Colder than Ice

by Jane Galaxy

  “Why do I feel like I’m supposed to be surprised that you’re here?” he asked Joanna after a moment.

  “Maybe you heard about that time I caught Vanessa on my fire escape trying to take pictures of me and Jax through the window,” she replied through a mouthful of cake.

  Tristan’s fork hovered halfway between the plate and his mouth.

  “What?”

  Joanna looked stunned for a moment, then swallowed.

  “It was a whole thing,” she remarked. “I didn’t talk to Jax for a while, I even hired a lawyer to go after Vanessa. It’s… I’ve had a weird history with people treating me like shit, invading my privacy, putting my personal life on blast when it’s not even that interesting to begin with.”

  Tristan waited. It sounded like there was lot going on under Joanna’s surface.

  “But after a while, Jax called and wanted everything to be okay, so they both apologized, and… Vanessa and I aren’t best friends or anything, but we can be civil. More than civil. I’m happy for her, for the two of them; she’s a beautiful bride.”

  He half-smiled down at their empty plates.

  “It’s nice that people can still forgive each other in the entertainment business,” Tristan said. Joanna eyed him a little cautiously, like she didn’t want to light a fuse she didn’t know she could handle.

  “I saw that you and Sophie broke up,” she ventured.

  Tristan watched as Knute Forsyth and Dominic Thompson chatted with a very animated Prasad at the edge of the dance floor.

  “She broke up with me because I lied to her, and when she confronted me, I lied to her again,” he said, and Joanna took in a soft hiss of air.

  “Damn,” she said. “You two seemed like you’d be great together, even if it was just for publicity. Couple of nerds into your superheroes and comic books, it’s rare to meet people who are genuinely into something other than ass implants or who got into the newest brunch spot.”

  “I thought it was fine at first, but the longer it’s been, the worse I feel about it,” he heard himself say, “because it’s not just her work I damaged, it’s crew jobs, and then I started thinking about the whole franchise—”

  “Stop.”

  “No, really.”

  “No, really,” said Joanna. “Quit leaning on yourself like this; it’s not the end of the world. Yes, you did something shitty,” she said in response to the look he gave her, “but that doesn’t mean you need to publicly flog yourself at the happiest day of someone’s life. Take the L, but pick yourself back up and keep going. Be a little dramatic for a while—people will look back on it and call it your phase, or something.”

  “A phase?” Tristan gave her a flat look.

  “That’s what the critics said when I came back to acting from dropping out of school.” Joanna shook her head with a smile. “I did all these super dark dramas and art house films where my characters either killed people or were dead by the end, and Priscilla Hains said it reflected my youthful flirtations with the rejection of authority figures. I think at the time, I just wanted something grown-up to work on, but now I get to have a bit of a dark past, and it just makes me interesting.”

  She reached across the table and stacked their plates together, balancing the fork tines in some kind of sculpture.

  “Look,” Joanna said. “If this breakup of a fake relationship is making you so miserable that you hovered in front of a window for two hours looking out over 49th Street like you were going to throw yourself onto the roof of Christie’s, maybe the answer is to just fix it.”

  “Just… fix it? Just like that?” Tristan echoed, a tinge of sarcasm floating in.

  “Apologize, do what you need to do to earn atonement. If you get back together, great, if she turns you down, well… you know, you tried. And it won’t eat at you.”

  Tristan shook his head slowly back and forth, slower and slower until finally he said,

  “This was the first film project I ever felt like I could just relax and enjoy, that I could let my guard down and be passionate about. Now I wonder if it’s all tainted, the idea of being in popcorn movies like this, doing the fun properties from books and comics, like it was a bandaid I was putting over deeper problems and now it’s all ruined for me.”

  “If you found something that lit a fire under your ass, you should soak it in and allow yourself to enjoy it no matter what anybody else says,” said Joanna. They both looked over at Jax and Vanessa bouncing up and down as the dance floor moved them in a huge circle. “I mean, look at him—he was a nobody in a bunch of crappy teen sex comedies, and now he’s the biggest superhero in Hollywood. He is Dirk Masterson, and he owns it.”

  Joanna looked back at Tristan.

  “It’s a process,” she said, and stretched out her palm for him to place his own hand into. “Let yourself want what you want, and enjoy what you enjoy. After all,” she said, shifting into her Morganna voice, “Though our lives be long, we are but mere mortals, brother, and this is all we have to conquer.” She stood and spoke in her normal voice. “Come dance with your sister, you nerd.”

  And then the answer came to him, like the perfect piece of dialogue. As he stepped onto the circular platform at the center of the room and was greeted with the cheers of his fellow Card One family, Tristan knew what he needed to do.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Sophie had managed to get her phone back from Ashley, but it hadn’t been without a lot of explaining and outright begging. There may have even been a promise to watch the triplets whenever Ash wanted in there someplace. Sophie knew she’d be on the hook for it, but she was the type of person who’d do that for her best friend anyway, and Ash knew it too.

  She’d been trying to figure out where exactly the hell Tristan was for the past three hours, and it was a lot trickier than she’d expected.

  The tabloids said he was in England, which wasn’t helpful—that included both London and Battenmire. While Sophie had enjoyed spending time in London, she needed absolute proof of where he was. And she definitely wasn’t just going to show up on Rufus Eccleston’s doorstep to casually ask if he’d seen his son lately.

  The plan was that there was no plan, but Sophie had an overwhelming urge to track down Tristan wherever he was so that they could talk face to face. A phone call or a text were good ways for him to dodge her, or worse yet, for her to be routed through to someone else. He might have put her on a restricted list, and Sophie didn’t want the embarrassment of some snotty personal assistant picking up on her attempts to be civil.

  She kept scrolling. Twitter was all agog about the Dark Magic film, and the only thing the guys on the Card One subreddit wanted to talk about was whether or not Morganna’s power levels were justified at this point in the franchise, because she was still really early in her development as a character overall within the cinematic universe, and didn’t the writers want to save some for later, maybe let the Steel Knight show up to help throw a few punches and toss off a few quips?

  She closed that tab before she could gag on the idea of a “real” superhero showing up to help an alien warrior goddess fight her own father’s military forces.

  Places like FB2 and Glitter and Glass weren’t any help either; apart from a couple of small items talking about Tristan maybe getting back together with Gabriella Zahn, there wasn’t much about him specifically at the moment. Even the comments about Sophie herself and whether she was worthy to date someone as chiseled and lithe as Tristan Fucking Eccleston had mostly died down in the wake of pictures of Jax Butler and Vanessa Reyes getting married in New York City. There had been a strict no-cell phone policy, and contrary to most celebrity “wedding of the century” type events, it had been an intimate gathering of friends and family.

  Along with some asshole who’d brought a GoPro they could fit into a buttonhole, or something, because the pictures were everywhere. Either Jax and Vanessa would get to start their joint lives together with a lawsuit, or it was a unique viral marketing campaign. Eith
er way, Sophie was grateful to them both, because for once, she was out of the top headlines. Not that she’d be the type of person to stay there for long, but still. It was nice to have some internal peace and quiet, especially for what she was gearing up to do.

  Sophie went to close the wedding candids tab too, but was suddenly struck by something at the edge of one of the pictures. Behind the couple was a very familiar figure—kind of blurry, but she could swear that was the side of Prasad’s head in profile, talking to a couple of other celebrities.

  She switched the screen off and set the cell phone on Ash’s kitchen table with a clatter. This was the kind of thing that could change the trajectory of her research-slash-stalking entirely.If Prasad had been at such a private and lavish event, there was no way he wouldn’t want to talk about it with somebody. Maybe bending a friendly and interested ear his way would mean he could see it in his heart to forgive her for stretching the truth a little when it came to the last phone call she’d had with him.

  Okay, and she could certainly outright apologize to him for doing that in the first place. For all the times she’d silently blamed him for damaging her story, Sophie knew now that Prasad had just been doing the work he’d been given—and he’d been gracious about letting her redirect the story, and a kind and genuine person to know in a city like Los Angeles, to boot.

  She looked down at her black phone screen. He wouldn’t have a calling redirect set up—Prasad didn’t have people constantly chasing him down, trying to get hold of his personal information they way the EcclesFans did. Maybe Prasad knew where his friend was, if they were still on speaking terms. Or maybe…

  Maybe they’d been at the wedding together. Maybe she could figure it out without even having to call him, interrupt and bother him, or get a generic voicemail message, maybe…

  Sophie frowned. Maybe if Tristan had been at the wedding, he’d already left New York and headed someplace else. He had told her he’d spent six months at a mindfulness retreat in Bali after his breakup with Gabriella. Her thoughts turned musing. What kind of place would a man visit after Sophie had broken up with him? Jacksonville? Akron? Kansas City?

  Just call him, you weirdo. Tristan’s probably back in London, or in LA doing voice stuff for the movie.

  She felt a slight pang of guilt at that thought, for some reason, but slid her device off the table and thumbed through the contacts list until she came to Prasad’s name. He picked up just before voicemail did, and about half a second before Sophie was going to give up and just pretend she hadn’t spent her entire evening doing this.

  “Hey!” he cried. It sounded like Prasad was at a party, and Sophie felt gratified when the sounds of people talking and thumping music faded as he found a quiet place to talk. “I wasn’t expecting any calls from you, what a nice surprise.”

  “Oh, God,” Sophie said, wishing he wasn’t such a chill person to get along with. “I feel bad, but I had to call you. I’m… sorry I lied to get some information out of you. That was a shitty thing to do.”

  “Ahh,” Prasad replied in a sympathetic tone. “No worries, or no hard feelings, at least. So! Whatcha calling for?”

  She wasn’t sure if he was being serious, or if this was an extreme and new form of sarcasm that was just becoming trendy.

  “Just like that?” she spluttered into the phone. She hadn’t been expecting it to be so easy. “You’re sure we’re okay?”

  “Honestly, yeah.” Prasad’s voice was breezy enough to convince her—maybe the party along with a few new opportunities since she’d last seen him had Prasad’s mind in a different place these days. Sophie shook her head. Hollywood really did move at light speed.

  “Well, I have a favor to ask, then, if you’re feeling so generous,” she said, half-hoping that this would make him get serious and tell her no, that the whole thing was a bad idea and she shouldn’t risk herself like this. “Do you know where Tristan is? I want to talk to him.”

  The wind blew into the receiver on Prasad’s end, or maybe he’d exhaled so suddenly that it sounded like a breeze had come up.

  “He was in New York for the wedding,” Prasad said finally, and Sophie was ready to do a fist-pump for being right, “But I’m pretty sure he went back to Los Angeles today. Or maybe it’s tomorrow that he’s leaving. I forget.”

  Well, that was more than manageable. How many places in LA could Tristan honestly visit? She knew all the places where he usually hung out, and she could grab the stuff from the spaceshare apartment and save herself the cost of having to ship her stuff back to Omaha. It was an easy decision.

  “Oh,” said Sophie brightly, but Prasad continued.

  “He’s only there for a little while, though, because he’s got more travel on his schedule after that.”

  “Where to?”

  “No idea, sorry. I think it was something about a pop culture and comic convention, or maybe a holiday? Or was he just going someplace to record some ADR? Anyway, he’s definitely traveling. At some point. To somewhere. I dunno, he wasn’t himself at the wedding, I could hardly get a word out of him.”

  Sophie felt a stab of emotion—sympathy and guilt, with a strange dash of hopefulness—go through her.

  “Well, where do you think he might be?” she asked him desperately.

  “Er, it’s hard to say, Sophie,” Prasad answered, sounding distracted by someone talking nearby. “Listen, I’m sure he’s in LA. If you want to talk to him…” he trailed off. “I’m sure you could call him.”

  “No,” Sophie murmured into the phone, digging her thumbnail into the side of the kitchen table. “I want to do this in person.”

  With that determination, Sophie said goodbye to Prasad and opened the travel app on her phone. Last-minute flights to Los Angeles for the next morning were… not cheap, that was for sure. She pressed the “buy ticket” button without thinking about any of it too hard.

  Sophie was, however, thinking very hard about her decision when her alarm went off too early the next morning. She’d already said goodbye to Ashley and Greg the night before, along with the triplets.

  “Anything goes wrong, you tell him the real Morganna is out here in the plains country waiting to smack him in the mouth,” said Ash into Sophie’s ear while they hugged goodbye. Sophie’s chest wasn’t tight just from the bone-crushing embrace—it was the feeling of someone looking out for her and rooting for her, too.

  But that feeling of warmth and belonging felt far away in the cold early-morning hours as she lugged her suitcase to the waiting Uber outside. The driver didn’t even get out of the car to help her load the luggage, although she couldn’t blame him. It was cold enough to see her breath and then some.

  They would get there in time, and she’d find Tristan, maybe at his apartment or at the studio, or someone would be able to tell her where he was, and they’d be able to talk. She wasn’t even sure what “a talk” would involve—really, Sophie realized, she just wanted to be okay again, and in her mind’s eye that looked like being friends with Tristan again. Or at least friendly. There was too much about him that was like having the sun shining on your back on a really cold winter day, just the right temperature to make you appreciate the weather instead of feeling miserable and like spring would never come.

  She didn’t feel that same optimism when the pilot came on to make the announcement that airspace over Colorado was looking tricky because of blizzard conditions near Denver, and they were being rerouted farther south than they’d planned for, which would put the plane’s arrival time a half hour later than expected. And then when they did finally manage to land, planes were so backed up at LAX because of storms that it took another forty minutes just to reach the terminal, and by the time Sophie got off the plane and reached the baggage returns, she was aching from sitting too long, cranky from all the delays, and starting to wonder if this had been a good idea.

  She had her answer when the straggling group of paparazzi stationed near the exit doors who were packing up their gear suddenly
looked up and took a hard look at her.

  “Hey, Sophie Markes!” someone called, and a few clicks went off. She kept walking without changing expression, and found a corner where she could check the ETA of her Uber out of LAX. Outside, driving a white Camry.

  Like that didn’t describe fifty gazillion cars in the city limits of Los Angeles. She sighed, gathered up her things, and went in search of the airport pickup line.

  This time, the driver heaved her suitcase into the tiny trunk, smashed the lid down on it, and opened the back door for her. Sophie was mildly relieved until she got inside and saw that it was a “themed” car: the guy had installed an arcade-style video game system in the back seat in an effort to be more competitive and get better rankings. Cute, but she wouldn’t be playing today.

  “You registered to vote around here?” The guy said as he pulled onto the highway. He pointed a thumb over his shoulder and eyed her in the rearview mirror. “I got forms back there, doesn’t matter to me which party you are, but you gotta promise to go, okay?”

  “I’m registered, thanks,” Sophie said with a wry smile.

  “Alright, just sit back and relax, because it’s gonna be morning traffic and there’s a wreck on the 405.”

  The smile dropped off Sophie’s face, and she briefly ran a hand over her eyes. Everything was conspiring to make sure she wouldn’t be able to get what she wanted. She tried to think on the bright side, but it was starting to get harder to see how this would work out well. Wasn’t it just how things went—if it wasn’t a storm, it was the nerve-wracking experience of getting through an airport that was more like a portal to Hell, and if it wasn’t that, it was morning traffic and a wreck—all this for an overpriced airline ticket and no guarantee that Tristan was even in this time zone.

  She leaned her elbow along the edge of the window and pressed her chin into the heel of her hand. What was the point of any of this if she was just going to wind up wasting time and money chasing down someone who was probably backpacking in Australia, or completely plastered by a pool in Juan-les-pins, or—or spending time with his gorgeous ex-but-not-ex girlfriend the model and award-winning actress?