Colder than Ice
Page 18
“That sounds like an awfully flimsy basis for a relationship,” said Sophie. “Having exactly one thing in common.”
“If even that,” he remarked, and felt Sophie shift slightly. “Nobody knows this, but my father was the one who wanted me to go to RADA. I wanted to research comparative media and sociology, study the influence of pop culture on modern society. But it wouldn’t have yielded much in the way of a job—perhaps as a professor somewhere. And that wasn’t acceptable to him, he was going to refuse to let me go on with any studies at all. The family wealth wasn’t going to pay for something that wouldn’t yield results, he said.”
“Parents aren’t supposed to blackmail their children into doing what they want.”
“I suppose it’s a good thing I’ve gotten decent acting reviews,” Tristan said, a bit ruefully. “Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy being on stage or making films, but it never felt like what I was supposed to be doing until I had the audition with Card One.” He looked down at her, stretched out across his knees. “We never sat and talked like this, Gabriella and me. She wanted to spend a lot of time at parties or restaurants, or especially at anything with a product launch. She’s an expert at seeming to be above all the branding and sponsorship-grasping, but is just as much down in it as everybody else.”
There was a pause, and this time, Tristan realized it had become a natural part of their conversations with each other.
“Why did you break up?”
He’d already come this far, and there was no longer a point to trying to keep Sophie apart from his past. “It wasn’t anything huge in the moment, but a lot of little things over a long time. She’d wander off at parties and talk to some director all night, I’d go home after I couldn’t find her and she’d be in the trade papers the next day with a fantastic new role. She’s very good at marketing herself—but that’s most of what she is. Ambition disguised as prestige and acting ability.”
He sighed.
“Enough about her, I don’t want to spoil the evening.”
“You aren’t ruining anything,” Sophie replied evenly. “I can listen to someone talk about an ex—with the way the Internet is trashing me, I think I’m a little tougher than that.”
“Oh, what’s the fanbase up to now? Let me guess, they’re angry because you gave Morganna actual armor and a complex internal life.”
“That, and I’m ruining their childhoods, the entire franchise by extension, and I’ve destroyed Gerhig’s original vision. All that from the set stills—you look great with the VFX work they’ve done so far, by the way.”
“Are they already releasing set pictures? Goodness. Well, know this: you’ve done a splendid job with a difficult task, and the Eisner Award that I’m guessing is sitting at home on your bookshelves has your name on it for a reason.”
Sophie gave a short laugh.
“I think it’s in a moving box somewhere.”
“My point still stands. Wherever it’s living, it’s yours, and no one can take that away from you. Even awful fanboys.”
Sophie hmmed and wriggled her nose, looking up at the ceiling.
“That doesn’t sound good.”
She frowned, looking like she was thinking of how to most diplomatically break some news to him.
“Your fangirls have collided with mine.” She scrunched up her mouth. “That’s not something I thought I’d ever say.”
“What’s going on?”
Sophie sighed and sat up, motioning for him to move over a bit and began to list things off on her fingers.
“I’ve stolen their boyfriend from them, or I’ve brainwashed you, I’ve also dragged you down by forcing you to date someone far beneath your fame level. I dress like your personal assistant, I’m too short to be photographed next to you, and the only way our relationship is real is if we’re being blackmailed. Which is surprisingly accurate, but mostly being put out there as a funny conspiracy theory.” Sophie popped her neck to one side and then the other. “Oh, and you’re secretly the real screenwriter for Dark Magic.”
She got up and went across the room to flip on one of the floor lamps, and Tristan sat and tried to recover from this. Fuck. He never should have gone to Battenmire.
“I’m secretly the writer?” he repeated, his voice so calm that he nearly believed it.
“Yeah, apparently there’s a gossip site that put out a rumor that you rewrite every year’s Oscar contenders to punch them up,” Sophie said after she’d chewed a bite of Turkish delight.
“Huh,” was Tristan’s quiet response.
She took another bite.
“So, are you?”
“What?”
“A script doctor.” From the look on her face, he could tell she’d think it was tremendously funny if he said yes.
Tristan shrugged.
“I don’t see how,” he said. It wasn’t entirely the truth, but it wasn’t a lie, either. What she was describing was someone specifically hired to come in and rework whole screenplays—he just added a couple of lines here and there casually, as a favor. And Prasad hadn’t hired him, just asked him for some advice.
Tristan weighed the prospect of coming out with all of it.
He’d asked himself so many times what the point was of throwing a spanner in the works, but he’d never bothered to come up with an answer. What could be gained by telling her that he’d stepped in when Prasad had needed him most? He’d offered his vast knowledge for punchier, bigger story arcs, but that was just a few emailed suggestions, and maybe a few bits of dialogue. Pages, maybe. And yes, maybe he’d redone a lot of the second act, but still, it wasn’t the same thing.
Script doctoring was more… complete, more thorough.
Tristan Eccleston would be nowhere in the film credits—and they’d all be happier for it, him and Prasad and the studio executives. There was hardly any reason to be concerned.
Besides, among all the other things the therapist had told him in Bali was that he tended to get in his own way, that he needed to stop over arguing for himself and allow himself to be happy.
And Sophie seemed so happy in London with him that Tristan felt that rising urge again to protect all of this from outside influences, to preserve things exactly as they were. And more than ever, it was essential that he make it all work, prove that being in a relationship didn’t need to be all about accomplishments and spotlights. Sophie’d heard him talk about Gabriella well enough, but it was all finally nice in a way that felt settled and secure; he had Sophie’s approval, her easy smiles and the way she hugged him from behind even when she was asleep.
He had validation that she liked him, maybe loved him, this person who understood him, knew he was an awkward weirdo and still laughed at his jokes and beamed when he walked into the room. Tristan didn’t want to go back to the way things were before Sophie had opened up and this whole thing had gone from reluctant and fake to homemade pot pies and rainy weekends.
Still, the hard little core of guilt burned away in his stomach.
“I knew that site was full of shit,” Sophie said casually, “but if you wanted to be a screenwriter, I bet you could. Oxford and an interest in pop culture—you could probably adapt old public domain works into something exciting for a new audience.”
Good Lord, he suddenly wanted nothing more than to not be part of this conversation.
Tristan hmmed vaguely and shifted the conversation.
“How did filming go yesterday?”
“Oh, they got the stunt against the flat worked out, and Prasad is working on redoing a little clip of the dialogue when Lucius breaks the front window. Did you get your call sheet?”
“Yup, don’t worry.” It was going to be another early morning tomorrow. Tristan wrapped his arms around Sophie when she came back over to sit with him, and he watched her open her messaging app so she could read aloud what her friend Ashley back home had been asking her about London. While she talked, his mind forcibly went back to the piece of luggage in the hallway by the arch.
But now there was a new burden, not one on his shoulders, but inside his stomach, and Tristan felt more unsure than he had for months.
Chapter Sixteen
Sophie was walking through a forest, finding her way easily across the mossy ground, over tree roots and rocks. She came up to a towering tree, so tall that the branches and leaves were obscured by fog. Underneath it was Ashley.
Or maybe it was Morganna.
Either way, a tall blonde woman with hair in a fishtail braid and fancy armor was sharpening an axe with a stone, and when Sophie hesitated, the woman stopped and looked up calmly.
“See,” she said, and held out her hand. There was a small purple flower in the middle of it. “If we are to blossom, we must also expose our petals.”
Sophie wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Morganna—or Ashley, it still wasn’t clear, her face kept changing back and forth—began to hit the rock against the axe blade with a sharp, deep sound. Thunk-thunk-thunk.
“What are you doing? You’ll ruin it,” said Sophie, coming closer and reaching for the axe. The woman ignored her and hit it louder, this time the sound coming out hollow and far away.
Thunk, thunk, thunk.
Sophie woke to a quiet flat, the light gray morning light coming in through the sheer Roman shades. Tristan was gone.
The distant noise came back, this time more insistent. Someone was knocking at the front door downstairs. She quickly pulled on a robe, tied it as tightly as she could over her naked body, and thumped down the stairs before realizing that it could be a member of the press, or an insane fan who’d found Tristan’s address and had stalked him—or her—all the way here.
But looking through the peephole, the only person Sophie could see outside was an older man with tortoiseshell glasses, whitish-blond hair, and a plaid scarf. He was looking to his left far down the street and frowning. Maybe it was Tristan’s agent, or a London contact of some kind. She opened the door enough to speak to him.
“Yes?”
In response, the man tilted his head with his arms folded at the small of his back and gave her a very close once-over. It was hard to tell from the look on his face whether he found her to be more of an oddity, or unpleasant.
“Is he in?” The man said briskly, and it was immediately apparent that he was, among other things, very annoyed that he’d had to wait for someone to answer the door.
“Uh,” said Sophie. If she said no, the man would know she was here alone. If she said yes, surely he’d want to speak to Tristan in person. He was old, but she wasn’t dressed and had no idea what sort of morning she’d be in for if this ended in physical violence.
“Oh for God’s sake,” he went on, “I paid the property taxes on this house the first year Tristan had it, or he wouldn’t have been able to afford the place, let me in.”
And somehow, something in the timbre of his voice changed, there was an immediacy, an urgency, that if she didn’t do this, there would be worse consequences, and suddenly the man was in the foyer looking her over again.
“So you’re the American, eh?”
She blinked, considering the possibility that this was a crazed fan after all, when it struck Sophie that she kind of recognized his face. It was the long slope of his nose, and the way his eyebrows started heavy in the middle and slanted outward at the corners.
This was Tristan’s father.
She tucked her arms around herself to discreetly secure her robe even tighter.
“He isn’t here,” she said, hoping that would make Mr. Eccleston leave a note or something and go away. It was weird, seeing someone from Tristan’s personal life apart from Los Angeles, and even weirder that this was the winner of multiple BAFTAs, a couple Oscars, and probably something else. He was holding something behind his back, a package wrapped in brown paper, and when he saw her looking at it, drummed his fingers against it.
“I gathered that, thank you,” was his reply. Again the tone of his voice made it difficult to tell whether he was being sarcastic—it was a lilting softness, as if he thought it was funny to say things like that at her expense. Playing to an invisible audience—or just an audience of himself.
Now he’d moved in far enough to turn his head and look into the living room. Sophie had to physically stop herself when she realized that the couch cushions and blankets were still strewn about from where she and Tristan had been making a sort of combination nest-slash-pillow-fort and watching a movie before they’d gotten bored, started making out, and… well.
And now his father was looking over the aftermath of it. At least he wasn’t looking at how red her face was.
“What an interesting method of housekeeping,” he murmured to himself so quietly that she had to lean in and then try to decipher what he was saying. He had the rich, plummy accent of a man accustomed to being a conqueror—if not of the world itself, then of the stage, of people’s attention. Everything he did and said was designed to make her do that, lean in farther to prick up her ears and give him what he wanted.
Jesus.
“I’m Sophie, by the way,” and instantly she wondered why she’d told him that.
“Ye-e-e-s, the American,” said Mr. Eccleston, still not looking at her. “Put your stamp on the place, I see.”
“Writing is a process, frequently a messy one.”
“Writing… what was it again?” He chuckled, almost kindly, but she was on her guard. Tristan didn’t like this man, and she wasn’t inclined to like him either, even without proof or evidence. “He said you won something—were you on the Booker shortlist? I forget,” and this brought a wave of his hand, silly old me, I’m always forgetting things like this, you understand, “So many awards to be involved with, even for writers.”
She couldn’t let something like that hit her.
“Better than selling margarita mix to divorcees,” she said, widening her eyes as much as possible so that when the man flicked his eyes at her sharply like she guessed he would, it slid off her effortlessly. “Did you want to leave that for him?”
The look he gave her was clearly designed to make her feel as short as she was, like he couldn’t possibly trust a woman who was obviously and undeservedly sleeping here to give the package to his son without setting it on fire or losing it down the kitchen drain somehow.
Rufus Eccleston—that was his name, she remembered now—opened his mouth to answer, but the front door got there first. Tristan came through holding a paper bag in the crook of his elbow and juggling a cup tray with two steaming things of coffee in one hand and his keys in the other.
The expression on Tristan’s face when he looked up and saw the two of them gave Sophie sudden clarity into what they must have looked like. His father dressed in the very finely checked wool overcoat with the artfully arranged scarf standing next to Sophie, with her unwashed JBF hair, zero makeup, and wearing a hideous orange chinoiserie robe that was so long it puddled at her feet. A glorious welcome home, she thought, and for the first time in a long time, felt a distinct sense of shame, at herself and at having probably embarrassed Tristan. It was not a welcome feeling, or one she experienced too often.
“Er,” said Tristan. It seemed to be about the only thing it was possible for anyone to say, given the situation. Sophie rescued them both by coming forward to take the breakfast he’d gone out to get before she’d awoken, and took it into the kitchen.
What was she supposed to do? Tristan had just been out to the family estate; was his dad trying to spend time with him? He’d seemed so relieved to get back to London. Was the old man here to argue? She clicked the switch on the teakettle and slipped out the other kitchen door to head upstairs, throw on some clothes and tie her mess
y hair into a topknot.
When Sophie came back downstairs—carefully, one light step at a time, both to avoid bulldozing her way into their conversation and to conveniently overhear what was being said—she could hear Rufus telling his son,
“—you take that to an awards red carpet, and the press will unhinge its jaws and swallow you whole. And don’t think I don’t know about—” His voice grew too quiet for her to hear, just a murmur.
Sophie leaned her shoulder hard against the stairwell wall, waiting for Tristan to answer, to say something, to defend her.
But there was just vague murmuring.
She squinted, trying to make herself hear harder, as if maybe he was whispering, or there was some clue hanging in the air that she could smell or taste, anything to tell her more, what she wanted to know.
Rufus sighed, and there was a sharp rustle or crinkle of paper.
“The earliest draft,” he said, “Just back from the printers. I wanted you to be the first to see it and tell me if you think there ought to be any revisions made—and if so, which ones.” Footsteps, the front door opening, and then very faintly, she heard his voice again. “Think it over carefully, will you?”
When the door closed, there was a long and heavy quiet totally unlike the one she’d woken up to. Sophie was still thinking about that, about silence, when Tristan appeared at the bottom of the stairs before her, looking down at the package that his father had put into his hands.
The family biography, wrapped in brown paper and string. She came down as he went into the kitchen.
Tristan flipped open the kitchen trash can with the foot lever and tipped the entire thing in, with an unceremonious crash and thump. Then he turned, dug around inside the paper bag he’d been carrying for a chocolate croissant, took one of the coffee cups out of the tray, and left the kitchen.
Sophie looked at the paper bag with what was probably another chocolate croissant, and the still-hot coffee, and followed him without touching either.