Текст книги "This is What Happy Looks Like"
Автор книги: Jennifer E. Smith
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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 17 страниц)
From: [email protected]
Sent: Monday, June 10, 2013 7:24 PM
Subject: Re: if you get lost…
I’m on my way. (And trust me, I’m not lost.)
For the past hour, Graham had been wandering the streets of Henley. When he told Ellie he needed to run back to his hotel and check on a few things, he’d been lying. He just wanted to give her some time to get ready. The moment the dinner invitation had slipped out of her mouth, he could see that a part of her had wanted to take it back.
He should have told her not to worry, right then and there, as they stood at the top of Sunset Drive, the late-afternoon light coming through the leaves in a way that made the freckles on her nose stand out. He wished he’d told her that he’d grown up in a house not much bigger than hers, where the bathroom tiles were crumbling, and the basement smelled funny, and the stairs conducted a chorus of creaks and groans each time someone had the nerve to climb them.
He should have told her that his parents still lived there, only now, when he came to visit, his mother prepared the house as if for a stranger, some visiting dignitary or long-lost relative who might be impressed by flowers on the windowsill or neatly folded towels, all meant to disguise the true nature of the place, to make it unrecognizable when all Graham really wanted—all he was ever there for in the first place—was the exact opposite: to find his way home again.
But the words had failed him. He’d become so accustomed to keeping those sorts of thoughts to himself that he no longer seemed capable of sharing them at all.
In town, he walked with his head down, moving past small groups of tourists examining the menus outside of local restaurants. At the end of the street, the movie set was silent, the hulking trailers dark and empty. They’d long since wrapped for the day, but even so, Graham knew Mick would still be buzzing around somewhere, going over the script or checking on the equipment before tomorrow’s scene, which would be their first filming out on the water.
As he passed a hardware store with one of those old-fashioned mechanical horses out front, he noticed a sign in the window announcing the annual Fourth of July festival, and he paused to examine it more closely. Every year, it seemed, there was an all-day party in the town square, a concert and cookout followed by dancing and a fireworks display, and even now, Graham could almost picture it: the streets filled with people, kids running around with sparklers, the distant pop of firecrackers, and the swell of music in the air. It reminded him of the celebrations in his own hometown, and he was struck by the memory of all the parades he’d watched with his parents when he was younger, the three of them waving flags as the marching bands boomed past.
He was halfway down the block, heading in the direction of Ellie’s house, when it occurred to him that he’d still be in Henley then. The production wouldn’t be moving back to L.A. until a couple of days after the Fourth, and though Graham couldn’t remember the exact schedule at the moment—had, in fact, hardly even looked at it yet—he was sure they must have at least a little bit of time off during the holiday weekend.
Before he had a chance to think it through, he pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed his parents. As it rang, the possibilities of the weekend expanded in his mind, and he found himself smiling at the idea of it. His parents had only ever visited him once on set, and that was right at the beginning, during one of his first scenes, which had been shot in a studio in L.A. They’d been hopelessly out of place, the two of them standing off to the side in their cable-knit sweaters and glasses, his mom shivering from the low temperatures in the studio, his dad squinting against the glare of the lights. During a break, his mother had given him a kiss on the cheek and explained that she wasn’t feeling well, and Graham watched them walk out the door with a leaden feeling in his stomach, a sense that something had already been lost between them.
But this would be different. He could show them around, impress them with his knowledge of the production, let them see him in action in a place where they’d be more comfortable. He’d take them on a tour of the town, buy them dinner at the Lobster Pot, bring them to the festival so that they could watch the fireworks together, just like they had when he was younger. Maybe he’d go fishing with his dad. Maybe they could even meet Ellie.
When the answering machine picked up—the same recorded message that had been on there for years—he snapped back, clearing his throat. “Hey, guys,” he said, then hesitated. “It’s me. Just wanted to see if you had plans for the Fourth. If not, I was thinking maybe you could come out and visit the set. You’d love it here. It sort of reminds me of home. And it could be fun for you to spend the weekend. I’m in Maine, by the way. Can’t remember if you knew that. Anyway, let me know what you think…”
He trailed off, then hung up fast, already feeling less certain of his plan. His parents hardly ever traveled. When Graham was a kid, they took exactly one family vacation a year, driving two hours to an oceanside motel, where they’d stay exactly three days before returning home again, pink-cheeked and sun-drunk from their hours on the beach. It wasn’t that they weren’t curious about the world; it was just that it was all they could afford on two teachers’ salaries.
“We live in California,” they’d always say cheerily. “Our whole life is like a vacation.”
But the California that Graham had grown up in was very different from the one he lived in now. It was even different from the one where he’d gone to school, a twenty-minute drive from home that might as well have been twenty hours. Just before his freshman year, he’d managed to win a partial academic scholarship to a private school a few towns over, and his parents used the money his grandparents left him to make up for the rest. It was an amount that had seemed vast to Graham at the time, and he’d felt guilty about taking it when there were so many other things they could have done with it: make repairs on the house, replace their puttering car, pay off the bills that seemed to collect on his dad’s desk with alarming frequency.
Now, of course, Graham had enough money to do all of those things: he could buy his parents a brand-new home or a whole fleet of cars, send them on a trip around the world or pay down all their debt without even blinking. But the only thing they really wanted—the only thing they’d ever really wanted—was for him to go to college.
It wasn’t that they weren’t supportive of his acting, but they seemed to regard it as something to be tolerated, a stopover on the way to higher education rather than something that might shape the rest of his life. The only movies his dad ever watched were old black-and-white classics, and he didn’t consider anything made in the last few decades to count as art. When Graham took them to the premiere of his first movie, they clapped and smiled in all the right places, but he’d been acutely aware of how it all must have looked to them: the fight sequences strewn with high-octane special effects, the over-the-top dialogue, and, worst of all, the scene where he’d finally kissed the heroine, which had not until that moment struck him as unbearably cheesy.
Graham knew that even as they tiptoed around him, strangers in the foreign terrain of his new life, they were hoping he might come to his senses, get this whole acting thing out of his system. They had a habit of talking about his career as if it were a gap year of sorts, as if he were putting off college to run away for a season with the circus or spend a few months studying the mating habits of monkeys in Bali. But the truth was that Graham had no intention of going to college next year. Once he finished his high school equivalency with the help of his on-set tutor, that would be it for him.
Part of it was that he truly enjoyed acting, and he couldn’t imagine walking away from the ever-expanding opportunities in his future, all the actors he still wanted to work with and the roles he still wanted to play. And part of it was that he just didn’t see the point. The idea of college was to study hard in order to get a good job, in order to make a lot of money. But he already had plenty of money, enough to last him his whole life. And he could learn anywhere, couldn’t he?
But if he was being really honest, it was about more than just that. The way he’d always pictured college—hurrying to classes in ivy-leafed buildings and trudging up snow-covered pathways in the winter, sitting perched on the bleachers during football games and debating philosophy in rooms full of bright-eyed students—seemed hopelessly distant from his new life, where he’d completely lost the ability to blend in. And the last thing he wanted was to be one of those celebrities who fancied themselves a scholar, making a halfhearted effort at being a normal college kid while being trailed by cameras and gawked at by classmates, missing finals to jet off and shoot an indie film in Vancouver. Graham had no interest in being any more of a spectacle than he already was.
He knew his parents were quietly hoping he’d change his mind, and he hated to disappoint them. But he felt sure about his decision. And that had become just one more reason that they no longer seemed to understand one another, that they’d become less like a family and more like three people who had once lived together for a time.
What they needed, Graham was thinking now as he neared Ellie’s house, was an old-fashioned family vacation. What they needed was food and flags and fireworks in a place that was about as far from California as you could get. In just a few short days here, he already felt like a different person. Maybe Henley would work its magic on his parents as well.
But when the door opened and Ellie appeared—her long hair still damp from the shower, looking beautiful in a bright green sundress—he realized it wasn’t Henley at all.
It was her.
He leaned forward to kiss her—a movement so automatic it felt like tying his shoe or climbing the stairs, something you do without even thinking about it—and he was still several inches away when he wrenched himself back unsteadily, everything coming into focus with an abruptness that startled him.
They hadn’t even had their first kiss yet, and here he was, leaning in like it was something that happened every day, a motion like a ritual, like they’d kissed a thousand times before. It took a moment to right himself, and he pulled his shoulders back as he regained his equilibrium. He didn’t want to be half asleep the first time he kissed Ellie. For that, he wanted to be wide awake.
She was eyeing him with a look of confusion, and Graham couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Hopefully she didn’t realize that’s what he’d been about to do.
Hopefully she just thought he had terrible balance.
“Hi,” he said with a sheepish grin.
“Come on in,” she said, looking somewhat flustered herself.
She ushered him into a hallway that smelled of lemon cleaning solution, and Graham stooped to pet Bagel, who was sniffing his shoes with a businesslike air. They both followed Ellie into the kitchen, where the table was set for two. The room was dimly lit and there was still a hint of dish soap in the air. But Graham hardly noticed anything beyond that; his eyes were pinned to Ellie’s green dress as she moved between the cabinets and the refrigerator and back again, her face apologetic.
“It’s not like we ever have a lot of good stuff here,” she was saying, “but I figured there’d at least be a frozen pizza or something.”
“So what you’re saying is,” Graham teased, “there’s no lobster?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Very funny.”
“It’s fine,” he said, moving beside her to examine the contents of the pantry. He pulled out a nearly empty box of crackers and a can of tuna. “We’ll have a smorgasbord. A little of this and a little of that.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, leaning against the sink. “We probably should’ve gone into town. I can’t believe I’m feeding you stale crackers.”
“Are you kidding?” he said, sweeping an arm around the room. “Not just anyone gets to eat at Chez O’Neill. I’ve heard this is one of the most exclusive establishments in Maine.”
“That’s true,” she said with a grin. “We only cater to A-list celebrities.”
They rummaged through the refrigerator, spilling everything out onto the counter and then standing side by side as they assembled the meal, a random assortment ranging from microwave popcorn to apple slices, two leftover pieces of pizza, and some frozen peas. What looked less than appetizing went right to Bagel, and the rest made it to the kitchen table, where they arranged the dishes in front of them as if it were a buffet.
“So,” Graham said as he pulled out a chair. “Did you ever figure out if you’re doing that poetry course?”
Ellie looked surprised at the question, and he smiled, because it was the same way he’d felt when she mentioned his drawings earlier, like she’d plucked the thought straight out of his head. She stood on tiptoe to grab a bowl from a high shelf, and when she turned around again, she nodded.
“I’m going in August,” she said, but there was a catch in her voice. “I’m pretty excited about it. They have this one professor there that—”
“So you figured out how to pay for it?” he asked, and Ellie went stiff. She turned her back to him again, dumping a partially empty bag of tortilla chips into the bowl. Already, Graham was regretting the question. When they’d talked about this over e-mail, it had been so easy for her to tell him these things, but something had shifted now, and the question no longer felt quite right in person.
“Not exactly,” she said lightly. “But I’ve got another month or so to figure it out.”
“How much more do you need?” he asked, and she looked embarrassed.
“Enough,” she told him, her face coloring. There was an awkward silence, and Graham realized his mistake. Part of him had wanted to rescue her, to swoop in with the money she needed, but he could see now that this would only make it worse. And by bringing up the issue of money so casually, he’d managed to remind her again of who he was: not the boy on the other end of the e-mails, but the movie star who was sitting in her kitchen. He could feel the easy rapport between them turning brittle, and he cleared his throat as she set down the bowl of chips, desperate to change the subject.
“This looks good,” he said, and he could see her shoulders relax. “I’ve never had fortune cookies with chips and salsa before.”
“Well,” she said with a slow-blooming grin, “we’re on the cutting edge of the Chinese-Mexican fusion movement here at Chez O’Neill.”
“I like it,” he said. “Three stars.”
“What?” she said, sitting down across the table from him. “Only three?”
“That’s the most you can get, I think.”
“That doesn’t seem like a lot,” she said. “I’d prefer ten.”
“How about two thumbs up?”
“Now you’re confusing this with the movies,” she said, licking some peanut butter off her finger. “Speaking of which, how’s it going?”
“The movie?”
She nodded.
“Okay,” he said.
“You don’t sound very excited about it.”
“No, I am,” he told her, reaching for an apple slice and popping it into his mouth. “It’s nice to be doing something different. And the director’s really… interesting.”
“Think you’ll work with him again?” she asked. “I mean, you must get your pick, right?”
“I guess,” he said. “But I haven’t figured out what I’m doing next.”
“Well, what do you want to do?”
“Something that matters.”
She tilted her head to one side, considering this. “You mean something that matters to you?”
He nodded. “Hopefully.”
“You’ll know it when it comes along,” she said. “But it must be kind of fun to be playing a new character. I saw the trailer for the first movie, and there was that part where—”
Graham sat forward. “Wait,” he said, laughing. “You only saw the trailer?”
Ellie reached for her water and took a sip, hiding behind a blue plastic mug that was emblazoned with a smiling whale.
“You never saw the movies?”
“Well, the third one isn’t even out yet,” she said, setting her mug back on the table and picking up a fortune cookie.
“Yeah, but the first two?”
She shrugged. “Quinn tried to drag me to the first one, but it’s not really my kind of movie.”
“I thought every teen girl in America was obsessed with them,” Graham said, amazed. It had been an embarrassingly long time since he’d met someone who hadn’t seen those films, or at least pretended they had.
“You’re thinking of you,” Ellie corrected. “Every teen girl in America is obsessed with you.”
He laughed. “So I take it you’re not a big Graham Larkin fan?”
“I am now,” she said, cracking open the fortune cookie. She drew out the little strip of white paper with a frown, then laughed. “It says: You will receive a fortune cookie.”
“No way,” Graham said, and she passed it over so that he could look for himself. “That’s the best fortune ever.”
Ellie took a bite of the cookie. “Well, it’s the most obvious, anyway.”
“Most fortunes don’t ever come true,” he said, shaking his head at the tiny scroll. “But this one already did. I mean, would you rather have a fortune that promised you a delicious cookie and came true instantly, or one that promised a million dollars and never came true at all?”
“At the moment, I think I’d take a million dollars,” she said, brushing the crumbs off the table so that the dog, who was beside her in a flash, could finish it off. “The cookie wasn’t nearly as delicious as advertised.”
“Bagel seems to disagree.”
“His palate is similar to that of a vacuum cleaner,” she said, looking down at him fondly. “So are you ready for your scene tomorrow?”
He shrugged, but it wasn’t very convincing.
“I bet you were supposed to be learning your lines instead of hanging out with me all afternoon,” she said, leaning forward on her elbows. “Do you know them?”
“More or less,” he said, folding a piece of pizza in half. Bagel, who had taken up a new post beside him, thumped his tail a few times, and Graham tossed him the crust. “I’ve been carrying them around in my pocket all day, so I’m hoping there’s been some osmosis action.”
“I’m sure all the great actors rely on osmosis,” she said, then reached a hand across the table. “Can I see? We could practice.”
Graham sat back in his chair. “It’s okay,” he said, suddenly embarrassed. Acting on set was one thing; acting in front of the girl you liked was another. He wasn’t about to get into character in front of Ellie. “I’ll be fine.
“Come on,” she said, bobbing her outstretched hand. “It’ll be fun.”
“Fine,” he said, sitting up to pull the folded papers from his back pocket. “But I’m not doing it for real, okay? Just running the lines.”
“I don’t get to see the full Graham Larkin effect?” she teased, taking the section of script from him. “I guess I’ll just have to stop by the set tomorrow.”
“You’ll have to be a pretty good swimmer then,” he told her. “We’re gonna be filming out on a boat.”
“Okay, Ahab,” she said, studying the lines on the page. When she looked up again, her face seemed somehow different; her lips were pouty, and she was looking at him from underneath her eyelashes. She tossed her hair in an exaggerated way, and it took Graham a moment to realize where he’d seen the gesture before: she was mimicking Olivia.
“Not bad,” he said, but he was also relieved when she dropped the act and examined the script one more time with a more familiar expression.
“Okay, here we go,” she said, clearing her throat. “ ‘Where are you going, Jasper?’ ” She stopped and looked up with raised eyebrows. “Your name is Jasper?”
He shrugged, and she continued.
“ ‘Come back!’ ” she shouted with a melodramatic flourish, loud enough to cause Bagel to lurch up, his collar jangling, his head cocked to one side.
Graham reached down and gave him a little pat. “That was great,” he told Ellie. “Not at all over the top.”
“I never said I wasn’t doing it for real,” she pointed out. “Your line.”
“ ‘I need to be alone right now,’ ” Graham said in a flat voice to underscore the fact that he wasn’t really playing along. “ ‘I just need some time to think.’ ”
Ellie tilted her head to one side. “I know I’m not an expert, but I’m betting you could do it with a little more feeling.”
“Everyone’s a critic, Bagel,” he told the little dog, who whined at him in sympathy as Ellie turned back to the script.
“ ‘You have no idea what you need right now. You have no idea—’ ” She paused there, her eyes still on the page.
Graham honestly couldn’t remember what came next. He’d planned to study his lines later in the hotel room, and his call time wasn’t until noon tomorrow, so he’d have the morning too. He’d memorized whole scenes before with less time than that to spare.
“You’re supposed to kiss me,” Ellie said, looking up at him with an unreadable expression. Graham’s stomach dipped, and he stared across the table at her, unable to formulate a response. The room was quiet except for the ticking of the clock above the stove and the soft breathing of the dog, and it took a moment for Ellie to shake her head. When she spoke, her voice sounded very bright. “It’s in the script,” she said, pointing at the page without taking her eyes off Graham.
He nodded quickly. “Right,” he said, blinking fast.
“You’re supposed to kiss me,” she said again, then blushed and held up the crumpled papers. “I mean, Olivia. Or—” She glanced at the words. “Zoe. Really? Jasper and Zoe? Who writes this stuff?”
She was back to examining the script now, but Graham wasn’t really listening. Her words were still rolling around in his head: You’re supposed to kiss me.
She was right, of course. He was supposed to kiss her. He was supposed to kiss her just a little while ago, when he arrived at the house. He was supposed to kiss her earlier today on the beach. And that day in town. And that first night, right outside on her porch.
Suddenly, it seemed there were about a million times he was supposed to have kissed her, even without the benefit of a script, even without any sort of direction. Almost without thinking about it, he placed his hands on the table and scraped back his chair. It wasn’t until she smiled at him that he realized he was smiling too.
“I think it’s important,” he said as he stood up, “to follow the script.”
“Yeah?” she said, her smile widening.
But a light swept across the darkened windows above the sink then, disappearing briefly before landing squarely in Graham’s eyes again. He stepped aside, blinking, and when he turned back to Ellie, she was up and out of her chair.
“Shoot,” she muttered. “She’s home early.”
“Who?” Graham asked, feeling disoriented. A moment ago, everything had been in slow motion, and now it was as if someone had yelled “Cut!” and the spell was broken. I was supposed to kiss her, he thought, and the whole evening felt suddenly like a song that had been switched off before the last bars had played, leaving only a wrenching sense of incompleteness.
“My mom,” Ellie was saying as she cleared the table. “She must not have been a fan of the book.”
Outside, the headlights went out, and Graham could hear a car door slam. Bagel went trotting over to the back door, and a minute later, Ellie’s mom appeared, her face tightening when she noticed Graham standing there in the middle of her kitchen, his hands in his pockets.
It had been a long time since he’d met someone who looked at him with such open suspicion. In his old life, he’d been great with parents; he was a nice kid, charming enough to win over most anyone. And in his new life, he’d gotten used to people falling all over themselves in an effort to please him. But the way Ellie’s mom was eyeing him now, with a peculiar kind of mistrust, was something entirely new.
Graham shifted from one foot to the other and attempted a winning smile, which seemed to have no effect whatsoever.
“I thought Quinn was coming over,” Mrs. O’Neill said to Ellie, her eyebrows raised as she dropped her purse on the kitchen counter.
“There was a change of plans,” Ellie mumbled. “You remember Graham, right?”
Mrs. O’Neill nodded, but didn’t offer a smile. “Nice to see you,” she said, though she managed not to make it sound that way. “Enjoying Henley?”
“Yes,” Graham said, biting back the “ma’am.” “It’s lovely here.” He cleared his throat and dropped his eyes to the floor. He’d never used the word lovely before in his life.
“And how long are you all in town?”
“Another few weeks,” he told her. “But I wish it was longer. It’s really a lovely place.” He coughed, his face hot. It seemed impossible that he’d just said the word lovely twice in under a minute. “Actually, I just invited my parents out for the Fourth,” he said quickly, feeling himself begin to ramble, but unable to stop. “I thought they’d like it here too.”
From across the room, Ellie gave him an encouraging smile. “That’ll be fun,” she said. “How long will they be here? We could give you some ideas of stuff to do while they’re in town.”
“Probably four or five days,” Graham said, thinking even as he did just how unlikely that was. But he felt suddenly desperate for it to be true. “My dad and I are pretty into fishing, so we’ll probably do that for some of the time.”
“Sounds like fun,” Ellie said, casting a glance at her mom. “Well, it’s late…”
“Yeah,” Graham said, taking a step toward the door. “Yeah, it is.” He gave Mrs. O’Neill an awkward little wave. “Thanks so much for having me.” Then he turned to Ellie, smiling at her from what felt like a great distance, even as he wanted nothing more than to cross the room and finish what they’d started. “I’ll see you”—he was about to say “tomorrow,” but thought better of it—“around.”
And with that, he was sidestepping the dog on the way to the front hallway. Even as he made his way out the door and onto the porch, he was surprised to hear them begin to argue, their whispers drifting through the screen, harsh and raspy and much too loud.
Outside, the night had cooled off, and he stood there for a moment, trying to make sense of what had just happened. Maybe she was one of those mothers who didn’t want her daughter spending time with boys. Or maybe it was just that they’d been alone in the house after dark. Or that she’d had a bad day. But whatever the reason, Graham knew it was best to make a quick exit, and he took a deep breath before stepping quietly off the porch.
He was almost to the end of the driveway when he heard the screen door bounce shut behind him, and then the sound of Ellie’s bare feet on the pavement as she ran to meet him, shaking her head as she approached.
“I’m sorry—” she began, but that was as far as she got, because Graham couldn’t wait any longer. He leaned in, his lips meeting hers, which tasted faintly of peanut butter, and he closed his eyes, and he held her by the shoulders, and he kissed her.
It was exactly as he’d thought it would be, like the first time and the millionth time all at once, like being wide awake, like losing his balance. Only this time, it wasn’t just him; this time, they were losing their balance together.
