The One That I Want

by Marilyn Brant

  “Ah! So you had some practice with that, long before Hollywood came calling.”

  He chuckled. “The star treatment usually only lasted through third or fourth period, Julia, but, yes, it was an adrenaline rush. No doubt about it. A person who craved attention could get addicted to that.”

  “And need more?”

  “Yep. Like a narcotic.”

  I glanced over at him. His eyes were facing the school building but his gaze was a million light years away.

  “Ever take any of those?” I asked lightly.

  He turned toward me and tilted his head, as if weighing whether to tell me the truth or a give me a canned, media-ready response.

  Finally, he exhaled and said, “Yeah, a few times. It was a mistake. They made the highs higher for a while, but they also made the lows much lower. And, once you lose a friend or three to OD’ing, it’s enough to make a guy reconsider his choice of vices.” He held up the bag with Samuel’s brownies. “I choose more wisely now.”

  I smiled at him. He was making a joke, of course, and, yet, he’d told me a hell of a lot about himself that we both knew wasn’t funny at all. I appreciated his openness, his honesty, but I was, admittedly, most surprised by his willingness to trust me.

  “What makes you so sure I won’t go blabbing your secrets, Dane? I mean, I won’t, but you couldn’t possibly know that for sure.”

  “Couldn’t I?” he said. “Look, I’ve been watching for signs of potential betrayal every moment of my life for the past twenty-five years. I have a long history of my privacy being invaded and people trying to siphon from me what they hope will be incriminating information.”

  I felt myself blush a little, remembering Dane’s accusations when he thought I was a reporter, and I also remembered the rude questions some of the students in the audience and members of the press asked him at the theater. I mentioned this.

  “Oh, that was nothing,” he said. “Believe me. When I was a kid and less guarded, I made a few slips that I lived to regret deeply. Since then, I study everyone’s non-verbal behavior, looking for tells. And as an actor, this also has the benefit of giving me a range of facial expressions I can channel—to help me mimic character ticks and emotions. But, when I was younger, it was purely so I could avoid getting myself in trouble.” He looked closely at my face, as if analyzing every contour and crease. “You’re a puzzle to me in a number of ways, but you’re not trouble, Julia Meriwether Crane.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “That was a compliment, I think.”

  He laughed. “We’ve officially talked enough about me for a while. I’d like to know a few things about you.”

  “Okay. Like what?”

  We’d finished our rotation around the high school and began heading back, through the park, and soon met up with the bike path again.

  “Tell me something important about you,” he said. “I can Google basic details—”

  I grimaced.

  “Don’t look at me like that. Almost everyone has a digital footprint these days, even if it’s not a mile long, like mine.” He nudged me with his elbow. “And don’t forget, I can ask people in Mirabelle Harbor questions about you, too. After that radio station visit today, I know lots of people that you know.”

  “That sounds suspiciously like blackmail, Dane.”

  “Hey, just keeping you honest. But I’m serious. What I’d really like to know is what you think is something real about you. Something about you beyond the researchable facts.”

  I stopped mid-stride to think about this. “That might just be the hardest question anyone has ever asked me. But, also, one of the most thoughtful.”

  “Well, I’ve been interviewed a lot in my life.” He shrugged, feigning modesty. “Guess I picked up a few things.”

  I laughed. “I’ll bet.”

  But I hadn’t been entirely joking. It was a hard question. One I had to consider more deeply than the usual. I’d often felt very few people really knew me, but what would I have wanted them to know? Not the superficial details. Living where I did, in the kind of suburb that felt like a small town, everyone thought they knew those things about me already. But how much of the real me did I actually want to share with them? With anyone?

  “What I’m telling you right now isn’t something I’ve told to anybody—at least not anybody still living.” I paused. I had told Adam, but not my parents or the rest of my family. Not even Shar. “I secretly wanted to be a poet when I was a kid,” I told Dane. “I loved to read, but I couldn’t imagine writing anything as long as a novel. Poems, though, could be short, intense, and packed with meaning. In just a few well-selected phrases, a good poet could describe an entire world.”

  Dane nodded, taking this in thoughtfully, as if matching my words with what he knew about me so far to see if all the pieces fit together.

  “Why didn’t you?” he asked. “Become a poet, that is. I think you’d have made an excellent one. You have an eye for things. For places and people.”

  “I went part of the way there. I was an English major in college. But I hadn’t really lived long enough to have much to write about, and I knew it. So I got my teaching certification and started the adventure of working with kids. It turned out I liked it. Then I met Adam, my late husband. He was in med school, and we were in love. I needed to do practical, income-generating things with my degree, especially since I got pregnant right away.” I smiled, replaying in my mental viewfinder the day Adam and I found out that amazing, life-altering news. “We’d already planned our small wedding, but I was two months into my first trimester during the ceremony, and our daughter Analise was born seven month later.”

  He grinned. “So you had family and friends counting back on their fingers?”

  “Exactly.”

  “How old is your little girl now?”

  “She’s ten,” I said. “And spending this month at Camp Willowgreen.”

  He studied my face again as we neared the end of the bike path. “Sounds like you have quite a few things you could write about now.”

  “I hadn’t thought about it that way but, yes, you’re right. I’m not that sheltered suburban girl anymore who only shops at the mall with her friends, talks about dating cute guys, and watches her favorite actors in the movies.”

  He shot me one of his mega-watt grins, the kind he probably reserved for high-profile photo shoots. “Please tell me I’m still one of your faves.”

  I considered messing with him, but something in his tone told me that he cared a little more about my answer than he wanted to admit. And I remembered the look he gave me as I turned away that night at the Knightsbridge. Defiant. Hurt. Wanting to still be the idol of his youth and knowing those days were gone.

  So, I told him the truth. “You’re the only actor whose fan club I joined in my entire life, Dane. And I don’t think I’ve ever missed one of your films.”

  “Not even Dorm Daze? That one was terrible.”

  “Not even Dorm Daze. Your performance as an irresponsible and frequently drunk college student was strikingly believable.”

  “Oh, God, kill me now,” he deadpanned.

  We laughed and found ourselves back in front of The Lovin’ Spoonful Bakery.

  “I’d suggest stocking up on more of Samuel’s brownies,” I said, “but we still haven’t eaten the extra ones he packed up for us.”

  “I know. I’m dying for another. C’mon.”

  “Where are we going?”

  He was walking toward a green door just to the right of the bakery. I initially thought it was an entrance to another shop—a dry cleaner’s—but when he opened the door I saw it led to a staircase.

  “To the apartments upstairs,” he explained, holding the green door for me and ushering me inside.

  I shot him an apprehensive look. “Do I need to be worried about this?”

  He shook his head. “Trust me, the walls and doors are very thin. One squeak out of you, and the other residents will come running. Also—” He paused. “I
f I laid a hand on you and Samuel got wind of it, he’d flatten me. You’ll be safe.”

  “Well, all right then.”

  Like the bakery, there was chipped paint and an air of disarray, but the stairs were sturdy and the few apartments at the top looked to be occupied by responsible residents.

  Dane stopped in front of apartment 2B.

  “To be or not to be…” he mused.

  “Whose apartment is that?”

  “My brother’s,” he said and immediately produced the key from his pocket.

  “Wait! Don’t we have to knock or something? What if we’re interrupting him?”

  Dane laughed. “Liam’s not here. He and his wife and their two very adorable kids live in Massachusetts. He’s a thoracic surgeon and owns a couple of houses, a smattering of condos, and a few rental properties around the country. Including this place, which he keeps for sentimental reasons.” He pushed the door open and invited me inside. “Welcome to my childhood home.”

  I couldn’t entirely hide my surprise. “This is where you, your mom, and your brother all lived when you were in school?”

  It wasn’t a tiny place, per se, but it was definitely on the smallish side for a two-bedroom apartment that once housed three people. Not many frills. Well kept, but minimalist in every way.

  It reminded me a bit of a budget motel room, only with a small kitchen included and a couple of extra doors to section off the bedrooms.

  We walked in and Dane pointed to the smallest of the rooms, which had bunk beds against one wall. “My brother and I shared this one. It got trickier once we both sprouted over six feet. I fought him endlessly about being the one who’d gotten stuck with the top bunk.” He rubbed his head. “I think I still have the scars from bumping against the ceiling so many times.”

  I laughed. “Well, he probably hit the six-foot mark first.”

  “Only a year before I did. And I’m half an inch taller now, which still pleases the competitive younger brother in me.”

  I hadn’t wanted to pry into his relationship with his brother earlier, but now I felt justified in asking a few questions.

  “So, were you close as kids? And are you two friends now?”

  Dane looked at the bunk beds, wistfully, I thought. “When we both lived at home, Liam and I fought like a pair of demons, but the arguments never lasted beyond a day. After he left to college in Boston and I left to California, we lived very different lives, but we always stayed in touch. He’s still my best friend in the whole world.”

  “You’re lucky,” I whispered.

  “You have siblings?”

  I nodded. “A sister who’s four years older than me. Katia. We’re very polite to each other on the rare holiday that we get together. She’s not that far away—Michigan—but it’s a big deal if we see each other once or twice a year. And we were never best friends. Not when we were kids. And not now.”

  “Sometimes we have to make our own family,” Dane said.

  I thought of Shar, who was the closest I had to a sister, and the whole Michaelsen clan that had adopted me as one of their own. “That’s true.”

  Dane set the white paper bag on the small Formica table and pulled out a couple of cream-colored plates from one of the cabinets. He added forks, two napkins, and a pair of empty glasses.

  “What can I get you to drink? A soda? Sparkling water? Wine?” He swung open the refrigerator door and held it to show me an extensive collection of beverages.

  I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help it. “You keep it extremely well stocked.”

  “Yeah, well, this is my private escape pod when I’m in the Midwest. The Knightsbridge people very kindly set me up in a gorgeous suite at the Hotel Royale nearest the theater. It’s spacious, beautifully appointed, spotless, and bright…but it’s not home.”

  “So you sneak away whenever you can to your childhood apartment above the bakery that serves the best brownies in North America?”

  “You got it. Samuel and his wife have lived across the hall in apartment 4B since before I was born. I consider them family.”

  “I got the sense that Samuel feels the same about you, Dane. I only just met him, but I think he’s a wonderful man.”

  “They don’t come better.”

  I chose a diet Sprite and he unloaded the contents of the bag. In addition to several brownies, Samuel had packed for us a selection of cookies, scones, and a couple of oversized muffins.

  “I suddenly know how Hansel and Gretel must have felt, walking up to that candy house,” I said.

  He groaned, staring at the array of baked goods. “I’m going to have to work out in the hotel gym for about three hours tonight, but it’ll be worth it.” He handed me a fork. “Dig in.”

  By the time we’d made a modest dent in the desserts, I learned a few other things about Dane Tyler:

  He was here in Chicago just for this limited engagement and would only be staying for about a week after the play closed.

  He was flying to New York City for a few days after that, before finally returning to L.A.

  He had a film that was set to start shooting in early August but, once that wrapped, he didn’t have any projects on his schedule for a while.

  He planned to take time then to seriously consider what his next steps should be professionally. Maybe directing, although he admitted his insecurities there. Would he be able to pull it off? Get the right people behind it? Work well with all the actors?

  And whenever his mom, who now lived in Florida, got sick of hearing him complain, she’d tell him to drop the Hollywood scene entirely and just do theater for the senior citizens in her retirement community.

  “That,” he said with a grin, “is usually enough to get me to shut up.”

  He asked me a bunch of questions, too.

  About Adam and Analise.

  About my friends and what it was like teaching junior high kids.

  About growing up as a “normal” teen in Illinois.

  I laughed at that. “Dull,” I said, remembering my pages upon pages of inane journal entries from high school. “There was never much in my life that any gossip rag would’ve swooned over,” I told him. “Even if I’d turned out to be a talented actor like you.”

  I caught him glancing at my wedding band, and I twisted it on my finger. I still couldn’t quite bring myself to pull it off.

  “Honestly, Dane, aside from losing Adam so early and having to consult counselors on how to help my daughter work through her grief, there’s very little that’s unusual about the way my world operates. Nothing I’ve done that could be considered exceptional by anyone.” I shrugged. “Normal can be pretty boring.”

  “I don’t find you boring, Julia. And, don’t take this the wrong way, but you aren’t exactly my idea of ‘normal’ either. You might have been as a teen—I didn’t know you then—but you grew up into someone with an exceptional soul.”

  It was the kind of compliment that would have been jarring coming from most men, but it didn’t seem fake when Dane said it. Maybe he was just that good when it came to acting. But I couldn’t detect any motivation he’d have for needing to flatter me.

  And I soon lost track of how long we spent just talking at that little kitchen table.

  At one point, Dane pulled out some whole-wheat crackers, cheese slices, and cold cuts, and we nibbled on those for dinner or, as Dane called it, “the antidote to Samuel’s sugar bombs.”

  “Everyone should eat dessert first sometimes, though,” I stated, and he readily agreed.

  It was nearly dark by the time he drove me back to Mirabelle Harbor and to my car, parked in the lot by the radio station.

  “I’m still pissed that you gave away those tickets to the VIP party Saturday night.” He pulled into the empty space next to my car and fished his cell phone out of his pocket.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I would have kept one of them if I’d have known you better before today.” I meant that.

  “Good. ’Cuz I’m not letting you o
ff the hook.” He swiped at his phone, his thumb poised over the keypad. “What’s your number?”

  I recited my cell to him and, a second later, my phone beeped.

  “That’s a text from me,” he said. “From my private cell phone. Let me make this perfectly clear to you. This is a number I give out only to family members, very close friends—”

  “And big theater donors?” I joked.

  He glanced heavenward in a show of exasperation, but his lips quirked upward. “Actually, no. Not even them. My mother, my brother, my agent, my PR reps, and my lawyer all have it. And some friends. But if you give it away to anyone, I swear I won’t be responsible for my actions. Got it?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Idle threats.”

  “You think I’m kidding, Little Miss 49202. I will find you, and you will be sorry.”

  We both laughed at that.

  Dane Tyler.

  I was sitting in a car, joking around with Dane Tyler.

  My sixteen-year-old self would be squealing uncontrollably if she knew.

  “I’ll protect your privacy with my life,” I said, in a tone of mock reverence.

  “You’d better. Now, I don’t have any other tickets on hand, but that’s okay. I’ve got a new and improved plan,” he informed me. “The gold VIP tickets let the guests come in at the theater door and are necessary for entry into the Carmody Room at the hotel for the party after the show. But you won’t need that if you meet me at the Knightsbridge earlier.”

  “How much earlier?”

  He squinted into the distance, calculating. “Couple of hours. You can sit in the auditorium for the final performance or, if you’d prefer, you can be backstage with me and the cast. Then we can go to the party.”

  “As a group, you mean? With the other actors?”

  He shook his head. Then, because I must have looked confused, he said, “Julia Meriwether Crane, will you be my date on Saturday night?”

  Chapter Twelve

  Kristopher Karlsen showed up on my doorstep Wednesday morning. He wasn’t smiling.