Not that it matters. There’s Rainer. Rainer, who is sweet and sexy and wonderful and who actually for some totally insane reason wants to be with me. And besides all that, Jordan probably has chemistry with a doorknob. It was acting, obviously, but I can’t stop thinking about being that close to him. Is this why actors are constantly breaking up and cheating on each other? Is it this intimacy? Is this intimacy? I can’t wrap my head around the possibility that Jordan didn’t feel it, too, but maybe after you do this for a long time you learn to separate it out. Maybe I have it all wrong. Maybe it’s really just playing pretend.
I wish Rainer were here. I’m sure this is all happening because he is gone. If he were here, I wouldn’t be feeling this way. I wouldn’t be feeling like I wanted to see Jordan. I wouldn’t have to put myself on house arrest.
By two or so I’m going stir-crazy and the only thing left in my fridge is a bottle of mustard and a jar of pickles. I asked them to stop the magical food deliveries. I felt bad that so much of it went to waste, but now I wish I hadn’t. Unfortunately the time has come to leave the premises. I brace myself against the elements with rubber flip-flops and a rain jacket. Then I pull the door open and head downstairs.
I wolf down a sandwich from the shops and then zip up my raincoat, the heavy-duty Oregon one I brought out here on a whim. It’s pretty dry inside, and I decide instead of going back upstairs I’ll take my chances and walk the beach. I need to clear my head, and if I haven’t seen him in the lobby or at the shops, Jordan’s probably in his room.
It’s nice to have sunshine, don’t get me wrong, but there’s something about the rain that makes me feel at home. It’s the smell. Even here, where the salt water threads its way into almost everything, it still smells the same. Like cool moss or strong pine or the heady, calming scent of lavender. The clouds roll in, my nervous system relaxes, and things feel quieter, less intense. Like the world softens.
The beach is pretty much deserted. I set my flip-flops down by the rocks’ edge and sink my toes into the sand. The rain makes tiny pinpoints, nipping at my legs like insects. I start to walk west, down to where the beach curves around and then stretches forward. It’s hazy, and the rain picks up, beating down in long, diagonal sheets. I walk with my chin tucked in, hands firmly in my pockets.
“Hey!” A voice comes from behind me, and I turn around to see Jordan jogging, a blue hoodie soaked through and pulled up over his head. The sight of him makes my stomach lurch forward. My veins feel like electrical wires.
“Jesus, I’ve been calling you for five minutes.” He’s panting.
“I didn’t hear.”
He steps closer to me. I can see him breathing. The slow rise and fall of his chest. The raindrops that hang on his forehead and his impossibly long lashes. “I saw you come down,” he says.
“You’re drenched,” I point out.
He looks down at his sweatshirt, then glances around the deserted beach. “Come on.” He grabs my wrist and pulls me up the beach. His fingers are cool, but his palm is warm on my freezing hand. His fingertips find mine, thread through them. I can’t even see where we’re headed through the rain.
I look up to see a line of cabanas being beaten down by the rain, strung across with rope. Jordan unclips the rope and holds the canvas flap open.
“It’s hotel property,” I say.
He gives me a look to tell me just how lame he thinks that response is and if I want to stand out there in the pouring rain, that’s cool, but he’s not going to. I duck inside. Jordan follows, looping the rope and knotting it back together once we’re in. It’s like a tiny tent inside, two beach recliners pushed together. They are covered with damp towels, and Jordan hands me one before using another to dry off. He unzips his sweatshirt and hangs it over the back of his chair, then runs the towel over his face and hair. I notice how his shirt clings to him. The outline of his chest and arms. Arms that, just yesterday, held me close to him. On set, I remind myself. In a make-believe world.
He looks at me. “Are you okay?”
I realize I’m sitting there, still in my raincoat, holding the towel and staring at him.
“Yeah.” I take off my jacket and set it down. It’s cold now, and the wetness seems to have soaked into my bones.
“Here.” He takes a folded towel from the foot of the chairs, opens it, and reaches across to drape it over my shoulders. His arm skims mine, and I can feel his damp skin, the remnants of rain. It makes my goose bumps perk up even higher.
“Thanks,” I say. I lay the second towel on top of me, tucking it down around my feet and pulling it up to my chin.
Jordan looks at me. “Snug as a bug.” He lies down next to me, shoulder to shoulder, and does the same.
I laugh. “Did that seriously just come out of your mouth?”
“I have a little sister,” he says matter-of-factly.
We’re silent then, and I focus on the sound of the rain on canvas. Small, melodic beats.
“I like being in the editing room,” I venture. “I like that you’re showing me that stuff.” Jordan doesn’t say anything, but I can feel him inhale next to me. “I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said. About art not existing in a vacuum.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.” I roll over onto my side to face him, and he turns his head, his eyes meeting mine. I’m incredibly aware of how close our faces are now. No more than inches. I think about what it felt like to kiss him yesterday. How soft his lips were. How strong his arms were. “It’s interesting,” I say. “It makes me want to learn more about the whole process.”
“You should,” he says, his face still turned. “That’s the best part about this kind of art. It’s collaborative. Everyone relies on everyone else. You get to form a community.”
“I like that,” I whisper.
“I’m glad.” He turns his head up to face our tiny hut roof. “I think a lot about why I’m here. Why out of everyone I’d be chosen to do this. You know what I mean?”
“Yes,” I say. I don’t have the heart to tell him that for me it’s more a constant fear that someone will realize they chose wrong. That I’ve been miscast. That I’m not their August after all.
“I used to think I didn’t belong in Hollywood,” he says, like he’s reading my thoughts. “But now I just feel a crazy amount of gratitude.”
“You don’t take it for granted, do you?” I say.
He rolls over to look at me, and when he does, I see something close to disbelief on his face. “Never. I know what it’s like to have nothing. I’d never forget it. You have to keep reminding yourself of what’s real,” he says. “Who you really are, the people you love, your family.”
“Family?” I remember that he’s supposed to be this money-hungry bad boy who is suing his parents. That he’s cut them out of his life entirely. Lying next to him now, his eyelashes blinking raindrops, it’s hard to imagine.
“Do you want to ask me something?” he says, still looking at me.
I bite my lip. “Your family,” I say. I jump in quickly, burying the words I just said. “My parents are clueless. And my brothers are crazy. My family is totally screwed up, too. And… I’m rambling.”
“It’s okay. I don’t read tabloids, but I know what people say about me.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, pulling the towel up closer to my chin. “You don’t need to tell me anything.”
He scans my face. “I didn’t sue for emancipation because of money. Money is a nice side effect, but it’s not why I do this job.”
“So what happened?”
His eyes settle on mine. “My dad isn’t a great guy. He tried to take everything, and then when I wouldn’t give it, he turned on my mom.”
My chest feels tight, heavy. I want to put my hand on his cheek and hold it there. “What did you do then?”
“I had to get her away from him. I had to get all of us away, actually, and the only way to do that was to make sure I could support them.” He inhales. “My sister and
mom. I did what I had to do.”
My eyes roam over his face, settling on his scar. Without even thinking I reach out and touch it, run my hands down the silver line of his jaw and down the back of his neck. He closes his eyes. “Did he do this to you?” I ask.
He nods, his eyes still closed.
A hot bolt of fire shoots up from my core. Anger. I want to find his father and kill him for what he did to Jordan. To his mom and sister, whom I’ve never even met.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” I’m aware of how lame my voice sounds. Of how stupid and small my questions seem now.
He opens his eyes. “To the press? I would never do that to my mom.”
“But she—”
“Has pride,” he says, like there’s nothing more to discuss.
“That must be hard,” I say. “Don’t you ever want to tell people the truth?”
He shifts his arms and puts one hand down on the space between us. “As much as I’d love to get back at my dad for hurting us, it wouldn’t be worth it. And the people who I really care about know.” He searches my face again, like he’s looking for something. “That’s good enough for me.”
Something hits me, sharply, like the water on a cold morning. “How come you’re telling me?” I ask. “I could tell anyone.”
He looks at me and blinks, a raindrop sliding down his cheek like a tear. “You could,” he says. “But I don’t think you will.”
Without even realizing, I’ve inched closer to him. My body is moving on its own, like when it’s really cold in the winter and you go straight for the radiator. Like he’s the only source of heat on this rainy, freezing beach. He is. “Why?”
He looks at me in a way that makes the world stop. Like some higher power has hit the pause button, and for a second I think he’s going to say something. Something I really want to hear. But he doesn’t. Instead he takes my face in his hands. He cups my chin with his palm, and gently brings my lips up to meet his. Everything fades. The sound of the rain, the cold chill, the goose bumps on my arms and legs. The only thing I’m aware of is how it feels to be close to him. His lips move against mine. They feel even better than yesterday. So much better because it’s just us here now. We don’t have to pretend to be August and Ed. There is no one watching.
His lips leave mine and find my neck. He trails kisses down to my collarbone and I gasp, my fingernails digging into his shoulders.
“Jordan,” I breathe, but his lips are on mine again, devouring the words. He rolls me toward him and then I’m on top of him on the lounge chair. I feel his hands move on me. They grip my shoulders, then move down my back, pressing me against him. I can feel everything. His hip bones, the hard muscles of his abs. He keeps one hand on my side and with the other brushes my hair out of my face as it swings forward. I keep kissing him. I want to bottle this feeling. To have it forever.
Then he pushes me back gently, cups his hand to the side of my head, and tucks my hair behind my cheek. He drops his gaze down, lets his hand fall. “We shouldn’t be doing this,” he says. His breathing is labored, and I can feel the frenzied beat of his heart a few inches below mine.
“No,” I say. It’s the first thing I think. I say it automatically. The truth is when something feels this good, this right, it’s hard to remember why it should be different. What reason could there possibly be that we shouldn’t be here, right now, together?
But I know; we both do. Rainer. He doesn’t deserve this. Even the thought of it, of him finding out, of what it would do to him, makes me feel like I’m going to be sick right here in the sand.
Jordan straightens up, and so do I. We untangle ourselves so we’re just sitting side by side, not touching. My body aches for him. It feels like I’ve severed something. A limb, maybe an organ.
“Why couldn’t you have come sooner?” I ask.
Jordan smiles. “I don’t know,” he says softly.
“Jordan…”
He shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter,” he says. “I can’t go through this with him again.”
“But I thought you said you never dated Britney.”
“I didn’t,” he says. “But he doesn’t believe me.”
I clear my throat. “I want—”
But he reaches over and grabs my hand before I can finish. I want him. I want a different situation. I want to go back and rearrange everything. Make this feeling possible for more than this minute.
“Paige, don’t,” he says. He drops my hand. My heart sinks, like it’s been submerged in freezing water. I don’t know how it’s possible to go from pure elation to devastation so quickly.
He sits up and pulls back the canvas flap. “Looks like it stopped,” he says.
The light comes flooding in, bright and unwelcome, and I know that we’re leaving.
He folds his towel and tucks it neatly at the edge of his chair, then he reaches across, his hand brushing my shoulder, and slides my own towel down.
“Thanks,” I say. I try to hide the disappointment in my tone, but I know it comes through. I can feel it in the way he looks at me. His eyes seem to say it for both of us: I wish things were different.
He folds my towel and then stands, holding out his hand. I put mine in his, and when we touch, I feel it again. Like the final puzzle piece snapped down into place.
But it doesn’t matter now. It’s like an umbrella in the middle of a rainstorm after you’re already wet. It’s exactly what you need, what you want, but it’s come too late.
CHAPTER 18
The final book of the trilogy comes out tonight at midnight, and Jordan and I are being sent to the Barnes & Noble in town to surprise fans. Rainer is on the last leg of his press tour and won’t be back until tomorrow afternoon.
I’ve seen Jordan only once off set since the day at the beach. I ran into him in the hallway and awkwardly asked if he wanted to have dinner, but he said he was on his way out. He didn’t clarify, just glanced at his watch and took off for the lobby.
He’s been distant on set, and he barely looks at me when we’re not filming. We haven’t talked about what happened on the beach at all. Part of me feels like it didn’t even happen, and I think that’s what he wants—to pretend it never did.
Maybe it’s for the best. I miss Rainer. I miss the way he makes me feel at home here. I miss watching movies in his condo, having dinner together. I miss the way he makes me laugh on set, the silly things he whispers to me, and how comfortable I feel around him. Sometimes I sleep in his condo to feel closer to him. Rainer makes me forget that the stakes are so high. He makes me feel calm. With him gone, everything feels too important, too serious. Jordan, this movie, the book release. It’s like we’re all at the edge of a cliff and Rainer is the fence, the thing that keeps us from spilling over the side.
We were supposed to go to L.A. for the book thing, but that got canceled because of our shooting schedule. I was relieved, actually, because honestly? The book and movie are linked and all, but the story is what won people over, not us. Rainer’s and Jordan’s fans are kind of established, but besides that girl at the Fish Market and a few curious tourists, no one has recognized me. I know that we’re making tabloid headlines fairly regularly—PAIGE AND RAINER: SEPARATED BY DISTANCE; AUGUST PINES FOR HER NOAH—but we’re pretty removed here. It’s easy to forget the other side of all this.
Tonight I don’t want to be anything more than a fan. I can’t wait to get my hands on the final book to find out what happens to August. Does she choose Noah or Ed? When we started shooting the first movie, I thought they’d probably cast me in all three—if they made them, that is. But now that I’ve heard more of the behind-the-scenes gossip, the whispers of the producers hovering around set, I realize that it’s far from a foregone conclusion. Will we get the chance to see this thing through to its end?
In the first book, we found out that Noah holds a special place on the island—he’s descended from the people who live there. It gets complicated, obviously, and even now, having read the
first two books of the series, I’m not sure where August’s heart really lies. You think it’s Noah in book one. How could anyone ever live up to the epic love they have? But then Ed comes back and she starts to remember what it was like to be with him. How he’s family. I feel as confused as she does.
We’re supposed to be getting copies of the book delivered to us this afternoon, and I’m going to try to get through as much as I can before we go out tonight. It’s a Saturday, so that shouldn’t be too hard to swing. I go for a swim in the morning, dragging myself out of bed at six. I could go later, given that it’s not a filming day. I tell myself this isn’t about trying to see Jordan, but I know that it is. No matter how hard I try, no matter how much I think about Rainer and miss him, I can’t get Jordan out of my head.
He’s there when I wake up, like a dream that doesn’t fade. I keep thinking about him in the tent, the way my fingers traced across his face, the silver sliver of his scar. I know I just need to focus on Rainer, on the fact that he’s coming back tomorrow, and on our plans to go to the other side of the island next weekend. I was so happy to hear his voice from London when he called. “I miss you,” he said. “I love that next time we do this, we’ll be doing it together.”
It’s probably a good thing that Jordan’s not at the beach this morning. I’m disappointed—I can feel the emotion palpably, like it’s sitting inside me—but it’s better this way. Seeing him leads to more of the what-ifs. And it doesn’t help to think that way. It’s the reality that matters.
I hang out in the water for a while, floating on my back, watching the sunrise from the corner of my eye. When I finally peel myself out, it’s almost eight and my skin is shriveled and prickly.
I wring out my hair and wrap my towel around my waist, then walk back up to the condos. When I get inside, I find a package sitting on my counter. It must be the book, ahead of schedule, but I’m surprised at how tall the envelope is. I tear it open, excited to see the cover, but when I look inside I realize I’m wrong. It’s not the book at all, but a copy of Scene, the shoot the three of us did last month. I peel back the tissue paper and flip to the page with the Post-it on it, but the photo isn’t the one I expected to see—one of the three of us. Instead, it’s just me. I’m sitting on one of the giant polka-dot chairs, my hair half over my shoulder, half back, and I’m wearing the black dress. The look on my face is one I don’t recognize. It’s hard, cold. I’m not smiling. My expression is blank. I look older with my hair curled and styled. I look pretty in a way that’s hard to distinguish. If I were passing a newsstand and flipping through the magazine, I would know I’d seen the girl in the spread before. That she was vaguely familiar. I’d just never, ever, think it was me.
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