by Greg Taylor
“That’s Cher’s house,” Abernathy said, pointing out a palace-like mansion with a wall around it that was perched on a high bluff overlooking the ocean. “At least I think it’s still hers. It’s hard to keep track sometimes.” Reflecting the rosy colors of a beautiful sunset on the ocean horizon, the house looked absolutely radiant. It looked like the queen’s palace in this fairy-tale land.
Can you believe this, Regina? I suddenly asked myself. Can you believe what’s happening to you?
At that point, I really couldn’t. It was still just too unreal. I felt like if I blinked, it would all go away. Not long after Cher’s house sighting Abernathy turned left off the PCH and onto a narrow side road. As he drove past a sign that read PARADISE COVE, I thought …
Don’t blink, Regina.
8
A film set is a surreal kind of place. Especially at night. After giving a security guard my name, Abernathy was waved past a ticket booth at the bottom of the road. There was a restaurant just to our left. Beyond the restaurant was the beach.
Banks of bright lights were set up on the beach. A nearby pier was outlined in Christmas-like white lights, which were reflected in the water flowing past the pier. The whole scene looked like an amusement park, without the rides.
After Abernathy parked the limo, he opened the door for me and said, “I’ll wait for you here.”
“Thanks, Abernathy. And thanks for the rundown on P.C.H.”
“My pleasure.”
I gave Abernathy a smile, then headed toward the bright lights. The closer I got to them, the faster my heart beat. This was exciting, after all. I’d never been on a film set before. Well, actually, I was, once, when my parents and I went to Orlando and Disney World for a vacation. But it was hot and I was cranky and nothing much was going on.
But at Paradise Cove, plenty was happening. A cluster of people were near the lights and camera and a large fire burned in a nearby pit. Beautiful swimsuited boys and girls sat around the fire. Someone played a guitar. More gorgeous gals and guys played volley ball near the fire pit, their bods bouncing and well-oiled skin flashing in the firelight. All of this activity seemed to be in service of a scene that was being rehearsed near the camera as I approached.
“Can I help you?”
The person who came up behind me couldn’t have been much more than twenty years old. He wore a headphone, a jacket to ward off the chill evening breeze, and carried an official-looking notebook. When I turned toward him, his expression morphed from a stern frown to a smile.
“Sorry, Regina. I didn’t recognize you.”
That’s right, these people know me already. “That’s OK,” I said, trying to look like I was on familiar ground.
“I’m Andy. The lowly second AD.” Andy must have read the uncertainty in my eyes.
“I know who you are, Andy.”
“Don’t worry about it. You only meet, what, about a jillion people a week? Right this way, Regina. We have a chair for you.”
Following Andy to a director’s chair that was set up near the camera, I got a real jolt when I saw the scene that was being rehearsed. Bradley was on a blanket with Melissa, the actress who played Stephanie. The two passionately embraced as about twenty crew people watched them.
What an interesting way to make a living. That was the first thought I had. The second was, Melissa is one gorgeous gal. And she certainly filled out a bikini better than I did, even in my dreams.
“All right, silence! Places, background! This is a take!” A man standing next to the camera said this. He looked really serious. Which struck me as kind of funny, because what they were about to film looked like a modern version of Clambake, an old Elvis Presley movie I’d seen when I was a kid.
But everyone listened to him, running this way and that, like troops getting ready for battle. A woman scooted up to Bradley and Melissa and sprayed them with a water bottle.
A guy wearing a Spring Break Shark Attack T-shirt walked to a spot just in front of Bradley. “Scene seventeen, take one,” he said, then snapped a black-and-white clapboard with a loud crack.
It took them ten tries to get the scene just the way the director wanted. For one thing, Melissa kept erupting into laughter for some reason, which didn’t seem to faze Bradley but really annoyed the director. So this meant there were ten more sprays from the water bottle. Ten more cracks of the clapboard. Ten more passionate kisses for Bradley.
I went into a kind of reverie as I watched the scene. First, I’ll admit that I imagined myself lying on the sand in Melissa’s place. (Can you blame me?) But then I mentally wandered off and thought about the life I’d been living just a few days before. Before my wish.
Band broken up. No boyfriend. No prospects. Going through the drudgery of school in the middle of a harsh winter. Now here I was, in Malibu, a famous musician, who was visiting my famous actor boyfriend and watching guys and girls run around in bathing suits. In February!
“Dinner! One hour,” the serious man yelled, blasting me out of my daydream.
People took off toward the parking lot as if they were in a race. I stayed in my director’s chair and watched a young girl in clam diggers hand Melissa a bathrobe. Melissa said something to Bradley, laughed, then joined the exodus to the parking lot.
Bradley smiled when he saw me. He walked slowly in my direction, toweling off the water from his muscular chest and biceps on his way. Then he put the towel around my neck, pulled me gently toward him and leaned in for a kiss. Remembering my feigned illness the previous night, he stopped a few inches from my lips and raised his eyebrows.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
I thought about Julian and Hayley at that moment. “A whole lot better,” I assured him.
Bradley nodded, then gave me a kiss. “Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” I said back.
Bradley took my hand and led me across the sand toward a group of trailers parked in the corner of the lot. “How’d your recording session go?”
“Good.”
“Excellent. You hungry?”
I realized I was starving. “I could eat something.”
“I need to change first.”
It felt wonderful, being led across the sand by a gorgeous guy in a bathing suit on a beautiful February night in Malibu, California. And yes, this is when those seven words I told you about made their first appearance, surfacing in my brain like something floating up from watery depths.
A girl could get used to this.
9
“How does it … feel to be … one of the beautiful … PEOPLE?”
Still wearing his bathing suit, Bradley sang along to a CD that was playing in his laptop in his dressing room. It was a small space, so we were pretty close to one another. I smiled as he sang, but I was perplexed. Where did he get this CD of the Caverns playing “Baby, You’re a Rich Man,” one of the Beatles/Bloomsbury songs we had recorded for our second album?
Bradley suddenly scooted next to me on the little booth seat. “This is such a great song, Regina.”
“Thanks.”
“There’s something really … sexy about you sharing your new songs with me. It’s cool, you know? I’m the only one who’s heard the new set of Regina Bloomsbury classics!”
So that was it. I’d slipped a prerelease bootleg CD of Something New to Bradley. That explained where he got the song, but I couldn’t quite figure out why Bradley’s boyish, over-the-top excitement about the CD was making me feel … well, kind of uncomfortable. Before I could dwell on that, however, Bradley started to sing again.
“Baby, you’re a rich man / Baby, you’re a rich man / BABY, YOU’RE A RICH MAN, TOO-OO!” I winced when he tried to hit the high notes. Truth be told, the guy couldn’t sing a lick!
So I’d found Bradley’s Achilles’ heel. He wasn’t perfect after all. That didn’t matter to me, of course. It made him a little more human, actually.
“God, look at me. I forgot,” Bradley said. “Dinnertime!”
&nbs
p; I nodded gratefully, then waited as Bradley went into his tiny bathroom to change. He emerged wearing a pair of jeans and a plain white T-shirt. It was ridiculous how good he made a pair of jeans and a plain white T-shirt look.
“Shall we dine?” he asked cheerfully.
I didn’t reply. That’s because I had entered a Bradley zone. This trance was different from the one I had experienced on the beach as they shot Bradley’s scene. This time I was focused on one thing, and one thing only. The teen god whose picture was plastered on girls’ walls all over the world. Would I ever get used to the fact that I was actually dating this guy?
“Regina?”
Bradley Sawyer saying my name was a nice way to come back to earth. ’Cause he was actually there, in the flesh, standing only a few yards away. I took a moment to compose myself, then got up from my seat and said, “Yes, we shall.”
* * *
For dinner, there was steak and salmon and rice and freshly cooked vegetables and a huge salad and, to top it off, cake and cherry pie for dessert. I was expecting, I don’t know, picnic kind of food. Burgers and hot dogs and stuff like that.
“Do you always eat like this on the set?” I asked in amazement when I saw the menu written on a chalkboard at the food trailer, then quickly zipped it when I saw Bradley frown.
You’ve been on the P.C.H. set before! How many times do you have to be reminded of that?
In an attempt to change the subject, I pointed to the pier and asked, “Can we eat out there?” I could tell Bradley was still thinking about my you-always-eat-like-this? comment, but then he smiled and said, “Sure.”
We found a spot and sat on the edge of the planks, our legs dangling over the water. The twinkling lights along the railing and their reflection dancing in the water below made me think Magic Time. That’s what it felt like, being out on that pier with Bradley. Like a perfect moment.
“Yessiree. This is a long way from Montana,” Bradley said suddenly.
I almost replied, “That’s where you’re from?” before catching myself. I’m telling you, it was hard to remember that I had a history with these people. I had to tread carefully in my conversations with Bradley, not knowing what he and I had already talked about.
“I still can’t believe it, sometimes,” Bradley continued. “I mean, can you, Regina? Can you believe what’s happened to us?”
“No,” I said, quite truthfully.
“It’s like, the first sixteen, seventeen years of our lives, nothing happened. Then, BLAM!” Bradley laughed and shook his head at the wonder of it all.
“Well, something happened,” I said, bristling a bit at Bradley’s depiction of our lives before fame and fortune as nothing. “I mean … school. Parties. Girlfriends. Boyfriends.”
“Yeah. All that,” Bradley said dismissively.
“Can you ever imagine going back?” I asked. I surprised myself, asking that question.
“What, you mean to visit?”
“No, I guess I mean … do you ever think about what your life would have been like if you hadn’t become famous?”
“All the time. It’s my motivation. To keep going. ’Cause I never want to go back to being just a Montana boy. Besides, if I’d never come out here, we wouldn’t have met.”
I felt a kiss vibe coming from Bradley. He was looking at me, deep into my eyes, then he leaned in and kissed me lightly on the lips. I hesitated, then kissed him back. That led to a longer kiss.
Wow.
That describes the kiss as well as any other word I can think of. As in …
Wonderful.
Out of this world.
Want more of this!
I’ll admit I haven’t kissed that many boys—I really need to like a boy to want to kiss him—but it was pretty clear that Bradley had kissed a lot of girls. The kiss had that kind of experience behind it. But you know what? I didn’t care how many girls Bradley had kissed before me. All I knew was that he was with me at this perfect moment on this perfect night, and nothing else mattered.
As the kiss was reaching its peak—that’s what it felt like it was doing, anyway—it dawned on me that I was still holding my plastic fork and knife (duh!) so I tossed them aside in order to be able to put my arms around Bradley. When I reached around his neck …
My tray of food slipped off my lap and fell into the water! The splash was like a slap in the face. To say the moment was broken would be an understatement. We sat, silent, for a moment, then laughed. I mean, what else could we do?
“We’re back!” a voice I recognized as the serious guy yelled from the beach.
“I’ll say,” I agreed, then we both laughed again.
“Sorry to kiss and run, Regina, but I have to get to makeup.”
I nodded. “I think I’ll just stay here for a bit.”
Bradley smiled, gave me a quick kiss, then headed off down the pier. As I watched him go, I noticed that some of Bradley’s tan had rubbed off on my jacket. He wasn’t bronzed after all.
It was just make-believe.
10
Dad was waiting for me in my room when I got back from the beach. I literally jumped when I came through the door and saw him.
“What are you doing here, Dad?”
“Waiting for you.” I could tell he was angry. “Where have you been?”
“I went to see Bradley on the set.”
“Just like that? Without telling anyone?”
“What’s the big deal?”
“For one thing, you’re only sixteen. I don’t care if you’ve been all around the world. I still want to know where you are when I’m not with you. For another, we were supposed to film the video tonight.” That caught me off guard. Had that been on the itinerary? Maybe I purposely forgot to remember that it had. “You inconvenienced a lot of people tonight, Regina.”
“I’m sorry, OK?” And I was. “Things have been pretty crazy this week. I guess I just blanked on the video.”
“You know what? I’ve been holding this in, but I can’t anymore. I don’t like Bradley. I don’t trust him. I think he’s after you for all the wrong reasons.”
“Why, because he didn’t know me before I was famous?”
“Something like that.”
“So, what are you saying? Break up with him just because you don’t trust him?”
“You know I wouldn’t ask you to do that. But I do wish you and Julian had stayed together.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I kept quiet. Dad sighed suddenly and ran his hand through his thinning hair. He looked older to me in that moment. I didn’t like that. He stared out the window, but I got the impression he wasn’t really looking at anything outside.
“You’ll feel better when we get back home,” I said.
“I’m not sure if we are going back home. That’s part of the problem.”
I’d forgotten about that. “You don’t have to worry about that, Dad. I’m definitely going home with you on Sunday.”
Dad looked at me to see if I was telling the truth. Something in my eyes must have told him that I was, because he visibly relaxed. But then he frowned and shook his head. “I don’t know. I still have a bad feeling about all this. It’s like the wheels are about to come off on this whole crazy ride.”
“Everything’s gonna be fine.” I didn’t say that with as much conviction. Maybe because I wasn’t so sure about that myself.
“You need to tell Lorna that. She was ready to go home this morning, Regina. You have to make some kind of peace with that girl.”
“I will.” I said that, but making peace with Lorna was low on my list of things to do. She’d left the Caverns just a few days before, after all. OK, that was before my wish, but still …
Dad stared at me, then pushed himself up from his chair. I felt bad for him. He looked weary, and I knew it wasn’t from jet lag. All this “fame” stuff had obviously taken a toll on him. As he was leaving, he said, “The video shoot is first thing tomorrow. We leave at nine.”
I s
at on the sofa like a lump after Dad was gone, staring out the window. I’m not the kind of person who believes in “signs,” but it was kind of interesting that all I could see of the Meet the Caverns! billboard from where I sat was me. My bandmates were cropped from sight. So, there was my huge face, in half shadow, staring back at me.
It felt appropriate, that isolated image of myself. ’Cause that’s how I felt. In just one day, I’d managed to get Dad, Julian, Lorna, and Danny mad at me. The only person whose feathers I hadn’t ruffled was Bradley.
I smiled at the thought of Bradley. Paradise Cove had been a total blast. So why are you getting on a plane on Sunday and leaving all of this wonderful stuff behind, Regina?
Like a number of other questions, I stored that one in the Later Department of my brain.
* * *
The dreams started that night.
They were different from my normal dreams. It was like the difference between watching a 3-D IMAX movie and the same movie on TV. They were so “in my face,” so real.
My first dream, on my second night in L.A., was a kissing one.
Bradley’s lips on mine.
No, wait. Julian’s.
No. Bradley’s.
Julian’s.
Bradley’s.
It was both Bradley and Julian.
Morphing from one to the other.
Very strange. But not unpleasant.
Unsettling, maybe.
But definitely not unpleasant.
* * *
I was waiting in line at the Starbucks just down from our hotel the next morning when I saw Julian at a corner table by the window. His hair was all messed up and he looked like he’d just gotten up. Some guys look pretty good that way. Julian is one of them.
My first thought when I saw him was, Should I go talk to him? My second was … of course! I was working with Julian the rest of the week, after all. I couldn’t avoid the boy. I didn’t want to avoid Julian, anyway. I still needed a confidant. And I still wanted a friend.