by Amy Finnegan
“Uh … how did my dream inspire those deep thoughts from Brett?” I ask.
“Deep thoughts from Brett? What an oxymoron,” Kimmi says with a curt laugh. “He’s asked for the attention he gets—good or bad. There’s no such thing as privacy when you’re in this business. I knew that when I started acting, and he should’ve thought of it too.”
Emma narrows her eyes. “He was four. I doubt he considered paparazzi.”
Kimmi is getting ripped to shreds in the tabloids right now, so I don’t get how she can defend them. Since Payton ended up with someone else in Tahoe, the rumors are that Kimmi threw a major hissy fit, then tried to get back at Payton by hanging on several other guys. So in the worst kind of way, Kimmi is getting all the A-list attention she’s ever wanted.
“That reminds me, Emma,” she says, “I need something to wear for the junket tomorrow. Want to go shopping after work?”
Emma’s jaw literally drops. “Um … sure,” she replies, nice and slow.
My own shock and instant agitation would be hard to miss. Emma and I aren’t leaving on our “real date” tonight until eight, and we’re scheduled to wrap by four, so she has plenty of time to shop. But Miss Texas told me something about knowing Kimmi, or knowing of her maybe? I wasn’t really paying attention, but now I regret that. Should I try to get a few minutes alone with Emma to explain things before Kimmi does?
Then again, maybe she needs to hear a rumor about me once in a while.
Kimmi and Emma finalize their plans, and we’re called back to first positions. We all go to our marks on the track, joining a group of extras playing other students in our gym class. But before we even rehearse the scene, McGregor leaves his monitor and comes over. “This needs something more,” he says, roughing up his wiry red hair. “Mr. Elliott, your shirt’s gotta go. That’ll add some heat.”
Everyone on set snaps their heads over to look at me, including Emma. My response is much more delayed, hesitating as McGregor and I have a staring contest.
Finally, I give him a rigid nod and pull off my shirt.
McGregor seems pleased as he walks away, but he suddenly spins back. “On second thought,” he tells me, “this episode plays during November sweeps—you know how important those ratings are. So let’s have you do this whole scene au naturale!”
Everyone cracks up, and Brett takes off like a bullet—he obviously told McGregor about my dream. I shout one threat after another as I chase Brett down and tackle him to the grass. McGregor’s laugh is the loudest. “Costumes, makeup, and hair again! Go!”
Emma
Kimmi and I drive separately and meet in the courtyard at La Encantada, an open-air mall with upscale shops and cozy boutiques. Typical for Tucson, the two-level buildings are earthy colors and blocky, but softened by wide arches over entrances and pathways. The shopping plaza is in the resort area of the Catalina foothills, not far from where I live.
We’re mostly inside while we shop, so my sunglasses and big floppy hat would only raise suspicion. I’ve gone to my Plan B of disguises today: a baseball cap with a ponytail sticking out the back, and small reading-type glasses with tinted rectangular lenses. I’ve also taken off most of my makeup on the way here. People rarely recognize me this way, and I pay with cash whenever possible so no one sees my name.
The stone walkways of La Encantada weave from one store to another, and Kimmi and I make our way through nearly all of them. We spend a good hour just swinging handbags around in front of mirrors, and then see who can walk best in the highest pair of heels. I doubt that friend is a label Kimmi wants me to slap on her, but at the moment, she kind of feels like one.
She’s even asking my opinion about what she should wear to the junket. This is a shocker in itself, but Kimmi really surprises me when we’re in a very girly boutique, and she holds up a light-pink baby doll dress. “Is this America’s Sweetheart enough?” she says. “Or do I need to cover up entirely?”
“I love it!” I reply. “It has a shy and innocent feel, but it’s flirtatious at the same time.” I actually like the dress so much that if she doesn’t buy it, I will. The bottom flares out just a little and hits right above the knee—several inches longer than what Kimmi usually wears—and the top has a scalloped neckline with capped sleeves. A whisper-thin lace covers the silk shell. Kimmi has already considered dozens of dresses and skirts, but everything she’s tried on has all been very non-Kimmi-like. “Don’t take this wrong,” I add, “but why are you worried about looking so …”
“Chaste? Prim? Completely opposite of what everyone expects?”
“I was thinking of a word closer to modest,” I reply. Kimmi gives me her usual roll of the eyes, and I finally catch on and laugh. “That’s why you wanted me to go shopping with you, isn’t it? You need my expert, prudish opinion.”
Kimmi drapes the dress over her arm and strolls off to a changing room. “Just to make things clear,” she says, “I don’t need fashion advice from anyone.” She steps into a stall and closes the door. “It’s just that the tabloids are wrong about me being a ‘tantrum-throwing tramp,’ so I need to change a few million opinions. Immediately.”
“Oh.”
“Tahoe was such a joke,” she says. “Sure, I might’ve been a little too flirtatious with a few guys, and been a bit too vocal when I confronted Payton, but I wasn’t about to hide under a table like someone else I know and cry my eyes out. Because who cares if he brought along the Laker Girls for his own entertainment?”
A part of me wants to say, “I know how it feels to be cast aside like that,” but it’s hard to imagine having a serious conversation with Kimmi. Still, I allow myself a moment of empathy. The only time I’ve ever seen a glimmer of light in her eyes—before we went shopping, at least—is when I last saw her with Payton. She had liked him a lot.
“Does that surprise you?” Kimmi goes on. “That I’m … well, usually not a wounded, raging, blood-sucking skank?”
Those insults didn’t come from the tabloids. “Not at all,” I say through the stall door. “I’m just shocked that you’d confide in me. That you’re talking to me at all, really.”
Kimmi opens the door, looking even better than I imagined she would in the pink dress. “What do you mean?” she asks. “We talk all the time.”
“No, we speak. And you tell me things, like how pathetic I am.”
She walks around me and strikes a red carpet pose in front of a full-length mirror. “But look how much good I’ve done for you. You wouldn’t have been so blunt a few months ago.”
“Maybe not, but if you want the truth, you’ve never scared me.” Both our tones are matter-of-fact, not snippy or defensive. We could just as well be talking about different brands of designer jeans. “You look great in that dress, by the way.”
“I know,” Kimmi says and blows a kiss to her reflection. “But you should be afraid of me. Care to guess how many reporters have asked me for dirt on you? And I happen to know a super juicy secret that I could twist into making you look however I want to.”
It’s obvious that she knows Jake and I spend more time together than we let on, but I’m not about to admit it. “The tabloids tell plenty of lies about me. One more wouldn’t matter.”
“Oh, but this isn’t a lie, so it could hurt you even more.” Kimmi turns to see how the back of her looks. “Super hot, right? All I need is some killer heels.” She returns to her stall. “What do goody-two-shoes girls like you wear on their feet these days?”
“Whatever we want,” I say. “I bare it all, every single toe.”
Kimmi peeks out from behind the door and gives me a smile, a real one. “Good comeback, Barbie. See what hanging around me will do for you?” Her large brown eyes disappear as she slips back into the changing room. “And now, for keeping my mouth shut, you owe me. I need to know how to be cute and bubbly, and utterly darling at the junket. Then you need to tell me how to make the press believe that the Tahoe stories were only a faulty attack on my upstanding character.�
�� When I just laugh at her, she adds, “Oh, I see. First, you want me to spill what I know about you.”
I glance around the store, rechecking for anyone close enough to hear us. “Okay, I’ll take your bait,” I whisper. “Why haven’t you dished out the dirt you think you have on me?”
Kimmi opens the door and motions for me to join her in the stall. She only has on a skirt and bra, but this isn’t much less than what she typically wears. “Besides the fact that I know McGregor would likely fire me,” she says, “you’re a hard person to hate, and that’s incredibly irritating. If it wasn’t for all your ‘Hey, Kimmi! How was your weekend?’ crap. And daily kissing up, like, ‘Oh my gawwwwwsh! I totally love your earrings!’ Then I would’ve already told everyone you were hooking up with Jake. Like, months ago.”
I keep my expression as blank as possible.
She pulls on her shirt. “Brett is suspicious too, I can tell. So if an idiot like him can figure it out, it won’t be long until everyone knows. Just thought you’d want a heads-up.”
My mind fills with a whole lot of cursing.
“You and Jake are about to cause all sorts of fallout,” she says. “You already know about Miss Texas, right? Because she has every Tri Delta house in the country talking about their date, and I doubt she’ll back down quietly.”
A vision of Jake with a gorgeous, big-haired blonde in cutoff shorts flashes through my mind. Ugh. “I’m sure any girl who’s ever dated Jake is bragging about it right now,” I say, my voice barely holding steady. “To her sorority sisters and anyone else she knows.”
There’s a pause. “Your naïveté astounds me,” Kimmi says, then her snide tone disappears. “Jake didn’t date her in the past. He met her on a flight from New York last weekend, and they’re meeting up in Texas this Monday.”
I sit on the chair behind me.
“Didn’t you hear Jake today?” Kimmi adds. “Making sure he still has Monday off?”
Jake did double-check his schedule today, but there’s no way he would go out with someone else, not when we’re so close to dating—for real now.
“Kimmi. Jake and I … we’re not together. Okay? He can date whoever he wants to.”
She’s quiet again as she studies me. The truth of what I’ve just said, as well as the sting of it, is probably evident on my flushed face. Jake and I really aren’t together—not officially. We’ve never even talked about being exclusive, and … maybe he’s been going out with other girls all along. How would I know? We hardly ever have a day off together, and his weekends are usually spent in New York, surrounded by models. Hot, gorgeous models.
And beauty queens, apparently.
“Whether you’re a couple or not, you like him—that’s obvious,” Kimmi says. “And his eyes follow you across every room you enter, which is why I don’t get this Miss Texas thing. Most guys are scummy, two-timing pigs, but Jake seemed different.” She shrugs. “Guess not.”
With barely a wisp of air in my lungs, I reply, “How did you hear about … her?”
Kimmi swings her handbag over a shoulder and steps into her shoes. “I have tons of friends who are Tri Delts, and news travels fast when a fellow sister is dating a celebrity.”
“Right.” But … wait. I’ve fallen for this sort of story before. I can’t believe anything about Jake without talking to him first. He’s definitely given me enough chances to explain my own version of rumors.
What if this isn’t just a rumor, though? What if it’s true, and Jake really did ask another girl out, and likes her enough to fly to Texas to see her again? Technically, he wouldn’t be doing anything wrong, not when I’ve been so clear about us not getting serious until I’m ready. And didn’t he once tell me that you can’t cheat on someone if you’re not even together?
As Kimmi pays for her dress, I stay in the changing room and try to think logically. Do I feel betrayed … yes, no … maybe a little? It’s probably jealousy, more than anything. I may not be ready for a real relationship, but I sure as heck don’t want anyone else having Jake. And I know him well enough to realize that Miss Texas, or any other girl he’d be interested in, must be worth his time. So, what it really comes down to is this … I may have competition.
What am I going to do about that?
Jake
The moment I see Emma wearing a fake smile, I’m convinced that Kimmi told her about Miss Texas. I should’ve flat-out said no when that chick’s pageant director called Liz to ask if I would “escort the lovely girl” I met on the plane to a state luncheon with the governor of Texas. But the call had come too soon after I’d asked Emma to go on a real date, and she’d acted like she was only doing me a favor. So I’d told Liz, “Sure, why not? It’s just a luncheon.”
Pride is a beast. I’ve stooped to an all-time low by trying to prod Emma forward with jealousy, and now I’m freaking out, knowing I can’t wait any longer to admit it.
I’m ten minutes late picking Emma up for our date. Trying to ease my previous demands, I go to her back porch, rather than marching through her front door like I’d wanted to, and we walk down the running path toward my place. Emma seems a world away—not mad, exactly, just … distant.
When we turn the corner of my building, she pulls me back and points to the parking lot. “Yeah, I know,” I tell her. “It’s Brett’s truck. I borrowed it.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see,” I say, and lead her to the passenger side.
As soon as I sit in the driver’s seat, Emma tells me, “Just a little FYI: Kimmi has figured things out about us—she told me so—and she thinks Brett is suspicious too.”
I start the engine. “And you said … ?”
There’s total silence, then, “I didn’t really deny anything. I just kept her guessing.”
Emma waits for my reply, but when I only back out of the parking space, she adds, “As a matter of curiosity, what reason did you give Brett for borrowing his truck?”
“I told him I had to pick up some new furniture,” I say. I hadn’t planned on borrowing it, but when I saw that Brett drove it to work, a particular vision of how I could make this date just a bit better popped into my head, so I’d asked if we could switch cars for the night. “He didn’t question me at all.”
I half hoped he would.
Emma nods. “Kimmi has to be wrong about Brett, though. If he knew about us, he’d come right out and say it like she did. He doesn’t have a single thought pass through his head that he doesn’t tell the whole world about.”
Don’t act possessive. Play it cool.
“Maybe he’s waiting to see how serious we are,” I say. “To figure out if we’re actually dating … or just flirting.” I shoot a sideways glance at Emma. “He’s not the only one who’s wondering that, you know. And I’m not talking about Kimmi.”
Emma trails the tip of her finger down my arm. “I haven’t even started flirting with you.”
Okay, I’m smiling now. “Maybe you should give it a try. Just to see if I like it.”
The farther we get from the city, the more relaxed things feel. And since Emma doesn’t bring up Miss Texas, I decide not to ruin our date by announcing how immature I am. But I’ll still have to tell her about my attempt to make her jealous before the luncheon on Monday.
It takes half an hour to travel up Mount Lemmon and find a campground that has a perfect view of the sky. I grab a bundle of firewood and other necessities from the truck, and we sit on a log next to a fire pit for an hour or so, roasting marshmallows and eating smores.
“My dad used to take me camping,” Emma says, then hurries to blow out the flames on her marshmallow before it turns to ash. “It was my favorite thing to do as a kid.”
“Sorry to get your hopes up,” I reply, “but I didn’t bring a tent.”
Emma kicks my giant hiking boot with her pixie-size sneaker. “Then what’s under the tarp in the truck, huh? A UFO? Nuclear missiles?”
I steal the marshmallow off her stick and toss it into my mouth b
efore she can stop me. “You watch too much television.”
“I’m in too much television. It’s obviously warped my mind.”
“That’s for sure.” I wrap an arm around her and give her a quick kiss on the crown of her head. Then I freeze, stunned by what I’d just done without thinking about it. Emma holds as still as I do. “We, uh, better hurry and put this fire out,” I say, standing. “There’s a meteor shower tonight, and we have front-row seats.”
Emma stays on the log and looks up at me, the light of a thousand stars reflected in her eyes. “So that’s why we’re in the middle of nowhere?” she asks. “I thought we were just hiding from the army of reporters who are in town for the junket.”
“That’s only a bonus.” I kick dirt on the fire, a little nervous now. “The higher our elevation, the better we can see the meteor shower. And Arizona is one of the best spots on earth to watch one.”
I’m relieved when I glance up from the embers to find her smiling. “How convenient,” Emma replies, and she offers a hand so I can help her off the log.
When we reach the truck, I pull off the tarp and reveal the giant beanbag chair that I brought along. The second I saw Brett’s truck at work today, my imagination had easily replaced my previous vision of Emma and I watching the meteor shower from the separate bucket seats in my convertible to getting a heck of a lot closer in this.
Emma laughs and shakes her head at me. “If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, Jake Elliott, you might leave disappointed.”
I lift Emma into the back of the truck and climb in behind her. “Did you say might?”
“Same rules, remember?” she says, and pushes me onto the chair. I sink into the foam and pull her next to me. She laughs. “Don’t you have two of these?”
“I can’t remember. Do I?”
I stretch my arm around her back, and Emma rests her head on my shoulder. For several minutes we watch streaks of light soar across the sky and fade into darkness. Meteor showers are common in Arizona, but it’s been a long time since I took the time to watch one. The sky is perfectly clear tonight, the air fresh and crisp, and about twenty degrees cooler than in the city.
