“I know it sounds ridiculous, but I swear, it’s not about me being too fancy to get in my own car and get myself food. I just didn’t want to deal with people seeing me at a fast-food place and the pictures the tabloids would run and the terrible headlines. Inevitably it would be something about how fat I’m getting, or how I’m in the depths of despair because of a breakup with someone I was never even dating, and about how I lost this or that role because of my body, et cetera. And I didn’t want to invite that on myself.”
The matter-of-fact way Anna said all of that made him just as mad as what she’d said.
“That’s such fucking bullshit,” Ben said. “I can’t believe you have to deal with that. You’re one of the most beautiful women in America, and you have to sneak around to get a cheeseburger? That’s ridiculous.”
Just the idea of it made him fume.
She patted him on the arm again, but lingered this time.
“Thank you for your outrage. I’m so used to it I barely even think about it anymore.” She shook her head. “No, that’s not true—I think about it all the time, but it’s so normal to me now I don’t get mad about it anymore. It’s just . . . the way it is.”
Ben glared at the road in front of him.
“Well, I fucking hate the way it is, then.” He sounded like a petulant child, but he couldn’t help it. He knew, intellectually, that women got shit on for their bodies all the time, even though he didn’t get it. He fucking loved women’s bodies. The places they were strong, the places they were soft, the way they curved and rippled and moved and sighed when he touched them—he loved them all. How boring was it to want them to all be shaped the same? Where was the fun in that? And especially someone like Anna—why anyone would want her to change anything about herself, he had no idea.
“I fucking hate the way it is, too,” Anna said. And then she laughed, and then he laughed, and they both laughed for the next few miles down the widening freeway, until they each stopped laughing and smiled at each other.
“Okay, so, important question,” Ben said.
The smile faded from Anna’s face.
“Okay,” she said. “What is it?”
Ben swallowed hard.
“Can I trust you with the music? We need good music for a road trip, but I don’t know what kind of nonsense actors listen to, and I can’t have any of that highbrow intellectual crap. And”—he held up a hand to stop her from interrupting—“do not—do not—even say the word ‘podcast’ to me right now, do you hear me? This car is a podcast-free zone!”
She was laughing again, so hard she could barely talk. Good. He hadn’t been able to get the stricken look on her face when she’d gotten off the phone out of his head. His mission since that moment had been to do whatever he had to do to make that look go away. And all he wanted was for her to forget for a few minutes about why they were in this car together, speeding south, and just enjoy the ride.
“First of all,” she said when she recovered, “I’m insulted you even felt like you had to ask that question. Of course you can trust me with the music. Just because I’m an actor doesn’t mean I have no taste.” She stopped and pressed her lips together. “Okay, well . . . I mean, I may not have what many people would consider good musical taste, but that’s not because of my job; it’s more because I’m a teenage girl at heart when it comes to music. Especially music for a road trip.”
He gestured to her phone.
“Come on. Show me what you’ve got.”
She held up a finger.
“Second, you take that podcast thing back right now. The audacity to think that I would suggest a podcast for a late-night road trip, of all things! It’s like you don’t know me at all!”
Ben hid his grin. He didn’t know her at all, but he liked everything he was getting to know.
“I deeply, sincerely apologize. I don’t know what I was thinking.” He shook his head. “No, I know exactly what I was thinking—that the last time I drove to Tahoe with my brother, he insisted on listening to some podcast about the Civil War! Which, yes, fine, it was interesting, but not road-trip material.”
Anna was still smiling. Good.
“Okay, you’re forgiven. I understand the effect a brother can have.” She connected her phone with his car stereo. “Now. Is this your opinion of proper road-trip music?”
A few seconds later, the dulcet tones of Cardi B came rolling out of his speakers. He grinned.
“This is exactly what I was talking about.”
They moved from Cardi B to Rihanna to Missy Elliot to Tupac to Beyoncé to Lizzo. Okay, yes, she knew what she was doing with this road-trip-music business.
Suddenly, after they’d been listening to music and not talking for a while, she turned to him.
“Your brother—is he your older brother?”
Ben nodded.
“He is. Only by three years, but sometimes he acts like it’s by a dozen.” He laughed to himself, picturing Theo, tipsy, with his glasses crooked, dancing his heart out at the last family wedding. “And sometimes he doesn’t.”
Anna smiled at him.
“You two are close?”
He could barely see the smile on her face now in the dim light from other headlights, but he could tell she was asking because she really wanted to know, not just to make conversation.
“Yeah,” he said. “We are. We’re very different, so sometimes that causes friction, and sometimes we irritate the hell out of each other, but in the end, none of that matters.”
He wondered what Theo would think right now if he knew his brother was speeding toward Southern California with a famous actress in the passenger seat of his car. Actually, he could picture exactly the look on Theo’s face. He almost laughed out loud.
You’re on your way where? With who??
He’d have to text him when they stopped for food, just to experience this moment for real.
He still hadn’t told Theo about Dawn. Or Dawn about Theo, for that matter. She’d emailed him back in response to his apology email—she was a first-grade teacher, and also a dance instructor. She’d included a picture of herself as a little kid, with her mom . . . and their dad.
It was definitely their dad in the picture—Ben rarely looked at old pictures of his dad, but he knew it was him because it looked just like Ben. It was uncanny.
The picture could still be fake, though. It could be just some random picture of his dad with some woman and her kid. He kept trying to tell himself that, but in his heart, he knew it wasn’t true.
“What about you and your brother?” he asked Anna, to shake off thoughts of Dawn.
He could hear the smile in her voice.
“We’re also very different, but he’s great. He’s a very buttoned-up professor at Cal, deeply academic, but also very funny. Every so often, some of his students realize who his sister is—Gardiner isn’t my real last name, you know—and they freak out, which cracks me up.”
“Is he also older?” Ben asked.
Her hair tossed back and forth as she shook her head, and she pulled a ponytail holder off her wrist and pulled it back.
“No—I’m two years older, but he’s always seemed like the older one. Except when I’m embarrassing him, which I’ve always loved to do. I still do.” She laughed. “I made him come with me to an awards show a few years ago, and afterward there was a whole series of articles about ‘Anna Gardiner’s hot brother.’ He was mortified. I loved it.”
Oh God, Ben would love to be able to embarrass Theo like that.
“That is absolutely something I’d do to my brother. For years, girls had crushes on him that he was totally oblivious to. Granted, it also took him a long time to realize he’d fallen in love with his girlfriend once it happened. My therapist says we all have blind spots; I guess that’s Theo’s. He’s the smartest person I know, but sometimes I can’t beli
eve how very not smart he can be.”
Anna laughed, but her laugh trailed away at the end. He saw that she was gripping her phone again.
“Hey,” he said softly. “Your brother will call you if he hears anything.”
She took a long breath. And then another one.
“I know,” she said. “He will. I just . . . I don’t want anything to happen to my dad.”
He started to reach for her hand but then stopped himself. Just because she’d wanted him to take her on this impromptu road trip didn’t mean she wanted him to touch her. But before he could move his hand back, she grabbed his and held on tight.
“We’ll get to him,” he said.
She leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes.
“Why were you and your brother going to Tahoe that time? Were you going skiing?”
Ben laughed.
“We’re both too warm-blooded for that. No, it was in the summer, for a family wedding. One of my cousins. We almost got stuck driving with my mom and aunt, which would have been a nightmare. Don’t get me wrong, I love them both very much, but they talk, incessantly, during every car trip longer than fifteen minutes. Neither Theo nor I would have made it. But we couldn’t leave work as early as they wanted to go, so we got a trip to ourselves. We even . . .”
Ben looked over at Anna after he’d finished his story and saw that she’d fallen asleep.
* * *
—
Anna slowly opened her eyes. It took her a minute to realize where she was. In the car with Ben, on the way to Palm Springs, to see her dad. The motion of the car, the darkness, the cozy warmth, the sense of companionship she felt, all put a lazy smile on her face, despite the reason for the drive. She turned her head just in time to see Ben dancing along to “Oops! . . . I Did It Again”—hand motions and all—and she laughed.
“You’re awake,” he said, showing no embarrassment about his car dancing.
“How long was I asleep?” she asked.
He glanced at the clock.
“About an hour and a half. Good timing—there’s an In-N-Out coming up in about thirty minutes.”
She sat upright and stretched. She hadn’t meant to fall asleep. Sometimes she did that as a stress reaction—when the world got too much for her, she would hide away and take a nap and let everything disappear. She’d managed to hold her panic about her dad at bay for the first few hours of their drive, but it had finally gotten to her. She rarely felt comfortable enough with other people these days to let herself fall asleep in front of them, though. She was glad she had this time—the nap had helped, at least somewhat.
“I certainly hope you would have known to wake me up for In-N-Out,” she said.
He smiled at her for a second before he turned back to the road.
“I had a feeling that’s what I should do, so I’m glad my instinct was correct.”
She reached into her tote bag for her water bottle and drained it, and then grabbed the second one she had in there and offered it to Ben.
“Water? Driving is hard work.”
He reached for it, and she uncapped the top before she handed it to him. He took a big gulp and gave it back to her.
“Thanks, you’re right, I was thirsty. I usually plan better with snacks for things like this, but at least something did tell me to fill up my gas tank this morning.” He grimaced. “Well, the ‘something’ was probably my gas light coming on yesterday on the way home from work, now that I think about it, but hey, I’ve driven for at least two days with that thing on before, so I’m still going to take credit for a smart decision.”
Anna thought for a minute about what would have happened if they’d had to stop for gas before continuing down south. She would have had more time to rethink this ridiculous plan, she would have thought of multiple other ways to get to Palm Springs, and she wouldn’t be in this car with Ben right now. She smiled to herself. She was glad he’d stopped for gas this morning, too.
Soon they saw the brightly lit In-N-Out sign from the freeway, and Ben zipped off the exit and drove them straight to the drive-through.
“I assume you don’t want to go inside,” he said. “I mean, I doubt there will be paparazzi here, but . . .”
She laughed and shook her head.
“Yeah, no, drive-through is great. We should eat in the parking lot, though—I want you to get a break from driving. Plus, I’m sure we’ll both want a bathroom break.” She lifted the water bottle. “And to fill these up for the rest of the trip.”
“What’s your order?” Ben asked as the In-N-Out guy with the walkie-talkie came toward them.
“Cheeseburger, Protein Style, with chiles. Fries and a Diet Coke, please.”
After he ordered, Anna reached into her wallet and grabbed a twenty.
“Here,” she said.
He took it without arguing with her, thank goodness. Men either seemed to want to sponge off of her, or got insulted when she paid for things, no matter how small. Ben definitely wasn’t the latter, at least.
When they pulled into a parking spot with their food, Ben turned off the car and sighed.
“Tired?” she asked. She was glad he’d parked near a light, so she could see his face clearly.
“Just need to stretch a little.” He unsnapped his seat belt and threw open the door. “I’m going to stand up for a second, but I’m going to attack that burger very shortly, don’t worry.”
Ben got out of the car and stretched his arms up high, and then bent down to touch his toes. He faced the front of the car, so Anna had a perfect view of his profile. Or, rather, the profile of his ass. She bit her lip. What a view it was. The man wasn’t a backup dancer anymore, but wow, did he still have an excellent body. When he straightened up, she tore her eyes away from him and reached into the bag for her burger.
“Oh God, I didn’t realize how hungry I was,” she said after the first bite.
Ben sat down and picked up his own burger.
“I’m starving,” he said. “Neither of us has eaten since, what, those brownies on set this afternoon?”
She took a sip of her Diet Coke.
“Sorry I fell asleep,” she said. “We should have stopped earlier to eat—that was my fault.”
Ben waved that off.
“Don’t worry about it. If I’d known I would be this hungry, I would have sped through a drive-through while you slept.”
He picked up his phone and checked the directions.
“We’ve made excellent time, by the way. Only about three more hours to go.”
He reached for his drink and then dropped his hand and stared at her.
“I just realized something. You could have flown to L.A. Tonight, I mean—there are a zillion flights from SFO to all of the L.A. airports; you could have gotten one. And then you could have rented a car or gotten a driver or something to get you to Palm Springs.”
She nodded.
“I know,” she said before she thought about it.
“You knew?” He stared at her. Now she wished there wasn’t quite so much light in this car.
She reached for a fry so she wouldn’t have to meet his eyes.
“I realized that at some point after we’d gotten on 5. But by that time, it was too late.”
That wasn’t precisely, exactly true. She’d realized it when they were only about thirty minutes into the drive, when there was still time to tell him to turn around and take her back to SFO. Her assistant absolutely could have gotten her on an L.A. flight at that point, and she definitely could have gotten a driver to pick her up and take her to Palm Springs.
But she’d realized it right when he’d made her laugh about the podcast thing, and right after he’d casually referred to her as one of the most beautiful women in America. The amazing thing was, she knew he hadn’t said that to flatter her; he’d said
it so matter-of-factly, it blew her mind. Sure, people had been calling her beautiful for years; it wasn’t like she didn’t know she was attractive. But somehow, the way he’d said that, and the way he’d talked to her, the way he’d made her laugh, had all calmed her down, had just made her feel so warm inside. She’d known she wanted to stay in this cozy little car, with Ben cheering her up and helping her relax and making her feel comfortable. And when she realized that instead she could get on a plane, the thought of making him turn around, of going through the airport alone, and trying to avoid people and not letting them see her or take pictures of her while she was so anxious and scared, and dealing with the long, cold drive to Palm Springs from LAX alone and friendless in the back seat of some town car or SUV felt so sad and scary and lonely.
She’d almost told him to turn around anyway, but then she pictured herself having an anxiety attack during the flight, surrounded by strangers and people looking at her, and she knew she didn’t want to get out of this car. Here, in the car with Ben, was a happy place, full of dancing and conversations about snacks and pop music and someone she felt safe and comfortable with. No matter what was at the end of the drive, she had this. She needed it.
But now she felt guilty for forcing him on this road trip when she’d had another option. She was Anna Gardiner, after all; she had more money than she knew what to do with—she probably could have chartered a plane if she’d needed to. But no, instead, she’d made this unsuspecting guy—whose job probably depended on making her happy—drive her five hundred miles?
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I should have—”
He held up a hand to stop her.
“And take a road trip away from me, are you kidding? I’m glad you realized it too late. Plus, we’ll probably get there around the same time you would have, given L.A. traffic and how long it takes to get out of LAX.”
She’d thought of that already, too, but more to justify for herself why her decision was the right one. It still didn’t excuse making Ben drive, but she appreciated him saying so.
“Good point.” She smiled at him.
He crumpled up his cheeseburger wrapper.
While We Were Dating Page 7