“You asshole,” the bald man had said, ignoring Graham’s outstretched hand and struggling to his feet on his own. Already, his eye was nothing more than a slit, the skin beneath it puffed up, a crescent of pink that would undoubtedly be turning an angry purple before too long. He pressed two fingers there, wincing, then explored the side of his head where it had hit the pavement. When his eyes focused on Graham again, there was a spark of something so unexpected—smugness, perhaps, or even glee—that Ellie found herself taking a step back.
“You better get ready,” the man said to Graham. “I’m gonna take you for all you’re worth.”
But Graham had already grabbed Ellie by the arm, spinning her around and urging her away from the huddle of black-clad men. She’d hurried to follow him, the urgent snap-snap-snap of the cameras trailing after them. But to her relief, she heard no footsteps, and before long, even the flashes had blinked out in their wake.
“You okay?” he asked when they were a safe distance away.
Ellie nodded, though her wrist still tingled from where the towel had been yanked so abruptly from her hands, and she realized she’d left it behind. Somehow, in spite of all that had just happened, it was this—the thought of that seahorse towel, which she’d had since she was a kid, lying wilted on the ground in the middle of an empty road—that caused a lump to rise in her throat.
It was almost fully dark by then, and they’d walked quickly, heads bent and shoulders hunched, propelled by an unsettling mix of anger and fear. Ellie’s teeth were chattering, though she wasn’t cold. Her mind buzzed with questions both big and small, but she stopped herself from giving voice to them. The way those men had circled them like hyenas, the steady chirp of their cameras—she’d never felt so exposed. Even now, she still couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being followed, and she kept whipping around to make sure nobody was there.
As they neared her house, Graham slowed and turned to her. Their eyes met briefly in the darkness, and she could see that his were full of worry. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it again, looking pained.
Already, Ellie was doing an inventory of what tomorrow would bring and she knew that he must have been too, cataloging the phone calls to publicists and lawyers, preparing for the conversation with his manager, thinking through the inevitable fallout. There was nothing more interesting to the world than a self-destructive celebrity, nothing more exciting than a public meltdown. It wouldn’t matter that the photographers had been staking them out, or that they’d been overly aggressive. All that would matter was that Graham had punched one of them.
Ellie glanced toward her house. Even through the trees at the end of the driveway, she could see the lights were on in the kitchen. It felt like it had been days since Mom left her bobbing in the water at the beach, and she was probably wondering where she’d gone. It made Ellie queasy to think of explaining to her what had happened tonight.
When she turned back to Graham, he was still watching her. “I’m sorry,” he said after a moment, and she watched his lips as he formed the words, reminded of their kiss on the beach. They were supposed to be on a picnic right now, she realized, and the idea of it seemed impossibly distant, like it had been planned by two other people entirely.
Ellie shook her head. “It’s not your fault.”
“But I made it worse,” Graham said, his voice flat. “It’ll be so much bigger now. The story.”
“It’s okay,” she said, although she knew it might not be. She’d made the decision to stay away from him in an effort to sidestep this very situation, but then she’d fallen under his spell again, wholeheartedly and perhaps inevitably. And now it didn’t seem fair to have gathered so much momentum only to be pulled up short again, yanked back and forth like the worst kind of yo-yo.
Their hearts simply weren’t built for this sort of thing.
“I should probably go,” she said, her eyes drifting to the house. The air between them felt charged, and Graham forced a smile. But it was an actor’s smile—feeble and strained—and it faltered when she took his hand.
“Hey,” he said, holding on to her for a moment, his face grim. “I’m gonna do everything I can to fix this, okay?”
She nodded, trying to look convinced, then turned to walk up the driveway, leaving him there on the street. It wasn’t until she reached the porch that she slumped against the door, taking a few deep breaths before turning the knob. Inside, she could hear Mom in the kitchen, and she knew somehow that to talk to her would be to break down and cry, and she didn’t feel prepared for that just yet—for the explanations and confessions, the weighty implications of the night—and so she called out a hello, her voice thick, and then hurried up the stairs.
In her room, she grabbed her computer and sat cross-legged on the bed, searching for Graham’s name. The most recent hits were a picture of him with Olivia in front of the deli from earlier that day and a few articles that speculated about his potential involvement in another movie, but nothing yet about a photographer with a black eye, or a broken camera, or a mysterious girl with red hair whose estranged father may or may not be running for president one day.
She spent the rest of the night there, telling Mom through the door that she wasn’t hungry, hitting the refresh button on her computer so many times that the words started to swim and blur, just meaningless chains of letters.
She had no idea what time she fell asleep; she knew only that when she woke up it was still dark out, and it took her a moment to fumble with her phone and see that it was just after five o’clock. The memory of the previous night came back to her in a rush, and she reached for her computer, her head fuzzy with worry.
This time, it was there. All of it. Her heart sank as she read through the headlines: Graham’s Slam; Larkin Doesn’t Pull Any Punches; Larkin’s Barkin’ Mad. She scrolled through article after article, her stomach churning, wondering if Graham had seen them yet. The first ones had been posted as early as eleven o’clock last night, probably just after Ellie had fallen asleep, and several were accompanied by a photo of Graham just before he struck out, his elbow pulled back like an archer with a bow, his face dark. In the background, Ellie could see the seahorse towel bunched on the street, and behind that, just a sliver of herself: a pale arm and a few strands of reddish hair.
They hadn’t gotten anything worth using on her, she realized, though every article mentioned an “unidentified female companion.” That seemed to be it, at least for now, but Ellie knew better than to be relieved. She understood the bigness of this, the sheer scope of it, and a worry for Graham pulsed through her like a heartbeat. Some of the articles mentioned a potential lawsuit, while others simply framed him as a sudden and previously unknown menace, as if he were some kind of slumbering beast that had finally awakened. Even if he wasn’t sued, she knew how damaging this could be for his image, his career, his movie, and she wished there were a way to defend him, to explain what had happened, how anyone might have done the same.
But she knew she couldn’t. And she also knew it wouldn’t be long before someone connected the dots and identified her, some tourist who had seen them together, some local looking to make a buck, some reporter who asked the right questions. It was only a matter of time before the rest would unravel.
She thought about checking her e-mail to see if there was anything from Graham, but she wasn’t sure she could bear to read what he might have written or, worse, to find out that he hadn’t. Instead, she lifted her hands from the keyboard and looked out the window, where a scrim of light had appeared on the horizon, spliced by the darker shadows of the tree branches.