“She naps like a pro in this thing.” He strapped the carrier on Dash and nestled Luna inside of it, all before Dash could get out another word of protest. “If she wakes up, I’ve got diapers, a bottle, and formula in here. And you have my cell. Just call if you need me.” Chris picked up a bag from the counter and eased it onto Dash’s back.
Dash had been in the door for less than five minutes, but he had an infant strapped to his front, a backpack on, and he was, apparently, about to head out to a meeting. What the hell was happening?
“I can’t bring a baby to AA.” Though, Dash already had a hand on Luna’s back and was lightly bouncing on instinct to try to soothe her.
“Of course you can.” Chris opened a bag of avocados and gave one a squeeze to test if it was ripe. “It’s just down the block. Now go, because I have big plans to put this bad boy on some focaccia, then crash.”
Dash wanted to protest, but one flicker of Chris’s appreciative smile stopped him. And then, when he looked down to Luna, she’d already fallen asleep against his chest. He wasn’t about to wake the sleeping baby.
So he left and started to walk toward the AA meeting. This was the same spot where he’d met Chris, and where they’d gone every Tuesday. He hadn’t been to a meeting in six months because he felt secure without one. And not needing to go into that building had felt like an accomplishment. Because if he didn’t need a roomful of people to be accountable to, then maybe he could stay sober on his own.
So when he got to the building, instead of slowing down he just kept walking. He thought he’d circle the block, then come back. But he continued straight down Melrose.
Luna shifted slightly against him, and he gently rubbed his hand along her back through the fabric of the carrier. They’d been on a walk for almost an hour: past the designer-clothing shops, trendy bars, and late-afternoon traffic. They’d strolled right by the iconic pink wall where tourists came to pose for photos, and the enormous blue, green, and red Legolike exterior of the Pacific Design Center. He realized he should turn around and head back before Luna got restless, but when he did, he nearly collided with a person in front of him.
“Sorry. Excuse me,” Dash said.
He looked up and saw two fortysomething women, one with long, dark hair and a phone in her hand, the other holding a purse that contained a tiny dog.
“You were in that movie, right?” The phone was eye-level with him, and she was clearly filming.
He didn’t respond, but he put a protective hand against Luna’s back. He sometimes did get recognized, and he didn’t mind when people remembered him, necessarily. He just didn’t love when they started filming without his consent.
“This guy was in a movie?” the one with the dog asked.
“Yeah, the sad one where they go to Coachella and fall off the Ferris wheel?”
“Oh, I hated that one.” Even the dog barked, almost as if in agreement.
Dash had been nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Actor for that film, We All Fall Down, but he’d keep that little nugget of trivia to himself.
“And his brother is—”
“Sorry.” He sidestepped away from them. His older brother was, by all accounts, an actual celebrity. Whereas Dash had mostly performed in indie movies, Reece had blockbusters to his IMDb credits.
“Why are you so short?” the one with the dog asked loudly.
“Angeluhh.” The other woman extended her friend’s name and laughed.
Yes, he was kind of short, but he wasn’t altogether in the mood for discussing biology, and genetics, and how those things worked to determine a person’s height. This was why he didn’t love going out. Whether people recognized him or his famous family didn’t really matter. They always seemed to have an opinion and weren’t afraid to share what they had to say because, to them, he wasn’t a person with feelings, he was an object for public consumption.
He was just trying to get Luna back to Chris, really. So Dash turned, put a finger up to his lips, and pointed to the baby, hoping this would squash the rest of their conversation.
But the women continued to follow him as he walked down the sidewalk.
“What are the tats of? Is that one a horse?” one of them called out behind him.
“It’s actually just the words Mind your own damn business.” He shouldn’t have responded—he realized that too late—because there was a very real chance these women could upload the video to social, and then his mom would have a lot of questions he didn’t want to answer.
Their jaws dropped in unison, and they stopped walking, so Dash took the opportunity to pick up the pace, keeping a hand on Luna’s back as he walk-jogged down the street and out of their sight.
He was more than aware (and a little annoyed) that if he had gone to AA, none of this would’ve happened in the first place. As if the universe was reminding him that he’d broken a promise to Chris. Still, he hadn’t gone, and maybe he did deserve a bit of skewering as a result.
“You look like you’ve been through the wringer.” Chris reached for Luna as he opened the door. “Was it a rough meeting or something?”
Dash shook his head as he took off the backpack and placed it on the table in the entryway. He couldn’t meet Chris’s eyes and lie to him about not attending the meeting. So he changed the subject. “My tenant—”
“The drunk one?”
“Well.” Dash licked his lips, because Sophie wasn’t just the drunk one, and now he was regretting telling Chris that fact in the first place. “Yes, but she’s also a successful writer. She wants to help write the speech for my dad, actually.”
“Oh, I assume you told her no?” Chris, who had acquired the power to multitask now that he had a kid, had prepped a bottle and was already seated in a rocker with Luna. Her hands wrapped around the bottle as she drank.
“Not exactly. I mean, she seemed excited about it.” Dash traced a finger along the outline of his jaw. “And I need someone to be excited. My mom thinks the speech will put me back in the public eye and into acting again. But I don’t know how to tell her that I’m not interested in acting anymore.”
“A job can be fluid, and you’re allowed to change your mind.” Chris was a former pro baseball player turned stay-at-home dad, so it was hard to argue with him there. “Surely even Kitty understands that.”
Dash was fairly certain that Kitty did not understand that, though. She’d pitted Dash and Reece against each other their entire lives to see who would become America’s Next Top Leading Man. And while Reece had been more than up for the challenge, Dash had never risen to the occasion, much to his mom’s dismay.
“Have you thought about a timeline for telling them yet?” Chris asked.
“Not really. I’m just trying to get through this speech.”
Dash wandered toward the kitchen and away from the living room where Chris sat with Luna. He really didn’t want to have this discussion.