Exposure_A Love Story

by Tracy Ewens

  West sat back down. “By my second year, I didn’t mind. I enjoyed geography, but now that I think about it, it’s not much of a Plan B.”

  “Um, could you see me as a high school teacher?”

  “No.” He held her legs on his lap.

  “I guess it’s a good thing our Plan A worked out.”

  “I guess.” West ran his hands along her calves and seemed lost in thought.

  “Are you close?” Their eyes met and West was back from wherever he’d gone. “With your brothers?”

  He nodded. “I mean as close as brothers can be. Weird that we’re both the youngest, don’t you think?”

  Meg agreed and they continued on like that through another pot of coffee and eventually sandwiches ordered from room service. They both stuck with the vegetarian since the poor room service attendant didn’t even bother to ask his manager. He was so thrown by the “where do you source” question that he came right out and said he “had no clue.” Meg had to appreciate that a guy shuffling dozens of orders didn’t have the luxury of worrying about their meat. It wasn’t his job. West agreed to talk to the manager and Meg left it at that.

  Hours went by and right when it seemed they’d learned enough about each other for one day, one of them would insist on another question. They both knew what was happening, could feel the looming inevitability of the real world.

  “Okay, I know that you don’t eat berries because of the seeds and that your father broke his wrist when you insisted that he hang a tire from the tree in your backyard, but I don’t know how you started taking pictures. I think that’s an important one.”

  They were now lying on opposite sides of the couch with their legs making a bridge between them.

  “I… well, I started taking pictures of the crazy things I was doing. I used to go rock climbing and hiking, bungee jumping, cliff diving, you name it. If it had an edge to it, I was there. So, I started that way and then I kept pushing myself. I wanted to do more, see more. Somewhere along the way, it became less about me and more about animals. They are the ultimate thrill seekers.”

  “Neither of you does well in captivity,” he said as if the parallel had occurred to him.

  Meg didn’t have an answer and he was certainly one to talk—it wasn’t as if his life was moving anywhere near a picket fence. The guy lived in a hotel. Meg let her legs drop, needing to rip the discomfort of leaving off like a Band-Aid.

  “I need to get going,” she said, swallowing a growing lump in her throat. An hour’s worth of questions ago, she was ready to move into one of those cute little historic homes near Berkeley and spend every morning with him.

  That was never going to happen. And while she talked a tough game after the photographers barged through the door, Meg wasn’t sure if she could ever get used to the bubble of his life. When West came up behind her and wrapped her in his arms, the lump in her throat grew. She wished Westin Drake had stayed in theater. At least then they’d stand a chance.

  “We are blowing up a bridge on set next week. Who’s excited?” he said into her neck.

  Meg laughed and turned to find him smiling at her. That need to protect him, to love him despite the obvious complications, bloomed in her heart again. The heart wants what the heart wants. Meg remembered that quote hung in Annabelle’s room when they were growing up, so someone important must have said it.

  “Do you want to be my date for my sister’s wedding next weekend?” Meg blurted out as if she might change her mind. West wondered which of the “we could do this” scenarios she was running through her head. He had a whole list of his own, but after the morning they’d had, the list was getting smaller.

  “I… don’t think that’s a good idea. It’s their day,” he said as carefully as he knew how to be.

  “It is their day and I can bring a date. I want you with me.”

  He hesitated and saw whatever minute leap of hope she had that he was simply a man and she was simply a woman slip between them.

  “Can I see you after the wedding?” he asked as a pathetic consolation.

  “Where? Here in the Tony Bennett Suite or huddled in the backseat of a car?”

  Here we go.

  “There are other things we can do. What do you want to do, Meg?” He tried steady and controlled since she was about to launch into the “none of this is fair” portion of the weekend. But also because his heart was begging him to buy an SUV, text Hannah on the way out of town, and take her to some small remote place until they found some other guy to take over his public life. He needed to maintain control.

  “I’d like to go to the farmers market or the Sunday Fun Days they have down by the Wharf. I’ve heard Kite Park is fun. I want to get on a cable car at eight in the morning.”

  West said nothing, so she went into the bedroom to grab her things.

  “You can do all of those things. Are you sure you even want to? You’ll be leaving soon too, Meg. Don’t put this all on me.”

  “I want to go to my sister’s wedding with my—”

  “Your what?”

  “My boyfriend. Isn’t that what you are, West?”

  He was still facing her, but he closed his eyes in resignation that he would never be something so ordinary ever again.

  Meg threw her bag over her arm and put her hand on the door. “Forget it. This was a fun weekend. Thank you.” She opened the door and West lunged forward.

  “What are you doing? Let me get my shoes on and I’ll drive you home.”

  “Drive me? Or ride with me?”

  “Come on. This isn’t fair. I haven’t pretended to be something I’m not. You knew what you were getting into before you climbed into my bed.”

  That came out harsher than he intended, but he wasn’t sure where this was coming from. Her work with him was done too. She’d be jet-setting around the world in a matter of weeks. Neither one of them had normal lives, so he was trying to figure out why with his life, as ridiculous as it was, he needed to be the bad guy. He loved her, not that he was ready to share that yet. He hadn’t pursued this alone, but he must be missing something—she seemed to want more than either of them had to give.

  “I’m sorry. You’re right. It’s frustrating.”

  While that response was unexpected and far too easy, West took it. He’d be up to his ass in pyrotechnics by tomorrow. He’d take easy if Meg was willing to give it for now.

  “I know, and I’m sorry too. Let me take you home.”

  She nodded and seemed defeated, which made his chest hurt. What the hell were they doing?

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  West was physically on set by nine o’clock Monday morning, but his heart was in San Francisco. He was beginning to think it was some cruel joke that he lived in the Tony Bennett Suite.

  After his flight landed, he’d texted Meg but received no response. She was pissed and nothing he could say would change that, so he stopped trying. Since the thought of losing her was not something he was prepared to deal with on four hours of sleep, he was three espresso shots into his morning and standing in a makeup trailer while one of the makeup interns shaded and dusted his nipples with an airbrush that looked like it should hurt.

  “The fucking bridge will blow up today and it will blow up correctly, or I’ll have someone’s ass, is that understood?” Gary bellowed after the third squib failed to ignite, instead causing a sparkler parade rather than the massive explosion following the car chase that would end the movie. They’d started with the end scene because it was massive. Nothing was filmed in sequential order on action films. West had learned that after only a few days on his first movie set.

  “I’m finding it difficult to follow Nick’s character arc on this shoot schedule,” he’d said to Gary eleven years ago. It had only been his second time directing a blockbuster. He had more hair back then and wasn’t quite the eternally pissed of guy who only minutes ago reduced the explosives team to a group of first-year ballerinas. Although, even back then he had bite and a sense of hu
mor.

  When West had expressed his character concerns, Gary had pulled him aside and told him exactly what he could do with his character arc. West had been stunned into silence, made worse when Gary refused to talk to him for the rest of the day on set. The next morning, three dozen pansies were delivered to his trailer. The note simply read—Good luck with your arc. Lesson learned. West had not asked Gary another question, apart from clarifying intent and blocking, in eleven years.

  West had been drawn to the creative freedom acting allowed. It only took a few years before he’d become part of a machine that was the furthest thing from creative or freedom he’d ever known. After the fourth movie, West had some box office clout and Hannah agreed to get him some smaller independent films to work on over the summer. He did a couple and loved the experience but soon learned it was difficult for people to see him as anyone other than Nick Shot.

  Something shifted inside of him when he signed on for the fifth installment and he’d been resolved ever since. The money he made with Full Throttle helped finance his brothers’ brewery, paid off the home he grew up in, and funded a new traumatic brain injury center at San Francisco Memorial Hospital in honor of his Aunt Margaret. Full Throttle had been good to him and the people he loved. It wasn’t creative, not what he’d planned for his career, but it was his job. Over the years, the movies had come to define him a bit more than he liked, but back home he was a success. A shining star on the McNaughton family tree. West wasn’t sure he could ask for much more than that.

  So he understood the pressure a guy in Gary’s position was under. The Full Throttle franchise wasn’t about compelling stories or character development. It was about money and marketing. He needed his actors to look good, not get hurt, and focus on the spectacle. When the third installment failed to hit number one opening weekend, there was talk of finding another director who could deliver. Gary pulled off record returns with the fourth installment and had been a demanding ass ever since. West was all right with that. He supposed they both had bills to pay.

  “Drake, I need angles and your stunt dummy seems to be taking a powder break. Do you mind?”

  West put his T-shirt on over his airbrushed nipples and headed to work.

  It was time to buy a house, he thought hanging from a bar placed in front of a green screen. He had no clue where the thought came from, but he wasn’t sure what kind of a guy lived in a hotel either. Dropping one hand and his head to his right shoulder as instructed, he had another thought that almost caused him to lose his grip.

  He should go to the wedding with her. She’d asked him and before he’d even realized the leap of faith that must have taken for her, he became wrapped up in his own self-centered world. When had he developed such a fear of everything?

  “Drake, both hands back on. And can you pull up a few times?” Gary called out. “I’ve got a million-dollar-a-minute actor hanging here, moron, do I need to come over there and film the movie too?” Gary said as the guy on camera three shook his head.

  West smirked as he pulled his weight up and dropped back down as instructed. He’d have to thank his trainer again. There was no way in hell he’d have the discipline to develop this strength on his own. West’s thoughts drifted back to fear. He wasn’t about to be a victim of his own life. They were shooting through the night on Friday. He could leave by eight on Saturday morning and sleep on the plane. He could get there in time to be her date for the wedding. No one was going to take his picture at a private reception, and if they did, so what? She wanted him there.

  “You know what? You’re an asshole.”

  You’re right, West thought and then glanced up at Gary, who was standing next to West’s stunt double. Doug, whose resemblance to West freaked him out a little, was finishing up a sandwich from craft service. Doug was the asshole.

  “Drop, Drake. Your stunt dummy decided to show up to work,” Gary said and redirected his attention to camera four.

  Doug pounded West’s fist and with one effortless jump was hanging in West’s position.

  Meg had said her sister was marrying a football coach. There might be security at the reception, or he could bring his own. Her life was just as important as his own and West was getting tired of explaining himself. That’s why he’d told her he couldn’t go. Of course he wanted to be there for her, to meet the family she so clearly loved.

  Then there was that look in her eyes again, the one that hinted she might need him to be there. Lead with need, that’s what she’d said. Christ, that look was haunting him, especially coming from Meg. She hung out with bears for a living. How was it possible she needed anything?

  In all the years she’d been gone, the UC Berkeley Campus had barely changed, at least from what Meg could see of the outside. Anna wanted to meet her for lunch between her last class and a faculty meeting. Her sister, Middle Two as they all called her, was a Shakespeare professor when she wasn’t obsessing over seating charts and helping Dane plan their honeymoon.

  “I swear to God, I’m going to have so much time on my hands when this is all over, I’m not going to know how to act,” Anna said after they ordered. “You too, sis. We are heading into the home stretch. Barring fire or flood, I think you have survived your first assignment as maid of honor.”

  “Only,” Meg corrected.

  “Oh, come on. You don’t want to be the woman in 27 Dresses?”

  “I don’t know who that is, and I don’t want to be involved with anything that has twenty-seven dresses. I’m retiring from M-O-H duties, as your obnoxious wedding planner put it, on Saturday night.”

  “She is awfully cranky, isn’t she?”

  Meg nodded and bit into an egg roll. If she didn’t need to slip into a form-fitting dress over the weekend, she would be giving serious consideration to eating her feelings. There were so many of them and she didn’t know where to put them.

  “Your new office is beautiful. How’s the new job that goes with it?”

  “Thank you. Not much different from what I was doing before. More meetings, which I don’t mind. At least I know what’s going on now. I’m still working my way around the politics, but it remains my happiest place.”

  Meg had no doubt. Her sister was practically glowing already and the wedding was still two days away. Anna’s happiness, like Meg’s, had been self-contained and she doubted that had changed. Middle Two still made her own happy. Dane was the icing on the cake. Gorgeous icing and incredibly sweet, but Anna was a full show all by herself. Meg liked that about her, probably patterned her own life after her big sister’s in some ways, although their career choices were opposites.

  “What’s up for you next? The gallery show was incredible. They’re delivering the black and white of the Spirit Bear to our house after the wedding. Our house, that sounds odd,” Anna said.

  “You bought a picture? I would have given you one. You don’t need to buy it.”

  “I knew you would say that, so I didn’t. Dane bought it.”

  Meg shook her head.

  “I wanted to. It’s gorgeous and I’m so proud of you.”

  Meg had to look away, do the wide-eyed thing West had described so perfectly in his story. Her sister’s words hit her straight in her heart. They were so simple, and yet to Meg they meant so much. Her parents must have said they were proud of her when she was a child but that acknowledgement left after high school sports and report cards. No one said they were proud of an adult. No one except Anna, it seemed.

  Her sister reached across the table and took her hand. Not helping with the tear control, Middle Two.

  “Are you okay?”

  Meg nodded. “I don’t know why, but it means something that you’re proud of my work.”

  Anna smiled. She looked so comfortable with her love these days. She’d always been a loving sister, not quite as syrupy as Sage, but then again no one was that agreeable. Anna was more at ease, though—in love and happy. It spilled off her and across the table to Meg as if Anna sensed her baby sister needed
a little extra.

  “I didn’t say I was proud of your work. I said I was proud of you.”

  A tear slipped down Meg’s cheek and she quickly wiped it away. “Cut it out.”

  Anna handed her a tissue.

  “I don’t need that. This is supposed to be your last lunch as a free woman. We should be talking about all the new sex positions you are going to try with that mountain of a man you’re marrying. This is not the time for warm and fuzzy.”

  Anna didn’t say anything. She held her gaze.

  “What?” Meg finally said a little louder than she planned.

  “Nothing. I simply wanted to tell you I was proud.”

  “Okay. Thank you. We’re done now.”

  “And I wanted to say that everything is going to be okay.”

  “Isn’t that a song?”

  “Probably. I’m serious, Meg. With you and West. If it’s supposed to be, it will work out.”

  “What, no Shakespeare quote this time?”

  “Well, since you asked.” Anna’s eyes widened.

  She was forever quoting Will, as she called him, in everyday situations. Occupational hazard, she told people. Will’s bits of wisdom were often educational and frequently annoying. But there Meg was, asking for one. Nothing made sense anymore.

  “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves,” she said with the ease most people only felt when reading a grocery list.

  “Brutus? Didn’t he kill Caesar? That’s not exactly romantic.”

  “He did, well with the help of forty other senators, but yes. It’s a powerful quote all the same.”

  “Uh-huh. Translation, please.”

  “We are responsible for our own actions. West may be a star, but he was a man first and I believe he’ll sort that out. Eventually.”

  “Before he kills me?”

  Anna laughed. “He’s not going to kill you. Caesar was stabbed. You wouldn’t allow him that close. The quote works for you too, sis.”

  “Okay. Thank you for that, but I’m finished talking about the Greeks.”

  “Romans.”