Incidental Happenstance

by DeSalvo, Kim

  Lexi was at her house in ten minutes, and she immediately put her arms around Tia and held her while she cried. “How about the two of us get away for a week over the holidays?” she suggested. “We could go sit on a beach somewhere in the Caribbean, drink pina coladas and shamelessly flirt with cabana boys, get massages on the beach…”

  “Oh damn it, the holidays!” Tia whined. “When I told my parents I was going to Australia, they booked a cruise. I don’t even have a place to spend Christmas now!”

  “Of course you do—you’ll spend it with us!” Lexi said immediately. “You know you’re one of the family. My parents would love to have you.”

  “Son of a bitch!” Tia bellowed. “I’m sure I’ll take you up on that, but right now, I don’t know how I can celebrate anything. I’d be horrible company on the beach, too, and it wouldn’t be fun for either of us. Maybe spring break, OK? I might be more human by then.”

  “OK, spring break in the Bahamas, then,” Lexi suggested.

  “Lex,” she said sadly, “I need to keep this break-up a secret until after Christmas, OK?”

  “Why?” she asked, flabergasted.

  “My parents are so excited about their trip, and if I tell them I’m not going to Australia; that Dylan and I broke up--” her voice cracked as she said it, “they’ll cancel their trip. Or worse, insist that I go with them. Either way, I don’t want them to know just yet. And for God’s sake, please don’t say anything to Jace—the last thing I need is for him to start bugging me.”

  Lexi looked at the ground. “About that,” she said slowly.

  “Oh shit,” she moaned, “please don’t tell me he already knows!”

  “I didn’t tell him, but Ryan was there when you called, and I’m sure he heard. He might have mentioned something to him, I can’t be sure.”

  “Shiiit,” Tia groaned. “Please intervene, would you? I don’t want to deal with him.”

  “I will, don’t worry,” she said, but she definitely sounded worried.

  The flowers arrived at school three days later, a huge bouquet of tropical colors. Lilly called her down to the office while her kids were in art class.

  “Looks like someone’s thinking of you today,” she said slyly, pointing at the bouquet. “These were just delivered for you.”

  Dylan! Tia thought, pulling off the plastic to get at the card. They were so much like the flowers he’d gotten her when they’d said goodbye the first time; pretty and unique, just like you, he’d said. She pulled the card out of the envelope and read the message, her face falling. “How about a fresh start?... Jace” the card read.

  All Tia’s hopes came crashing down. “When hell freezes over,” Tia whispered under her breath, tossing the card in the recycle bin. She completely deflated, and was close to tears.

  Lilly looked at her with concern. “Now that doesn’t look like the face of someone who just got beautiful flowers from her boyfriend,” she said. “What’s wrong?”

  Tia looked up at her friend, unable to hide her pain. “Dylan and I broke up, Lilly,” she admitted. “These aren’t from him, but I was hoping they were.”

  “What? When did that happen? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “A couple weeks ago,” she sighed. “I haven’t said anything to anyone yet really. I don’t want it to be true, and I keep hoping that we’ll work things out somehow. Plus, my parents have planned a trip for Christmas, and I don’t want them to feel obligated to…”

  “Australia,” Lilly said sadly. “You were supposed to go and meet him there.” She pulled Tia into a hug. “Oh honey, I’m so very sorry. But he’s not worth a lick if he doesn’t know what a good thing he’s got in you.”

  “He’s already got someone else now, actually,” she said. “Someone he works with.” The tabloid pictures ran through her mind again. She’d seen five other covers on several different magazines before she’d started ordering her groceries online and having them delivered.

  “No wonder you’ve been in such a funk lately,” she said, rubbing slow circles over Tia’s back. “I just thought you were fighting that bug that’s been going around.” She pulled back and took Tia by the shoulders. “So what’re you doing for Christmas, then? Marcus and I would love to have you join us.”

  “That’s sweet Lilly, thanks, but I think I’ll probably be going to Lexi’s.”

  “Well, the invitation’s open if you need it,” she said, “and you know I’m always here for you if you want to talk. You know I love bashing men, especially over a bottle of Merlot.”

  Tia glanced up with longing at the picture of Dylan that still held its place of honor on Lilly’s bulletin board. “I’ll let you know,” she said, walking out of the office.

  “Wait, don’t forget your flowers!” Lilly called to her.

  “You keep them,” she said, her voice flat and emotionless. “I don’t want them.”

  Chapter 33

  Penelope checked out the photos Angela had taken with her telephoto lens. “I like this one, this one, and this one,” she said pointing to the images. “Go ahead and submit them.”

  “Got it,” she said, agreeing with Penelope’s choices. Most of them had been taken during filming so the relationship was purely fabricated, but since they were both pretty good actors, they looked natural, like they were a real couple. Plus, by the time Steve got done with them, they’d all be in different locations that looked nothing like the set.

  Penelope had letters now, dozens of them. Angela now delivered them straight to her, and she’d been instructed to destroy the ones that came for Dylan. She was much more interested in the letters Dylan sent anyway—she was able to erase Tia’s name and insert her own, adding them to her collection of times she and Dylan hadn’t yet shared, but would soon enough. Her photo album was full, and she’d moved on to a second scrap book. The letters were coming so frequently now that she hadn’t had time to keep up—her little shoe box was nearly full and she needed to find some time to get to them; put them in their proper places. It was only a matter of time now until Dylan turned to her for the comfort that he so desperately needed—the touch that only a woman could give. She left him alone the first week; let him wallow in the fact that his precious schoolteacher had dumped him. He was moody and irritable and she did her best to get him to confide in her, but he said nothing about the break up. She was also disappointed that he kept writing her—sometimes two letters in the same day—and that he didn’t take down a single picture of her. She let it go for a few more days, but when she saw him sitting in a chair in front of his trailer the next Friday morning, staring blankly into the empty field that bordered their makeshift accommodations, she poured him a mug of coffee and went out to see him.

  “Good morning!” she chirped, balancing the steaming mugs.

  He jumped in his seat—she’d obviously startled him from his deep thoughts.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” she giggled. “I saw you sitting out here without coffee and figured you might like a cup.”

  “Thanks,” he said absent mindedly, taking the coffee and cradling it in his hands without drinking it.

  “What’s up?” she asked casually. “You look like you got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.”

  “I didn’t sleep at all,” he said.

  “Dylan, is something wrong?” The concern in her voice was just enough to sound both innocent and genuine. “You know, it’s been pretty hard not to notice that something’s been going on with you the past couple weeks. I’m your friend, remember? You can talk to me about anything.”

  “It’ll be fine,” he said, still hoping he’d hear from Tia and not volunteering any further information. He’d sent at least a dozen emails and written two more letters last night. There was still a chance she’d respond, and until then, he wasn’t giving Penelope anything that she could misconstrue.

  Penelope was disappointed that he didn’t share the news with her, but didn’t let it show. She went up behind him and wrapped her a
rms around his neck from behind and whispered in his ear, “Guess which scene we need to practice?”

  Shit, he thought. Tomorrow they’d do their first romantic scene and have their first on- screen kiss. Dylan had figured he’d get through it by thinking about Tia, but now, thinking about her broke his heart. He’d have to get through it somehow, but right now, the last thing he wanted to do was pretend to be romantic with Penelope Valentine. He didn’t know if he could pretend anything, actually—a deep depression was taking hold of him and he felt powerless to fight it.

  “Can we do it a bit later?” he said. “I was thinking about running into town this morning, picking up a few things and dropping off some mail.” He could check to see if he’d gotten any letters from Tia then too, and get away from this place for a little bit.

  “Actually,” Penelope said, thinking fast, “I’ve got some stuff going on this afternoon and then we have the evening shoot…and Angela is going into town anyway. Just make a list and she can get whatever you need. Sorry, but I think we’re going to have to run the scene now.”

  “Fine, whatever,” he said absently, going into the trailer and coming out with a pad, a pen, and two envelopes. He scribbled a list, and handed the stack to Penelope.

  “I’ll just go get my script, and drop these to Angie. I’ll be right back!”

  She exhaled with relief that Dylan hadn’t insisted on going to the post office—her plan depended on the two of them not having any contact. Angela had told her that Tia’s letters were still coming too—why wouldn’t either of them just give it up? She’d have to keep a closer eye on that in the future, she realized—if just one letter got through, everything would come crashing down. She slipped the envelopes under a magazine on her coffee table to read later—she could hardly wait. The letters he wrote these days were dripping with love and sentiment, and she loved imagining they were all about her. Soon enough, he’d be saying those things to her, and her stomach did little back flips at the thought. She grabbed her script, dropped the shopping list at Angela’s, and grew giddy with anticipation at the thought of her and Dylan’s first big make-out scene. She hoped they’d have to practice it over and over before it was perfect.

  She was more than a little disappointed when they got to the kiss and Dylan backed off. They had run the lines, professing love for each other in hushed tones. It was the easiest role she’d ever played; she didn’t need to act anymore when she told Dylan that she’d been in love with him for longer than she could remember and couldn’t believe they’d wasted so much time not being together. When she leaned in for the kiss, though, Dylan pulled back and put his hands on her shoulders, stopping her forward momentum. “Um, the scene’s not over yet,” she said seductively.

  “It is for now,” Dylan said, turning away. “I think that was great, we’ll nail it in one take tomorrow.”

  “But the kiss…”

  “Is for when the cameras are rolling,” he finished. “I don’t need to practice that; I’m fairly well accomplished, trust me.”

  “But we don’t know what it’s like to kiss each other,” she said. “We need to work on the chemistry.”

  “There isn’t any chemistry, Penelope. It’s acting—pretend and make-believe. It just has to look good on camera, and it will.”

  Penelope was incredibly disappointed, but couldn’t let it show too much. She wanted their first kiss to be perfect, not in front of the entire crew, and certainly not in one take. She’d have to blunder a line or two, or giggle or something, to make sure they needed to run that scene over and over again. “Of course it will!” she said as she ground her teeth behind her smile. “Hey,” she added, changing the subject, “are you hungry? I made my aunt’s casserole again last night and it should be out of the oven in,” she looked at her watch, “eight minutes. Interested?”

  “No thanks, I’m not hungry,” he said, turning and walking into his trailer and shutting the door. She heard the strum of his guitar, sad slow notes drifting out the window and headed back to her own trailer. This day hadn’t gone as she’d planned it at all.

  Three more weeks passed, each of the players surviving in their own private hell. For Tia, it involved going through the motions at work, hiding her feelings, and trying to appear cheerful on the outside when her insides felt raw and shredded. She’d had a fair amount of practice when she’d first lost Nick, but this was different—Nick had been taken from her, but Dylan had made the choice to remove himself from her life. None of it felt right to her, and no matter how hard she tried to convince herself that it was over, she couldn’t help holding out at least a shred of hope that he’d come to his senses and come back to her—regardless of the evidence staring her in the face constantly, she couldn’t make herself believe he would chose Penelope to spend his life with.

  She’d taken off the Eiffel Tower necklace and placed it in her jewelry box, but people at work noticed and asked why she wasn’t wearing it so she had to put it back on to keep up the façade. It pained her whenever she caught sight of it in the mirror and she’d remember what Dylan had said as he put it around her neck that night in Paris. It was supposed to help her remember that no matter how far apart they were, she was always close to his heart.

  She refused to go into any store or even the gas station for fear of being confronted with another picture of Dylan and Penelope smiling or embracing on the cover of a magazine. But no matter how she tried, she couldn’t escape it. She was in the dentist’s office when she saw the headline that read, ‘Engaged?’ above a picture of the two of them, their foreheads touching, looking deeply into each other’s eyes. She’d had to leave and reschedule the appointment.

  The television was quickly becoming a source for reminders, as well. There were so many tabloid TV shows, commercials for tabloid TV shows, entertainment news during regular broadcasts—but as bad as it made her feel, she couldn’t help but stare whenever Dylan’s image was projected on the screen. She wanted to hate him for what he did to her, and the hurt and anger were still close to unbearable, but there was still that little part of her that just couldn’t make sense of it—she still had too much trouble believing that Dylan would just dump her without an explanation—it just wasn’t the kind of person he was. As the weeks went by however, and she turned her calendar over to December, staring sadly at the little hearts and smiley faces she’d drawn all around the words ‘Dylan in Australia!’ over the bottom half of the page that would be her Christmas break, her hopes faded into fog and drifted away, and she realized that she was going to have to completely rethink her New Year’s resolutions. She was going to have to decide to go on with her life without Dylan.

  Penelope was incredibly frustrated by Dylan’s lack of interest. She was running out of time—her goal was to be in his bed before Christmas, and to have him ask her to join him in Australia for the holidays. Obviously, Tia wasn’t going to be showing up, she smiled.

  Penelope didn’t speak to her family at all; her mother was a demanding bitch who always wanted something from her, and her father hadn’t been part of her life until she started acting, showing up suddenly and wanting to be a daddy again. Yeah, right. Her older sister was so jealous of her younger sibling’s success that she refused to speak to her. She was probably still furious that Penelope had stolen her husband, but she’d given him back, hadn’t she? What it meant was that she had no plans for the holiday; no wonderful get together to share old times and hand out presents. She’d told Dylan that she was going to spend the holidays with her favorite aunt, she of the famous French toast casserole, and she hoped that when dear old auntie kicked the bucket, if nothing else, Dylan would take pity on her and invite her to his celebration. That was the last resort; of course, she’d planned to be a couple by then and get a real invitation. But that was only a few weeks away now, and she hadn’t made any headway in getting him to make a move on her. She’d given him plenty of opportunity and made it obvious that she was willing, but he was still stuck on that stupid girl. He was
still writing her letters nearly every freaking day, hoping that she would give in and respond. Maybe it was time for him to lose her address, as well as all her other contact information. She needed him to get his mind cleared of her once and for all. She’d have to look into that.

  It was killing her that he was nothing more than professional with her on the set, too. Their first kissing scene was downright depressing for her—she meant to screw something up so they’d have to reshoot the scene and she could kiss him again, but when his lips touched hers, she just melted. She tried to intensify the kiss, but he gave it exactly what the scene called for and refused to accept her tongue. When the director yelled “cut,” he turned and walked away without a word, wiping his lips with the back of his hand where her tongue had touched him. There were still a couple pretty hot scenes coming up before the break though, and the big ones in Bora Bora when they got back. She was already dreaming about that.

  She grew increasingly flustered that Dylan hadn’t shared the break up with her, too. He had to know that she was aware that the letters had stopped coming, although Angela had confirmed that they were still rolling in regularly. She wanted him to confide in her, to let her know himself that he was available again. It bothered her that he was still wasting time and energy on such a plain and ordinary person—he was a big star and could have anyone he wanted, and he was still writing her, begging her in his letters to just call him; to give him an explanation. He still loved her, he wrote, and he refused to believe that they were over. At least he wasn’t writing twice a day anymore, so perhaps he was finally getting ready to move on. She’d have to make sure he had every opportunity to do just that—and soon. It was already December and they had just a little over a week of filming left before they broke for the holidays, and she had every intention of spending them in Australia with Dylan.