“Yes, there’s a theater about six blocks from here. I’ll check and see what’s playing. Then we can grab something after that, sound good?” I pulled my laptop from my bag and settled in on the couch.
“Oh, I’ll be grabbing something after the movie, that’s for certain,” he said, sticking his head back around the corner and winking at me.
“Dirty bird,” I muttered as he disappeared down the hall toward the bedroom.
“You love it,” he shouted over his shoulder.
I laughed quietly to myself and signed on. My TMZ homepage came up immediately because I was a sucker for all things celebrity gossip. I could hear Jack putzing in the bedroom, so I figured I could indulge in a few minutes of celeb surfing. Guilty pleasure. I scrolled through the pictures of the latest buzz: An actor checking into rehab, another actor leaving rehab. A singer who’d been threatening to retire for twenty years heading back out on tour. I skipped ahead—not a lot of celebrity news. I was about to zip over to the movie times site when an interesting snippet caught my eye:
Jack Hamilton seen out on the town with actress Marcia Veracruz. Are these two on again?
Wait a minute. Back up.
What?
Once Time comes out, maybe he can afford to buy a new car! The two were spotted having lunch in Venice a few days ago before climbing into Jack’s old, beat-up MG.
I felt sick.
Breathe, just breathe.
Ever since he was cast as Joshua, women everywhere have been wondering whether this Brit Boy is single. Well, ladies, it appears this time-traveler is spoken for! Just two nights ago, Jack Hamilton was spotted driving away from an L.A. nightclub with his latest gal pal, actress Marcia Veracruz. The two were previously in a confirmed relationship, and although they took a break, it appears things are still hot and heavy between them.
I really felt sick. I tried to close the laptop, but I couldn’t make my hands move. They were clenched too tightly into fists.
Ask him. Don’t flip out. Ask him.
Oh, hell yes, I was gonna ask him.
I stared at the pictures, really looking at the two of them together. I examined his face: smiling, ball cap pulled securely down over curly hair. I forced myself to look at her, really look at her. She was smiling too, her face inclined toward his as they left some club in L.A. together.
She was pretty.
She was really pretty.
Not good…
I heard Jack coming down the hallway, and although part of me wanted to clear the screen, pull up Mr. Movie Phone, and shove this whole Marcia thing in my famous mental drawer—The Drawer where everything unpleasant goes to be avoided—but we were past that. We were way past that. And if I’d been honest with myself, not such a chickenshit, we would’ve dealt with this months ago when I saw her text that night in the dark.
Of course, true to form, I’d refused to deal, letting this build to the point of full meltdown before acknowledging it. Why? A battle raged constantly between the cool, tough Grace exterior and the sad, frightened, still-sees-herself-as-the-fat-girl Grace on the inside. Jack had taken a tiny peek or two at Inside Grace, but he had yet to experience the mess that was actually in there. Come on, why deal with things expediently when they can fester and become an emotional storm of epic proportions? I never claimed to be the mature one in this relationship, that’s for sure.
I second that.
“Hey, Gracie, I think we should skip the movie and just stay in and have a shag, what do you say?” he deadpanned, stopping in the archway to the living room. His hands were pressed to either side of the archway, his hair raked back and crazy, his lower lip sucked in between his teeth, and his eyes blazing deep green. He smirked at me, taking my lack of speech as proof that his seduction was working.
He sauntered closer, coming up behind me on the couch and leaning over my shoulder. “What do you say we close this thing and talk more about this while I take these pesky clothes off of you…” he started. Then he saw the pictures on the computer.
He froze.
“Explain this, please,” I said in a low voice. When I was mad, I was dangerously quiet.
“Shit, Grace, I was going to tell you about this. I know how bad it looks, but really, it’s nothing,” he said.
“Explain this now, please,” I asked again, my voice even quieter. I was beginning to shake I was so angry, but beneath the anger was a profound sadness. This is what I’d been afraid of since the beginning.
“Grace, really, just listen. Marcia—she’s just a friend. I swear. You can even ask Holly,” he said, walking around to the front of the couch and moving the laptop away. He sat on the coffee table in front of me, watching my eyes. I think my expression told him to tread lightly.
Holly knows?
“Holly knows about this?” I asked, closing my eyes and feeling prickling behind my eyelids.
“Well, yes, she does. We talked about it earlier this week when these pictures first came out. I know this looks bad, Grace, but truly, she is just a friend. And Holly actually thinks we can make this work in our favor, since the pictures are already out there,” he started to explain.
This was just sounding worse.
“I know you used to date her, Jack. Don’t try to tell me you didn’t. I know better. What are you doing going out with your ex-girlfriend? I know I must sound like some crazy bitch, but right now I’m feeling all kinds of crazy, so start talking,” I said, my voice finally getting a little louder.
“Okay, yes, we used to date. But we’re just friends now. I promise you there’s nothing going on! She knows all about you. I talk about you all the time. That’s actually one of the reasons we’ve been hanging out so much lately. Her boyfriend travels a lot, and she never sees him. So we hang out sometimes. It’s harmless. I swear, Grace.”
“Ya know, it’s not so much that you’re hanging out with her, which I can overlook. Hey, man, we have no claims on each other. You can hang out with whoever you want. But the fact that no one bothered to tell me, and that you and Holly even discussed this? I feel sick. I really feel sick,” I said, my voice getting louder still.
Jack was quiet, looking at the floor.
I went on, the twists and turns of my stomach somehow giving me the push I needed to keep going. “Do you have any idea how this makes me feel? I feel like an old fool. Maybe this is the kind of person you should be with—someone who fits with you better than I ever could. And I’m sorry, Jack, but a girl does not text you in the middle of the night if all she wants is friendship,” I finished, the tears beginning to creep down my face. I wiped them angrily away.
Jack’s face had grown angry as well, but it flashed confusion when I mentioned the text. “What text? What are you talking about?” he asked.
“She texted you in the middle of the night weeks and weeks ago, before I even left L.A. You were asleep, and I picked it up to shut it off. Yes, I read it. I shouldn’t have, but I f**king did. I would say I’m sorry, but you know what? I’m not really even sorry. I wanted to see who was texting the man asleep in my bed, with his hands all over my body, at three in the morning. And looky what we have here! The same girl you’ve been photographed with all over town. Shocking, really,” I said sarcastically, getting up from the couch and pushing past him to stand in the kitchen.
I was still crying, but these were angry tears, pissed-off tears. All that shit I’d been pushing away for so long was coming home to roost now, and all I could do was hang on and let it come out.
Jack was quiet, still sitting on the coffee table. He finally rose and stood in front of me, face stormy.
“Gracie, I am going to say this once. Was I wrong not to tell you I was hanging out with my ex-girlfriend? Yes, probably. Was I wrong to not tell you sooner about the conversation I had with Holly? Yes, definitely. I’ve never done this before—had a relationship with someone who lives across the country while I’m going through the biggest thing professionally I’ve ever, or probably will ever, go through. And you know what? There will probably be more pictures of Marcia and me together. In fact, I can guarantee it. She has a movie she’s promoting, and our managers are milking this thing for all it’s worth. Even if you don’t trust me, which you clearly don’t, you know Holly would never do anything to hurt you. She was bloody well pissed when she saw these, as she should be. I really have my head up my ass sometimes, and I didn’t think about what these pictures would look like, or how they might make you feel,” he said, breathing heavily.
“Well, I think—” I started, and he put his finger over my lips.
“I’m not finished. You seem to think I’m going to f**k around on you. I admit that these pictures look terrible if you’re thinking about it in that way. You’re here, I’m there, and it sucks. But there has to be some trust between us. Would you agree?” he asked, removing his finger.
I glared at him. “Yes, I agree, but—”
“Grace, you either agree or you don’t. Yes or no?”
“Yes, I agree, and I do trust you,” I said, a fresh wave of tears starting.
“I trust you too. Otherwise I’d be asking you why there are a pair of men’s trainers by the front door. A less-trusting boyfriend would wonder about that…” He trailed off, arching an eyebrow at me and looking over my shoulder.
I turned and followed his gaze, and I saw Michael’s sneakers. He’d left them here the other night, changing into boots when it started raining.
Touché.
Shit.
I looked back at Jack. He seemed curious, and a little…apprehensive?
“Grace, you’re a beautiful woman. I see how men look at you. I know there are other men who want to be with you. Whose shoes are those?” he asked.
I grabbed a box of Kleenex and blew my nose loudly, getting control again. “Michael’s. They’re Michael’s,” I said. “He was here earlier in the week. We were working on a scene, and he changed shoes. He never took those with him, and frankly, I didn’t even notice they were here until now.”
Jack had nothing to worry about. Michael and I were just friends. Just friends.
Friends that used to have feelings for each other.
But Jack doesn’t know about that.
“Did you and Michael ever date, Gracie?” he asked.
“Date? No,” I answered quickly. That was true. We never dated.
“Are you sure? You two seem to have more than friendship in your past. I noticed that right away. And when I said I see how other men look at you? He looks at you that way,” Jack added, his face going dark and his eyes turning that stormy-sea green I saw at the airport when I left L.A.
“No, we never dated. But yes, there were feelings there—years and years ago. That’s all over, though. We truly are just friends,” I assured him, breathing a little more easily now.
“Friends. Like me and Marcia are just friends.”
“Ugh,” I said, rubbing my eyes.
“Do you see how much easier this is if we just tell each other what’s going on?” he asked, reaching out his hand to me. I hesitated for a second, then took it.
“How the hell did you get so mature at twenty-four? Seriously, man. I’m like a basket case next to you,” I said, breaking the tension a little.
“I’m British. We’re born more mature,” he said with the sexy half smile that always turned me to mush.
“Feeling better now?” he asked as I blew my nose again.
“Yes, but don’t ever let me find out something like that courtesy of TMZ again, okay? I can’t take another surprise like that,” I said fiercely, as he crushed me against his chest.
“I promise. That was a shitty thing to do. And don’t let Michael get too comfortable over here. I don’t want to have to piss in the corners to mark my territory, but I will if I need to,” he said.
I laughed in spite of myself. “Well, you tell that Marcia I’ll be very glad to meet her next time I’m in L.A. And make sure to tell her I said to keep her hands to herself in the meantime. I can go along with seeing pictures of you two together for publicity’s sake, but the second I see her hand on your ass, the bitch is going down.” I grabbed his collar and pulled him closer to me.
“Fucking Nuts Girl, how could I love anyone but you? You’re insane,” he said, lowering his mouth to mine.
I let my hand slip down to his buns and gave him a squeeze. “This sweet ass is mine, and don’t you forget it. Now come give mama some sugar,” I said, and kissed him hard.
We never made it to the movie. We made it through another potential shitstorm, and we kept our shit intact. We were an odd couple to say the least, but for now, all was well in Jack-and-Grace Land. And we were off to the Four Seasons.
That night we did the crossword puzzle, and I made him clean up his room. Honestly, it was messy already. We watched the Golden Girls, and then he made love to me slowly and sweetly. The rest would work itself out another day.
Interesting. Shoving shit to the side again already, are we?
Sigh.
Chapter 5
The next morning I woke to the sound of the phone ringing shrilly. Jack groaned and dove deeper under the covers, leaving me to roll across him to answer it on his side of the bed.
“No, no, let me get it,” I muttered sarcastically as I grabbed the phone on the fourth ring. “Hello?” I asked, yawning deeply.
“Shhh, too loud, too early,” he mumbled from under the covers. I poked my toe into his thigh.
“Good morning. This is your wake-up call,” a chipper voice said.
“Great. I love wake-up calls,” I said and hung up. I leaned back against Jack, listening to his breathing begin to even out already. I squinted at the clock. It was seven-fifteen. I had an early rehearsal today.