Famous (A Famous novel)

by Jenny Holiday

  Maybe Melissa’s eyes narrowed. “You look familiar,” she said to Emmy. “Did you go to Dane College?”

  That sobered Emmy right up. “Nope!” she trilled as the brain fog lifted, replaced by adrenaline-spike-induced clarity. “Just visiting. Evan and I are old friends. Our families are intermarried. Sort of.” Never mind that it wasn’t technically true, since it was only Evan’s friend who had married Emmy’s cousin. “So we’re kind of like in-laws. Sort of.”

  All three of them—the Beefeaters and Evan—were looking at her strangely.

  “Okay!” she said, trying to be subtle as she searched the kitchen for her abandoned hat. “Nice to chat with you guys. I’m going to head out and do some cleanup.”

  What she actually did was hide in the garden. She dragged a chaise longue to the very far back corner of the yard, where she was mostly obscured by large lilac bushes, and looked up at the star-studded sky.

  …And woke up who knows how much later when she sensed someone’s presence looming over her.

  She opened her eyes. “Evan,” she said, sleepy and happy. The fear that she’d been in danger of being discovered had been borne away by her little nap, leaving her in a pleasant buzzy state. She wasn’t drunk like she’d been before, just uncharacteristically loose. Relaxed.

  It wasn’t a familiar feeling, but it was an awesome one.

  Part of it was the satisfaction of a task completed. She’d planned the party. She’d executed the party. It had gone well. But part of it was something else. This place. This summer.

  “Is everyone gone?” she asked, rubbing her eyes.

  “Yep,” he said, and as she pulled her legs up and gestured to the extended part of the chaise, he lowered himself to sit. But then he surprised her by reaching for her legs and guiding them back to where they had been, which meant they extended over his lap. It was the way a couple of long standing would watch TV, one reclining, half draped over the other.

  Except she needed to revise that analogy, because she was pretty sure that couples of long standing vegging out in front of Homeland didn’t do it sporting boners. Or lady boners. His she could feel clear as anything under her calf, and he either didn’t realize that her leg was there or didn’t care. Hers, as he rested his hands lightly on her bare shins, was intensifying—moisture gathered between her legs and her nipples hardened to almost painful peaks.

  God damn it. Her defenses were down, thanks to the booze and the contentment. It was going to be hard to enforce the Summer of No Men thing in this state.

  “Thanks for the party, Emmy,” he said, his voice gravelly, which wasn’t helping. “You are insane, but thank you. I think your evil aims were achieved.”

  She was sober now, so she couldn’t blame booze for what she said next. “And here I was, going to vote for Option B.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “What you said before—you didn’t know if you should thank me or…”

  “You don’t even know what Option B was,” he said, sounding almost angry.

  She shrugged. “I’m feeling lucky.” She was treading on dangerous ground, but that boner under her leg…it made her brave.

  “Fuck, Emmy,” he muttered before turning and straddling the chaise. It had the effect of removing any contact between them, and she was about to register her displeasure when he pressed a hand on each of her ankles. Grabbed them. He was still for a long moment with his hands around her ankles. It was too dark to read his face. His hands, heavy and hot, were shackles. She wanted them to stay there, but she also wanted them to move up, up toward the center of her body, to her core, which was on fire, throbbing as surely as the pulse in her throat, which was beating so frantically she had to press a hand to her neck and will herself to breathe. She would have been embarrassed at how obvious her desire no doubt was, but she was protected by the darkness, and he was breathing hard, too.

  How to break the standoff? Who would move first?

  Him. She was surprised there wasn’t a burst of steam when he finally took his hands off her ankles. She moved forward to meet him halfway, except…

  He wasn’t there. He’d stood and moved away, hands on his hips, staring into the dark yard of his back neighbor. There was another whispered, “Fuck,” but this one was different than the first. Dismay had replaced desire.

  He didn’t say anything else, and after several long moments she had to conclude he wasn’t going to. She got up and started for the house. She knew how to take a hint.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. His back was still to her, but he sounded so tortured that he stopped her in her tracks. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I keep doing this. I know this isn’t what either of us wants.” Then he turned. It was still too dark to see his face, but she could feel his eyes on her.

  She was tempted to object, to raise her hand, to say, “I do. I want it.” But of course he was right, elementally, even if he hadn’t used exactly the right word. She might want him, but this summer was supposed to be about what she needed—freedom, independence, a break from her usual patterns.

  So she shrugged, affected a light tone, and said, “It’s okay. We both had a fair amount to drink.” Which had absolutely nothing to do with what had happened, and they both knew it.

  “Right,” he finally said, the urgency drained from his voice. “Well…thanks for the party, Emmy.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  By the time they set out for Minnesota the next weekend, things were almost unbearable. Evan wasn’t sure how he had fucked things up so badly. Well, that wasn’t true. He knew exactly how: he’d practically rubbed his dick on Emmy’s leg, shamelessly letting her feel what she did to him, and then he’d done some kind of weird caveman-possession thing with her ankles. He’d been thinking only of touching every part of her skin. Of starting at her feet and working his way up. He’d wanted—needed—to put his hands all over her, like she was a statue he had the power to animate or some shit.

  But he’d forgotten—again—the critical context: they were living in a bubble. Yes, they could have a one-night stand, or a one-summer stand or whatever, but the key point was that bubbles always burst. She wasn’t going to hide out in his house forever. Hell, he didn’t want her to. They were playing with fire. They’d been lucky so far in that she was mostly lying low, and when she did go out her disguise seemed to work. But it was only a matter of time. There was also the equally important point that the bubble wasn’t about sex for her. It was about songwriting. Finding her feet again.

  It was Emmy’s Summer of No Men. And how did he respond to that? By putting his hands all over her? God, he was an asshole.

  Despite his self-flagellating, Emmy had been acting normal. Or trying to. She had developed a new pattern: she would get up early, make breakfast, and leave him a portion before heading out on a walk he was pretty sure was designed to minimize face time with him. Often, when he arrived home from the office, Mrs. Johansen was at his house or Emmy was at Mrs. Johansen’s. Gone were the cozy evenings spent on the porch, working side by side. When they did have to be together, she was perfectly friendly, and so was he, but it felt like they were actors playing parts. There was an artificiality about their interactions that felt weirdly formal.

  But, amazingly, the odd stiffness between them wasn’t enough to extinguish the attraction between them. It was still there, underneath everything else. It was there all the time, like a third person in the house. No, like a ghost. A relentless motherfucker rattling his chains and howling, intent on dogging Evan’s every move.

  And he was painting. Every night.

  He couldn’t stop. Was no longer sure he even wanted to. While he was painting, the ghost went away, allowing him to channel all his restlessness, all his anxiety, all his lust, into his work. He was still overcome with disgust at the end of a session, though, like a junkie coming off a bender. It wasn’t like he was ever going to show any of the paintings, so what the hell was his endgame? When would it stop? When the summer was over, and Emmy left, h
e hoped. At least that’s what he told himself every time he mounted the stairs to the attic.

  So even though he hadn’t initially been crazy about the idea of their field trip to the Minnesota State Fair, by the time he pulled the Subaru around from the garage in back to the front of the house so they could load it up, he was all in. Sure, it meant a long drive with Emmy in the car and then two days with her in close proximity, but they had their teenage chaperone—Evan and Jace would share a hotel room—and he hoped everyone’s focus on the competition would let some of the pressure out of his relationship with Emmy. And more importantly, he couldn’t paint at the Marriott Courtyard Minneapolis. So maybe he could use the time to calm the fuck down and get out of his own head.

  As Evan got out of the car, Jace, whose mom had dropped him off that morning, popped the trunk and threw in his guitar and backpack. Evan added his stuff—a gym bag and a computer case. As if on cue, Emmy appeared at the front door, decked out in her usual “going out” attire: “Not So Basic,” this shirt said. He was pretty sure that was a joke he wasn’t getting. She had her guitar slung over her shoulder and was pulling her suitcase with her other hand.

  “What is in here?” Jace asked, making a face as he took the suitcase from her and hefted it down the stairs. “We’re only going for two days, you know.”

  Emmy glanced at Evan, and then away.

  Of course, he hadn’t thought of it, but she only had the big suitcase she’d come with. “I can loan you a backpack,” he said, “or a carry-on-sized suitcase.”

  “That’s okay,” she said, jogging down the steps from the porch and taking over management of the suitcase from Jace.

  He watched her struggle with it for a moment as she tried to get it started rolling over the uneven cobblestones of the path that led from his house to the street. “Let me,” he said, easily overcoming her resistance when she tried to object.

  “Man, this is heavy,” he said as he hoisted it into the trunk. What did she have in there? A hundred baggy shirts?

  “Actually,” she said, looking at the ground like Jace used to do, “I’m going to stay in Minneapolis for the rest of the summer.”

  “What?” he said, blinking. The question had come out neutrally, which was kind of amazing given that the corresponding “What?!?!” inside his head had been shrieked by a chorus of indignant banshees.

  “Yeah, I figured it was time to get out of your hair.” She opened the rear passenger-side door and said to Jace, “You sit in the front. You have much longer legs than I do.”

  Evan was on her in an instant, grabbing her elbow before she could get in the car. “You don’t have to leave.”

  She looked at him sadly for a moment. “I kind of do.”

  “But…you haven’t finished—”

  She coughed, and the sadness on her face turned to admonishment as she hitched her head slightly toward Jace.

  Right. He couldn’t ask about the album in front of Jace.

  But what could he have said anyway? Please stay even though I can’t seem to stop mauling you? Not to mention the fact that I didn’t want you here to begin with?

  “Anyway,” she said, her voice dripping with artificial enthusiasm, “I’ll get to spend some time with my parents! It’s gonna be great.”

  It was great. Surprisingly. Emmy had expected the ride to Minnesota to be as uncomfortable as the last week in Evan’s house had been, but having Jace with them made all the difference. Emmy had made a playlist for the trip. Jace hadn’t heard most of the songs—she’d put some obscure stuff on there—and he wasn’t shy about sharing his opinions. They alternated between talking about the upcoming competition—it felt like a shared sense of mission was kicking in—and listening to the songs. The miles went by much more companionably than she’d expected.

  “Have you ever heard anything by Emerson Quinn?” Jace asked as the last song on Emmy’s playlist wound down.

  Adrenaline surged through Emmy, and she whipped her head up to meet Evan’s alarmed eyes in the rearview mirror. “Um,” she began, and then had to pause and clear her throat because she sounded like a chipmunk. “Yeah, I’ve heard some of her stuff.”

  “What about you, Professor Winslow?”

  “Can’t say that I have,” Evan said, and damn him, he thought this was funny. He was pressing his lips together like he was trying not to laugh, and his eyes were twinkling like he was in a contact lens commercial. “But I’m notoriously not plugged in to pop culture.” He turned to Jace. “What do you think of her? Are you a fan?”

  Was he kidding? Was he insane? Was he trying to give her a coronary? Emmy started to scooch down in her seat.

  “I used to think she was kind of fluffy,” Jace said, “but I got her last album, and it’s actually really good.”

  “I have to go to the bathroom!” Emmy shouted.

  Evan dutifully exited the highway, and Emmy breathed a sigh of relief that the interruption succeeded in derailing Jace’s critique of…her.

  When she emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later, neither Evan nor Jace was at the car, so she took a moment to collect herself, walking over to the vending machines. She was mindlessly staring at rows of candy when Evan appeared behind her. She felt him before he spoke.

  “Do you have the album done?”

  “I’ve made a great start.” It was the truth.

  “A great start is not enough.”

  She turned. “What’s it to you?”

  He took a step back, like she’d slapped him. Instead of answering her question, he said, “Your parents disowned you when you decided to pursue music. And now you’re skipping off to see them like it’s no big deal? You think that’s going to be a good environment to finish the album in?”

  “What’s it to you?” she said again, as if repeating the same question might actually get him to answer it. She didn’t mean it in a confrontational way, just to point out that he, especially given his extreme aversion to her fame, wasn’t invested in her decisions.

  She’d been hoping to end her time with Evan on a not-sour note, to slink away and not make a big deal of it. She was going to be eternally grateful to him for creating a haven for her these past six weeks. Even if he was right, even if she didn’t manage to write a single note in Minnesota, she’d written eight pretty damned amazing songs at Evan’s, and no one could take that away from her. Hell, she’d also learned to drive. And cook. And perform various household tasks. She felt a little bit bad about—

  “Who’s going to help me with the art show?”

  That. She sighed. Abandoning her work on the art show was the one thing she couldn’t square with herself when she’d decided to leave Iowa early. She knew the show was a big deal, both because Evan cared about it and cared about his town, but also because it was a tool to impress his colleagues and help bolster his tenure bid.

  As bad as she felt about bailing, she couldn’t stay. Couldn’t sit on the porch working side by side with him, watching the fireflies emerge, and pretend that there was nothing between them. She wasn’t supposed to want him. He didn’t want her. There was no way out but to save herself. She had to listen to Maude. She could only hope she was capable of continuing to write when she wasn’t sitting on the porch with him. “Look, I—”

  “Hey guys, can we go to the fair this afternoon when we get to town?” Jace ambled up to join them. Saved by the adolescent cowboy. “You know, to get the lay of the land?”

  Evan huffed a frustrated-sounding exhale, but he pasted a smile on his face as he turned to Jace. “Fine by me.” Then he looked at Emmy as if in search of her agreement.

  She hadn’t been planning to go to the fair with them. Being from Minnesota, she ran the real fear of being recognized not only by fans but by actual people she knew. She’d been planning to hang out in the hotel room. Maybe make Evan FaceTime her Jace’s performance. She hadn’t yet figured out a way to tell Jace that she wasn’t going, though.

  “Also, I want to say thank you.” Jace reverte
d to his old, shy self, shuffling his foot on the pavement and not making eye contact. “To both of you, but mostly to you, Emmy. You know, for helping me so much.”

  Wow. It was a day for high emotion, apparently. “Oh, Jace—”

  He held up a hand, apparently not done speaking. “And even if I don’t win—even if I come in dead last—I don’t care. I’m glad I get to perform in public with you in the audience. I just want you to see me, and I want to make you proud.”

  Emmy sniffed. Well, fuck it. Her disguise had worked perfectly this summer. And her Iowa retreat was over regardless, so what did it matter if she was spotted in Minnesota? In a warped sort of way, it would be the perfect ending to this summer. If she was discovered, Evan would run for the hills, and that would be that. A decisive break.

  She hugged Jace. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Deep-fried cheese curds?” Evan liked to think of himself as an adventurous person, and that included eating, his usual diet of casseroles aside. But…blobs of cheese covered in some kind of breading and dunked in a vat of boiling oil? Wanda had them on her menu in Dane, but he’d always steered way clear of them.

  “Just try it,” Emmy entreated. She was literally bouncing up and down, buzzing with happiness. The weirdness between them at the rest stop had evaporated. Erased by the magic of the Minnesota State Fair? He had no idea, but hell, he’d take it.

  So he played it up, popping the disgusting orange-brown blob into his mouth, and… “Oh my God.”

  “Toldya,” she said, gloating.

  “Wow,” he said, hoovering curd number two, “that is inexplicably, amazingly delicious.” He looked around, suddenly panicking. Where was Jace? Had he fallen down on his chaperone duties because of deep-fried cheese?

  “He’s in line over there for candied bacon donut sliders,” Emmy said, reading his mind and pointing to a concession stand fifty or so yards away.