CHAPTER 10
REID
A quarter after one, and I haven’t seen Emma in a few minutes. I’ve been keeping track of where she is all night, covertly. The one time we made eye contact, she was dancing with Quinton. They moved perfectly together, and she looked so hot I almost ditched the mindless pack of girls clustered around and asked her to dance right then. I opted to wait a little longer. Now I’m rethinking that dimwitted decision, because she’s nowhere.
Did she leave with some guy? Disappointing, but not impossible. She may be better at this game than I’ve given her credit for. Time for inventory. Quinton’s here, dancing with Jenna. Tadd’s chatting with Brooke—which gives me a moment’s pause, but he’s too loyal to tell her anything I’ve said. He also won’t tell me anything she says, but I really don’t give enough of a shit to want to know anyway.
Looking at Brooke, though, reminds me of Graham. And I don’t see Graham anywhere.
“God, I’m so drunk!” one of the girls near me says, making sure I’m listening. “I feel completely crazy tonight, like I could get talked into doing practically anything.”
Wow. Subtle. “Oh, yeah?” I say.
“Absolutely. Try me.” She leans against me, breasts all but escaping from the plunging neckline of her sundress.
“Okay.” I glance around the circle, take the hand of another awestruck girl. I pull her forward gently and say to Miss I’m-So-Drunk, “Take my friend here, and go out there and dance together.”
A flash of disappointment darts across each of their faces before they size each other up. Sharing is better than not having at all. With a wicked smile, girl number one takes girl number two by the hand and they proceed to make a spectacle of themselves, just because I said to.
Meanwhile, Meredith comes to the bar for a drink and I pull her aside. “Have you seen Emma?” My voice is as casual as can be.
“Oh, yeah, she left a while back. She said something about running in the morning?”
“What, before filming?”
“Yeah—crazy, huh?” She takes two drinks from the bartender.
“Definitely.” I get another beer and pay attention to Thing One and Thing Two, who are learning the value of sharing.
*** *** ***
Emma
My phone alarm sounds at six. I’m momentarily disoriented, then sorry that I made a pact with myself to run. As I pull on shorts and brush my hair into a ponytail, I avoid looking towards the unmade bed, all soft sheets and downy pillows. Perusing the map of running routes around Town Lake that the hotel provided, I lace up my shoes, determined to escape this room before the bed convinces me to ditch the run and sleep.
As I cross the lobby, I hear my name. Turning, I’m surprised to see Graham in a t-shirt, shorts and Pumas. “Hey, going for a run?” he asks, and then he stops, noting my confused expression. “Listen, I don’t want to impose if you like to run alone—”
“Oh… no, I was just going to look for one of the trails on this map.”
“Come on, then,” he says as we exit the hotel. “I have a vast one day of experience in finding the trails, so I sort of know where to go. If nothing else, I can promise we won’t end up in Dallas. Or Mexico.”
I note a few girls standing in a cluster off to the side, coffees in hand. They’re watching as Graham and I walk down the steps, disappointment clear on their faces. I wonder if they’re part of Jenna’s “I heart Reid” fanclub.
“Do you run every day?”
He shrugs one shoulder. “I do all kinds of stuff—running, rock-climbing, biking, spin class, weights, yoga. Gets boring otherwise.”
“Huh,” I say. “I mostly run. I have a hard time remembering to do a sit up or a crunch every now and then. I can’t do aerobics because I’m a horrible dancer. I won’t do a spin class. If I want someone to abuse me verbally during exercise, I’ll just get my agent to drive alongside me and yell obscenities while I run.”
“I don’t believe you’re a horrible dancer, since I know better from personal, well, not experience, exactly, but maybe personal observation.” He’s studying the map and street signs, and I wonder if he actually meant to tell me he’d watched me dance last night. A warm hum shoots through me, especially in light of Reid’s brush-off, which doesn’t sting any less this morning than it had last night.
“Dancing in a class is different, especially if they have equipment like portable steps or those ginormous rubber bands? Disaster.”
He laughs. “Seriously, who thought up those rubber bands?”
We run the couple of blocks to the trail as the sun emerges fully behind us, the sky transforming to a lighter and lighter shade of blue, no clouds in sight. Austin is having an unseasonable “cool spell.” According to the local weather update the temps will only be in the mid-nineties by five p.m. I wonder if they understand the definition of the word cool here.
“Thanks for inviting me along,” Graham says, and when I look up at him with the same confused look I had in the lobby, he smiles.
I can’t help but smile back as he matches his pace to mine.
We’re far enough from the hotel now that when I glance back, I can’t see it. “Did you see those girls in front of the hotel?”
“Wondering if they were some of Reid’s followers?” he asks, and I nod. “Probably so.”
“Crazy.”
“You may want to prepare for your own groupies, you know.”
“Pshhh.” I wave him off, unconvinced that I’m about to become famous, though he’s only echoing what Emily said just before I left home.
“When you’re playing opposite someone with his fan base, everything the two of you do will be scrutinized. For instance, if there’s on-screen chemistry, people will assume you have it off-screen.”
“Huh,” I say, remembering my foolish thoughts about Reid and chemistry. Before last night. When he blew me off.
“You say that a lot, you know.” As we find the trail, the cityscape gives way to gravel paths surrounded by faded, end-of-summer green.
I frown. “I say what a lot?”
“Huh.”
A light bulb goes on in my head. “I say ‘huh’ a lot?”
“Maybe we should start counting.” He grins down at me as I’m estimating exactly how embarrassed I should be. “By the time I get to twenty or so, you’ll have broken the habit if for nothing else than sheer annoyance’s sake. We’ll call that last time one.”
I frown at him good-naturedly and he laughs softly again. Is this an old habit, or a newly ingrained one? Why would Emily not point this out? I make a mental note to grill her during our next conversation.
“Maybe we won’t be that convincing onscreen,” I say, returning to the previous subject, which is not, I realize belatedly, grounds for non-self-conscious discussion.
“I doubt that. This is an adaptation of one of the most romantic novels ever written. There has to be chemistry.”
I give him a narrow-eyed look. “If this is your idea of ‘no pressure,’ it’s not working.”
“They wouldn’t have chosen you if the chemistry wasn’t there. I’m just pointing out what being a romantic lead opposite him might do to your private life. Such as, there’s no way Reid could do what we’re doing right now without bodyguards.” He moves behind me briefly so the elderly couple walking towards us on the pathway don’t have to squish together.
“I hadn’t thought about it like that,” I say as he falls in beside me. I think of Emily, who isn’t a crazed fangirl, but would still freak out if she saw Reid in person.
“Well. No reason to panic. Yet.”
“Yeah. Yet,” I echo.