Jennifer E Smith

by This Is What Happy Looks Like (v5. 0) (epub)

  “Hello?” she called out, laying her book down on her lap. Her voice sounded strange even to her, wavery and thin. She heard the person take another step forward, and though she was blinking hard, her eyes still hadn’t adjusted enough to see who it was. “Quinn?”

  This time, there was the sound of a throat being cleared, and Ellie realized it wasn’t Quinn at all. She rose from the porch swing, a little bead of worry starting to work its way through her. Henley was as safe as any small town—probably even safer—but the feel of the place changed in the summertime, its very molecules seeming to shift as it made room for an influx of strangers, and any of her friends or neighbors would have called out by now, rather than lurk in the shadows.

  “Sorry, I didn’t meant to scare you,” the person said, a deep male voice that carried across the lawn as the blurry figure approached. “It’s just… me.”

  He took a few steps closer, and like someone emerging from the water, he seemed to appear in pieces; first his eyes, then his mouth, then finally the rest of his features, coming into focus all at once as the light fell across him to reveal the familiar face of Graham Larkin.

  He’d been in only two movies so far—the highly anticipated final installment of the Top Hat series wouldn’t be out until later in the summer—and though Ellie hadn’t seen either one of them, she was still aware of his usual range of expressions from the many times she’d seen him on talk shows and red carpets. There was always something brooding about him, an edge of impatience. But now, standing here on the bottom step of her front porch, he looked nothing if not sheepish, and it was all so unexpected, so entirely unlikely, that her first instinct was to laugh.

  He said nothing, but his mouth turned down at the corners, and he reached up and rubbed at the back of his neck. He was wearing a blue-and-white-checked shirt with a pair of sunglasses dangling from the pocket, looking oddly uncertain, and it almost felt to Ellie like the whole thing was staged, like she’d fallen into a scene from a movie.

  “Sorry, I’m—”

  “I know who you are,” she said. “Where’s Quinn?”

  He looked at her blankly for a moment, and then his eyes seemed to snap into focus. “Oh,” he said. “She told me where you lived.”

  Ellie tilted her head at him. “Why? And if it didn’t go well, how come you’re here and not her?”

  “There was kind of a mix-up, actually,” he said, coming up to the middle step. He smelled of mint and something else, something soapy. It was intoxicating, in a way, being this close to him. He looked like he was waiting for her to ask what he was talking about, but she remained silent, pressing her back against the screen door, and after a moment, he cleared his throat. “She was wearing your shirt.”

  Ellie frowned. “What?”

  “Earlier today,” he said. “At the ice-cream place.”

  “Okay…” she said, unsure where he was going with this.

  “So I thought she was you.”

  “Why?” she asked. “You don’t know me.”

  “That’s why I thought she might be you.”

  Ellie gave him a hard look, then turned to scan the darkness behind him. “Are you filming a reality show or something? Is this some kind of joke?”

  Graham jerked his head from side to side. “No, why?”

  “Because I’m really confused,” she said. Behind her, the dog—a little beagle with floppy ears—had appeared at the door, his black nose pressed against the screen, his tail wagging. Ellie ignored him, her eyes trained on Graham, who seemed equally thrown off; he was either a really good actor or he was just as confused as she was. “Did Quinn put you up to this?”

  “No,” he said as the dog began to whine. “I swear.”

  “Then what?” she demanded. “What do you want?”

  He looked slightly taken aback by this, and Ellie suspected it wasn’t often that people spoke to him that way. But it had been a long day, and she was tired, and having a movie star on her front porch was feeling less like some kind of sweepstakes prize and more like an unclassifiable problem.

  “You’re E. O’Neill,” he said. It wasn’t a question, but a simple fact, and Ellie eyed him suspiciously.

  “Aren’t movie stars supposed to have stalkers?”

  For the first time, his face slipped into a smile. “Yeah, I guess this must seem pretty weird,” he said. “I’m just excited to finally meet you.”

  She let out a short laugh. “Again, isn’t that something I should be saying?”

  The dog began to paw at the screen door, his whimpers turning into full-fledged howls, and Ellie knew that it wouldn’t be long before Mom emerged to let him out.

  “Shush,” she muttered, and he sat back on his haunches and fell abruptly quiet.

  Graham leaned to look past her. “Hey, Bagel.”

  Ellie had been half turned to face the dog, but now she whirled back around again. “How do you know his name?”

  “You told me,” he said, and then paused before continuing, as if this were a matter of no real importance. “It’s a great name for a beagle. Really clever. I was a lot less creative with Wilbur.”

  Her heart was beating fast now, her thoughts tripping over themselves, but when she spoke, her words were measured. “You have a dog named Wilbur?”

  Graham’s eyes met hers, and he shook his head. In the dim lighting, his face remained neutral, but there was a smile just below the surface, and his eyes were giving him away.

  “Nope,” he said, and Ellie’s head felt suddenly light. She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing emerged.

  Graham was smiling now as he watched her. “Wilbur,” he said quietly, “is my pig.”

  Ellie nodded. “Wilbur is your pig,” she mumbled, trying to force her mind to catch up. She drew in a shaky breath and looked at him carefully. It was like the simplest of math problems; the answer was right there in front of her, but even so, a part of her was still having trouble believing it.

  All this time, it had been him. All those e-mails, all those late-night conversations. All those silly details about school and her mom and everything else. All that thinly veiled flirting. All this time, she’d been writing to Graham Larkin.

  She’d told him about the poems in the frames, and how she liked to pretend to be a tourist sometimes, falling into step behind large families with cameras. She’d written about how she learned to juggle this winter when there were no customers at the shop. She’d babbled on about the location of her locker and the unfairness of her chemistry teacher, the reasons she liked winter better than summer and her failed attempt at planting flowers this spring. She’d confessed that she loathed her freckles and that she hated her toes. She’d even admitted that she didn’t really like lobster.

  And now here he was, standing on her front porch with his thousand-watt smile and his perfect hair and those eyes of his, which seemed to go right through her, and she knew what she was supposed to do. She’d seen the movies. But to her surprise, Ellie didn’t feel ecstatic or lovestruck or even incredulous.

  What she felt instead was embarrassed.

  “You should’ve told me you were you,” she said, her cheeks hot. “Were you trying to make me look stupid?”

  Graham stared at her, unable to hide his surprise, and Ellie couldn’t help taking a small amount of pride in this. Most girls probably tiptoed around him, but she wasn’t one of them. She might have been duped, she might have been made to look like an idiot, but at least she wasn’t some kind of groupie.

  “No,” he said, and then he said it again: “No. Not at all.”

  “Then what?” Ellie demanded, meeting his gaze with a level stare.

  “It was just an accident, and then I didn’t say anything because—”

  “Well, you should have,” she told him. “If you had, I never would have…”

  Graham raised his eyebrows. “You never would have told me all that stuff?” he said with a little nod, then lifted his shoulders. “Exactly.”

  His voice wa
s so hollow then that Ellie could think of nothing more to say. Her heart was still pounding, and she kept a hand on the doorknob to steady herself.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “Maybe I should have said something. But believe me, I wasn’t trying to make you look stupid.” He paused, flashing a little grin. “You could never look stupid.”

  In spite of herself, Ellie smiled at this. She studied him there in the dim lighting, trying to work out whether he was being genuine or whether he was just a genuinely good actor. She could see a thin moon-shaped scar just above his left eyebrow, and with a jolt, she remembered him telling her about this; it was from when he’d jumped off the roof of a van. At the time, she’d been picturing a sandy-haired boy in a leafy suburb, and then an older version of that same gutsy kid, more self-conscious now, perhaps even a little bit nerdy, but with a hint of his former boyish grin as he parked himself behind a computer to open her e-mails.

  Now she closed her eyes and tried to edit this image, placing Graham Larkin there instead, writing about his mother’s oatmeal cookies and his obsession with Wii tennis and his complete inability to throw his socks in the laundry basket at the end of the day.

  All this time, it had been him.

  All this time, she suddenly realized, he’d been writing to her too.

  She opened her eyes, and her hand slipped from the doorknob. The screen rattled, and from the other side of it, Bagel scrambled to his feet with a gruff bark, and then another. Ellie turned to placate him, but it was too late. Through the screen, she could see Mom’s bare feet on the stairs, and seconds later, she was standing beside the door in a pair of moose boxers and an I MAINE T-shirt. Bagel danced around her, his tail whisking the air. Ellie turned to look at her through the screen, blocking the door.

  “He needs to go out, El,” Mom said.

  “Give me a minute, okay?” Ellie asked, flashing her a meaningful look that seemed to get lost through the screen.

  “What’s up?” Mom said, pushing the door, and though it opened only partway, Bagel slipped out and went barreling over to Graham. Ellie gave up with a sigh, and Mom stepped outside too, her mouth forming a small circle of surprise.

  Graham was stooped to greet the dog—who had rolled onto his back in sheer joy over the prospect of meeting someone new—but now straightened and extended his hand.

  “I’m Graham Larkin, Mrs. O’Neill,” he said. “I’m sorry to come by so late.”

  Ellie was waiting for Mom to make a joke about how nine o’clock is the Henley equivalent of midnight, or how Bagel was always happy to receive guests at this hour. But instead, her eyes strayed out to the yard behind them, raking the darkness for signs of anyone else, and Ellie shifted uncomfortably.

  “He just stopped by…” she began, but wasn’t sure how to finish that particular sentence.

  “I just stopped by to introduce myself,” Graham said, looking suddenly boyish, less like a movie star and more like a regular kid caught out after curfew. “But I guess I should get going.”

  Mom forced a smile, her instinct for customer service kicking in despite her wariness. “Well, it was nice to meet you,” she said. “And welcome to Henley.”

  “Thanks,” he said, then nodded at her shirt. “So far, I heart Maine too.” His eyes slid across the porch to find Ellie’s. “I’m really glad someone told me about this place.”

  Then, with a little wave, he turned and walked down the porch steps and out into the dark of the yard. Bagel threw his head back, letting out one crisp bark that seemed to echo across the quiet neighborhood for far too long. Mom was staring at Ellie, waiting for some sort of explanation, but it was hard to imagine what she might say. All she could think about was that she was the one who had brought him here.

  And suddenly, she was really glad too.

  From: GDL824@yahoo.com

  Sent: Sunday, June 9, 2013 9:28 PM

  To: EONeill22@hotmail.com

  Subject: Re: what happy looks like

  Meeting new people.

  From: EONeill22@hotmail.com

  Sent: Sunday, June 9, 2013 9:43 PM

  To: GDL824@yahoo.com

  Subject: Re: what happy looks like

  You already said that one.

  Graham was only half listening as his manager strutted around the trailer like some sort of demented rooster, flapping the morning’s newspaper with one ink-smudged hand.

  “Is this why you wanted to come early?” asked Harry, tossing the paper onto the table beside where Graham sat slouched in a folding chair. The trailer was small, with little more than a miniature dining area and a tiny changing room with a costume rack that had been set up by a wardrobe assistant. For the past two years, Graham had worn things like top hats and capes and dark robes with velvet lining. But this film was a contemporary love story, and the clothes hanging nearby weren’t a whole lot different from his own: board shorts and solid-colored T-shirts and flip-flops. He wondered if he’d be able to keep some of them at the end. There were few things he hated more than shopping.

  He peered over at the picture in Page Six of the New York Post, which was taken from a distance, but clearly showed him at the Lobster Pot with Quinn. She was turned to the side, so that all you could see was a curtain of shiny hair, but there was Graham across from her, leaning over intently. If he had to guess, it was probably the moment he learned she wasn’t Ellie. There was only a small caption beside the photo, which read “Larkin’s New Love?” and a one-paragraph article that Graham didn’t bother to read.

  “No,” he said truthfully, and Harry fell into the other chair with a sigh.

  When Graham first signed with him, Fenton Management had been up and running for only a few years. Before that, Harry had been an entertainment lawyer who had grown tired of contracts and fine print and thought he might have a knack for managing the careers of actors instead. His first client was a round-faced, bespectacled kid from a popular sitcom, and after that, he’d somehow scraped together a decent roster of young actors with dubious levels of talent.

  Before Graham had signed the contract for the trilogy, back when the casting was still under wraps and nobody could have known how quickly his star would rise, Harry had been the only one willing to take a meeting with him. Graham would always be grateful for that, for his faith in him, a completely untested high school kid whose only credit was a middling performance in Guys and Dolls. Now he was by far Harry’s biggest client, and in addition to the usual amount of time and attention this position merited, it also seemed to have earned him an often grumpy, middle-aged shadow while on location.

  “This is bad,” Harry was saying, running his hand through what was left of his hair in a worried manner. “You can’t just waltz into a town like this, ask out the first girl you see, and then leave her high and dry.”

  Graham looked over. “Is that what the story said?”

  “No,” he said with a shrug. “But word’s out.”

  “I didn’t leave her high and dry,” Graham explained. “It’s just that there was a mix-up…”

  “That’s not the point,” Harry said, scraping his chair around so they were facing each other. “The point is that you’re supposed to be with Olivia.”

  Graham glared at him. “Am I?”

  “In a town like this, with no other girls around for the next few weeks, everyone figured you two would just—”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Just what?”

  “You have to admit, it would be great publicity for the film—and for you,” Harry continued, oblivious to the look on Graham’s face. “You’re at a crossroads here, career-wise. Your next project, your next girlfriend—these are all important considerations. And don’t look at me like that. This is why you pay me the big bucks—to tell you these kinds of things. To take you to the next level, we need to step carefully, okay?” He paused and threw up his hands. “Plus, she’s Olivia Brooks, for Christ’s sake. It’s not like I’m suggesting that you sleep with a troll.”

  “You don’
t get to tell me to sleep with anybody,” Graham said, rising from his chair.

  “I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant—well, you can at least try, can’t you?”

  Graham walked over to the tiny window at the back of the trailer, which looked out over the set. The cameras were already positioned, and the director—a young guy named Mick, who was coming off an indie darling that had surprised everyone by garnering an Oscar nomination—was pacing with a gaggle of production assistants at his back. Soon, Graham would be called out there to run down the street after Olivia, sweep her up, and kiss her passionately. And not just once, but probably more like eighteen to twenty times.

  “There are others girls around, you know,” he said without turning around. “Just because this isn’t New York or L.A. doesn’t mean there aren’t interesting people.”

  “Right,” Harry said. “I’m sure she was lovely.”

  Graham smiled, remembering the look on Ellie’s face when she first saw him under the lights of the porch, but then he realized Harry was talking about Quinn. Before he could say anything, there was a knock on the door, and they both turned.

  “Five minutes, Mr. Larkin,” someone called, and Graham took a deep breath. No matter how many times he did this, no matter how prepared he felt, this was the moment when his stomach always dipped. There was an art to being himself now, and it didn’t come without effort. In some ways, it took more acting for him to carry himself a certain way on set than it did to lose himself in his character, a teenage boy whose father had just died in a tragic boating accident, and who had complicated feelings for the girl who had witnessed it.