“You did.”
“She also tried to get me my first job. I said no, I was going to change my name and do it myself.” He leans us against the railing, the wind lifting up our hair. “She warned me against a certain acting coach and I was sure, because I was a teenager, that she was lying to me so I’d fail and have to come back to her.”
“What happened?”
“I went to meet the coach. She was famous and everyone knew if she agreed to take you on, you were special. It was her and me.” He sighs. “Then she told me to sit down and she put a hand on my thigh. High on my thigh.”
“How old were you?”
“Eighteen.”
“What did you do?”
He laughs and it’s the same tone that I have when I think of Todd. “Nothing at first. Maybe it was in my head. I didn’t want to make a fuss. I didn’t want her to think I was a little kid.”
“Did she stop?”
Sam looks at me, mouth turned down. “Do you think she would? Did your boss?”
“No.”
“What I realized later was it’s not only sex. It’s power. She saw a vulnerability in me and took advantage.”
“I’m weak, is what you’re saying.” I move further around the side of the balcony and Sam follows. We’re now completely hidden from the crowd.
“I think Todd saw you care about people and you avoid calling attention to yourself. He saw a chance.”
This is too true for me to debate. “Did the acting coach… I’m sorry.” I suddenly realize I’m prying.
“I managed to drop the script, and when I bent to pick it up, I pretended to fall off the chair, muttered my apologies, and ran out.”
“Smart.”
“I felt like an overreacting idiot until I went back and told Fangli and Chen. We knew there was no point in telling the instructors so they helped me talk it through, process it. That was that.”
“What about the coach?”
“Faded into obscurity after she got caught misreporting her taxes.” He smiles broadly. “I might have been the one to report her.”
“They say revenge doesn’t make you feel better.”
“Do they? Felt pretty great to me.”
Sam’s story encourages me about the situation but I still feel like past me was gutless. “I should have…”
He puts a finger on my lips. “Fuck shoulds.”
“But…”
“Gracie, you are perfect as you are. It’s not a bad thing to want to keep peace in your life and care for the people in it. That a bad person can manipulate it doesn’t mean it’s wrong. To be kind and generous is a gift.”
“Please take your seats.” I hear an usher politely herding people into the main room. “We’re about to begin.”
In our secluded side alcove, Sam and I ignore him.
“Todd knows I’m Gracie when I’m dressed like this, as Fangli.” I point to the tube top.
“Did you admit it?”
I think. “No.”
“Then forget Todd.” He puts his finger under my chin to lift my face. “You’re beautiful inside and out. Don’t let a person like him extinguish any of you. You should be proud of yourself.”
“Thank you.” My reply is barely a whisper.
“Gracie.” He’s so close. The breeze from the lake licks my skin where he pushes my hair back behind my shoulder.
“Sam?” I don’t move for two reasons. The first is that my knees are so shaky that if I move, I might fall over. The second is that I want him to make the choice. I want Sam to close the distance between us.
He doesn’t make me wait long before he presses his lips to mine, butterfly soft and so fleeting I wonder if it happened. Then he pulls back, only a bit, as if to gauge my reaction. “Gracie?” he asks. “Is this…this is good?”
“God, yes.” I wrap one arm around his neck and grab his arm with the other as I rise up on my toes. I can feel the smile on his lips disappear as I lean into him for a proper kiss, the one I’ve been craving ever since I saw him on that stupid magazine cover. His mouth slots perfectly into mine and this time, it’s real. Sam is kissing me, Gracie. Not Fangli. His arms are wrapped around me, and he kisses me again. Hidden on a balcony overlooking a dark lake, he kisses me until all I can think of is Sam.
This is all real. I can feel it’s real. I know it’s real. It has to be.
Thirty-One
I’m not sure how I make it through the rest of the Chanel party. Angular women strut in front of me in thousands of dollars’ worth of clothes and I react with smiles and appreciative nods for the cameras and eyes trained on my face. All this happens on the periphery of my mind because all I can think about is Sam’s leg brushing me when he moves and thanking every god in existence that the lipstick I wore tonight is layered with a varnish that would withstand a hurricane. Our balcony make-out session didn’t even smudge it, let alone leave the two of us with clown mouths. That’s a quality product worthy of a five-star Amazon review.
I can’t tell if the show ends too soon or too late, but at some point, we clap politely, stand, and go. Sam ushers me silently into our waiting car and sits beside me. Very close beside me.
He takes off the wig and brushes his hand over my short hair, which is sweaty and mussed from being under the equivalent of an insulated winter hat. “Gracie,” he says, his fingers tracing along my ear and pushing the wisps back.
I want this. How could I not? The man who’s burrowed himself in my mind is about to kiss me again. Luckily, there is no moment too romantic and no experience too wondrous that my brain cannot ruin.
“We need to talk about this,” I say, pushing him back.
The slashed brows almost meet in the middle. “About me kissing you?”
“More about why.”
He blinks. “Did you want the entire thought process or shall I summarize the highlights? I can probably manage a quick slide deck on my phone if you give me a few minutes. There’s a template I like.”
“There’s no need to be a jerk.”
He captures my hand in his and kisses my fingers, his lips warm on my skin. “I want to kiss you because I want to kiss you. I don’t know how to break it down. I can’t tell you that it’s twenty percent the way you smile at me when I help you out of the car, or sixteen percent the way you laugh at your own jokes.”
“Not that I look like Fangli?”
Sam grimaces. “I’ve had to kiss Fangli for weeks onstage and it’s like kissing my sister. You are not Fangli and I want you.”
His conviction is a bit ruinous to my self-restraint. “It’s that this is a very strange situation,” I explain.
“I like to think we’ve grown on each other.”
“Like a moss?”
“Or a mold.”
“You tell me you’re a good actor. I don’t know what to believe, if this is real or not.”
He thinks about this. “What would be the point of acting like I want you if I don’t? If I didn’t, there would be no need to fake that I did.”
This makes sense when he lays it out like that. “You could be pretending to like me because you want to get laid.”
His entire face creases in disgust. “Please. If meaningless sex was the only thing on my mind, I wouldn’t have a problem acquiring it.”
True enough. Sexiest Man in the World and all that.
“However,” he adds, “I’m excited to know you’re considering the possibility.”
“Sam.”
He sighs. “We agreed that we started off on the wrong foot, correct?”
“Correct.”
“We agreed we would begin fresh. We signed a contract.”
“We agreed, yes.”
He opens his hands wide as if that says it all.
“I’m a nobody.”
Sam glares at me. “Enough with that.”
“It’s true, though. Look at you. Rich, famous, and so on.”
He moves a bit away. “Is that all I am? That’s it?”
Shit, I put my foot in it. “That’s not what I mean.”
“Sure sounds like it.” His voice is wry.