by Sara Forbes
Jack.
I stumble back and grasp onto the booth seat. “What exactly did he say to you?”
June gives an impatient shrug. “Wouldn’t take my order, wanted you to.”
There’s a split second when Jack notices me and his whole body seems to let go of its tension. I clutch at my chest where a heaviness is squeezing the air out of my lungs. Then, mechanically, I start to move. My legs somehow manage to get me to his table without buckling under me. Regret and excitement are warring for dominance in my head.
“Hello,” I say when I’m about five feet away.
The whole world seems to hold its breath. His so-familiar blue eyes sparkle as they search deep into mine. My gaze trails from his beautiful face down his neck and over his broad shoulders. He’s tanner, his hair has grown a few millimeters. His eyes have that same intensity, but his forehead and jaw are more relaxed. His chest still fills out his casual white cotton shirt to perfection. What did I expect in four months? It’s not fair that he looks so good. He reaches up to his glasses and adjusts them—a familiar nervous tic. “Hi, Mia.”
I nod dumbly. Nothing can prepare you for a moment like this, hearing that rich, deep voice again.
“Coffee. You wanted coffee.”
He waves vaguely at the cup, then shakes his head and motions for me to sit down opposite him.
I slide into the booth and sit ramrod straight, tucking my feet under me. I put the coffee jug on the table, something we’re not supposed to do, and wring my fingers in my lap, waiting for him to say something. He didn’t just drop in on a whim.
“I don’t expect anything…” His voice croaks. He coughs and tries again. “I just wanted a minute of your time, Mia.”
“You got it.”
“Right.” His gaze slides to something under the table. He reaches down and pulls out a wad of paper, which he then places on the table. It makes the whump of heavy document meeting wood.
“What’s this?”
“The script.”
He doesn’t need to tell me which one—his vulnerable glance at it tells me everything.
“OK.” I flick a stray hair off my face. “Did you come here to give me this?”
He slides it over the table to me. “Can’t trust the mail these days.”
“Huh.” I read the familiar title on the cover page: Aliens in Distress. Why the hell would I want to read this? But my gaze trails farther down to the author name. Jack Palmer. My gaze darts up to his face again.
“Just read it, Mia. And when you do, picture yourself as Seela.”
I push it back toward him. “I’ve enough homework this weekend.”
“For school?”
I nod.
The light in his eyes warms. “How’s that going?”
“Fine. But you didn’t come here to talk about school.”
He frowns. “Correct. I came here to give you this.” He nudges the script another inch toward me. When I fail to react, he shifts his chair and says, “I should go.”
I watch every flex of his muscles as he shrugs on his jacket, throws way too much cash on the table, rises, and weaves his way through the tables and out the door. I remain seated, frozen in time. All that’s left is the lingering, pine-fresh scent of his cologne that whisks me right back to Islas Las Aves.
Staring at the space he vacated, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. My heart is drumming like I’m on amphetamines. How could he crash into my life as if it was a normal thing to do and then whoosh just vacate it again? What kind of mindfuckery is this anyway?
Slowly, I flick to the first page of Act 1. Is this what he’s been doing since we last saw each other? What does it mean?
“You taking that tip?” June asks in a shrill voice by my shoulder.
“Uh…no. You have it.”
Last thing I want is Jack Palmer’s money.
“If you insist.” She reaches across me and pockets the notes. “Come on, let’s finish up and get the hell out of here.”
***
I HOLE UP IN Annie’s student apartment for the weekend and spend most of it reading, interspersed with a trip to the store, cooking and basic-level cleaning. The script meanwhile sits on Annie’s coffee table like a magical object sucking all the power out of the room, but still I persevere and get all my homework done first. I don’t want to go unprepared into Professor Wilcox’s Pedagogy of Acting lecture on Monday—I’ve too much respect for my teacher and the subject to allow that to happen. Also, I refuse to let this movie—or this man—derail my life again.
But once I do start reading, I’m smitten with Jack’s way with words. The pages flip by quickly. He’s transformed the movie into something funnier, wittier, and subversive but in a subtle way—it can be read on two levels. The banter between the sisters reminds me of Thelma and Louise. I could play either role and have a ball acting it out. But I lean toward Seela—she seems uniquely written for me, which I suppose she is, and I can easily imagine Janet playing the more phlegmatic Sola.
John Carter is a much more nuanced character now, with anti-heroic tendencies coming to the fore. Unlike the last cardboard cut-out, this version of Carter is someone I can actually envision the sisters Seela and Sola falling for.
“How is it?” Annie asks, peering over her Four Faces of Moral Realism. “Did I hear you chuckling over there?”
I sigh happily. “Damn good, that’s how it is. I had no idea he had this in him.”
“Well, they do say ex-actors have the know-how to create great scripts. It’ll be you next.”
“There must be some truth in that, because this here makes me want to leap onto a stage and start acting! If only this were the version we’d taken with us to the island.”
Annie wags her finger at me. “Is he throwing temptation your way? You’re meant to be studying.”
“Don’t worry, I got this,” I say in a breathy voice. “I’m not the mess I used to be when I met him first. I’ve learned how much I don’t know and weirdly, that’s given me confidence in myself.”
“Humility being the first step to self-assurance,” Annie says, sagely.
“What’s the second?”
“Uh, acceptance of one’s limitations.”
“So much fun,” I say wryly.
She nods and slips an old receipt into her book, closing it over, like she’s settling in for a long conversation. “What will you do about Jack? I mean, he’s kind of proved himself by coming back to you. By doing this.” She points at the script pages strewn across the coffee table. “It’s all for you.”
My chest buzzes with a happy feeling but I’m too cynical to believe her. “He wanted to transition to writing anyway. But yeah, I’ll call him on my next term break to let him know what I think of his work.”
“You’re going to make him wait four weeks?”
“I probably need more time than that, but yeah.”
“Then what?” she presses.
“Well, I’ll decide then. And when I do, it’ll be a choice, not an act of desperation.”
She’s quiet for a moment, chewing on this, as Annie does. “Choice is always good, Mia. Make the right one for you.”
***
TWO MONTHS LATER, on the Saturday morning after my mid-term exams, I’m standing outside Jack’s apartment block, script under my arm, shivering with nerves. Before I can entertain any second thoughts and run the hell away, I punch his doorbell. Now or never. I put way too much effort into my outfit and makeup to turn back now.
The buzzer sounds, and I can enter without him asking who I am. This way, he’ll be even more surprised when he sees me ,and I’ll get a blast of the raw emotion on his face when he opens. I push through the main door.
On the seventeenth floor, I traipse out of the elevator and slink up to his door. It’s closed, so I rap on it. There are muffled voices within. I cringe. What if he has someone sleeping over? Why didn’t I think of this beforehand? Oh God, I’ll die. I’ll run and never come back.
The door
swings open, and I register a mop of unruly blond hair. It belongs to a man with a cute face and a fabulous body, clad in white, like a young Liberace or a freaking angel. OK, he’s actually gorgeous, and I don’t know any other man who can rock white pants, but he’s not Jack.
“Umm,” I say.
“Wait, I know who you are,” Blondie says with a frown that suddenly makes the family resemblance clear. “You’re Mia!”
I nod. “You’re Felix.” In a matter of split seconds, I feel we’ve already built a rapport.
“Come in.” His face breaks into a cherubic grin, the kind he’s probably used all his life to get his way with stuff. He cocks his head backward. “He’s in there being all mopey on his computer. Please, take him off my hands.” He holds the door open wide.
“Do my best.” I slip in past him.
28
JACK
SOMEWHERE IN THE convoluted middle of Act Two, Scene Three, there’s a tap on my shoulder that shatters my concentration. I wrench off the headphones playing Avicii at full blast and hurl around.
“Felix,” I growl.
“Do I look like Felix?” says a voice, the sweetest in the world. Like a vision, Mia stands before me, the sunlight burnishing her hair, caressing the soft features of her face, and dancing a merry jig in her green eyes.
I blink. Is she really here? Then I bolt up to standing. “You came.”
She holds out the script toward me, brandishing it like a shield. “To give you this.”
I’m speechless as I take the heavy bundle of paper from her hands. The edges of the sheets are worn which means she’s probably read it. Either that, or she used it as a doorstop.
She peers past me to my laptop. “Oh, are you still working on it?”
“No.” I nod at the drivel on my screen. “That’s a whole new screenplay.” I drag my fingers through my hair. “Less sci-fi, more drama. I’m trying to channel Edward Albee but in a domestic noir mystery. It’s…awful actually.”
She laughs. I could bottle that sound up and store it as a cure-all elixir for the rough times ahead. “I’m sure it’s better than you think.”
“What did you think of my Aliens?” It’s the question I’ve been dying to ask her for six months, ever since I started working on it. And yet, now that I’m asking, it seems trivial compared to the fact that she came here with it. The question I really want to ask is what do I have to do to make you stay forever?
“I love it!” Her shining eyes tell me it’s true. “Everything, but especially Seela.”
“Good. That’s good.”
She takes a step closer, close enough for me to touch her. “Jack, did you really write the part for me?”
“Well…I—”
“Hell yeah, he did. He wrote the whole thing for you,” Felix calls over from where he’s sprawled on the sofa.
“Stay out of this, Felix,” I mutter. “Better still,” I glare at him, “give us a moment?”
I turn back around to Mia. In my periphery, Felix rises, iPad in hand, and stomps to the door of his room flashing Mia a smile before he disappears.
“Sorry about that.”
Mia’s grinning. “Brothers, eh? So, are you John Carter?”
“No, don’t worry, I didn’t mean for us to perform together or anything like that.”
“Shame.” Her lips curl into a sly smile and her gaze roams over my face, neck and torso and lingers on my mouth. “There are some pretty steamy scenes in there.”
“That there are,” I say hoarsely.
“R-rated, I’d say.”
We stare at each other. My skin tingles with the need to touch her. Starting with her delicious lips.
She’s still smiling as she steps in closer. Too close. I can’t stop my arms enclosing her, cradling her shoulder blades, positioning her where I need her to be.
“Show me, Jack,” she whispers. “Show me how you meant Act Two, Scene Two to end.”
It’s where Carter and Seela first kiss. I wrote it picturing me kissing Mia, as I did all the kissing scenes. But this particular scene mirrored how we first kissed on the island.
“I can hardly take you by surprise now,” I murmur, dipping my head and cradle her face in my hands, capturing her mouth in an ungentle, insistent kiss that grows deeper and greedier. I burst into flame, caressing, stroking and pressing her soft skin, finding the places that give her most pleasure. It may be four months but I haven’t forgotten.
Soon, she’s making soft moaning noises that tell me she needs me in an urgent way. I take her T-shirt by the hem and yank it over her torso. She presses herself into me and I feel the glory of her silken bare skin, the swell of her breasts and the two tiny nudges of her hardened peaks. How could I have lived without this?
“Bedroom, we have to…” I moan.
“Take me there, Captain Carter,” she says. “Rock my galaxy.”
***
AFTER MAKING LOVE, we lie side by side on top of the covers of my bed and talk. Well, she talks and I listen. I’m greedy for every detail of her new life, her school, her job, her friends. Her jaded attitude is gone, replaced by a determination to succeed.
“What excites me most is the methodologies used to teach acting. I never thought that would be interesting.” She laughs. “And I never thought I’d ever use a word like methodologies. I nearly passed off pedagogy for another subject, but now it’s my favorite.”
“You used to teach those kids in the hospital. Maybe it’s what you were born to do.”
“Maybe,” she says, caressing the side of my arm, leaving a trail of hairs standing on end. “Too early to tell. We’ll see in three and a half years, I guess.”
I nod. I especially like how she used the “we” there.
“Yup,” she continues, “I’m seeing a bigger picture now. And there are always side projects. But I’m not going to let them stop me graduating.”
I rise up on my elbow and look down into her face. “Well, for the record, you’re not a side project to me. You’re the project. I’ve fucked up monumentally and I own that. I let my stupid principles ruin everything when all I was doing was covering up my fear of being a loser. But there are many kinds of success, the greatest of all being that you’re here right now, with me.”
“Oh Jack,” she breathes. “Of course I’m here. I was always going to come back—if you’d have me.”
“So, you forgive me?”
“There’s nothing to forgive,” she says, her eyes glowing. “I’m done rehearsing. I want to do this right.”
“Me too,” I say, taking her hands and squeezing. “You opened me up. Made me approach life from a different angle. I could’ve gone on forever being a profit-and-loss fixated asshole. I would only gave gotten worse had I not met you. I don’t want to lose you again. I have so many plans for us, just wait and see. This production team is set up and firing to go.”
A smile bursts over her face, a smile I’ll remember for the rest of my life. “I want to be with you, Jack. But I got some plans of my own. Make no mistake—this here is going to be a co-production.”
EPILOGUE
(SIX MONTHS LATER)
MIA
“LONDON?” I LET out a whistle. This will be only my second trip by airplane and the Islas Las Aves trip hardly counts because it was work. Besides, it seems so long ago—more than a year.
Jack nods. “I didn’t want to tell you before you’d finished your exams; didn’t want to distract you.”
We’re walking on the sidewalk between the parking lot and his apartment—I mean, our apartment. I gave mine up last week as it made no sense to rent a dump I never stayed in. I had worried that giving up my freedom would feel weird but it doesn’t. Felix moved out a month ago, and Jack started to point out how quiet his apartment was. I took the hint.
I stop walking. “But my job...”
“I sorted that.”
“Ja-ck, we talked about this.”
“It’s just four shifts. June said there’s people who�
�ll step in. It’s all organized. Please?”
Normally, I’m touchy about accepting Jack’s financial help or even organizational help. I guess it’s the specter of Aunt Rita telling me I need to stand on my own two feet. But this is a special treat, not everyday life management. And London! Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, and Harry Potter! Who could say no?
“It’s because of you I’m going there,” he adds, ushering me in to our apartment.
“Me?”
“It’s a get-together of the Bitcoin billionaires. Otherwise, I’d have chosen Lake Garda for our summer break.”
“Wait, you’re meeting up?” A few weeks ago, Jack called this guy called Egan something, wanting to know more about his investments way back when. The upshot of that was that Egan had a confession to make—to both Jack and Felix. Apparently, Egan had dished out only a part of what their Bitcoin was really worth. The resident nerd Paul had somehow generated more than the three million each but hadn’t given it to them because…well, reasons. And there was a whole cabal—seven of them in total who had their paws on a rather big pot. More than that he would not say over the phone.
I’m glad they’re meeting up to talk about it. It seems a lot of money to withhold from its rightful owners. Jack is cool about it. Felix is as excited as a puppy dog.
Jack being Jack has sold one script for a decent sum and is thinking of producing the next one himself. He’s not letting it consume him though.
“Have you met them before?”
“Well, of the five, I’ve met Paul, the hacker who started it all, and Egan, the leader, back when we made the original investments.”
“Any idea about the other three?”
“None whatsoever.” He rubs his palms together. “That’s what’ll make it so interesting.”
“I’ll bet.” We’re in the apartment. I kick off my shoes and flop onto the sofa while Jack goes to mix the drinks. It’s our Thursday evening routine before we hit the movies.
