lovers whose parents disapprove of their relationship—be able to escape the magma and volcanic ash in time? Talk about a triumph of the human spirit.”

  Barry lowered his arms and stood, grinning down at her. “Well?” he said. “What do you think? I see me as the part of the young lover. A young Roman general, or something. And the girl could be, you know, from a long line of pan-flute players, and her parents don’t want her to marry a soldier, because they want her to carry on the pan-flute business, or some crap like that. And the general, see, he can be the only person who knows the volcano’s gonna blow, because the same thing happened on his native island. He’s like an ancient volcanologist. So he’s trying to warn everyone, only they won’t listen, on account of being all obsessed with the pan-flutes—”

  “Gosh, Barry,” Lou interrupted. She hadn’t wanted to interrupt, but Barry did not seem close to winding down, and she wanted to get him out of her room before midnight, if at all possible. “That is such a great idea.”

  Barry grinned down at her. “See. I knew you’d like it. That’s why as soon as I thought of it, I was like, I have to talk to Lou. Only, you know, you were lost in the tundra.”

  “Woods,” Lou said, standing up. “And I think that’s just a great idea for a movie, Barry. And you know what’s best about it? The way you tell it. So compelling. In fact, you tell it so well, I think you should be the one to write the screenplay, not me.”

  She had taken his arm and begun to walk him towards the door. Now, however, Barry jerked his arm from her reach.

  “But, Lou,” he said. “I’m not a writer. That’s why I came to you. You can have it, Lou. You can have full story by, screenplay by credits, whatever, I don’t care, so long as I get to star. See, Lou, the scripts I’ve been getting since Hindenburg…well, they’re all really bad. I mean Jim Carrey, Robin Williams bad. I need you to write something for me. Another star vehicle….”

  Lou smiled up at him. She didn’t want to do it. It really was like shooting fish in a barrel.

  But the thing was, he’d completely asked for it.

  “But Barry,” she said, with her eyes very wide. “Remember when you told me I’d grown so hard and cynical you barely recognized me as the same girl you’d moved out to California with?”

  He eyed her uneasily. “Yes….”

  “Well, I realized then, Barry, that you were right. I have grown too hard and cynical. So I’ve decided to quit the film writing business.”

  Barry stared down at her, so astonished that he didn’t even remember to put an expression on his face.

  “Quit the film writing business?” he echoed.

  “Yes,” Lou said, taking his arm again and steering him towards the door. “You see what an enormous influence you’ve had over me, Barry? And I just can’t thank you enough for it.”

  “B-but you can’t,” Barry stammered. “You can’t just quit. I mean, what are you going to do instead?”

  “Well,” Lou said. “I’m working on a novel.”

  Barry looked hopeful. “Really? Do you think it would translate to the screen? Because you know I bet the studio could adapt it, and if you mentioned my name for the lead character—”

  Lou laughed. She couldn’t help it.

  “Well,”she said.“I don’t know about the lead character. But there’s definitely a part in it for you, Barry.”

  He brightened. “Really?”

  “Uh-huh,” Lou said. “You can play the ex-boyfriend who uses the heroine and then dumps her when someone prettier comes along.”

  The smile left his face. “Hey. Hey, now! That’s not called for.”

  “Isn’t it, Barry?” Lou asked. They’d reached the door now. All she had to do was pull back the deadbolt, open it, and shove him through.

  But she still had one thing left to say.

  “Hasta la vista, Barry.”

  Then, just as she’d planned, she lifted the deadbolt, opened the door, and got ready to shove Barry through it.

  Except that she couldn’t. Because a very haggard-looking Jack Townsend was standing there, holding a bottle of Dom Perignon in one hand, and in the other, a bright pink box of Mr. Bubble.

  26

  “I can’t believe you did that,” Jack said, a little while later. “Left me alone to deal with the Attack of the Five-Foot Fuck Bunny.”

  “Hey,” Lou said, from the bathroom, where she was brushing her teeth. “She was your fuck bunny, not mine.”

  “Oh, right,” Jack said. “Like I didn’t rescue you from your own fuck bunny attack just now.”

  “For your information,” Lou said, “Barry was not a fuck bunny. He and I once shared a deep and abiding love for one another.”

  Jack, stretched out on her bed, the bottle of Dom resting against his flat abs, said, “Once more, in English, please.”

  Lou spat the toothpaste from her mouth, rinsed, then, wiping her face on a hand towel, stomped out of the bathroom to say, “I was in love with Barry. For years and years.”

  Jack winced. “That is not something I would go around repeating,” he said. “It doesn’t cast you in the most positive light, you know.”

  “Oh, and your having sex with Melanie Dupre makes you what?” Lou demanded. “Ghandi?”

  Jack observed her from the bed where he lay. “What have you got on under that robe?” he wanted to know.

  Lou felt, to her fury, her cheeks start to heat up. “Nothing,” she said. “And not for the reason you think. I happened to be showering when you reappeared. I didn’t expect to see you again tonight. I thought you were going to escort Barry back to his room, then retire to yours like a good little actor. You’re supposed to be at the set at nine tomorrow morning, if I read the call sheet correctly.”

  Jack rolled onto his side, and, propping his head up on one hand, said, “Hey, a guy can’t be too careful where a woman like you is concerned. I turn around to deal with an irate ex, and next thing I know, you’re in here with a guy I thought was not only long gone out of your life, but who was supposed to have been safely wed to another. You’re damned right I came back. I wasn’t sure who I’d find in here next. I thought I saw Matt Lauer wandering around down in the lobby, looking for a scoop. Seemed a good bet he’d show up on the old eighth floor eventually.
Everybody else seems to.”

  “You,” Lou said, “are a sick, sick man.”

  “I know.” He patted the mattress suggestively. “Come and sit down over here. I think I need to have a look under that robe.”

  Lou, who’d picked up a bottle of moisturizer, sat down on the opposite side of the bed from him and began industriously to rub the cream into her newly shaved legs. She did this in order to keep her gaze from roving too hungrily over his long, lean body, laid out so enticingly across her bed. She was not going to fall into temptation again. Not this time.

  “I think I recall, Jack,” she said, “my saying just a short time ago that this little flirtation you and I seem to be having is never going to work.”

  “Well, not if you won’t take that robe off, it won’t.”

  “I’m serious, Jack,” she said.

  “So am I.”

  “Jack.” Lou sighed. “What happened out there—you know, while we were, um, lost. That was just a fluke. All right? That wasn’t me. I don’t do things like…well, what we did in Donald’s cabin. Okay? I’m not that type of girl.”

  “Could have fooled me,” Jack said, with a suggestive laugh.

  “I know.” Lou felt herself starting to blush as she remembered all the things she’d done to merit that laugh. Be strong, she told herself. Remember what happened with Barry. Jack could break your heart ten thousand times worse. She shook her head. “Look, I’m sorry if I misled you. But this—whatever this is—it’s got to stop. It’s got to stop now, tonight.”

  Jack’s dark eyebrows rose. “Wait a minute.” He looked—and sounded—incredulous. “Are you breaking up with me?”

  She couldn’t blame him for being shocked. She was probably the first woman who’d ever turned down a chance at being Mrs. Jack Townsend for a month, or however long his romantic liaisons tended to last.

  And she was, she told herself, probably one of the few women to walk away from him with her heart still intact.

  Or at least she would be, if she broke things off with him now, tonight, this very minute….

  “Listen,” Lou said. “In order for me to break up with you, we’d have to have been in some kind of relationship. Which we never were.”

  “We weren’t?” Jack looked even more incredulous. “You could have fooled me.”

  Lou gave a nervous laugh. She didn’t know what else to do. She certainly had never expected him to fight her on this. She’d thought he’d be relieved. Weren’t all serial daters like Jack just dying for an excuse to dump their current flames, so they could move on to the next one? He ought to be on his knees before her in abject gratitude.

  Instead, he looked troubled.

  “Who’s going to break the news to Dakota?” he wanted to know.

  She stared at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, just that you can’t break up with me now,” Jack said. “We haven’t even figured out who’s going to get custody of Dakota. And have you considered the impact this is going to have on his fragile little psyche? He may be in therapy for years over this.”

  He was joking. It had taken Lou a little while to realize it, but of course it turned out he was joking. His resistance had been token after all. He didn’t care. He didn’t care in the least.

  She told herself that this was a good thing—that now she’d be able to extricate herself with ease.

  Except a part of her was hurt. A part of her—the same part of her that believed in the happy endings she penned, that really did think love could triumph over all—was wounded to the quick that he could joke over something that, however briefly, had meant more to her than…well, than she’d been able to admit to herself.

  But it was better this way. So much better. Now they could go back to squabbling over his nude scenes and the I need a bigger gun line. Things would go back to the way they were. Things would go back to normal.

  Everything, she knew, except for her. Lou Calabrese, she knew, would never, ever be the same.

  And that’s why it was good she was getting out now, before the damage was irreparable, and he ruined her for any other man.

  She tried to match his flippant tone, so he wouldn’t know she cared. “I thought Dakota,” she said, drily, “was a golden retriever.”

  “Changed my mind,” Jack said. “The dog’s name is Ranger. Our firstborn is Dakota.”

  Lou sighed. He was only teasing, she knew. That’s what Jack did. Teased.

  But this kind of teasing hurt. He didn’t know, of course, how in high school, when she’d been planning out her and Barry’s life together, she’d been sure they’d be married with their first child by her thirtieth birthday. Sure, she still had a year or so to meet that deadline.

  But it still wasn’t a subject she could joke about.

  “You shouldn’t have come back here, Jack,” she said seriously.

  “I had to,” Jack said. “I left my Mr. Bubble here.”

  “I mean it, Jack,” she said.

  “Hey.” He looked genuinely irritated. “I thought we had a date. Remember? In the hallway? Before we were so rudely interrupted. I was getting definite date vibes back there. Then I come back in here, and all of a sudden, you’re breaking up with me. I don’t get it. What changed? Was it Officer Juarez? Look, I swear tomorrow I’ll handcuff myself to him. Tim won’t like that for the shot he’s planning on filming, but he’ll just have to edit the guy out later—”

  “It’s not that,” Lou said. “Though I wish you’d take the fact that someone wants you dead a little more seriously.”

  “What is it, then?” Jack demanded. “Is it Melanie? Haven’t I said how sorry I am about that? But honest to God, Lou, I never made her any promises, and when I found out how attached she was getting, I tried to break it off—that’s how my hotel room got trashed. I had no idea what a headcase she was—”

  Lou, who knew perfectly well that Melanie Dupre had, in fact, been a headcase long before she’d ever gotten involved with Jack, couldn’t help feeling a little sympathetic towards her. God knew Jack Townsend was a man worth lighting a love seat for. Look at him lying there on her bed. He looked completely delectable, like a newly unwrapped candy bar.

  Too bad she’d sworn off chocolate.

  “I can’t do this, Jack,” she said, no humor in her voice at all. “I really can’t.”

  Blinking, he sat up straight. “This is all starting to sound very ominous,” he said. “What can’t you do, exactly?”

  “This,” Lou said, lifting a hand and then letting it drop back into her lap. “You. I can’t do the casual sex thing, Jack. I’ve never been able to see the point of it. And I especially can’t do it with a guy who’s pretty much the king of casual sex. I just don’t have it in me. I think I had better just pull the plug on this thing before it goes any further.”

  “Oh,” Jack said, and to her surprise, the teasing tone was gone from his voice. Now he sounded…well, wounded.

  But that was impossible. Because he was Jack Townsend. Jack Townsend never got wounded. He only did the wounding.

  “That’s all I was to you, then?” he asked. “A casual fling?”

  If she hadn’t seen the expression on his face, she might have thought he was joking. But for once there wasn’t a hint of humor in those ice-blue eyes.

  “Well, Jack,” she said, giving a nervous laugh in an attempt to break some of the tension in the room. “I mean, come on. You can’t tell me you ever meant for this to go any further than that. A casual flirtation. Right? I mean…did you?”

  She tried not to look eager. The chances of Jack Townsend, notorious ladies man, ever settling down were exactly nil. He’d even told Playboy, in an interview, that he thought marriage was an antiquated institution, and that he didn’t think humans were meant to be monogamous.

  So when he said, “I guess we’ll never know now, will we?” then gave her a brief, cold smile, she couldn’t help staring at him. This was not the Jack that she’d come, over the past few days, to know.
Here suddenly there was nothing flippant, nothing playful, nothing even remotely casual.

  But how was that possible? Wasn’t she just another in a string of leading ladies with whom he’d been involved? Oh, sure, this time he’d picked one who worked behind, rather than in front of, the camera. But that was the only difference, really. Wasn’t it?

  Or didn’t he talk about Dakota with all his girlfriends? Had he talked about Dakota with Vicky?

  Lou took a deep, trembling breath. When she released it, she said, “Jack, I told you before, I can’t get into another relationship with an actor.”

  “Good thing Copkiller IV ’s my last acting gig, then,” he said.

  She shook her head. “I’m serious.”

  “So am I.”

  He looked it, too. She had never seen his gaze so somber.

  “No.” Her voice shook. She tried to get it under control. Now was not the time to crumble. “I mean it, Jack. I just can’t let myself get hurt that way again, not right now. There’ll be…there’ll be nothing left of me.”

  There was silence. One heartbeat. Two.

  Then Jack got up off the bed.

  Lou assumed he was leaving. She hung her head, feeling the prick of tears beneath her eyelids.

  But this, she told herself, was for the better. She had told him the truth. She could not afford to be hurt again…especially not by someone like Jack, who, unlike Barry, was so quick, so eminently capable of causing real, lasting pain. The disappointment she’d felt over what had happened with Barry had, after all, been tinged with relief, since she’d managed to escape her relationship with him with only her pride, not so much her heart, broken.

  With Jack, she knew, it would be different. Her love for Barry had been like a habit she’d clung to since adolescence. What she felt—was beginning to feel, anyway—for Jack was something far deeper…and so much more dangerous. If she did not extricate herself now, she knew, she’d only fall deeper. And with Jack, it wouldn’t just be her pride that would suffer. Oh, no.

  But to her surprise, Jack did not leave. Instead, he came around the bed, until he was standing in front of her. She looked up at him, wondering what he could possibly want. She had made herself, she was sure, perfectly clear.