by Roxy Reid
Elinor looks from me to the contract, confused, and a little pissed, “What’s going on? I thought I was speaking with Joshua. And how do you know about King productions?” She narrows her famous silvery-blue eyes at me, “Wait. You’re not an employee. You’re Joshua’s fiancée. This is ridiculous.”
Elinor tries to move around me to get to the door, but I block her in, “Oh no you don’t. You’ve been making him walk on hot coals for too long. You’re not leaving this room without signing the contract.”
She sniffs, and the amount of disdain in that one gesture is stunning, “You can’t make me be in a movie.”
I throw up my hands, “Then don’t be in the movie! There are plenty of other actresses who would die for this part. And none of them have a shot as long as Joshua’s hung up on you.”
“... other actresses?” She’s looking out the window, trying to play it cool, but I can see I have her attention.
So I do what any good Hollywood person would do. I start making shit up, “Of course he’d rather have you. You’re a once in a lifetime talent. But if you’re too busy to commit, there was this one actress from New York. A stage actress his family knows. It would be her screen debut, of course, which is a risk, but with someone of her pedigree…” I trail off.
“Who? Who is it?” Elinor demands. “Elizabeth Tigard? Beth Killingsworth? One of the Emerson sisters?”
“I’m sure you understand, she demands the same kind of discretion you do, and I’ve already said too much.” I lift up the contract. “So do you want the part, or…”
Elinor stares me down. I hold my breath and pray I haven’t lost Joshua his lead actress.
Slowly, Elinor shakes her head, and my heart sinks.
“I don’t care if you’re bluffing,” she says. “I don’t respond well to threats or ultimatums. And I have no intention of working with–”
“Oh, give me a break!” I burst out. “You give threats and ultimatums all the time.”
“What are you talking about?” Elinor asks cooly.
“You’re whole ‘if the media finds out I won’t work with you.’ It’s a gossipy town! The media finds out everything eventually. But Joshua has been bending over backwards to keep this a secret for you,” I say.
She purses her lips, “I hardly think not blabbing to the paparazzi counts as bending over backwards.”
“We’re in a fake-engagement because of you! I just… ARGH!” I dig my hands into my hair. I don’t know what else to say to this woman. I take a deep breath and try to calm down. “Look, I know you’re a legend. But he is too. And more than that, he’s a good man, who puts more into the things that matter to him than anyone else I have known in my entire life. And you get the chance to be part of the thing he cares about most in the entire world: doing this movie right.”
I step closer to Elinor, trying to make her understand, “This is going to be a success, with or without you. It’s going to be a once in a generation movie, with or without you. And it’s going to be the highlight of a lot of people’s careers.”
“But,” I continue, “it’s not going to be the highlight of his. For Joshua, this is just the beginning of a charged, creative, history-making future.” I hold out the contract to her one last time. “So do you want to be part of that future, or not?”
Elinor blinks, “Really? You’re not engaged? Because that sounds like the speech of a woman in love.”
It’s like being punched in the stomach. Because there’s my answer, right there. To why I can’t get over him. Why I’m so obsessed with getting him the perfect goodbye gift.
It’s because I’m in love with him. I’m in love with Joshua King.
“Oh, honey,” Elinor says, her eyes on face. “Did you really not know?”
She gives me a pitying look, then holds out her hand, “Oh what the hell. This won’t be any worse than Angels in Space. Give me the damn contract.”
I pass the contract and the pen over, the small jolt of triumph at my success overwhelmed by the crushing realization that I’m in love with a man who can’t ever loosen up enough to choose me. Love can conquer a lot, but it can’t conquer always being in second place. And I would be only second place, with him.
“So why didn’t you two lovebirds make it work?” Elinor asks, her eyes skimming the contract.
“Irreconcilable differences,” I say. Which sounds like a line but is also, tragically true. “People don’t change.”
Elinor nods absently and starts to sign, when the door slams open, startling us both.
Joshua stands framed in the doorway, looking like he ran a mile to get here. His suit is rumpled, his collar is unbuttoned, and his hair is a mess.
He’s never looked sexier to me.
To my surprise, Joshua ignores me completely, and heads right for Elinor. “You’re a very hard woman to find. Also your assistant is oddly terrified of people from my office.” He rips the contract out of her hands. “Don’t sign that.”
Elinor blinks, “I thought the thing about the stage actress was a bluff.”
“It would have been a privilege to work with an actress of your stature, and please believe me when I say I value your need for discretion and I understand that what I’m about to do means you won’t want to work with me.”
Finally Joshua looks at me, and there’s so much heat and tenderness and painful hope in his gaze that it floors me. He crosses to me and kisses me, hard and fast. Like he’s kissing me for courage.
Joshua turns back to Elinor, “But right now I need to make a grand romantic gesture.”
He crinkles the contract up into a ball of paper and tosses it on the ground, before striding out of the room and back into the courtyard.
Elinor and I both look at each other, then hurry to follow.
Joshua hops on the stage and grabs the mic. A waiter tries to pass him champagne, thinking he’s giving his scheduled toast, but Joshua waves it away.
Across the crowd, Joshua looks dead at me. And then he begins to speak.
“I invited you all here, because I had an announcement to make. I’m launching a production company. King Productions. It’s going to be great, because I’m partnering with some of the best people I know, and we make good stuff. This speech, this event, this night was supposed to be building to that big reveal.
“But here’s the thing. I met this woman. This smart, passionate, vibrant woman. Her text messages are pretty funny too.” Polite, uncertain chuckles float across the room. No one knows what’s going on, but there’s that electric sense that this is a genuine, unplanned moment, and anything can happen. All of the reporters are on high alert, and the cameras are flashing away. “And because I was trying to keep this production company, and the possibility of Elinor Swift’s involvement, a secret from you all–” he gestures to the flashing cameras, “–I asked this woman to pretend to be my fiancée. As a distraction from - and for - the press.”
A few of the cameras figure out what’s going on and swing toward me. I have a weird, surreal moment of being glad I bought the red dress after all, since no matter how this ends, I’m going to be on the front page of every gossip site tomorrow.
“As you can imagine, a fake engagement isn’t the best way to start a relationship,” Joshua says, and the room laughs. “But Sienna is a great partner in crime. She’s a great… well everything. And I fell pretty hard.”
I can’t take my eyes off Joshua. I can’t believe what he’s doing.
“With a start like that,” he continues, “it was hard to get her to trust me. And when one night I picked my career over her, it was hard to convince her that it wouldn’t always be like that. Always me leaving to try to control my career, to try to control what you all say about me. So she left first.”
There are murmurs of sympathy across the room. A few of the women’s eyes shoot daggers at me, but I ignore them to focus on Joshua.
“And I couldn’t blame her, because I never even told her how I felt. So. Um. Yeah. I’m going to do t
hat now.”
The room is so silent you could hear a pin drop. Not even the cameras are flashing now. I’m sure the whole room can hear my heartbeat.
“Jesus, this is nerve wracking,” Joshua says, but even that doesn’t cut the tension in the room. The waiter offers him a champagne flute again, and this time Joshua takes it.
With a rueful smile, he turns back to face the crowd, lifting the champagne in a toast, “To Sienna Bridges. This is me blowing up the launch party within a launch party that you so perfectly planned – a round of applause everyone, for the sheer number of event binders this woman made – to tell you I love you. Desperately, madly, irrevocably. And I will choose a wild and wonderful life with you over the bland and tidy life I always thought I wanted.”
He smiles, and it’s that wistful, crooked smile that’s been haunting my dreams, “I can always rebuild my career. I can’t rebuild us. If you leave, I’m pretty damn well fucked.”
He spears me with his gaze and raises his glass, “I love you, Sienna. Please don’t take that ring off just yet.”
Then he steps back from the mic and chugs his high-end champagne like it’s gatorade and he just finished the race of his life.
Meanwhile, every camera in the house swings to me, and people start shouting questions.
“Do you love him, Sienna?”
“Are you going to marry him?”
“Is the engagement real now?”
“What designer will you be wearing to the wedding?”
“What would you say to those who call you an opportunistic gold-digger?”
It’s the day in front of the jewelry store all over again, and I can feel myself getting dizzy.
“HEY!” Joshua bellows into the mic, and they all step back to cover their ears.
“Leave her alone,” Joshua says. “If you want press access to me or my films ever again, you leave her the fuck alone.”
Elinor wraps an arm around my shoulders, “That’s our cue, love.” She ushers me out of the courtyard and back into the room I dragged her into earlier. Once we’re inside, she let’s go of me to shut the door behind us.
The crumpled, unsigned contract still lies on the floor where Joshua tossed it.
I still can’t believe he did that. I can’t believe he did any of that. Joshua hates that kind of messy vulnerability.
“What… what was that?” I ask, raising my hands to my face. I don’t think I’ve ever been as shocked in my entire life.
“That,” Elinor says, “was the sound of a man changing. You would not believe the amount of hours I have spent listening to that young man drone on about King Productions, and this movie, and what it means to him, and how carefully he’s planned it all out. And he just threw a major wrench in that plan, for you.”
“But he can’t mean… I’ve only known him for…”
Elinor studies me, then shrugs, “You don’t have to say yes to him, any more than I do.” She puts the rumpled contract in her purse, then turns to go.
Elinor puts her hand on the doorknob, then turns back to me one last time, “For what it’s worth. I have lived my entire adult life in a town pull of professional liars. It’s the flip side of trying to make the stories we do.” Elinor nods to the world beyond the door, “But, the man on that stage? He wasn’t lying about a damn thing.”
I bite my lip, my heart pounding with a terrible, wondrous thrill, as I begin to believe her. Begin to believe everything Joshua just said.
“The question,” Elinor Swift says as she opens the door, “is what are you going to do about it?”
By the time I pull myself together and realize what I have to do, Joshua has disappeared from the party. So have the reporters and photographers, who are all rushing off, trying to be the first to post the story. Though which story they’re posting is anyone’s guess.
The rest of the guests are wandering around, cheerful and boozy. None of them have seen Joshua, although one lady is pretty sure he took off after Elinor and I left the stage area.
“I think he took it hard,” she says, wobbling in her heels and sloshing champagne on the flagstones under her feet. “When he said he loved you like that in front of the whole world, and you didn’t say it back.”
I finally find Darian, but all he knows is that Joshua bought one of the guest’s motorcycles, and took off toward the coastal highway.
I groan. Joshua King, the love of my life, is so damn extra. He literally bought a motorcycle? Because I made him wait twenty minutes for an answer?
“He’ll make it home, eventually,” Darian says. “Sometimes he just disappears like this, when he needs to burn off steam. No one has any idea where he goes, not even Brittney or his family. But he always comes back. And he’s always ready to listen when he does.”
That’s when I realize. No one else knows where he goes. But I do. And I can’t wait until he gets back. I have to talk to him now.
“Darian, I need to borrow your car. Mine’s trapped behind the catering van.”
“Jesus, you’re as bad as he is,” Darian complains. But he digs in his pockets and tosses me the keys.
I catch them and blink, “These are the keys to a Porsche.”
“What, did you think Joshua paid me crap? I don’t take 3:00 a.m. calls for the love of the job,” he waves me off. “Go find your true love or whatever. And don’t scratch my car!”
I’m already sprinting to the parking lot.
21
Joshua
The sea spreads out before me as I stand on the bluff overlooking my favorite beach, leaning against the motorcycle, trying not to think of all the ways I just made a spectacular fool of myself.
But as the sun creeps closer to the horizon, I’m also, oddly, coming to some sort of peace. There’s nothing else I could have done. It hurts like hell to lay all your cards on the table like that, and still come up short. But it would fuck me up even more to always be asking “what-if” about Sienna Bridges.
The salt air stings my face, which feels appropriate. Every part of me feels raw.
The most fucked up thing, though? The person I want to reach out to for comfort is still Sienna.
Ok, looking at the beach isn’t cutting it. I’m going to have to take a walk down there and walk in the water until I’m numb. Hopefully no one steals my newly acquired ride home.
I’m reaching down to tug my shoes off, when I hear the squeal of tires.
It’s Darian’s car. At first I’m irritated and bewildered — how the hell did he find me? — but then the door opens and a woman’s legs emerge, followed by a red dress I remember very, very well.
It’s Sienna. Of course, it’s Sienna. No one else knows about this place.
She gets out and walks toward me, and I drink her in. She’s so beautiful it hurts to look at her. Like she’s snatched my heart and replaced it with a constant ache.
But I wouldn’t look away for anything. It’s probably a matter of minutes before she walks out of my life forever, and I’m not missing an instant of the time I have left.
Sienna comes to me, tentative, a slight smile lurking at the corner of her mouth. That smile is doing horrible things to me. It’s whispering Maybe she changed her mind, and Maybe she does love you, and Maybe it’s a pity smile. You’re pathetic and she pities you.
But there’s nothing tentative when she reaches up and presses her lips softly against mine. She’s sweet and sure, and I’m terrified this is a goodbye kiss. I pull her in as close as I can get her, sliding my hands up her back, through her hair, across her cheek. I need her so badly, in every way one person can need another. And the way she’s kissing me, her hands fisted in my shirt, holding me exactly where she wants me as she slides her hips against mine, I think maybe she needs me too.
Sienna pulls back to look at me, and I feel the first wild beat of hope.
And then she takes off the engagement ring, and my world comes crashing down.
Everything inside me revolts. No. This is not how it ends.
/> Sienna has to grab my hand and pry it open, then forcefully fold it around the ring, because I don’t want to take that ring back. In fact, if it’s not on her, I don’t even want to touch it.
I turn away and crook my arm back to throw it into the sea.
“My God, you’re melodramatic,” Sienna says. “If you don’t care about the money, at least hawk it and give the proceeds to charity.”
“Is that why you don’t want the ring?” I say, turning back to her, and I can’t keep the bite out of my voice. “Because I’m too dramatic?”
“No, I don’t want the ring because it’s ugly.”
“It is not ugly!” I say indignant. “It’s valuable!”
“It’s gaudy!” Sienna snatches the ring back from me, and holds it up to make her point. “And it symbolizes a fake engagement! If I’m going to wear something, I want it to be real.”
I freeze. Did she just… Is she saying…
“What exactly are you telling me?” I ask.
My heart’s in my throat.
This is the longest second of my life.
And then she breaks into a radiant smile. It’s so brilliant, I can feel the warmth of it in my toes.
“Will you buy me a real ring, Joshua King? One that actually looks like me?”
“Anything. Anything you want?” I crush her to me, just breathing in her scent, my eyes threatening to water because she’s not leaving after all. She’s mine. Sienna Bridges is mine.
Have I ever been this happy? I don’t remember being this happy.
“Just to be clear, I’m planning on wearing it on my right hand. At least for a while,” Sienna leans back just far enough to look me in the eye. “I think we should date. Like for real. Like a normal couple. And then if you still want to…” she makes a motion with her hand.