Chapter Twenty-Two
The final week without Will passed slowly, but I had settled into a routine with studying, class and calls from Will. No longer surprised, I received a fourth bouquet of carousel roses on Monday.
On Tuesday, Max called to invite me to go out with the guys after work, but I refused, citing my class as an excuse. When the subject of lunch plans was broached by Daniel on Thursday, I told him that I had to study because I was behind the curve and that I would call when I caught up a little more, knowing that I never would. I hoped that John would move on before I started work in the fall if I didn’t see him. I was counting on the old adage, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” being an old wives’ tale.
My last weekend without Will finally arrived and I was dreading it. Carrie would be away for the weekend with her boyfriend and I would be completely alone. I only had a few days left until Will would be home. These next few days looked to move even more slowly that the previous ones as I became increasingly more anxious as the time for him to come home got closer.
When Kate called on Saturday morning, I happily realized that I wouldn’t have that weekend alone after all.
“How would you like to spend the weekend with us out here at the house?”
“Are you sure it’s okay?”
“We’re fine. Paparazzi-free. They all know Will’s gone so we’ve pretty much been left alone. A few fans, that’s all, and when the guards tell them that Will’s out of town, they leave. So, please come. We would love to see you. Bring your books. We can swim and hang out. It’ll be fun.”
“Sure. When do you want me?”
“When can you get here?”
To my relief, I arrived to find neither photographers nor fans outside. I parked the car down the street just in case and one of the guards let me in the front door. I heard some noise coming from the backyard. I waved out the patio door and indicated I would be right out.
I entered Will’s room to change and found another bouquet of roses waiting for me with a card that read, “Only a few more days. I love you. W.”
I changed into a black one-piece swimsuit with a plunging bust-line ending in three brass cut-out rings down my stomach. I had some fake tan on my legs because I had been wearing skirts or shorts all week. I had touched it up back at the apartment and the new color was just starting to show. It was a little orangy, but better than the day-glo white my legs were without it. They were also a better match for my arms, chest and face, which had seen more of the sun over the years and were darker as a result of the freckles that blended to give them color.
I smeared some sunscreen on my face, chest and arms before putting on my oversized sunglasses, grabbing a beach towel that I had brought with me, and heading out to the patio.
Colin was the first to greet me as he had just climbed out of the pool. Of course, when he leaned to kiss my cheek, he succeeded in getting me partially wet. “Hey gorgeous, how are you?”
After seeing Kate and Gemma looking particularly petite in their tiny bikinis, the honest answer would have been, “Not feeling gorgeous, that’s for sure.” But I smiled and replied instead, “Good. Great to see you. Thanks for the invite.”
I then heard a chorus of “Hey Shannon,” and I walked over toward the pool to say, “hello.”
It didn’t take long for them to coax me into the pool. After a while of splashing around in the pool, we all got out to have lunch.
Colin fired up the grill and we all feasted on hamburgers, and pre-made salads pulled from the refrigerator. I thought it was odd how a bunch of Brits were doing such an American thing as a backyard barbeque. I was having a hard time imagining this scene in the U.K.
As we settled into our late lunch, I found that it wasn’t only the hamburgers that would be grilled.
“In these last few months, we’ve never really heard you talk about yourself much. So now that we have you cornered, you have to tell us all about yourself,” Kate said turning the focus of the group to me.
“There’s not much to say,” I said embarrassed. “I’m not all that interesting.”
“Will seems to think so. You’re all he talks about these days.” Colin interjected.
“With all he has going on, I find that hard to believe,” I responded.
“No, it’s true.” Gemma added. “We’ve never seen him like this. We’re glad to have you join our little gang. You’re good for him.”
“Hmmm,” I grunted. I still couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea that I wasn’t in an unequal relationship where I received the majority of the benefit.
Stephen explained. “We give him a break from his work, but not completely because we’re in the business as are almost all of our mates save a few at the Rugby Club. But you take him completely away from it and he needs that. His work makes him crazy sometimes.”
“He’s told me a little about that, but not much.”
Kate went on. “Yeah, well. It was pretty bad in the past. I think he has a hard time dealing with all the focus on him and particularly on his looks. He views himself differently than as just some sex symbol. He’s very intelligent, very creative. There’s a lot more to him than just a pretty face. But when everyone obsesses about his hair, his face, the state of his physique, his clothing, or other superficial things, it drives him insane. Then there are the cameras following him everywhere. Early on, he got lost in some hard partying and some not so healthy relationships.”
My breath caught when I heard the “not so healthy relationships” part.
I composed myself and replied, “I can’t imagine him like that. He always seems so together to me.”
“He has been for a long while. Just don’t hurt him, okay?” Kate asked with some concern in her voice and I thought that maybe she was thinking about John. I grimaced.
“I have a feeling I’m probably the one who’s more in danger of that. He works with some of the most beautiful women in the world and has women throwing themselves at him every day. He has a lot of opportunity to find someone more his speed than me. On the other hand, I lead a pretty mundane life. At this point, it’s all studying all the time pretty much and when I start working in the fall, it’ll be all work all the time.”
“I don’t know about that,” Gemma disagreed. “I saw the way your friends at work looked at you, particularly the one sitting next to you, the tall, dark-haired, good-looking one. He looked like he’d rather be more than friends.”
I looked at Kate and she had a concerned look on her face. So did Stephen. So it was obvious last Sunday. Hopefully, they didn’t see the handholding, but they must have noticed the way John looked at me.
“He’s just a friend. Even if I were interested, which I absolutely am not, I would never date someone from work. I can’t imagine mixing work with pleasure would be a good idea. Most relationships don’t work out and I imagine that working with an ex would be brutal.”
“We all met through work,” Stephen chimed in, looking to see my reaction.
“Yes, but you work on a film for a few months at a time and then move on to a different job with a different cast and crew. If I broke up with someone at work, I could have to work with them potentially for years. It’s a bit different when you have that kind of risk.”
“Will works with someone he dated and it’s fine,” Gemma blurted out and immediately wished she hadn’t when Colin gave her a very stern look.
“Really?” I asked, now curious. Was this one of the “not so healthy relationships”?
“It was nothing.” Gemma tried to downplay the slip. “Just an actress who plays one of the supporting characters in Midnight.”
Great. I could feel the jealousy rising.
“Who?” I asked unable to hide my curiosity. Will had asked me not to perform any more internet searches on him after the initial one confirming who he was. He had told me that a lot of what was out there wouldn’t be true and that he would be embarrassed. I promised him that I wouldn’t and I kept my promise. Now, I was
wishing that I hadn’t.
Gemma looked down at her hands and answered, “Kayla Roberts. She plays one of his sisters, the dark-haired one. It was during the promotional tour for Midnight 1 and for a time afterward. There was a feeding frenzy around him at that time and I think he needed a distraction. She was a bit of a partier, which suited him then. But I think she wanted a relationship and he didn’t, so it ended awkwardly.”
She continued without looking over at the unhappy expression on Colin’s face, “Over the years, they’ve smoothed things out. But back then, it was the combination of that ending poorly and his downward spiral in reaction to the frenzy over him that led Katherine to stage an intervention of sorts, which gave us the Will we had before he met you. Then you came along and he now seems genuinely happy.” She then smiled at Colin hesitantly. He gave her a tight smile that looked more like a grimace in return.
The beep on my cell phone effectively ended the conversation. It was time for one of my regularly scheduled texts from Will. It was the next morning for him in Tokyo.
I opened the text message. “U @ the house?”
“Yes. Thx 4 the flowers. Been meaning 2 ask – y carousel roses?”
“They remind me of u. Beautiful.” I had expected a more elaborate explanation, like his mother liked them or grew them at home or something.
“How r ur costars?”
“Good. Y do u ask? I told u stories about KS r not true.”
“What about the others?”
Rather than a receiving a return text, the phone rang. I answered it and walked inside to the family room so as not to be overheard.
“Hi, Shannon. What are you getting at?” I could hear a lot of noise in the background. It sounded like some kind of a convention.
“Your friends tried to make me the topic of conversation today, but I was able to turn the subject around to you.”
“That can’t be good.”
“No, it’s fine. They talked about the hard time you had a few years back. You already told me about that. They just filled in a few details, that’s all. Nothing for you to worry about.”
There was silence on the other end for a few seconds. “So they told you about Kayla, did they?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you should be fine. There’s nothing to it. It’s ancient history now.”
“I believe you. But just remember that if you ever get jealous of any friend of mine . . .”
“You’re referring to John, I assume.”
“Maybe.”
“I heard he was out with you the other day. Funny how you didn’t mention it.”
“It’s not like we get to talk very long and I don’t want to waste my precious time with you talking about him. Besides, it wasn’t a big deal.”
“Uh-huh.” He didn’t sound convinced. “I’ll make a bargain with you. I won’t act jealous. I can’t promise I won’t be jealous, but I won’t act jealous, if you won’t.”
“It’s not a very fair trade, you know. You have one person to potentially be jealous of and I have thousands, maybe millions.”
“You’re talking about fans that I never even get close to, but if you’re talking about people we know or have the opportunity to meet, I imagine the numbers are more even.”
“Not even close.”
“You forget, I’ve seen your fans both at school and work as well as whenever we go out. I’m not overestimating that.”
“Right,” I said with deep sarcasm. “Okay, I’ll agree just to change the subject. Have I told you lately how much I miss you?”
After I got off the phone, I returned to the backyard to find the others in the Jacuzzi adjacent to the pool. The subject never veered back to Will again for the rest of the weekend. I figured it was either due to their horror at the Kayla story getting out or because Will had called them to give them a hard time about it, and probably both.
I managed to get some studying in intermittently during the weekend between swimming, barbequing and watching a few rented movies that didn’t feature Will. I was particularly able to study at night when I returned to Will’s room to sleep.
On the one hand, I was sad to return home on Monday morning and start my weekday study routine. I had had a very good time. On the other, it was a few more days closer now to Will’s return.
If I can just make it to tomorrow night . . .
Chapter Twenty-Three
The day of Will’s return finally arrived and I sat in Bar review class willing the clock to move faster. I had made an effort to look nice for Will and was way overdressed for class, wearing the formfitting outfit Colin had scolded me about at the Royalist a few weeks back.
This week, we didn’t have a USC professor as our lecturer and, in that week, I realized how great I had it in law school. The subject was Contracts and it was snore-worthy. The reading in law school on this subject certainly had been dry, but my professor cracked the class up regularly, albeit unintentionally. Like almost all law professors, he used the Socratic Method, asking students about the cases they had read. After hearing the answer, he frequently would say, in his very flat Midwestern accent, “You’re wrong, but why?” or “There’s more than one way to slice the bologna.” It was funny because the student on the receiving end would not have answered the way he or she did in front of a very large audience if they had known they were wrong and why. But there was no humor during this week’s lectures whatsoever and it so needed humor as it was one of the more dense subjects.
Finally, the lecture came to an end and I bolted out the door. I looked at my phone to find a text message.
“I’m home. Call when u get out of class. ILY.”
Will was home. Thank God.
I put on my Bluetooth headset as I walked to the car and called as I drove off toward the Palisades.
“I’m so happy you’re finally home. So what’s the plan for sneaking me in tonight?”
“Same as last time. Colin’s at the Royalist waiting. It’s, uh, a little worse than last time, I’m afraid. I’m so sorry for this. I love you.”
I almost asked him to define “worse,” but I didn’t really want to know. It certainly wouldn’t stop me from getting to him. Nothing was going to stop me from that. I had been waiting too long. When I thought about it, though, nothing would have stopped me even if it had been one day instead of two weeks since I had been with him. At that moment, my need to be with him terrified me. I just couldn’t imagine that all this would end in a happily ever after like in the movies. I would be broken and bleeding afterward. I pushed those thoughts aside and braced myself for the trip to Will’s house.
The press clearly had gotten wind of the fact that the promotional tour was over and that the cast had returned home because there was a huge crowd outside the house as Colin informed me. This time, I didn’t peek. I could see flashing lights around the car as we approached the house so it appeared that LAPD must be there trying to disburse the crowd. Consequently, no one got close to the car as we drove up the driveway and into the garage.
When I got inside, Will wasn’t in the living room. Stephen informed me that he was in his room and I hurried to meet him, my heart racing.
I knocked on the door and walked inside to find Will rise from his seated position on the bed with his head in his hands. He looked worried. He rushed over and hugged me so tightly I couldn’t breathe.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes. There was no problem whatsoever. I think the police are outside now.”
“Good. We were ambushed at the airport and followed home only to be joined by more photographers. Someone must have leaked our itinerary.”
He stood back to look at me.
“Wow! You are beautiful. I missed you so much.”
“I missed you.” I leaned up to kiss him. “Mmm. I’ve missed this.”
“Mmm. So have I.”
We lay down on the bed together, staring at each other and kissing intermittently. This wasn’t the attack that usually happened afte
r we had been apart so I wondered if something was wrong.
“You must be tired after such a long trip. Maybe I should have waited until tomorrow to come.” I didn’t want to leave, but I was hoping that he was just tired and that nothing else was the matter.
“No, no. You think I don’t want you here?”
“You seem a little different.”
“I just . . . it’s been a fortnight since I’ve seen you. I just wanted to look at you. You’re so beautiful.”
I thought it would kill the mood if I told him he needed glasses, so I let it go.
He leaned forward and kissed me, and the urgency was there just as it had always been. Neither of us was going to get a whole lot of sleep that night.
We both awakened at about the same time mid-morning the next day. We spooned for a while with only intermittent conversation. Will seemed lost in thought. I wanted to hear all the details of his last two weeks and never wanted to let go of him. In spite of this, I turned around to kiss him and get up out of bed. I was going to have to return to my apartment and keep to my study schedule. The Bar Exam was in less than six weeks.
As I tried to rise, Will held me so that I couldn’t leave. He continued to look thoughtful for a second and then blurted out suddenly, “Don’t leave. Move in with me.”
“What?” My eyes went wide.
His eyes were pleading. “Move in, at least for the next few weeks. I can’t stay at your place with Carrie there. I want to be with you as much as I can until I leave again before your Bar Exam. It’s ridiculous to have you going back and forth. I promise I’ll let you study.”
My eyes remained wide, incredulous. It took me a moment to respond. “Very tempting, but how’s that going to work? With the crowd outside, how am I going to get back and forth to class? What would I do with my car? Aren’t you afraid we’ll get caught?”
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