“I bet you don’t have stars like this in L.A or New York.”
Grant brings his gaze down and smiles at me. “No. Just the vapid, self consumed kind. Nothing so beautiful as these.”
We both tip our heads back again and stare. It’s mesmerizing. I could spend the whole night here, watching the stars, away from everything and everyone else.
“So how long have Ava and Colin been together,” Grant asks. I blink. I don’t want to answer this question. I don’t want to talk about them at all. So instead, driven inside by some strange impulse, I bring my hands up and rest them against the hard planes of his chest. I breathe in sharply. What am I doing? Beneath the thin fabric of his shirt, I can feel the taught outline of his muscles. The ones that inspire a million teenage screams every time he takes his shirt off. I lean forward and push myself up to the tips of my toes and brush my lips against his.
At first it’s a gentle kiss, slow and delicate. Briefly my mind empties, but then images of Colin flicker behind my eyelids. No. I need him to go away, so I push myself deeper into Grant. Our bodies press against each other and I lock my arms tightly around his neck. For a brief second, we stumble as one, backward, until Grant’s shoulders collide with the side of the SUV. He barely notices the impact. With the careful teasing of his tongue, he pries my lips apart and I feel something inside of me slip...no melt. It feels good. A light tingling sensation creeps over my neck.
I kiss him harder, pushing myself to the edge. I lace my fingers through his hair then drop them to his waist and toy with the edges of his T-shirt. He responds by wrapping his arms more firmly around me, pulling me in so close that I can feel him on every inch of my body. Warmth spreads through me, over me. My skin seems to sing with heat. I knead my fingers against the muscles of his stomach, then slowly drag them to his sides, then his lower back. Everywhere skin touches skin, it’s like fire. A gasp catches in the back of my throat. I kiss him until the rest of the world disappears, until I forget about Colin and Ava, about the photographers and the movies. We kiss until there’s nothing left but the blaze of Grant’s touch and the stars above us.
Chapter Twenty-One
We climb up onto the hood of the SUV, and sit against the windshield, like I’ve seen them do in the movies a million times, but have never tried myself. It’s not as romantic as it might seem. The hood of the car isn’t smooth, but designed with ridges and cliffs that I can’t seem to steady myself on. The windshield is awkwardly sloped and holds my back at an odd angle. And I’ve got a windshield wiper poking me in the butt.
Grant seems to be having more luck than me getting comfortable. He leans back and folds his hands behind his head. I find a spot that isn’t too intrusive and still myself. Grant looks over and pulls his left hand from behind his head. He reaches for my right hand and holds it loosely, gently trailing his thumb across my palm. After a few minutes he lets go and I’m sorry. He raises his back and slides his forearms beneath him so their holding him up. He’s squinting up at the sky, but I can’t stop looking at him. Just visible beneath the sleeve of his t-shirt, his biceps are bulging from the pressure of holding him up. My throat gets sort of dry. I can see why every girl on this planet is in love with him. I close my eyes.
“Thank you,” he says.
“For what?” I blink.
“For I guess, being you. It’s so great being around someone who doesn’t care about the whole Hollywood thing. I think you’re the first girl I’ve met in years that has actually liked me for...well me. Not the fame, not the money.”
“Oh.” What am I supposed to say to that? He thinks I’m someone I’m not. I didn’t agree to go out with him because I wanted him, I did it for stupid, selfish, poor-me, Colin doesn’t like me reasons. I’m just as bad as those other girls, maybe worse. But I don’t want to be.
“Tell me something about yourself,” he says.
“What?”
“Anything. I don’t know. I just want to know you. Is that cheesy?”
“No” I cough. “It’s nice.”
He grins, pulls his arms out from beneath him, and rests his back against the windshield again. His upper arm brushes against mine and I feel a shiver rush down my spine.
I wrack my brain, trying to find something witty or exciting to divulge, but I come up with nothing. My life has been rather sheltered. Adventures only in the form of trips to Disneyworld and shopping in New York by myself. Nothing grand, nothing exciting, nothing really about who I am at all. I finally settle on a less than perfect memory...something I’d rather forget, but something that’s more me than anything.
“When I was thirteen I tried to dye my hair blonde with this peroxide stuff my mom had. I almost completely destroyed my hair. The stuff discolored my scalp for weeks. Once Mom had me cleaned up, it became this huge family anecdote to tell at parties. It was mortifying. And no one ever bothered to ask why I did it.”
“Why did you?”
“Well that would take us back a year. I went away to summer camp for a couple weeks. It was right around the time Arianna, one of my older sisters, was running in the Miss West Plane Pageant. While I was gone the town newspaper came to the house to do this article on our family, and it came out the day after I got back from camp. They titled it “The Golden Girls of Kane” and went on and on about my sisters, but never mentioned me once. I don’t know if the reporter just left me out, or if my family forgot to mention me, I never had the guts to ask, but for ages the entire town thought my parents only had five kids. People would recognize my family from the article and assume I was a friend or a cousin.”
“That sucks.”
“Yeah. I had to fight to make people believe I belonged in my own family.”
We remain in silence for a few seconds. I sit up and cross my legs. Grant sits up too, and leans toward me.
“Well if you ask me, I like the brown hair.”
“You do?”
“I do. You’re amazing Sydney.”
After years of self deprecating behavior, I’ve never learned how to properly take a compliment. A part of me wants to argue with him, to tell him there’s nothing special about me. But I force myself to stay quiet, and merely mutter. “Thanks.”
It’s my turn now, to ask the question.
“So how did you get there, Hollywood? What drove you to start acting?”
“My dad,” he smiles just a little, but the line of his jaw tenses and his eyes become hooded.
“Oh?”
“Yeah, when I was eleven we did this school play and I loved it. Up until then I’d been playing sports – hockey, basketball, baseball, football. While I liked them, I never really got into it. But I did this play and my Dad saw it, he knew. So he got me an agent and a few months later I booked my first big commercial. We lived in Oregon at the time, so we were all set to fly to California for a week. We were even thinking about moving there.”
“Eleven? I didn’t think you started acting until you were thirteen. At least that’s what Caroline told me.”
“I didn’t,” he presses his palms against the hood of the car and stares off into the distance. “A few days before we were supposed to leave there was an accident, a drunk driver hit my dad’s car. He died almost instantly.”
“I’m so sorry,” my mouth hangs open. I wasn’t expecting that.
“It’s funny,” he looks at me, “you’re the first person I’ve told about his death in years that didn’t already know.”
“Oh. Sorry. I guess, maybe I should read some more tabloids or something.”
“No. I like you this way. I’d rather you get to know me through me, not through other people’s versions of me.”
“So what happened with the commercial you booked?”
“We didn’t go. Everything just kind of fell apart. Mom kind of turned inward, she didn’t do well. Ne
ither did I. I started getting bad grades at school, getting into trouble with other kids. My sister Kelsey is the only one who held it together.
“Then a couple years later, I got into this really big fight and was almost expelled from school. I had this councilor who used to know my dad and he asked me if I was happy.
Obviously I wasn’t. And then he asked me when the last time I actually felt happy was, and I remembered that day we found out I got the commercial. My dad was so excited, so happy for me. He wanted nothing more than for all of my dreams to come true. And I realized that he still wanted that, wherever he was. He was the kind of guy that put everyone else first, and I’d been ruining his memory. So I talked to my mom and my sister and we all decided we needed a change. Two weeks later we moved to Manhattan Beach. I booked my first job a month later.”
“Wow.”
He sighs. “I haven’t talked about that in a really long time. I mean I get asked about my dad once in awhile, but I’ve never really told anyone about the rest... he pushes his turned down lips into a forced smile and looks at me. “Enough of my sob story. Things have worked out and for the most part, I’m happy. So it’s okay. Now it’s your turn. Tell me something else.”
“Grant…”
“Come on.”
I breathe out and look at him. It’s so silent, so peaceful. It’s unnerving. “I feel like we need music or something,” I tell him.
“Music?”
I nod.
“Alright,” he slides off the hood of the car and walks over to the driver’s side door. He pulls it open, shoves the keys into the ignition, and turns. Through the windshield I can see the lights of the front console illuminate. He starts poking around at knobs on the radio, searching for a station that comes in static free. He finally gives up and grabs his iPhone out of his pocket. He uses a cord to plug it in, then scrolls through his playlist. He pushes a button and the opening bars of a song I don’t recognize fills the air.
“What is this?” I ask when he climbs back out of the car.
“It’s a band from Canada,” he shrugs. “I went to one of their shows while I was up there filming Deader than Night. They’re called Marianna’s Trench.”
It’s a slow song and I find myself lightly swaying to each note.
“Come down here,” Grant motions for me. “Let’s dance.”
I laugh. “No way in hell.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t dance. I have absolutely no sense of rhythm. At all. I injure people. It’s not good.”
“Come on,” he waves at me again. I shake my head, but grudgingly slide off the hood and land with a thump on the ground, my feet kicking up a dusty cloud on impact. “You don’t want to do this.”
“Actually I do,” he reaches for me and pulls me into an embrace, locking his arms around my waist. I reach up and lightly rest my hands against his shoulders. We start swaying, tipping from side to side with the beat of the song.
“Look at that, you’re dancing already.” He grins.
“This isn’t dancing.”
“It is in my book.”
“Well your book is obviously not well written.”
***
“Did he ask you?” Caroline demands while chasing after me into Starbucks the next morning.
“Ask me what?”
She puts her right hand on her hip and narrows her eyes at me. I know what she’s talking about, but I like to watch her squirm.
“Sydney!”
“What?”
“Did he ask you to the premiere for Deader than Night – it’s next week.”
“I know.”
“Sydney!”
“Fine. Yes. He asked me.” I slide into line behind a guy wearing a horrible leather vest and stare at the menu, trying to decide between a latte or a mocha. Caroline stands beside me.
You’d think, by the expression on her face, that he’d asked her. Her eyes are all blinky and bright, and her lips are stretched into a smile so wide I can practically see every tooth in her mouth. “Oh. My. God.”
“Calm down Caroline. I don’t even know if I can go yet.”
“What? Why wouldn’t you be able to go?”
“It’s in New York. I haven’t asked my parents and I’m sure my dad would be less than enthralled to ship me off to the other side of the country with a boy he can barely bring himself to trust.”
“I thought your dad liked him, they bonded over sports or something.”
“That doesn’t mean he trusts him. He’s more worried about my virginity than I am. You think he really thinks you’d give it up after only three dates?”
At this the guy in the leather vest cranes his neck around to get a look at us. I feel my face flush red and lower my voice to just above a whisper. “I don’t know what he thinks. And I don’t really want to know. The last thing I need to have is a heart to heart with my dad about sex, whether I’m planning to have it or not.”
“Oh my god, are you planning to have it?”
“What? No! Who do you think you’re talking to here? Ava?”
“Well maybe Angelina...”
“Hardly. She’s a virgin.”
“She is? But all those guys...”
“Several of whom she’s dumped for pressuring her.”
“But all those rumors.”
“Are just rumors.”
“So she and Liam never?”
“No.”
If possible, the glee already painted on Caroline’s face intensifies. Liam, Liam, Liam. Ugh. If he could just graduate and get the hell out of this town already, she would be so much better off.
Leather vest guy places his order, then steps to the side. I step forward and smile at the girl behind the counter. The name tag pinned to her green apron says Mandy. I’ve never met a Mandy in my life, but that doesn’t stop her from greeting me like we’re old friends.
“Hi Sydney, what can I get for you?”
***
“I told you dating Grant has perks,” Caroline skips along beside me as we stroll down Main street, steaming cups of coffee clutched in our hands.
“Oh whatever.”
“She totally only charged you for a Tall and you got a Grande!”
“Maybe it was a mistake.”
“Or maybe it was because she recognized you and wants to be your best friend.”
“Well she’s too late, Michelle’s already called dibs.” I say dryly.
“It wouldn’t hurt to at least consider Michelle...she may be a bit awful...”
“May be? Caroline come on. She’s a nightmare. And she doesn’t really want to be my friend. She just wants to get close to Grant and steal him from me. Which, I’m guessing, is why she got Angelina to invite her over for a sleepover tonight.”
“She’s coming over?”
“Of course. Grant’s going to be there after all.”
“He is? You can’t let her Michelle meet him before me.”
“Calm down. He’s not really coming over. Do you really think I’d let Michelle anywhere near him? He left for London this morning and if Michelle wasn’t so obsessed with meeting him and actually did her homework, she’d realize he’s not even going to be in the country. I just made it sound like he was going to be around to taunt her a bit. She and Angelina will spend the entire night on their toes waiting for him and when he doesn’t show, I’ll laugh.”
“That’s very diabolical of you, in a marshmallow sort of way.”
“Well I try.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
I’m confused. Not just run of the mill, what should I have for lunch, kind of confused. But the gee wasn’t kissing Grant amazing, but I’m still totally into Colin, what the hell do I do kind of confused.
&nb
sp; I hate my life.
In my head a chorus of nuns are singing “How do we solve a problem like Sydney?” and I’m just praying they’ll come up with an answer.
I have one week to figure things out. Because I just can’t go to that premiere if I still have feelings for Colin. I can’t go to New York and stand beside Grant in front of thousands of people unless my heart is really in it. It wouldn’t be fair to me. It wouldn’t be fair to him. It wouldn’t be fair to the thousands of girls across the planet who are in love with him and would do just about anything to be in my place.
The worst part is that I have no one to talk to. If I even dare try and bring the subject up to Caroline, my sisters, or God forbid my mother, they’d all tell me I’m crazy. They’d all remind me Colin chose Ava and that I should just move on with my damn life. I wish Alyssa didn’t live on the other side of the country. I could call her, I know. But it’s not the same as being face to face. And this is defiantly the kind of conversation that needs to be had face to face. I need someone to look at me, to look me in the eye, and understand.
On Tuesday I go through my day on autopilot, dragging myself through school like a zombie. When I get home I spend an hour staring at the cover of the latest People, a photo of Grant and myself. Then I pick up an old yearbook from my freshman year and turn to the seniors’ page and stare at Colin’s photo. I can’t tear my eyes away.
***
By the time Friday rolls around I can’t take it anymore. Things at school aren’t getting better, they’re just getting worse. Michelle traipses after me, smile beaming, voice chipper and plan devious. Angelina was wrong, this girl is not giving up. Not anytime soon. And it’s not just her. It’s everyone else. My Algebra teacher wants a Grant autograph for his niece, and the director of the drama department thinks I’d make an excellent lead for his play (when clearly all he wants for Grant to come see me in said play and then see his directorial genius). Even Caroline is getting on my nerves. Her obsessive desire to be popular coupled with her crush on Liam are driving me crazy. I just need a break.
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