“What?”
“You’re just funny.”
He smiled. “You had me worried, but you’re doing fine.”
“Thanks. I love your car.”
“I know.”
I had automatically started driving us to my apartment, but the thought just occurred to me that Gavin might want to be invited in—for sex. Thoughts of Matthew had driven my questionable relationship with Gavin from my mind momentarily. And it wasn’t like we’d be alone there. Sophie and Corey were there, of course, and if Maggie was home from her date, she might have already installed hidden cameras in my bedroom so she could sell the sex tape to TMZ. But Gavin was probably assuming there’d be sex.
I was suddenly resolved that he wasn’t going to get it. Who did he think he was? Mr. Biggest Movie Star in the world and “I can get any girl I want to sleep with me even if I’m leaving tomorrow for months and not saying whether I will ever see her again even though I’m happy to tell the press that I love her and am crazy about her.” Yup, that about summed it up. No sex for him. Or me.
Was I just punishing myself here? Maybe I could justify a last goodbye. But no, the truth was that if I made love to Gavin tonight knowing that he was going to leave tomorrow and having nothing resolved between us, well, then I would just cry all over him and that wouldn’t be good for either of us.
Gavin cleared his throat. “You love my car,” he said, breaking into my internal monologue.
“I sure do.”
“But not me.” He let the words hang in the air. Say what?
“What?” Surely he wasn’t saying what I thought he was saying.
“You love my car but not me.” He sat straighter in the tan leather bucket seat. He was no chicken. He was having the relationship talk with me, a mere mortal, and I was the jerk not answering him. He ran his hand through his hair again and then stretched his fingers, flexing them. He obviously wished he were the one driving right now.
“I love you,” I said quietly. Of course I did. I always had. What was the problem with telling him? And why didn’t it feel true?
Gavin’s gaze darted to me, but I kept my eyes fixed on the road.
“You never said anything.” He put his hand over mine on the gear shift.
“And you only say it to the cameras.”
“That’s a fair point.” He exhaled slowly. “I guess I thought you’d make me tell you what I wanted, but you never did.”
“Did you want me to?” I finally glanced over to gauge his expression, but now he was staring out the window.
“It would’ve made things easier. If you were too pushy, it would have been easy to let you go, but you were just so cool and easy to be with. I liked having you around.”
“And that means ‘love’ by Hollywood’s definition?” I downshifted, slowing for traffic.
He turned toward me. “It means I have feelings for you. It means I should have gotten out before now.” He sounded truly vulnerable.
“It’s not wrong to have feelings for someone.”
“It’s dangerous.” He shrugged. “It’s putting someone else in charge of your happiness.” He rubbed his jaw. “You may have noticed I like to be in charge.”
A smile touched my lips. Yes, I’d noticed. It was quite a coup that I was driving this fine automobile. Maybe he really was in love with me.
“What’s with telling the cameras?” I wondered if he’d tell me the truth, if he even knew what it was.
“I’m used to living my life on-screen. I felt it, so I said it.” He shrugged again. “Once I tell the cameras, it’s real.”
I thought about what he said. It felt true. As far as it went. Outing our “love” probably also helped defend against the gay rumors that seemed to dog him. Good for him, good for his career. Win/win. I might never know where he’d be emotionally with no regard for his career because he couldn’t be separated from it anymore. He was what he’d built. He was this brand, this image of himself. There was no real Gavin underneath the superstar façade. This was as real as he got. Which meant I was looking for deep in a shallow pond.
I’d just said that I loved him too. It was too heartbreaking to witness his vulnerability and not try to give him what he wanted. I did love him. I did. What was all this for if it wasn’t love? Of course I loved him. I always had. And I’d learned that it didn’t matter that we didn’t have this deep, soul-mate connection between us. Nobody had that. That was as mythical as, well, dating a movie star. Of course I loved him. I’d be crazy not to.
Yup, that was it. I was in love with Gavin and I would prove it. Right here, right now. I would take him back to my crappy apartment and make sweet love to him on my uncomfortable bed, and we’d seal this pact by making love and there would be no more indecision or ambiguity or special FBI agents. Gavin loved me, I loved him, and we were signing the deal before he left for months away in freaking Vietnam. It was perfect.
Chapter Twenty-Three
When Gavin and I pulled up to my apartment, I parked his fantastically expensive sports car on the street and walked away from it with a pang of regret. I heartlessly left it behind and grabbed Gavin’s arm. He loved me, I loved him. Kinda. Our relationship issues were solved. I was suddenly giddy with the excitement of all the sex we’d be packing into tonight since it would be so long until I’d see him again. Gavin laughed and threw his arm around me, hugging me to his side.
When I let us into the apartment, Sophie and Corey were still in the living room watching movies. Maggie and Jonathan weren’t back yet. Hopefully they’d actually gone on the date I’d paid for.
The Gavin film festival was in full swing. Corey and Sophie had moved on to Elevator Impact, another stellar Gavin flick. It had some of the best martial arts moves I’d ever seen. When Elevator Impact had hit theaters, Gavin revealed to interviewers he had a background in mixed martial arts, which was what made the action so realistic and compelling. I was curious about the extent of his martial arts training. I’d have to ask him about that later. Just one of the many perks of him being right here.
We waved to Sophie and Corey but hurried past them to my room without engaging. I was playing by college rules, which state you just sneak past the other people even though you know they can see you and can, of course, guess what you are up to, but you pretend that they don’t and you just go about your business. Much like having sex on a private airplane, as I’d recently learned.
Gavin and I sneaked into my bedroom with a minimal amount of waving. Corey yelled, “Hi, Gavvie!” and Sophie waved, then turned the volume on the TV way up. They slouched deeper into the couch.
“Now why aren’t we just going back to my hotel?” Gavin asked, quite sensibly.
“Because my sister is visiting, and I have to make sure she gets home okay tonight. She may be a brat, but she’s my sister, and I’m responsible for her.” I flipped my hair over my shoulder and opened my bedroom door with a “Ta da!” and a hand flourish. “Now tell me your previous girlfriends didn’t have anything half as nice as my room, and I’ll know that you’re lying to spare my feelings and therefore really, deeply, love me.” I batted my eyelashes at him.
“This is by far the loveliest bedroom into which it has ever been my privilege to be invited.” Gavin’s warm smile lit his face. He knew how to deliver a line.
My room had cinderblock walls covered with at least twenty layers of various shades of latex paint, which was de rigueur for crappy apartments. What separated my apartment and made it extra special in comparison to other fine LA crap holes was that at some point in my apartment’s life, there had been tiny moths living on the walls, and instead of cleaning the walls, the Powers That Be just painted over them. There were hundreds of tiny little corpses of painted-over moths and other bugs on the walls near the ceiling all over the apartment. I knew because you could actually excavate a bug and cut through the paint to see its little moth head and its little folded-up wings and the four layers of robust latex paint encasing it in its eternal resting p
lace.
I had performed a few moth autopsies in disgusted yet fascinated curiosity. Once I discovered what they were and that there were thousands of them under the thick paint, I realized there were far too many to do anything about. Now I just tried not to think about these tiny vignettes of rotting death lurking on my painted walls.
Hopefully Gavin wasn’t seeing any of this. I made my bed every day and kept my room neat by habit. It probably looked like the room of a woman who didn’t spend much time at home and not an insect death tomb.
I soon found out Gavin’s mind was otherwise occupied. He grabbed me from behind and wrapped his arms around me, enfolding me in his embrace. I turned so he could reach my mouth and he kissed me, pressing his lips firmly to mine, coaxing a response that was more than ready. I pushed him down on my double bed, and he smiled and kicked his shoes off. He leaned up and took his jacket off, putting his foot on the floor.
“Ow!” He bent over to see what he’d stepped on.
The bottom dropped out of my stomach. I watched in slow motion as Gavin retrieved my Gavin Braddock scrapbook from under the bed. He must have stepped on the edge. I’d done that before. It hurts. I thought the last time I’d stepped on it that I’d kicked it farther under the bed, though. Way farther. Far away, where toxic waste should go. Not ridiculously convenient for visiting movie stars to find. I really should have thrown that out years ago. Or at least when Gavin and I started dating. It’s not like I’d recently updated the thing. How. Embarrassing. Gavin was holding the Gavin scrapbook in his hands staring at a goofily smiling—and younger—Gavin staring back at him.
“What’s this?” He sat upright on the bed and pulled the heavy volume toward him. Oh, no. He was actually going to look at it. I take it back. This was beyond embarrassing. This was forgot-to-wear-underpants-to-third-grade mortifying.
But Gavin was a movie star, and therefore in a stratum of self-fascination that no other career could touch. No one was more interested in him than, well, him. He opened the front cover and giggled when he saw where I’d scrawled “Mrs. Eden Braddock” and variations thereof a million times. Oh, yeah, this was fun. Shoving-toothpicks-under-my-fingernails fun. Why, oh why hadn’t I gotten rid of that thing years ago?
“It’s embarrassing, is what it is. You don’t need to see that.” I reached across him and made a grab for it, but he laughed and twisted away from me.
“Uh-unh. No, you don’t. Miss Eden Perry has been a secret fan of mine, and I get to hold the damning evidence in my hot little hands. Oh, I’m going to enjoy this.” He smirked.
I crossed my arms and collapsed back on the bed. “I thought you were going to enjoy something else.”
“Oh, we’ll get back to that.” He winked at me. “But I’m dying to see this—especially since you’re so happy about it.” He grinned at me, and I stuck my tongue out at him.
He held up a page where the paparazzi had caught him coming out of a hotel early in the morning, his hair sticking up all over the place. He laughed. “Look at my hair in this one!” It was one of my favorites. He looked real and natural and less composed than he did in photos at premieres and other events. “That was the morning after Lana and I…” He caught the look on my face and stopped talking. I knew he’d dated Lana Henry. The whole world knew. I didn’t need the intimate details.
He turned the pages and perused the pictures of him cut from movie promotion stills, the ones from magazines showing him at premieres with hot Hollywood actresses or models on his arms, revealing that, yes, I did actually know of some of his former girlfriends, even if I’d pretended I hadn’t. He read the articles where I’d highlighted—yes, highlighted—my favorite parts like who his favorite actors were and what his favorite band was and what books he was reading.
Gavin put a finger on the page and looked up. “I made a lot of that stuff up, you know.”
“What?” I leaned up on my elbows to see better.
“The answers to the questions in this article. ‘What’s your favorite band?’ ‘What’s your favorite book?’ I’d just say what my agent said.”
“Did you really love the book Love in the Time of Cholera?” I’d read that book only because Gavin had said he loved it. With every word I read, I’d pictured him reading those same words. I’d imagined us getting closer and closer to each other, the same words washing over us, connecting us on some astral plane of book lovers. I was sixteen at the time.
“No, I’d never heard of it. But my agent thought it made me sound cultured and like I was into the things my female fans were into. I think it was an Oprah book club book or something.”
What a waste. The shared experience I thought we’d had by reading the same book was a lie—it had nothing to do with Gavin. I guess I really hadn’t known him before we met.
I mean, of course I didn’t know him before we met. I knew that. Or I guess I was supposed to know that, but it had felt like I knew him. And I’d known parts of him, from his movies. Surely the parts of him that were the same in the different movies were what was actually him. The common denominator. And I knew him from Paris, of course, where we didn’t spend much time together or talk that much. Yup, this was a rock-solid relationship built on nothing but reality. Yikes! What was I doing? I didn’t have any idea who he really was.
Gavin, however, did not seem to be experiencing any relationship-identity-questioning like I was. He seemed a little too tickled to be the subject of such a hefty tome of scrapbooking attention.
“I really like what you did here.” Gavin indicated the two-page layout I’d done of him on horseback for the movie Elegy in Autumn interspersed with typed and matted quotes from the movie and oval cutouts of stills of his face in different scenes.
“Thanks.” This was so embarrassing. But it was almost worse that Gavin was so into it instead of being embarrassed for me. Not that I wanted him to be embarrassed for me or pity me or anything. It was just proof that he took himself so seriously that he recognized he warranted a big-ass scrapbook of himself. Of course he’d find this under his girlfriend’s bed and isn’t it so great and cute and funny and look how fabulous I am because I’m Gavin Braddock.
Hmmm…why was I resenting Gavin for being Gavin? Maybe because he had almost no sense of irony. Maybe because there should be something more meaningful—or at least the pursuit of something more meaningful—than being the biggest box office draw. Ugh…my mind was spouting heresy.
I decided to just chill and go with the moment and let Gavin enjoy the monument to embarrassing teenage obsession with which he’d been accidentally presented. I scooted up on the bed until I was resting my head next to his on the pillows and watched as he delightedly pored over the highs and lows of his personal and box office achievements.
“This is really great!” He leaned toward me, eyes shining. “It’s like a time capsule. You’ve got everything chronological in here from how it came out in the news. It’s funny because that’s not really how things happen, you know. You film a movie sometimes a year before it starts getting press. All the buzz happens when you’re doing publicity for it and not when you’re making the film, so it’s a whole different experience.”
Yeah, I was still just a fan who was outside looking in.
“Take us, for example. We’re dating now, and I haven’t started filming Blinking at the Sun yet, so our relationship won’t be associated with that film unless we’re still together when it comes out and we go to the premiere together, like a year from now. Funny, huh?”
“Funny.” Not funny at all. Not funny that a year from now we probably wouldn’t be together, and he’ll have a different girl on his arm and that’s who the public will associate him with in relation to the new movie. I didn’t know if we’d still be together in a year or not, but did he have to go and say that? Not even like he’d be crying for months and then be able to go and date the next actress/supermodel/hussy who crossed his path, but already anticipating the future date at which we wouldn’t be together? And the vali
dation of said relationship only happened when she was photographed on his arm for the film premiere? Oh, yes, freaking hilarious.
“Don’t be like that.” Gavin turned on his side and peered at me down his now-handsome-again nose. “I just meant that movies aren’t synced to real life. The timing for me is different than the timing the world sees in the press. It’s no big deal.”
“Yeah, I get it.” There was a future, and I probably wasn’t in it.
Did I want to be? I didn’t know. But I didn’t like being dismissed so casually from his mind. And life.
“Hey.” Gavin tugged on my hand. “I really love this scrapbook. I think it’s the best scrapbook on any subject I’ve ever seen.”
That coaxed the ghost of a smile from me. “I really did work hard on it…for a few years.”
“I see that!” Gavin laughed. “I have a concern, though.”
“Oh?”
“It ends full stop three years ago. What gives? Did my biggest fan not notice I was still making movies?” He put his hand on my knee and wiggled it playfully.
“She noticed.” My reluctant smile went full-force. “She just thought there was a certain age”—which really I knew I had long since passed but why tell him that—“where one should stop making scrapbooks of movie stars and start making a career and a life for herself.”
“Ah, so you graduated high school and thought you were too grown-up for it, is that it?”
“Something like that.” I was actually twenty-two when I quit updating the scrapbook, but if he thought I was in high school three years ago, there was no reason to contradict him.
He closed the book. “As fascinating as this is…and I do find the subject very fascinating,”—he cocked an eyebrow at me—“I have to admit to quite a bit of interest in what we were doing before your scrapbook attacked my foot.”
A-List Kiss: A Laugh-Out-Loud Romantic Comedy Page 19