The One That I Want

by Marilyn Brant

  “Maybe, he is—a little,” I said.

  Or maybe he’s not…

  I couldn’t tell Shar everything Dane and I had been talking about on Friday morning. I’d promised utter secrecy when it came to information about his daughter, and I wouldn’t go back on my word to him, not even to share it with my most trusted friend.

  Because of that, I knew Shar wouldn’t be able to understand why Dane was so tense and worried about what the reporters might say or what the consequences their public insinuations might have on his relationship with his daughter. Why he was probably feeling especially vulnerable that day—trapped, as he was, in my basement after he’d just shared all of this personal information about himself with me. Why he’d tried so hard to warn me, even though I hadn’t been listening closely enough then.

  Within twenty-four hours, though, I came to understand that the Tinseltown Buzz story wasn’t something we could easily brush away. It wasn’t a slow, containable leak, dribbling out a few rumors and lies about us.

  It was more like a flash flood, with the intent to drown.

  ~*~

  After the first set of ceaseless telephone calls on Friday, I turned off the ringer on my home phone and muted my cell. Then I watched Dane as he rapid-fire texted a series of messages on his own cell phone.

  “I need to let my agent and the PR people know about this,” he explained wearily to me. “To prepare for whatever ends up in tomorrow’s paper. You know when media people say things like ‘Representatives for the actor declined to comment on recent allegations that he did such and such’ and they go on to tell their readers or viewers whatever heinous things the actor reportedly did?”

  I nodded.

  “The people I’m calling now are the ones who’ll need to either comment or decline to comment on my behalf,” he added.

  Although I didn’t have to listen to my two phones ringing anymore, I couldn’t do anything about the intermittent knocking on the door, short of calling the police and reporting the paparazzi on our lawn for harassment.

  Don’t think I didn’t consider this. Seriously.

  But somehow I doubted that a squad car in the neighborhood would lessen the migraine I was getting. Besides, I had to know what Dane wanted me to do before I acted impulsively and contacted anyone. I didn’t want to make matters worse for him.

  Dane finished up his first set of texts and sighed. “In a few minutes I’ll have to give Marissa and Cat a call. They’ll need a heads up so they don’t get blindsided. I can’t tell you how much I’m not looking forward to that conversation.”

  I rubbed my pounding head. This situation seemed ridiculous. So unnecessarily complicated. “Dane, we haven’t done anything wrong—legally or morally. We’re single, consenting adults. Just tell them that if they hear anything about you and me, it means nothing. That we’re friends and we were just hanging out together during the time you were here. That the press was pestering us and they jumped to conclusions.”

  His face turned from pale to a surprising shade of red. “No,” he said loudly. “For one thing, this is not ‘nothing.’ Do you really think I’d put myself in this kind of position for something insignificant?” He streaked his fingers through his hair, and then crossed his arms and glared at me. “Dammit, Julia. I don’t care what the public thinks of me, but I never lie to my daughter. And I don’t lie to anyone else I care about either.” He shot me a pointed look. “The tabloids are a pain in the ass, but the biggest problem we have here is that you don’t trust me. You don’t believe what I’ve been telling you. You don’t think what I feel can be real.”

  I blinked at him. I wanted to tell him that I believed every word he’d said, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t deny my skepticism. Not with everything I knew about infatuation and enchantments.

  “Maybe you’re right,” I said. “Maybe I don’t completely trust whatever this thing is between us because it’s happening too fast and feels too much like a schoolgirl fantasy to me to be real. But let’s face it, Dane. Say what you will, but you don’t entirely trust me either. When those reporters came calling, the first thing you did was accuse me of blabbing information about you to my friends. You pay lip service to the idea that you know me, that you’ve watched my behavior and believe I wouldn’t betray you, but the instant that notion is challenged, you change your story.”

  “Look, I’m angry about our privacy being violated. About whatever pictures of us they’re going to dig up. About the incredibly deceptive piece of fiction they’re going to print tomorrow as if it were truth, and how fast their slanderous words will go viral. But it was a mistake if anything I said made you think I was accusing you.”

  I shrugged. “I didn’t contact any reporters. I didn’t tell my friends a single thing about you that wasn’t common knowledge or that they couldn’t see firsthand when they met you. But you realize that trust and love don’t happen on command, right? Some things can’t be rushed. Some things take time, even when they’re the right things. Like…grapes. You can choose the right grapes for a wine, but you still need to give the grapes the time to ripen. If they get pressed too early, they’ll be bitter.”

  “Wow.” He shook his head. “That’s a terrible metaphor.” But I could see a small smile tugging up the corner of one side of his mouth.

  “Perhaps, but that doesn’t make it less true.”

  “Julia, there’s more to all of this than you realize. I’ve gotten slammed by the Tinseltown Buzz before, and they’ll include just enough truth in their bundle of lies to keep people guessing. To get people who’ve known you all your life to doubt what you say. The wild card in all of this is what they’ll have uncovered about you. And what that’ll do to this thing we’ve begun. This right thing. Which, for the record, I think has a shot at lasting if we don’t screw it up. Do you agree?”

  This much I couldn’t deny—Dane and I did have things in common, and we were genuinely attracted to each other. We’d developed a real friendship, however newly formed. If he hadn’t been a celebrity, I would have been much more hopeful of anything between us lasting for a little while.

  But that particular element of his life wasn’t just one small part of his existence; it nearly defined him. His fame wasn’t just a deterrent to our personal privacy and our time alone together, but it was practically an entity in itself that would stalk our lives together. Adam’s “popularity” in town had been bad enough. Everywhere we went in Mirabelle Harbor, people would recognize him and, frequently, they came up to us to chat. I immediately noticed the absence of that interference whenever we went on vacation together, and I was always relieved to be away.

  How could I sign up for a life that would have a thousand times more scrutiny—maybe a million times more—and not just for myself but for Analise, too?

  “I don’t know,” I murmured. “And I don’t know how you think you can know either.”

  His light-blue eyes turned dark. “Maybe you’re right,” he snapped. “This,” he motioned between us, “might have all just been some hallucination of mine.” He nodded abruptly at his phone. “May I have a few minutes alone please?”

  “Of course.” I went upstairs, careful to avoid walking in front of any open windows. The news people were still milling around outside but, eventually, they’d have to leave, right?

  I could hear Dane’s voice downstairs. Not his actual words but his intonation. He was stressed out. Frustrated. Angry.

  It took almost an hour before he emerged from the basement and joined me in the kitchen.

  “Coffee?” I asked him.

  He shook his head. “I’m going to be leaving in a few minutes.”

  “You’re going outside? Driving away?” I looked doubtfully toward the front door.

  “No. I called Samuel. He’s going to pick me up in the cul-de-sac behind your house.” He pointed toward our backyard and the tree-lined area that divided our lawn from our neighbors’ garden. Beyond that was their little paved circle.

  “That’s
not a bad spot,” I acknowledged. “It’s very low traffic. As long as you can get over there without any of the press people out front seeing you.”

  “I’m counting on it. I just need to wait for a distraction.”

  A distraction? I could only think of one thing that would bring everyone around to the front. I swallowed. “Do you want me to go out there? If I open the door and talk to—”

  “God, no. Samuel’s eldest son is going to help me with that. And either he or Samuel will come back later for my car.” Dane suddenly pulled me into his arms and crushed me to him. “I’m sorry for all of this. The sooner I get out of your house, the sooner your life has a chance to go back to normal. I just wish…I don’t know. I wish you could have seen what I saw in us, and that it would have been enough to make all this trouble worth it.”

  He gazed at me sadly and kissed my forehead before stepping away.

  “Dane—” I began.

  There was a weird clattering sound out front, like a motor scooter had just rammed into a couple of metal garbage cans or something and was dragging them by our house.

  “That’s my cue,” Dane said, grabbing his things and quietly unlocking the sliding glass door to the back patio. “Take care of yourself, Julia. I’ll talk with you, um…later.”

  He poked his head outside to look around. The coast must have been clear in the backyard because he slipped away. As I locked the sliding door behind him, I saw him make a clean dash to the cul-de-sac in the distance and hop into a silver sedan that was idling in wait.

  Thanks, Samuel. Take good care of him, will you?

  I turned my attention back to the front of my house, just in time to see a jeep with a man and woman in it, driving away. It had tons of metal cans attached to the back, as if the couple were newlyweds. Was that Samuel’s son with his wife or, maybe, his girlfriend? Either way, I mentally thanked them, too.

  With Dane gone, I decided to check all of the messages I’d gotten since I’d clicked off the phones. Between the home line and my cell, there were so many voicemails and texts that I had to sit down.

  The same “unknown” number—which I now knew belonged to that obnoxious Tinseltown Buzz reporter, Caryn-something—had shown up over twenty times.

  Shar had texted, saying, “Are you okay?! Yvette said there was a news crew in front of your house…”

  Speaking of Yvette, she’d left two voicemails—one on my home line and another on my cell—the gist of which was, “What is going on over there? Do you need any help, Julia? Let me know. I can be right over if you need me!”

  Kristopher had sent a text, too. “Hey! Sorry I lost my temper the last time we were together. Can we just let bygones be bygones? Wanna grab some coffee this week?”

  Analise hadn’t left a message, but there was an odd, cryptic voicemail from her counselor Shannon. “Mrs. Crane, sorry to bother you. Analise is fine, but there’s this woman who keeps calling the camp and asking questions about her and your family…”

  Oh, good heavens.

  I called Shannon back first, thanked her for letting me know about this, and told her that this woman was big trouble.

  “Don’t worry, Mrs. Crane. We didn’t give her any information,” Shannon assured me, “and we won’t. I just thought you should be aware of her questions.”

  After being promised several times that my daughter was perfectly fine and safe, I finished my conversation with the camp counselor and gave Yvette a quick call back.

  “The news people have been asking the neighbors questions about you and Dane,” she said. “I told Mrs. Lancaster to zip it when she started blabbing to them about how you’d always been a fan of his movies. But, Julia, I don’t know if anybody said anything they shouldn’t have when I wasn’t around. The reporters have been like ants swarming around an ice cream spill on the sidewalk.”

  “I know.” I sighed. “Thanks for trying to keep the lid on my personal life.”

  “Is there, um…anything actually newsworthy going on over there?” Yvette asked.

  “No,” I said quickly. “Dane and I are friends. We were just hanging out at my house.”

  “Okay,” she replied. But I could hear the doubt in her voice, and I knew even sweet Yvette didn’t completely believe my story.

  I read through the text messages I’d gotten, deleted Kristopher’s immediately, but I did send a short response back to Shar.

  “I’m okay,” I texted her. “But from what Dane said, there will probably be some kind of story in the Tinseltown Buzz tomorrow. In print, online, or maybe both. If you see it before I do, give me a call. Otherwise, we’ll talk for sure in the morning.”

  She replied within thirty seconds. “I’m here for you, girlfriend. Don’t forget that. No matter what happens. I don’t care about any stinkin’ news crew stalking your place either. If you need someone to keep you company, I can be on your front doorstep in ten minutes.”

  I loved my best friend.

  “You’re the BEST, Shar,” I texted. “But stay home for now. I may need you even more tomorrow…”

  ~*~

  I didn’t have to wait until it was Saturday morning in the Chicagoland area before the shit officially hit the fan.

  Nope. I got a text from Dane just after eleven p.m., which would have been after midnight on the East Coast but only nine at night in Hollywood. Guess the reporters didn’t want to delay their attempt to ruin our lives for even an hour longer than necessary.

  “You have no idea how sorry I am about all this,” Dane wrote in his message, which included a link to the Tinseltown Buzz website. “I’d understand if you wanted me to stay away from you now and forevermore. Far away.”

  I didn’t reply to him at first—not for a couple of hours, in fact—because I was too busy reading the “article” (such that it was) and trying to recover from my shock. On the tabloid’s homepage, in huge letters across the screen, it said:

  FADING ACTOR & MERRY WIDOW’S SECRET LOVE TRYST!

  Oh, shit.

  And in smaller letters, a byline with a name I knew: Caryn Dizinger.

  I hadn’t recognized her voice on the phone, but she may have been trying to disguise it. After all, I’d done my best to get away from her at both the theater and the radio station. She was clearly mean-spirited, but she wasn’t stupid. She knew I didn’t want to talk to her. And with good reason.

  I held my breath as I scanned the opening paragraph. It went from bad to worse to truly appalling:

  Aging actor Dane Tyler—on the verge of hitting forty-something status—has bounced back from the crushing blow of being dumped by America’s sweetheart, Emily Brennan. He’s now got an unexpected new girlfriend that has set everyone’s Tinseltown tongues wagging! He and a recent widow—prim schoolteacher and mother, Julia Crane—have been playing house in the upscale northern Chicago suburb of Mirabelle Harbor. It’s reportedly a torrid affair that began in secret months ago. Some suggest that their relationship even preceded the death of Crane’s late husband. Was that, perhaps, what pushed the poor man to an early grave?

  I wanted to kill that Dizinger bitch.

  Really and truly.

  I imagined dismembering her, limb by limb. I didn’t want to read on, but I knew I had to. It would be worse not to know. But, oh God. How many people were going to see this piece of trash and believe it?

  One friend of Crane’s, who spoke to us on condition of anonymity, stated adamantly that Crane and Tyler had been involved for years. “Julia has been obsessed with him since high school,” Crane’s friend claimed. “I’m not surprised they ended up together. She’d literally do anything to win his affection.”

  Who the hell was this supposed “friend” of mine? He or she would be on the executioner’s block, too, if I had anything to say about it.

  Sources close to the actor assured us that this month’s tryst with the widow was merely a fling for him, though. “Dane’s known for always having quick rebound action after a relationship ends. But he’s still hurting b
adly over Emily’s abandonment,” said an actor pal.

  Of course, maybe, these revelations about Tyler’s Midwestern and (until recently) married love interest succeed in shedding more light on Brennan’s departure from his life. “Dane has a pattern of infidelity,” another member of the acting community confided, “He’s charming but rarely sincere. Emily knew she couldn’t stick around for more of his bad-boy behavior.”

  For however long it lasts, it’s certainly looking as though the fading actor and the merry widow have been enjoying themselves in the Windy City and the surrounding areas. Just look at these exclusive photos below and tell us that you don’t agree that this is a couple who can barely keep their hands off each other.

  What followed were a dozen snapshots taken from a variety of angles and in nearly every location Dane and I had been together. Not only did they have candid shots of us together at the theater and slow dancing during the VIP party, but someone had snapped photos of us talking in the hallway of the radio station and also in the lobby of Dane’s hotel—even before he’d started signing autographs. There was one of us by the elevators, too, taken from the back. We were holding hands and leaning in to whisper to each other. I hadn’t realized anyone had been there watching.

  And, oh, there were camp photos as well, which looked like they were pulled directly off of Facebook or Instagram and printed without permission. I doubted the people who’d originally took these photos even knew they’d been purloined for this purpose. But, worst of all, there were some long-lens shots of Dane and me in front of my house. Getting out of his rental car. Going inside. Even one fuzzy photo of Dane kissing me by the door. These bastards must have been stalking us for days.

  Tyler has spent the past month in the city playing a wild ladies’ man who juggles relationships with multiple women simultaneously in the Knightsbridge Theater production of “The Bachelor Pad.” His performance onstage earned him only tepid praise, but he really seemed to take the show’s lead character to heart. Method acting, anyone?