“Then sit the hell down,” Wyatt yells. He leans over to Camden, and they discuss whether we should move outside, now that there is actual rain to contend with.
Meanwhile Jordan has slipped himself into a director’s chair. His scruffy sneakers dangle toward the floor, his arms draped over the sides. I can see the glint of raindrops on his forearms, the beads of water falling down his neck.
“Your heart is racing,” Rainer says to me. He tucks my head under his chin. I feel his chest rise and fall against me—steady, strong.
But I still can’t shake the feeling that Jordan’s watching me. I want to ask Rainer why he told Jordan to stay, but I’m miked, so I can’t. Even if I know the answer, I want to hear it.
We go again. Rainer bends his head down, and I pull him closer. His mouth is warm against mine, his hair soft. I try to stay focused. To not lose myself in him. I don’t want to give Jordan the satisfaction of watching that. I can feel Rainer’s heart hammering against mine.
“Cut!” Wyatt calls. He looks us over, then back at Jordan. “All right,” he says. He checks his watch. “Let’s break for lunch.”
“Lunch” is any time when we’re halfway through the scenes we have to do for the day. Usually it’s around dinnertime, which means while I have a few hours left, the boys are gearing up for a night of shooting.
I glance over to see if Jordan is still there. He is. He’s seated, watching us, but when I look over, he turns his head sharply and begins talking to Camden. I want to make an effort. I want things to be okay on this set. But I’m starting to get pretty sick of his attitude.
The sound guy comes and takes our mikes off. I’m happy to be out of earshot for now.
“Hey, PG,” Rainer says. He’s still so close to me, and his hand is resting on my side, right at the curve of my back. “Walk with me?”
I nod.
He takes my hand. I jostle to see if Jordan is watching us leave, but I can’t meet his eyes, and Rainer is already halfway out the door. When we’re outside, I find that it is, in fact, raining hard. We huddle to the side of the sound studio, where there is a slight awning but not enough to prevent us from getting wet. It’s only been about twenty seconds, and already my nightgown is nearly soaked through. Rainer puts one hand on my waist, right where he last left it, and nudges me closer to him. “Come here,” he says. He has this look on his face like he wants to say something. I hold my breath. But he doesn’t talk. He doesn’t say anything. He kisses me.
My chest tightens and then swells as his lips come down on mine. My hands travel up his arms to grip his shoulders. He presses me to him so there is no space between us. He’s kissing me with so much intention. It’s gentle and soft and strong and sweet all at once. It’s everything I have wanted. I can feel us getting soaked, feel the rain on our faces, but I don’t care. We’re finally here.
CHAPTER 14
Rainer has to stay around set to finish filming, and I run back up to the condo, soaking wet and shaking. I feel exhilarated. It feels like it’s the start of something, and I can’t help but let excitement win out over fear. I want this. I want to be with him. He makes me feel comfortable and confident and protected. Safe in this new normal. I realize that the problem is not the way I feel about Rainer. I know how I feel about Rainer. The problem is the way I feel about Jordan.
He’s gotten into my head. I know this recent development with Rainer will make it even harder for us to get along, but it’s not like Jordan has been making any type of effort. He hasn’t even tried to have a full conversation with me. It’s all pointed stares and sharp hellos. It’s so unbelievably stupid. I should just follow Rainer’s lead. I should treat Jordan the way he treats me. But there’s something about him. It’s like I want to put as much distance as possible between us and at the same time figure out, up close, who he is. What makes him this way—his family? His history with Britney? I wonder if she knows Jordan’s secrets. I wonder what he says to someone he cares about.
I can’t sleep. I keep thinking about Rainer just down the hall.
I finally peel myself out of bed at 4:30 AM and slip into my bathing suit for a morning swim. I need to clear my head, and it’s been a while since I’ve gotten into the water on a weekday morning. Call times have been so early lately.
It’s dark as I slide into my flip-flops, sling a towel over my shoulder, and make my way down to the beach. I can see the outline of surfers in the water, their silver bodies illuminated by the predawn light. They look like those flying fish I read about once in a coffee-table book my dad has about lakes. I’ve never seen them live before, but their tiny bodies fly out of the water so they look like small silver arcs, moonbeams, almost like the reflection of shooting stars.
I set my towel down on a rock, tossing my shoes to the side. The sand feels cool under my feet, like it’s been in the freezer, and for a moment, I doubt my ability to go in. But I push the thought away, take a deep breath, and plunge headfirst into the ocean.
The water hits me, sharp and cold, and I start to swim. Long, fluid strokes. I don’t take my head out until I’ve done ten. When I look up, sputtering and gasping for air, I’m already a few yards off the shore. I flip over onto my back and let the current carry me out a bit farther. The sky is changing—navy fading to gray fading to the palest shade of violet. Soon the sun will break out—like a solo dancer onstage—and start spinning, its rays reaching out left and right and center.
It’s early still, and I swim out farther to where the surfers are congregated, straddling their boards, waiting for waves. I think about how Wyatt would kill me if he knew I was out here, and for some reason that makes me swim farther, faster. Past the surfers and the rocks off the coast. So far, in fact, that when I look back at the condos, they look like nothing more than sugar cubes: small and white and capable of dissolving in the mass of swirling water that is all around me.
I swim out a little bit farther. It’s peaceful out here—expansive in a way things just aren’t right now.
The thing about Hawaii is that there are no lifeguards. I remember them telling us this during our island orientation. When they told us about that moving lava chain. There are no lifeguards because the current is strong, very strong, and if you swim, it’s at your own risk.
A lot of tourists die in the water here. Not from shark bites, although that’s what I stupidly piped up during orientation, but from the current. They get dragged so far out to sea there is no way to get back, a big wave comes, and they drown. I thought that was ridiculous. Know your limits. I can handle the water, I thought. I’m a strong swimmer. Always have been.
Which is why what happens next is so crazy.
I know you’re supposed to go under waves when they come. If it looks big, you dive to the base, because if you can’t make it over the top, the force of the wave can knock you down and drag you under. But it’s too late. I don’t see it until it’s already there, looming over me. There’s no time to duck. I freeze, and in that split second, the decision is made for me.
The wave comes crashing over me, bearing down from all sides until I feel like I’m being pummeled to the ground. But it’s too deep out here to hit the ocean floor, and I’m being pushed farther and farther underwater. I know all that’s waiting for me down there is more water. More of the same, suffocating darkness.
And it is suffocating. My lungs feel like they’re on fire, and I can’t imagine that my mouth isn’t hanging open, attempting to scream. I have a mental flash of water flooding my lungs, filling up my windpipe so much it bursts, like the water balloons Cassandra and I used to throw out my bedroom window onto the concrete driveway in the summer. Ten points if you hit someone square, three points if they were just sprayed.
My thoughts start to blur. I picture Cassandra and my brothers and my parents and Jake in my living room, the three of us joking around, and Trinkets n’ Things. I picture a sunset full of orange and red—so bright it looks like the fireworks they set off in downtown Portland on the Fourth of
July.
Then I see the beach and the sound studio and Wyatt looking angry. Except the image is faulty, grainy, and light, like a photograph that’s been left out to fade in the sun. It wilts, and as it does, I see something else. Someone else. Someone I’ve imagined way before I knew what to picture. He’s here. Real and human in a way I’m not anymore. I know I’m dying in much the same way I’ve known I had to shower or that I was going to get reprimanded for not taking the trash out. It’s a practical kind of knowledge, and I don’t even try to fight it. I just close my eyes and wish for it to happen quickly. For me to stop thinking. Because when I think about him, I don’t want to go.
I hear him calling my name, quietly at first and then louder. I’m surprised because I imagined my senses would be fading. I thought that the closer I got to death, the quieter it would be. But it’s not. It’s full of noise. The screaming of my name, the sloshing of water, and then something else, too, something that convinces me I’ve already gone: his face, so close I can feel him breathe.
“Paige.” He says my name sternly, and for a moment I’m reminded of my eighth-grade math teacher, Mr. Steeler. I’m not sure why I’d be thinking about him now, at my moment of death, but that’s what happens.
It comes again: “Paige.”
I open my mouth to answer, before I remember I’m underwater. I brace myself against the rush of pressure, the taste of salt, but it never comes. Instead I find myself coughing, sputtering like I did when I first got in the ocean this morning. And I open my eyes.
The first thing I notice is that I’m lying on something. I try to lift myself to see, but an arm gently nudges me back down. I can still hear the water around me, but it’s softer now, less menacing. Instead of crashing, it’s lapping, a soft whoosh whoosh, almost like a lullaby.
“Paige?”
I turn my head and see him bobbing in the ocean next to me, one arm tucked over my abdomen, the other fanning through the water. I’m lying on top of a surfboard, and Jordan Wilder is pulling me to shore.
He’s frowning, the lines of his forehead pinched together like marionette strings.
“Jor—” I manage, and then start coughing again. His hand that is over me reaches up to touch my shoulder, then smooths the hair away from my forehead. I close my eyes again. It’s totally possible I’m dead. The odds of reality in this situation are not promising.
“Hang in there,” he says. “We’re almost back.”
I see now that he’s propelling the board forward with his legs, keeping me steady with his arms. I lift my head up and spot the shoreline a few yards off—the long stretch of beach is the best thing I have ever seen—wide and solid and steady.
“How are you feeling?” Jordan’s voice comes next to me.
“Okay,” I say. I cough some and then steady myself. “How did you…”
I look at him, and he shakes his head. “You were pretty far out,” he says. “You can’t do that in Hawaii unless you really know the ocean. You obviously don’t.”
“Did you follow me?” We’re close enough to the shore that Jordan is standing. I swing my legs over the opposite side and stand, too. They’re wobbly, though, and when they buckle underneath me, I keep my palms flat on the board.
“I had to,” he says.
“No, you didn’t.”
He raises his eyebrows at me. “You sure about that?”
“No,” I say.
“Right.” He puts a hand on my back. I’m surprised at how warm it feels. My whole body is freezing.
“Thank you,” I say.
“For what?” There is a lightness in his voice, playfulness. I haven’t heard it before.
“Saving my life,” I mumble.
“I’m sorry, what now?” he asks. He’s teasing.
I look up and glare at him. Even after he’s pulled me from the brink of death, Jordan Wilder is still obnoxious.
“You’re welcome,” he says.
I help him ease the board into the sand, then collapse. The sun is starting to warm the beach, and I can feel it on my back. I take a few breaths, lean back on my hands.
“Do you come out here a lot?” I ask.
He nods, sitting down next to me. “Every morning.”
I turn to look at him. “Really? Why have I never seen you?”
He glances at me, water dangling off his lashes. “I guess you haven’t been looking.”
“Have you seen me?”
He opens his mouth to answer, but I’m coughing again—large, heaving, water-filled gasps. I feel Jordan’s hands on my shoulders, and then one down my back, rubbing big, even circles. Even with the sun, it makes every inch of skin spring up with goose bumps.
“Thanks,” I say.
“Maybe we should get you inside,” he says.
“No.” I don’t want to go inside. I don’t want to go anywhere. I am overcome with the need to remain—to stay on this beach with him for as long as I can.
“You should get some hot liquids in you. And maybe a proper towel.” His voice is determined, and I gesture over to the rocks where my flip-flops are tossed, along with my pineapple beach towel.
“I have one,” I tell him.
He stands, wipes his hands on his board shorts, and jogs over to the rocks. I watch his tanned body, the outline of his torso, as he slings the towel over his shoulder. He’s so easy in the water and on this beach. He looks like the surfers who live here. Like he belongs.
He comes back with the towel and unfolds it, draping it over my shoulders like a cape.
“Oh, thanks,” I say. “You didn’t have to.”
He sits back down in the sand. “You’re a pretty priceless commodity these days,” he says, brushing his hands together. I watch the sand fall between them. “The star of the movie. I’d probably have to pay to replace you if you got hypothermia.” He looks over at me. “I don’t think I could afford it.”
“It’s Hawaii. Hypothermia seems unlikely.” I snatch my gaze away from him, because I’m worried he can tell, just by looking at me, what it feels like inside. How my heart beats faster knowing he’s near me than it did when I thought I was drowning.
Jordan looks at me, and there is something new in his eyes. Something more than that fleck of gold—a star in the night sky. His eyes look softer, too. More brown than black.
“We haven’t really gotten much of a chance to talk,” I say.
He snorts.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Tell me.”
He leans back on his hands, stretching his legs out. “You’re tied up, is what I meant.”
“Tied up?”
He shakes his head. “Come on, don’t do that. Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
I think about Rainer’s arms around me on Jordan’s first day on set. Then again at the photo shoot. “Rainer,” I say.
He raises his eyebrows. “You guys are a thing, right?”
I pull the towel closer around me. “I don’t know.” It’s as truthful an answer as I’ve got right now. Plus… “I don’t really see what that has to do with us being friends.”
He holds his hands up like I have him at gunpoint. “Hey, it’s your career, not mine.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He sighs. “Rainer likes to be in the spotlight.” He’s talking slowly now, like he’s explaining something to a second grader. “You get a lot more of it when you’re dating an actress.”
“That’s not what this is,” I say. “No one even knows who I am.”
He looks at me intently. “But they will.”
“Maybe,” I say. “But who is Rainer supposed to date? He’s an actor. Don’t you do the same thing?”
His eyes narrow. “I don’t date actresses.”
“Just pop stars.”
“I’m sorry?” he says, squaring his shoulders so he’s facing me. “Is there something you’d like to say?”
“What about Britney?”
He lets out a long breath, picks up a handful of sand, and lets it sift through his fingers. “Britney is not, nor has she ever been, my girlfriend.”
I can’t help it, the words tumble out. “So you just hooked up with her behind Rainer’s back?”
His eyes make my heart plunge down into my stomach. They’re soft again. But not because he’s concerned. He’s hurt. “Is that really what you think?”
I shake my head. “No,” I say. “I don’t know. I was totally out of line. I’m sorry.”
“Look, if you’re going to be a part of this business, you need to understand that there are things you don’t share, or talk about, because they’re sacred. People will come after everything. They will dig up graves for gossip. And if they can’t find it, they will make it up.”
Then he stands, like that’s that. “Come on,” he says. “We’re going in.”
He holds out his hand to me, and I take it. It’s strong, and a little bit calloused—the kind of hand that’s held things. That’s gripped them tightly.
We walk in silence, a silence filled with the million things I want to ask but don’t. It doesn’t seem like he wants to talk, and after he saved my life, the least I can do is shut up.
“Thank you,” I say when he drops me at my condo door.
He shrugs. “Luck,” he says. “I’m glad I was there.” His eyes meet mine, and we hold our gaze like that, not even blinking. I wonder if he feels it, too. I wonder if he wonders.
“Same,” I say, softly.
Then he drops his head, tucks his arms across his chest, and turns to go. I watch him walk down the hallway until he vanishes around the corner. Even then it takes me another beat to pull out my key card, to not keep standing there watching the space where he once was.
CHAPTER 15
I’m reading some scripts my agent has sent over. The thought of doing another project is really exciting. It helps me remember that August is a moment—a big one—but a moment. There are plenty of other characters to play. There is a script about a mean girl who gets pregnant, one about a mermaid based on another bestselling book series, and then a period piece where I’d play the daughter of the male lead. It shoots in Seattle, so I’d be close to home, which I have mixed feelings about. I’m almost through it, and the script is pretty brilliant.
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