A photographer, this one hired and therefore controlled via a contract and non-disclosure agreement, aimed his lens at me. Chance helped me up the stairs of the stage, and we waited for Paul to strum the final chords of “Party in the USA.”
Another waiter arrived with our glasses, these full of sparkling white grape juice.
“You’ll be great,” Chance said as the song ended. He passed me a glass.
Paul waved me over. “I believe we have just the perfect person to lead the toast,” he said into the mike. “Put your hands together for the girl formerly known as Frankie’s cotton candy tart, Jenny Gillespie!”
I gave Paul a light punch in the belly for that and he pretended to stumble back in pain. The crowd laughed as they turned to the stage.
I stepped up to the mike. It felt strange being up here when the last time I was here, I’d been standing down below. I felt this choice of location made sense. We were back to where everything had begun.
I searched until I found Frankie in the crowd. “You going to come up here or am I going to have to drag you?” I asked.
More laughter.
He reached for the hand of Alec, the screenwriter I’d seen mentioned shortly after my girlfriend contract with Frankie ended. They had gone public a few weeks after the party. Since Alec wasn’t an actor or the type to get in trouble, the publicity around them had been pretty quiet. Lucky them.
They came up to stand at the base of the stage. A waiter brought them fresh glasses of champagne. Then they smiled up at me.
I took a deep breath and began. “When I met Frankie, it was not love at first sight. It involved a sheet of paper, a pen, and an NDA.”
The crowd tittered.
“One of the things I loved about being his public girlfriend was his savvy. He knows everything about you people.” I pointed out in the crowd, then aimed squarely at Tellmund. “Especially you.”
More laughter.
“Because of him, I got involved in an amazing industry full of beautiful people and smart business. And of course, Frankie too.”
Frankie held up his champagne glass. “Absolutely accurate,” he said.
I smiled down at him. “I knew something amazing was going on. Something he wanted to protect. Something wonderful that needed nurturing and care away from the glare of the spotlight.” I paused. “And definitely out of the camera flash.”
The photographer took that moment to snap a shot, the light blasting the stage. Everyone laughed.
“I was lucky to be that girl. When I finally learned I was right, that Frankie had found somebody worthy of all that effort — and by effort, I mean putting up with me” — I waited out the laughter — “I had never seen him so happy.”
I held up my glass. “So here’s to you, Alec, for putting that amazing smile on Frankie’s face. And for the biggest happily ever after on any movie screen to be the one you have written for yourselves.”
Glasses clinked as everyone sipped. I handed the mike back to Paul and returned to Chance.
“That was terrific,” he said.
“Thank you.”
We headed back down into the party. Several people approached and commented about the speech. I moved toward the food table. The second trimester was definitely all about the calories.
Chance tugged on my hand. “Let’s go back to the gardens for a second,” he said.
I stood there, torn between our little memory lane and the crab cakes. But I went with him a short ways down the path where I had noticed a photographer watching and kissed him for the first time.
“This is a great spot,” I said. “Right where I sucked you into my evil plot.”
He laughed. I took a second to really drink him in. His shoulders were strong and broad in a charcoal sports jacket. Beneath, he wore a silk T-shirt, perfectly on-trend for the music set. He was learning.
He’d let his beard grow out just enough to have that sexy scruffy look that worked so well on camera. He didn’t have a lot of paparazzi chasing him down since he didn’t have a record contract or much of a following, but I had a feeling that one day he would.
For now, he played with the Sonic Kings and sometimes opened for the band who opened for Dylan Wolf, when Dylan was close enough and had something available. Chance didn’t mind being that far down the totem pole. It was something just to be on it at all.
I made enough money to support me and the baby anyway, and we were trying to decide if he was stay-at-home-dad material. We might not know until we got there. He’d moved in with me a month ago, though, and despite his complete and utter disrespect for pastels, it was going all right.
“Come here,” he said, pulling me close. “I have a question for you.”
“Does it involve ordering pizza? Because Brannah needs some nourishment.” We’d decided not to find out what gender the baby was, and had taken to calling him/her a combination of Bryan and Hannah’s names.
Chance stepped back and pulled out his cell phone. “Your wish is my command. Pepperoni or veggie?”
“All of the above.” I hung on to the lapels of his jacket.
“I’m going to have to work out more to be able to carry you at this rate,” he said.