CHAPTER 9
REID
“Look at this suite—holy shit, do girls even get all the way into the room before their panties hit the floor?” Tadd’s come up to my room with me to borrow my laptop.
“Jealous?”
“Of the girls? I think not. Of your room? Hell, yeah.” He plops onto the king-sized bed, hands behind his head. “Corner balcony. Elevated bed. Fresh flowers. Dude. Sweet.” I hand him the laptop and he brings up his email. “Hey man, is Quinton a go for tonight?”
I pull out my phone and tap a text. Quinton texts back a yes a minute later. “Of course he is—Quinton’s always a go. Who else? MiShaun and Emma said yes earlier.”
“I talked to some of the extras about where the best spots are, so a bunch of them might show. And I told Meredith, Jenna and Brooke… and Graham, who, by the way, is hot and I was hoping also gay, because he appears to be close friends with Brooke, but no such luck.”
I process this for a moment. “Graham and Brooke are close—and he’s straight? How do you know they aren’t screwing each other? Maybe they’re a thing. Or a friends-with-benefits thing.”
Tadd shrugs. “Maybe. I didn’t get that vibe, but hey, you people make everything more complicated.”
“What’s complicated about friends-with-benefits?”
He shakes his head, his eyes still on the screen. “Dude, that’s something my people perfected long ago. You guys can’t get away with it because girls are more likely to want emotion, attachment, love.” The latter is punctuated with an exaggerated shudder.
“You obviously don’t know Brooke very well. She’s like a guy with boobs.”
He laughs. “Sorry, Reid, but in my world, the primary aspect being a guy is not the having or not having of boobs. I’ve seen Brooke’s Life’s a Beach promos—her swimsuits are a couple of ribbons tied together. If she has underlying physical features of which I’m unaware, I’d like to know where she’s hiding them.”
“Aaaand thanks for that mental picture,” I say. “What I mean is, she thinks like a guy. She’s detached. Calculating.”
He closes the laptop and puts it aside. “So you screwed her and she didn’t love you back? Aww, that’s so sad.”
“F*ck off, man.” Laughing, I shove him and he rolls off the bed.
“What I mean is, she sounds perfect! You can screw each other’s brains out and just walk away.” He sits back down on the bed, his eyes on mine. “Or is that pretty much what already happened…”
I forgot how good Tadd is at digging deep fast. “Something like that. I really don’t care.” And I don’t.
“Then who cares what she and Graham are doing?” he says, making all sorts of sense.
I think about Emma. “You’re right. I’ve got better ways to spend my time.”
*** *** ***
Emma
I raise my voice above the music so MiShaun can hear me. “I can’t believe we all got in.”
“Get used to celebrity, baby!” She clinks her glass to mine. Once the guy at the door got a look at Reid, we were all escorted inside without an eye-bat at anyone’s ID.
Our group takes up a corner near the bar plus half of the tiny dance floor, and our brawny bodyguards look like they’re standing inside a child’s playhouse. While I sip my drink, we examine the rest of the cast. Jenna, Meredith, Tadd and Reid are dancing. Brooke is seated on a velvet sofa with the guy I’d seen leaving his hotel room in his pajamas two nights ago.
I lean to MiShaun. “Who’s the guy sitting next to Brooke?”
“That’s Graham Douglas.” Though he’s twenty feet from us and can’t possibly hear, his eyes snap up. He smiles and tips his chin back like guys do to indicate a sort of non-verbal hey, and MiShaun raises her drink in his direction. When Brooke turns to see who’s taken Graham’s attention from her, I develop a sudden and intense interest in the dance floor.
Running through the cast names in my head, I realize Graham is playing the part of Bill Collins, one of the nerdiest guys in literature. I slide my eyes back to him. In close conversation with Brooke, he leans in as she speaks, one arm draped across the back of the low sofa. “Do you know him?” His dark hair is on the longish side, swept back except for errant sections that fall forward. Unlike the other guys in our group, who are fashionably disheveled in t-shirts and jeans, Graham wears black slacks and a blue button-down, top buttons undone, sleeves rolled up.
“I’ve never worked with him. He’s done mostly indie stuff. He was in something that did well in Sundance this year…”
Graham Douglas is nothing like I would picture Elizabeth Bennet’s ridiculous cousin. “He’s sort of, I don’t know—too good-looking to play Collins?”
“A fellow Jane Austen fan!” MiShaun puts a hand up for a high-five. “Don’t worry, once he gets into makeup, they’ll do ghastly things to that handsome mug.”
I can’t help thinking that will be a shame.
Dragging my gaze from Graham, I notice that Reid has gathered a small harem of locals on the dance floor. The bodyguards hover, not interfering, but ready to at a second’s notice. MiShaun follows the direction of my gaze and shakes her head. “That boy is such a player.”
In everything I’ve ever heard about Reid Alexander, one thing he hasn’t done is sustained a relationship past a matter of weeks. Player is right, and I shouldn’t expect anything more from him, chemistry or no chemistry. Even still, I don’t think he’s looked at me once since we arrived.
Quinton Beauvier, whose role is the notoriously charming George Wickham, steps up behind us then, placing a hand on each of our shoulders. “Ladies,” he says. Tall and dark-skinned, hair cropped short, he’s boyishly handsome and easily the most muscled guy in the cast. An article in Emily’s favorite gossip magazine claimed he was as the hottest young actor to watch, and included a pull-out poster—now prominently taped on her closet door—in which he leans against a rickety rail fence wearing an introspective look, hands hooked in the front pockets of his low-slung jeans, biceps bulging out of a skin-tight white t-shirt.
“Mr. Beauvier,” MiShaun says, smiling.
“Would either of you like to dance? Reid and his cult followers are monopolizing the floor, and that boy can’t even dance. Look at him, just swaying around. Pitiful.”
“In his defense, he doesn’t have room to do much else,” I say, and Quinton laughs.
“Yeah, yeah. So it’s the principle of the thing.”
“Go dance, Emma. I’m gonna head back to the bar for another one of these,” MiShaun holds up her disappearing cosmopolitan, “and then I’m going to go ask that blond guy who’s been staring at me for the last fifteen minutes to dance. Or something…” She gestures over her shoulder, where a guy in a white starched shirt and loose tie leans against the bar within a group of friends. Any time he looks away from MiShaun, his eyes wander back to her within seconds.
Quinton takes my hand and flashes a brilliant smile. “Let’s show that boy how it’s done.” I don’t know if Reid’s watching or not, but for a few minutes, I forget about him.
Ten minutes later, I tell Quinton, “You’re an awesome dancer.”
He smiles, revealing small dimples and utterly perfect teeth. Emily will die when I tell her. “I love to dance. It was my backup plan, in case the acting thing didn’t work out.” I look out over the crowd, most of whom are watching our group. Reid sips a beer near the bar, girls surrounding him. He glances up then and smiles at me, but doesn’t make any move to break from his groupies.
I turn away, ask Quinton if he’s seen MiShaun.
“She’s still talking to that scruffy white guy.” He gestures towards a dark corner, where the two are seated at a tiny table in close proximity, talking animatedly. Quinton shrugs and we both smile.
After a couple of hours, another drink, and several dances with numerous cast members (none of whom are Reid, dammit), the physical exertion reminds me how much I need to get back into my daily running routine. There’s no way I can stay out later and get up at the crack of dawn to run. I tell Quinton and Meredith I’m going back to the hotel.
Quinton sways closer, a beer in one hand, the other outstretched. “You can’t give out now. It’s early!”
“It’s 1 a.m.!” I laugh. “That’s early?”
“We’re just getting started!” Meredith says.
“I have to get up tomorrow morning and run.”
They both look horrified. “What, before shooting?”
I wave to Jenna, who’s dancing nearby, but I don’t look for Reid. “Yeah, it’s a million degrees by noon. See you guys tomorrow!”
The valet calls a taxi while I wait in the shadow of the building, watching the mixture of young professionals and college students pass. I’ve never told anyone except Emily, but I know I owe my acting ability to compulsive people-watching. I could never express the emotions of so many various people, some of whom I can’t stand even if they are fictional, if I didn’t constantly watch people interact.
“They’ll have a taxi over in a couple minutes,” the valet tells me with a slight drawl.
“Thanks,” I answer, handing him a tip.
“No problem.” He smiles back and stuffs the bill in the front pocket of his vest.
As I peel a breath mint from its wrapper, Graham Douglas exits the club alone and moves to the opposite side of the entrance, lighting a cigarette. Something about a well-dressed guy lighting up is curiously attractive. This allure can probably be traced to the old black and white movies Mom and I used to watch, where everyone smoked: Cary Grant and Clark Gable and Bette Davis, men in tuxedos, women in glittering gowns, cigarettes loosely held like insidious little props.
Lighter back in his pocket, Graham takes a deep draw, exhaling as though every muscle in his body is releasing the stress of the day with the hazy stream. Passing girls glance at him with sidelong gazes, checking to see if he’s noticed them while he leans against the brick wall, running a hand through his dark hair and tapping on his cell. He seems oblivious until with no warning he lifts his gaze and I’m caught staring at him for the second time tonight. Smiling and pushing away from the wall, he crosses to me.
“Hey, you caught me,” he says, echoing my thoughts.
“Taking a break from the club scene, or are you just that addicted?” I ask, teasing.
He glances at the cigarette in his hand like he has no idea how it got there. “Er… both?”
“Ma’am, your taxi’s here,” the valet interrupts.
“Going back to the hotel?” he asks, and I nod. “Mind if I tag along?”
“Sure, no problem,” I say. He crams the cigarette into an ashtray atop a trash can and follows me into the cab as I give the name of the hotel to the driver.
“I’m Graham, by the way.” He holds his hand out and I take it. His grip is firm but not crushing.
“Emma.” The cab driver makes a humph sound and I realize that we’ve just gotten into a cab bound for a hotel, and we’re exchanging names. My face flames in the darkness.
Graham’s eyes narrow, flashing momentarily to the cabbie. He clears his throat. “So how did filming go today? I meant to go along to observe, but decided I could use a day to go over the script and, you know, oversleep.”
“It went really well. Some interesting off-camera action, too—Reid had a devoted crowd of groupies just off set.”
He shrugs, smiling. “Yeah, if fans discover his location, he’s mobbed wherever he goes.”
“Huh,” I say.
His phone buzzes and he checks the screen, types a reply and returns it to his pocket. When we arrive at the hotel, he brushes off my effort to pay half. We’re both silent as we walk to the elevator. I think about him leaving his room in his pajamas to play sleepover with someone, probably Brooke, from their postures in the club… But he left the club, and Brooke, and came back to the hotel with me. Maybe it was her he was just texting.
The elevator’s low-key ding announces the fourth floor, and I nearly stop breathing as I realize what he might expect—having come back to the hotel with me. What if he thinks I want to play sleepover? Heart pounding as we walk down the carpeted hallway, I hear nothing beyond the swish, swish, swish of the blood racing through my ears. I recall Emily’s tales of Hollywood hedonism. Shit. I didn’t plan to stand out as the cast prude quite so soon, but there’s no way I’m sleeping with some guy I just met, I don’t care how hot he is.
As we approach his door, he pulls out his wallet, retrieves his key card and turns to me as he sticks it into the lock. “Thanks for sharing your cab.”
“No problem.” Swish, swish, swish.
The lock on his door blinks green and he opens the door. “Well, goodnight,” he says, while I stand there like a moron.
“Goodnight.” I turn quickly, rummaging in my bag for my key card as I walk away. Unlocking my door, I glance back, and I’m alone in the hallway, muttering, “Idiot,” to myself.