“Yeah, I don’t think that’s what this is.”
I hate the jolt of adrenaline this gives me, because in what world does Sam have the right to be upset about any of this? And why do I care? I’m working.
We stop so a battery in the boom mic can be changed, and I stare up at the beams overhead. That’s the way movies are: hurry up and wait. Hurry up and wait. It leaves way too much time to think.
Because there’s that feeling again, the urge to break out of the box I’ve put myself in, the urge to rebel and tell Nick what really happened. “I told you, we had a fling when we were younger.”
“And he’s pissed a decade later.”
“He’s the one… ” I pause, not sure how far down this track I intend to go. Nick is so easy to be with, so easy to confide in. Even now, he doesn’t push, just wraps a piece of my hair around his finger and waits for me to continue—or not. Like it’s my decision. Nothing about Sam has ever felt completely like my decision. But I’ve also been burned by spilling to a guy before and am not up for it to happen again, from lover or friend.
I lower my voice to barely a whisper. “Okay, complete vault here, Nick: Sam is the one who told the papers that I was Ian Butler’s daughter. He sold the story and then just sort of vanished, and I didn’t see him until that day on the trail.”
It’s a tribute to Nick’s acting skills that he barely reacts. “Okay,” he says, and gives the smallest tilt of his head. “That explains a lot. Wow.” After a minute, he adds, “What a dick.”
I straighten the leg that’s hidden by the sheet, just to have something to do. I feel restless and uneasy. I don’t exactly want to defend Sam, but a strange protectiveness builds in my chest.
“He had a really good reason for doing it,” I say, “and I know that now, but it doesn’t really erase the habitual rage from all the years I didn’t know it.”
“Makes sense.” He glances up. “He’s always looking at you. The man has longing in his eyes.”
“No he doesn’t. He has a wife. You’ve seen him go upstairs at the Comm House to call her every night. I’m sure it’s just awkward for him to watch this.”
Nick shrugs, unconvinced. “Whatever. Fuck that guy if he doesn’t know what he missed out on—whatever his reasons. I don’t care how nice he is now. Even if he were single, no way would you go for that again. Once bitten, and all that.”
I go quiet at this, and Nick looks down at me.
“You know I won’t tell anyone,” he says quietly. “I know I’ve been hounding you for the dirt, but only because your brand of quiet makes me mad curious. You can trust me.”
I don’t say it, but I know he sees it in my eyes. I hope so.
Gwen tells us we’re ready to roll, and once Nick is moving over me again, I know I’m mostly hidden from the cameras until they move in for the tighter shots. I imagine how Nick looks from above, how the shape of me looks beneath the sheets, and wonder where Sam Brandis thinks he gets off being jealous, and why there’s a tiny, glowing ember in me that needed that petty consolation that this isn’t easy for him, either.
twenty-three
BY THIS POINT IN the shoot, the Ruby Farm staff seems pretty used to the nightly chaos caused by an entire cast and crew crowding around a campfire or taking over the dining hall in the Community House. In fact, many of them regularly join us. It’s cold out tonight, so the crowd inside is enormous. Some of the permanent staff have hauled a pool table into the main room. Someone else found an old, dusty karaoke machine. A brave—or masochistic—soul has passed around a couple bottles of Patrón, and everyone appears to be taking swigs as the amber bottles wind around the crowd.
I have an early call so I stick to a little wine, not wanting to deal with a headache in the morning on top of everything else. I listen to the conversations happening in our little circle, chiming in when I need to, all too aware of Sam on the far side of the room.
I catch him watching me a few times, always looking away the moment our eyes meet. He’s sitting with Gwen and Devon, but he doesn’t seem to be listening. And then I see it on the table between the three of them: my Vogue cover. The issue came out today; I completely forgot. They chose the Audrey Hepburn–style photo, the one that reminded me of myself, then.
I lift my eyes from the magazine on the table to find him studying me. Did he have the same reaction to the cover photo as I did? Did he read the profile, full of the same lies about my return to Hollywood that have always been told—never any mention of the man who, for better or worse, changed my life completely? Is that a flash of pain I’m seeing in his eyes?
It’s hard to deny what Nick said—I knew Sam once upon a time, and his expression isn’t completely without longing. Even so, he hasn’t bothered to come over, to tell me what he thought of the scenes today, to be at all social. Maybe I was wrong last night on the grass—no bond was forged. I feel perpetually wrong about that.
When he stands, he doesn’t do what I expect and head upstairs to make his nightly phone call to Katie. Instead, he heads toward the exit, and I feel an electric impulse to follow and poke at him. Maybe just to find a way to tell him to stop making this emotionally complicated for me. I don’t want to want him anymore. I don’t like the feeling that I would kiss him in a heartbeat if I could. This is the trouble with sets like ours: It’s forced proximity, intense and constant. It makes the rest of the world fall away.
I wind my way through the tables and out the door, into the chill of the lawn outside. Sam’s footsteps crunch on the gravel up ahead, and I have to lengthen my strides to keep up. Once we’re far enough away from the Community House, I call out to him.
“Sam! Wait.”
He turns around, surprised, but his eyes immediately turn wary. “Hey. What’s up?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing.” I reach forward, give him a gentle punch to the shoulder. “What’s going on?”
He squints at me. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t do that.” Inside I’m all twisty. Am I reading him wrong? Am I projecting or seeing what I want to see? I’m trying to make things easy between us, why isn’t he? “You’ve been weird since the shoot this morning.”
At this, he winces and looks away, to the side. I hate how every little thing lately reminds me of the boy in the garden: the angle of his face, the set of his shoulders, even the cold air around us.
All I get is: “I’m sorry if I was weird.”
“Can you at least tell me why? I mean, if it was awkward, you could have stepped out.” The truth flows out of me. “You’re making me feel like I did something wrong.”
“You didn’t.”
I laugh. “Well, I know that, I’m just trying to figure out what happened.”
He takes a breath that seems to draw in for ages. Finally: “I guess I’m having a bit of a hard time with Nick and everything.”
I scrunch my nose, trying to puzzle this one out. “With Nick?”
Sam looks back at me. “Yeah. You and Nick. Watching the scene today was hard.” He laughs, raking his fingers through his hair as he looks away. “I realize it was a set. I mean, I wrote the fucking movie, right? But I just had this awareness that you were naked there. That he was—” He breaks off, cursing. “Just—God, I sound insane.”
“You do, but say it anyway.”
Sam returns his gaze to mine. “I was jealous. It seemed so real when you were kissing. And you kissed before, though you said it was nothing. Look. I know it’s unfair.”
“Unfair for like a million reasons,” I agree, voice tight. I’ll put up with a lot, but I won’t be someone’s mental cat toy.
A tree branch creaks overhead, and I’m aware of every second of silence that passes between us. I expected him to deny that anything was wrong. His honesty leaves me dizzy.
“I made my choice all those years ago. I get that I have to live with it. I’ll do better,” he says.
“What does that even mean? ‘Do better’?”
“I’ll try
to keep my shit under control, is what I’m saying. I’ll try to manage my jealousy.”
“Oh my God,” I say, angry now. “Please tell me you’re joking. Aren’t you married, Sam? Don’t you have children at home? You don’t get to go away for a few months and pretend to be heartbroken when you look at me acting out a sex scene you wrote.”
His brows draw together, and the shadows emphasize each year that has passed between us. “Married?”
“Your wife? On the phone? I heard you talking to Katie. About the girls?”
His expression clears. “Katie is my ex-wife, Tate. Ex.”
The ground drops out from under me. “Oh.”
“All this time you thought I was married?”
I nod.
“We’ve been divorced for three years, but we’re still good friends,” he tells me. “She met a new guy a couple years ago and they just had twins. One of them isn’t doing so hot, so she had to have heart surgery.”
“Oh my God. I’m sorry.”
“She’ll be okay,” he says, waving a hand. “She’s a fighter.”
I don’t know if what I feel is relief or terror. Relief that Sam isn’t married. Terror because Sam is single. “How long—when?”
Thankfully, he knows what I’m asking. “We met when I was twenty-nine. Got married pretty fast.” He wipes a hand over his beard. “In hindsight I know I just wanted Luther and Roberta to see me settled. To not worry about me. We split up after three years.”
I try to fit this new information into the story I’d created—the image of him with this perfect wife, perfect life—and I can’t. I’ve been so angry for so long, and I’m not even sure what it was about anymore. About his life, or the shortcomings in mine?
“Apparently I wasn’t a great husband.” He pauses, narrowing his eyes. “She’s a great woman, though, and I’m lucky that she still wants to be family. But if you had just asked me any of this before, I would have told you everything. Why didn’t you ask?”
“What was I supposed to ask you?”
“Anything. About this wife you think I had. The daughters. If you’d just talk to me, we could avoid at least half our problems.”
“Because your track record is so great,” I say, pulse picking up. “Because protecting my feelings and my truths has always been at the top of your priority list.”
“You told me to stay away and, other than to tell you how good you were at the role, I did. Every time we have a blowup like this, it’s you seeking me out. You want the truth?” he asks, shoving his hands deep into his front pockets and leaning forward. “I hated seeing you in the grass with Nick. I hated seeing you in the bed today with him. I don’t have any right, but I did. Every time you’re near me I can’t touch you, I can’t pull you closer. I have to sit in it, stew in it. You’re beautiful, and hilarious, and ambitious. You’re still—” He cuts off, shaking his head. “I have to see what I had and what I gave up. But feeling bad for myself isn’t how this works, is it? I made the choice.” He takes a step away from me. “This is me living with it.” He takes another step away. “I’ll apologize a million more times, I swear, but just let me have a bad fucking mood tonight.”
Sam turns and starts walking away. But he isn’t walking toward the cabins; he’s walking in the direction of the distant parking lot, where the long tractor trailers that brought up all the equipment are parked.
“Where are you going?” I ask, tripping several paces behind him. My feet are crunching through the gravel just as loud as his are; he has to know I’m behind him.
“My truck.”
I stumble over a stick on the path that I didn’t see. It’s black out; nothing but stars overhead. “And then what?”
“Don’t know.”
We continue to march in stony silence, gravel crunching, crickets making a racket in the grass all around us. I could turn and go back to my cabin, have another glass of wine and try to process the fuck out of all of this: jealous Sam, guilty Sam, brilliant Sam. And the confused, relieved, hysterical anger bubbling up inside me. But I don’t feel done with this conversation tonight.
So here I am, following him into the darkness.
What kind of doormat am I? We’re weeks into this shoot, in the middle of nowhere, and he tells me he’s sorry and he’s jealous and that’s it? Fourteen years and I’m ready to pick back up where we left off?
I hate myself, but I can’t stop. There’s a voice inside me saying, This is how you scratch off the black crayon. This is how you find out what’s underneath. You stay with it, you become dogged, you don’t back down.
Sam slows in front of a big red truck—a rental, I assume—and presses his hands to the hood, bowing his head. His fingers are so long, palms wide and muscular. I know those hands, know those fingers and the way they curl and grab. I know those arms, and that shoulder, and that neck.
“Did you decide where you’re going?” I ask.
He turns. “No.”
“Going to go with your default, then, and just take off?”
He growls, taking a step forward, coming right up close to me. “What do you want me to say, Tate? What should I say? That I’m trying to figure my shit out? That I’m trying to give you some distance? That I’m losing my mind being near you? All of it, okay? Fucking all of that is true. Being near you like this is completely wrecking me, and—what am I supposed to say?”
I take a step back, finally breaking, too. My voice echoes off the trucks all around us. “What do you want me to say? I’m happy you’re single? I’m relieved you didn’t break my heart for fun? How much do you want me to debase myself here? You hurt me! You never tried to find me, not in all those years. But here I am, following you into the goddamn parking lot, trying to find my way back to you!”
The heat radiating off his chest is intoxicating. I’ve had two glasses of wine, but it suddenly feels like twenty. He’s so huge in front of me, this wall of man, of Sam. I lift a hand, rest it just above his solar plexus. His breath jerks, his hand comes around my wrist.
“Not like this.”
“Like what?” I spread my free hand out. “In the middle of nowhere?”
“Not when you’re pissed off.”
“I’m the one who’s pissed?” I say, laughing sharply.
He drops my hand and tilts his face up to the sky.
“I’m not pissed, Sam. I’m conflicted.”
“That’s better?”
It’s another match ignited—he thinks he gets the only say in when or how this happens? So I step closer, slide my hand up and around his neck. I raise up on my toes and hover there, just an inch away from his lips. He smells like water, and wine, and the strawberries of dessert, and it’s like a knife to the ribs to remember that day in the park, when he tasted like berries, and we ate them under a tree and then he laid me down so carefully in the bed, sliding a towel under me.
He’s shaking, shaking under my palm at the back of his neck and my other hand pressed to his chest, feeling his heart under there. It’s like a treasure in a fortress, this heart. I wonder what it’s felt, how many times it’s beat painfully enough to make him wonder whether he’s dying.
He did that to me.
Am I really the only terrible thing he’s ever done?
I shove him once and he stumbles back, landing against the side of the truck. My hands come to the front of his shirt, pulling the cotton into my fists, and I want to tear it off, dig my hands into the skin underneath and pull his heart free.
His hands come slowly to my hips, steadying me. “What do you want, Tate?” He lets his eyes fall closed. “You want me to leave? You want me to stay? I don’t know the right answer here.”
I don’t want to have to say it. He’s smart enough to figure it out. And I’m exhausted enough that the truth pushes past any barriers of mental self-preservation: I want him to want me. I want it to eat him up inside, like a cancer that can’t be cured. I stand there, looking at him, watching his eyes open again and his expression go from inde
cision, to hesitation, to that melting of relief, and he bends in jerky, halting movements, as if he wants to give me time to change my mind.
His lips meet mine, so soft, just resting there, but it feels like I’ve been ripped open the way everything pours from me. He lets out a hoarse sound of relief, and I remember this, how it felt to stand on my tiptoes, to reach for his neck, to pull him down to me, wanting more and deeper, wanting that slide of his tongue and the way his groan felt like it came from a fairy tale, the giant begging for something precious.
His hands grip my waist, holding my hips to his thighs, and against my stomach he stirs, his teeth brush against my lip—deliberately, a gentle tug turns into a bite, and fourteen years of anger and unresolved hurt pour out of me. I have two fists in his hair, tugging his head to the side so that I can bite his neck. He cries out, wrapping one arm around me and lifting me roughly, flinging me to the side so he can open the back door of the truck.
He all but tosses me in, watching as I scoot back and he’s a predator, or maybe I am, the spider luring him in here, hoping to give him something he’ll never get again.
I want every wish he ever makes to be for this. A penny in a fountain. The first star. An eyelash. Eleven eleven. Just for one more time.
The door slams shut behind him, and he’s too big for the space but he doesn’t seem to care. On his knees, he slides the skirt of my dress up over my hips, pulls down my underwear, and looks at me like he wants his mouth just there, right there, but there isn’t room for him to lay me down, stretch out between my legs.
Instead his hand comes to his trousers, unbuttoning, unzipping, and I’m there to help pull him free; and for the first time I can’t hold the sound back, that sharp cry when I remember this, too. The weight and heat of him. The noises he makes, helpless but deep.
He’s there, pulling my ass farther down on the seat, closer to him, beneath him, and he tells me not to say a word, a fucking word please don’t say a word because I can’t be in you and hearing you and feeling this.
Twice in a Blue Moon Page 21