Falling into You

by Abrams, Lauren

  “But you could be. You could have like, a limo, and there would be people following you around everywhere and girls throwing themselves at your feet, just to try to get a chance with the infamous Chris.”

  “I have to admit, that might be pretty cool.”

  “Hell yes, that would be pretty cool. Tell me about the movie you’re in. I’ll have to go see it. I understand that this is probably your worst nightmare, being stuck with some crazy girl who’s basically obsessed with celebrities, but you’re trapped at least until you get your coffee.”

  I let a long, loose laugh escape and she stares at me in surprise before joining me. “It’s not my worst nightmare. And I’m not stuck.”

  “Uh, huh.” She’s smirking. “Ok, go on.” She waves her hand at me, all traces of nervousness gone from her eyes.

  I start telling her about the movie, which was called, disappointingly, A Fairy Tale (at least until someone realized that was a really stupid fucking title and changed it.) I hope. The plot was pretty simple: bad boy meets incredibly beautiful and kind-hearted girl dressed in dark-rimmed glasses and nerdy overalls, they tutor inner-city kids together after he gets in trouble for breaking and entering the school on a dare, boy and girl fall in love, something keeps them apart, and then they meet up at the high school prom for a dance after the girl undergoes a major makeover transformation.

  It was a highly original plot.

  “That sounds like a terrible movie,” she bursts out as soon as I finish. She’s trying to hide her smile from underneath her hand, but I can see that her body is shaking with laughter.

  “Well, it’s not…” I bluster. My phone buzzes. The car service. I click ignore, and look back at her. Hell, I’ll walk home if it means that she’ll keep laughing at me.

  She stops chuckling and removes her hand. “What I meant to say was, it sounds absolutely terrible and exactly like the kind of movie I would love. I’m a sucker for high-school romances. I feel like I should have grown out of that a while ago, but I can’t help it. I’m totally obsessed.”

  I’m definitely not used to this level of honesty. There’s almost no guile in her. I can’t imagine that she ever got away with sneaking into her house late at night or skipping a class; guilt would be written over her whole face.

  “I think that’s what the movie producers are hoping for. That teenage girls, and some girls who are not so teenaged, won’t be able to resist.”

  “They won’t,” she says with absolute certainty. “Who’s the girl in it?”

  “Cassidy Chapman.” Cassidy was the star on a teen show, Hannah the Detective. At least I’m pretty sure that was the name of it. Basically, her character goes around and solves mysteries that the police can’t, with her motley crew of animal detective friends. While the show is absolute trash, Cassidy is certifiably famous. She even has a tiny paparazzi army that follows her everywhere. When I met her, I’d been surprised to learn that she was pretty normal and wanted to go to college, but her overbearing stage father refused to let her. Instead, she’d been making a stream of mid-budget teen movies ever since.

  She had looked at me one day during filming appraisingly and said, “You’ll get one of the big-budget summer movies one of these days, and your life will be turned into a circus. And the only thing that you’ll wish for is that you could go to a football game.”

  Maybe that would be my wish and maybe not. And maybe fame would sneak up on me one day. But then again, maybe not.

  “I never watched that show. But she is totally adorable.” She nods at me and looks at me curiously. “So….what made you want to be an actor in the first place?”

  I had been talking about myself for almost an hour, and there was no opportunity to turn the conversation on her. I start to remedy that, but as I look into her face, which is an open invitation, the whole story starts coming out—the fact that my parents are both in the entertainment business, my lack of desire to attend college, not knowing what I wanted to do with my life, and my love of being under the lights, whether it was on stage or in front of a camera.

  “Then it sounds like acting is perfect for you. You should do the thing you’re most passionate about, no matter what.” She nods. “What are you going to do next?”

  “I really don’t know. Like I said, I need to look at some scripts while I’m here. Then, there will be a round of auditions. I have an agent who calls me pretty much every hour, so it’s not like I can choose my projects or anything. I pretty much pick the one with the biggest part that might be a good film.”

  We talk for a long time about some of the scripts I had gotten. I tell her about a little indie that would start shooting in New York in a couple of months. It had a chance of being something more than a teen romance, and although the catering table would probably contain little more than stale peanuts, it might actually be a good movie with the right director and the right cast. I can’t seem to muster up much enthusiasm about it, and she’s shaking her head.

  “You don’t seem that excited about it.” She studies me. “It’s not the one you want to do.”

  It’s an accurate assessment. I haven’t even wanted to admit it to myself, but a long-winded description of the real movie on my mind, the big fish, starts to come from my mouth. It’s a reboot of an action franchise that had made stars of everyone in the cast when it had been released 20 years ago.

  The hero was James Ross, a badass CIA agent who shoots first and thinks later. He was iconic—men wanted to be him, women wanted to fuck him. I wanted that role badly, but I knew they would never pick me for it. A couple of the big names in Hollywood, established stars, were already being thrown around. I was probably last on their list. Not even on the backup list.

  Just as I’m telling her all of this, her phone buzzes, and she looks at me apologetically.

  “I have to get this. But I have a feeling that you would kill that audition. I could definitely see you as James Ross.”

  I gesture to her phone, and she picks it up and starts to talk.

  “No, I’m here. I’ll be there in a minute. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I can’t wait to hear about it, either. Oh, ok. Then I’ll see you in the morning, because it might take me some time. Ok. Ok.”

  She hangs up and shakes her head at the phone. “I’m sorry about that. It was completely rude. But I really need to go. It’s been nice talking to you.” She throws some money on the table.

  “Really nice.” She touches my hand for just a second before she stands up, and electricity flies up my arm.

  It feels like I just got hit with a bolt of lightning. I’m looking into her face to see whether she felt it too, but she’s brushing at her arm and giving me a friendly smile. What was that?

  “I don’t even…”

  Her words are coming out in a rush, and it’s obvious that she’s trying to get out of here as quickly as possible. “I’ll be excited to brag to all of my friends that I met you when we go to see that movie. I’ll have to exaggerate, though. Make it sound cooler than it was. You definitely saved me from falling off the ledge at the party. I’ll make you a hero. Then, you chased me to the diner. A real movie star stalker.”

  I look up at her, trying to gauge if she’s serious or not. I catch her eye, and she’s filled with laughter and light and it’s obvious that she’s teasing. In a flash, she’s up from the table. I call out to her.

  “How do you know that’s not what actually happened?”

  She turns back to me and speaks over her shoulder. “You definitely thought that I was the maid back there at the party. The coat girl.” She winks at me. “Movie stars aren’t in the habit of chasing after girls that they hand their coats to.”

  Shit. Had I really done that? In high school, we had always invited a freshman to stand at the door and take coats or booze. I vaguely remember handing the bottle I’d grabbed from my dad’s old stash to someone when I had walked in. I had just assumed…

  And just like that, before I could figure out how to apologize or to see
her again, she was gone. If only she had been wearing heels, she would have been slow enough for me to catch her. My skin was still warm, buzzing with the still-lingering touch of her fingers.

  I would just look her up the next day, I think. And then it hits me—I don’t even know her name. What kind of a selfish bastard talks to a beautiful girl for hours in a diner and doesn’t even manage to get her name?

  All of her questions had been directed at me, and I hadn’t even thought to ask her anything about herself, where she had come from, or what her goddamn name was. I checked off the things I knew about her—she was refreshingly honest, she liked bad movies, and she refused to wear heels, and last—she had the most incredible eyes.

  I also knew one more thing. She had done the impossible—I hadn’t thought about Sophia once. Not this whole time.

  Point—flip flop girl.

  Chapter 5

  HALLIE

  I shouldn’t have touched him.

  Just the pads of my fingers touching his skin had caused my whole body to flush. Even minutes later, my toes weren’t even cold, despite the flakes of snow starting to fall as I darted across the street. At least I had managed to get the dig in about him thinking I was the maid, even though it had come directly after admitting that I was going to tell all of my friends that he had followed me to the diner. That clearly wasn’t the case.

  Verbal diarrhea was my very worst habit. I never could figure out how to keep my mouth shut. Everything always just came spilling out whether I wanted it to or not.

  He probably thought I was a total fool. Argh.

  When I reach Sophia’s building, I take a deep breath, look out once more at the city, and open the glass door to the lobby. The doorman eyes me suspiciously, so I flash the key ring that Sophia’s father had handed to me right before he and Cleo left for the Hamptons. He nods and moves out from behind his desk to push the elevator button.

  For a moment, I feel totally helpless, but I quickly realize that it’s probably just part of his job. Clearly, there were plenty of people who lived in this building that couldn’t be bothered with little things like pushing elevator buttons. I smile and thank him, and he looks surprised but gives me a quick grin in return.

  “I’m Charles,” he offers, extending his hand. “29B? The Pearce residence, right?”

  He must have seen me with Sophia earlier. “You have a really good memory. I’m Hallie, and I’ll be here for a few weeks, so it’s nice to meet you, Charles.” I take his hand and shake it before learning in to whisper to him. “It must get pretty annoying, pushing buttons all day.”

  He shakes his head and smiles. “Sometimes, it’s a pleasure.”

  “I’ll have to remember that.” I frown at the elevator and then glance back at him. “Wish me luck. I’m jumping back in with the sharks.”

  He raises an eyebrow and gestures towards the empty elevator. “Good luck. I have a feeling that you might need it.”

  I can hear the music thumping as I ride up. The door is slightly ajar, and as I slide through its opening and close it behind me, I realize that Sophia had been almost entirely accurate in her description of the party. A girl with a bloody nose emerges from the hallway, several people down shots in the corner, and the sweet smell of marijuana is trickling in from the balcony. The living room has been turned into a close approximation of the dance floor at a club, and it’s filled with people who are clearly looking for a hook-up.

  For a moment, I think about joining them. Once my mother realized that I had developed a habit of falling down at the age of four, she had insisted on dance lessons, which had continued all the way through high school. I wasn’t ever going to be a prima ballerina, but I was pretty confident that I wouldn’t make a total fool of myself.

  Despite my total lack of coordination in basically anything else, dancing had always been one of my favorite things.

  My body is starting to sway to the rhythm, and it would be easy to let the music to take everything else away. That usually worked. Just as I’m moving towards the dance floor, I catch a glimpse of a guy pawing at an obviously drunk girl. It wasn’t worth the trouble, I decide. Even if I wasn’t exactly in the same league as the girls at the party, I had absolutely no interest in fighting off drunken boys with beer (or hard liquor) goggles on.

  Sophia is dancing with a good-looking boy in the corner, and she catches a glimpse of me and rushes over.

  “We need to find someone for you to talk to,” she suggests, raising her eyebrows suggestively.

  “Soph, I’m headed to bed. I’m tired.” I don’t have the energy to do battle with her, and although she’s disappointed, she nods quickly.

  “Next time?”

  I smile at her in response, even though my brain says, definitely not. She flits back to her latest conquest.

  The first time I had ever heard her say that she was “talking to” someone, I immediately assumed that she had made some sort of deep philosophical connection with the ridiculously hot frat guy that we had met at the Back to School Saints and Sinners party.

  “Do you like him?” I had asked her, getting nothing but a snort in reply.

  “I like the fact that he has a car and a room to himself,” she said. “I don’t like this whole towel on the door thing. Trashy. If I want to fuck someone, I want to at least do it without fear of having someone else catch the show.”

  I must have looked puzzled, because she quickly clarified: “You do know that talking means fucking, right? Like I would actually want to have a conversation with him. I can’t even remember what his name is. It’s like Trey or Tony or Tom. It definitely starts with a T.”

  His name was definitely Craig, which did not start with a T, but Sophia had already moved on to a new topic of conversation while I was still trying to figure out how “talking to” had become a synonym for having sex.

  Sleeping with someone whose name I didn’t know didn’t sound even remotely appealing. I had a boyfriend back in high school, a solid, respectable guy named Aaron. We had been together for about six months when I had decided that it was time to stop being a virgin. He had come over, talked to my dad about football for almost thirty minutes, and had then taken me to the parking lot of a local park and had sex with me in the backseat of his 1994 Honda Accord. Very romantic. Very…quick.

  It had happened a dozen times after that, and then I had broken it off. It was partially due to the fact that his fumbling fingers didn’t have anything in common with the racy scenes from the novels I had read since I was 12 years old. It was also partially due to the fact that his hands running over my body made me remember long-forgotten moments, the strums of techno music, and the night that I’ve been fighting for four years to remember. The night I’ve been fighting for four years to forget.

  Compared to what I saw and heard from my friends, it was nothing. I was practically a virgin, they said. A romantic.

  “You have to keep doing it until it feels good,” a girl named Jessica had told me, shaking her head. “You can’t just give up like that.”

  “A shocking lack of experience,” Sophia said. “Something we need to remedy as soon as possible.”

  I was going to have to figure a way to get her off of that train of thought, but any planning was going to have to wait for another night. I wasn’t lying when I told her that I was tired. It had been an incredibly long day, and I hadn’t even had time to celebrate the fact that my first real college semester was officially finished. I had finished all of my papers the night before, so there wouldn’t be any loose ends when we arrived in New York.

  I was fairly certain that Sophia still hadn’t turned any of hers in. I was also pretty sure that she hadn’t started any of them and wasn’t planning to. I think my mention of finals week that morning had actually been the first time she thought about it. After throwing her clothes in one monogrammed suitcase and her makeup bag into another, she had responded to my questions about her papers by shooting off an e-mail to the professor of the Psych 101 cour
se that we had taken together. I’ll be away for the holidays and will be able to turn the paper in after I return. She offered no further explanation.

  Of course, there was a good chance that she wouldn’t fail. I had seen the way the professor looked at her during the lectures. One quick afternoon of harmless flirting in his office and maybe some not-so-harmless flirting, if she was unlucky, and the paper would be forgotten. I’m sure Sophia knew that.

  That’s just the way things worked for her. On our first night out with all of the girls from our dorm, Sophia had told me that Greenview College was willing to overlook her “abysmal high school grades” because her father had spoken to the dean about his willingness to be an “enthusiastic” contributor to the school improvement fund.

  I hadn’t yet seen the Pearce name on any libraries or athletic centers, but I know Sophia’s father had probably been very enthusiastic, indeed. She had laughed about it at the time, but I could tell that it bothered her.

  Sophia was about the furthest thing from stupid that I could imagine, but she said that she didn’t care about things like classes or grades. It took careful prodding to get her to admit that it was a blow to her pride that her daddy had to pay off the school just to let her attend.

  I sigh. Sophia would be Sophia. And she would be just fine.

  I wasn’t so sure about me. There were a million thoughts dancing through my head. Would my mom ever forgive me for ditching Christmas? Was Ben actually mad? Were he and Susan taking the annual tour of Christmas lights without me? What the hell was I going to do in New York for the next two weeks?

  But there was something else at the forefront of the thoughts. Chris.

  It was obvious that he had just sat in the booth because there weren’t any other ones available. He couldn’t have made it clearer that he wasn’t interested, even though he’d been incredibly nice and made a pretty good conversation partner. The niceness was a pleasant contradiction from the whole thinking I was the maid incident.

  I decide to forgive him for that. He clearly hadn’t remembered it, not on the balcony or at the coffee shop, and there had been a bit of real contrition in his face when I had teased him about it as I was walking away. Rich people always thought someone was the maid. And honestly, he wasn’t too far off.