“Oh! I’m Emma’s mother!” I cringe at both this semi-fabrication and the appalling fact that she’s legitimately connected to me at all.
As I dream of trap doors and the benefits of quicksand, Leslie and Tim turn towards me, and I try to make myself think screw everyone else even though the last thing I want is for these two distinguished actors to have a poor opinion of me, even if MiShaun is right and it isn’t fair for them to judge me based on Chloe.
Leslie recovers first. “Well, I’m sure you’re proud of her. She’s so talented. At the moment, though, we’ve got to get this scene set up. If you’d just make yourself comfortable and enjoy watching Emma work…” She leads Chloe to a chair off-set and motions to an assistant to the PA, asking her to get Mrs. Pierce something to drink. As she turns from a stunned and silent Chloe, Leslie winks at me.
I think I love her.
At the end of the day, I’m exhausted and running on five or six non-consecutive hours of sleep, but Chloe insists on going out to dinner since they’re leaving early in the morning. I want nothing more than room service, a conversation with Emily about all the kissing going on, and some sleep.
“We’ll make it an early night,” my father says. “I haven’t gotten the chance to tell you how great you were today.” Unable to help myself, I warm under his words, leaning my head on his shoulder as he pats my knee.
Over dinner at a local barbeque place, Chloe talks about how awesome Leslie was for an hour and a half straight while my father squeezes in a sentence or two praising my performance. In the taxi, I dig my phone from my bag to text Emily. There are two missed calls and two texts from her; the restaurant was so loud that I didn’t hear the phone alerts. The first text says: CALL ME. That’s scary, considering the all caps, but the second, sent half an hour ago, is way more frightening: GOOGLE YOURSELF AND THEN CALL ME.
Once in my room, I boot up my laptop and type my name into the search box. And there, spread across the Internet, in multiple locations including every Reid Alexander fanpage, are indistinct photos and rampant speculation about Reid Alexander and his current costar, Emma Pierce, who were kissing, offscreen, at a club in Austin.
Oh. Shit.
I’d texted with Emily about the kiss the previous night, but there’s a vast difference in getting the unadorned facts via text, and seeing it in grainy color on a 17-inch monitor, accompanied by assorted enhanced close-ups of the action.
“I had no idea anyone could even see us. Oh, God.”
“No reason to panic. Let’s be logical. Okay, Reid Alexander kissed you, for real, not lights-camera-action. And like what practically ninety-nine percent of girls would do if faced with Reid Alexander’s lips, you went for it.”
“Yeah.”
“So what’s the problem, exactly, besides the whole thing getting outed to the world? You said he was an amazing kisser.”
“He is… but… there’s this, uh, complication I was going to talk to you about tonight, before I knew all of this. Remember the guy I’ve been running with?”
“Graham, right?”
“Yeah. Well, he kissed me. Monday night.”
“Okay, back up. What?” I visualize her waving her hands around. Emily can be on the phone and driving, and she’ll wave both hands around. She says it helps her think. “Is this the same Graham you said was ‘just a friend’ or some other Graham?”
“Oh, God.”
“Sorry, Em. You know sarcasm is my coping mechanism. Go on. Spill it.”
I curl on my side in the middle of my bed, exactly where Graham and I were. “I’ve felt this… building attraction to him, and we spent all Saturday evening talking, and then we were watching a movie, and I fell asleep and when I woke up he was gone.”
“So. Talking in bed on Saturday. Interesting. And then Monday, what?”
“I couldn’t sleep, and I knocked on his door, thinking we could talk, or something…”
“Emma,” Emily says, calling bullshit on me.
“Okay, well, he didn’t answer...” I gulp, anticipating how she’ll react to the next part. “So I was walking back to my room… and he came out of Brooke’s room.”
“Hold on. Brooke Cameron, aka Kristen Wells—evil incarnate?”
“Emily, you know she’s not as horrible in real life as her character on Life’s a Beach.”
“Yet she’s got this Graham guy in her room. Why?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask.” Wow, that sounds even worse out loud than it did in my head.
“Emma, what?” She sighs, and I know she’d shake me if she wasn’t several hundred miles away. “This kiss took place after he emerged sans explanation from Brooke Cameron’s hotel room?”
I take a deep breath and leave out the humiliation of him seeing me run back to my room like a frightened rabbit scurrying for a hole in the fence. “He came to my room, and we were talking, and then playing around, and somehow we ended up kissing.”
“Somehow you ended up kissing.” I see her dubious expression in my mind’s eye—mouth in a grim line, one eyebrow raised just so.
“I know. It sounds ridiculous...”
Emily is quiet, except for the sound of her tapping a pencil against her front teeth, which drives her mom insane. “Well, which of these two guys are you interested in?”
I think about Graham pushing a strand of hair behind my ear when we’d ducked out of the rainstorm, the feel of his fingers sliding over my skin, how he listened when I talked about losing Mom. I think about the hunger in Reid’s beautiful eyes, the heated difference in his off-screen kiss, and the way he teases me. “I like them both. They’re just… different.”
“Well that complicates matters. What happens after this film? Do you see either of them being in your life after it’s over? Do you want that?”
“Oh my God. I kissed two guys within 24 hours of each other—one in my hotel room and one out in public, and now it’s all over the Internet. What am I gonna do?” I don’t really expect an answer. I’m thinking about running away to join the Peace Corps, which seems more appealing every minute.
“Emma. Besides looking a wee bit slutty, and let’s face it, most of Hollywood is a little slutty, what are you really worried about?”
My answer surprises me. “I guess I’m worried that Reid will think we’re a thing… and I’m worried that Graham will think that, too.”
“So you don’t want Graham to think you and Reid are hooking up...”
“I think I’d feel the same if it was the other way around,” I say, while my brain goes you sure about that? and I think YES a little too forcefully and Emily would say methinks thou doth protest too much to if she heard me having this conversation with myself.
“Even though Graham and Brooke might be hooking up? Hmm.”
“Uh, one more thing. Graham left Austin sometime during the night after that kiss, and I haven’t seen him or heard from him since then. Some family emergency, I think. But he hasn’t called or texted or anything.”
“Weird,” Emily says, pencil going tic tic tic. “What else do you know about him?”
“He’s older.”
“How much older?” I hear a prepared-to-be-horrified note in her voice.
“Two and a half years.”
“Thank God, I thought you were gonna say he was like thirty or something. Look, I think the reason you’re in this predicament now is you’re letting them determine everything. Maybe you should decide what you want, Em.”
“Right now I want to come home and hide in your closet.”
She laughs because that’s exactly what I used to do when Chloe came to pick me up and I didn’t want to go home. “Look, you don’t need either of them. Don’t do anything else until you figure out what you want. Or who you want.”
I’m suddenly extremely homesick for my best friend, my usual routine, and my uncomplicated life—which didn’t include photos of me, locking lips with a bona fide teen idol, splashed across the Internet.
Chapter 22
REID
John arrived last night. Picking people up at the airport is starting to feel like a second job. Quinton tagged along and we all went out for a late dinner, then back to my room to plot the trip down the Guadalupe, which Bob is none too happy about. He came by the room to tell me he’s sending Jeff and another security guy with us. “If anybody drowns, it had better be that guy,” he said, pointing at John.
“What the hell, man?” John blinked. Bob growled at him as he left the room.
At this point, we’d already put down a load of whiskey sours, so this exchange was hysterical as far as Quinton and I saw it. Tadd joined us around midnight after some don’t-ask-don’t-tell activity, which he usually tells anyway. Especially if we ask.
I’d intended to be awake early enough to see Emma before we left, but given the level of inebriation that occurred and the fact that it was three a.m. by the time everyone left my room, that didn’t happen. I texted her once we were underway, and she answered when she was on lunch break. I’m less worried about competing with Graham than I was before I kissed her. Never hurts to draw an obvious contrast to potential rivals, though. Especially if it seems to be unintentional:
Reid: Going tubing for a couple of days with quinton, tadd, and a friend from home. Thought I would tell you and not just disappear. :)
Emma: What’s tubing?
Reid: Basically you get in a huge inner tube and float down the river. I will def bring you along next time.
Emma: Sounds dangerous…
Reid: Nope, lol. Just fun.
Emma: K. Have fun. :)
We rent three cottages and six tubes, and buy as much beer as the coolers can carry. If we’re doing this, we’re doing it all the way. Our assigned bodyguards, Jeff and Ricky, are less unhappy than Bob was about our impromptu excursion. Even though they technically aren’t allowed to drink on the job, we assured them we didn’t consider beer consumption drinking, per se. Plus they’re both legal and can buy the beer.
“How do you even know about all this?” Tadd asks, while we meander through a convenience store, all wearing hats and sunglasses, grabbing water shoes, sunblock and mesh nets to hold the empty cans.
“I used to know somebody who lived in Austin. The locals do this for fun during the summer—I figured we might as well try it while we’re here, right?”
Brooke is the somebody. Once upon a time, she told me stories about her older sisters, who planned tubing trips with their friends every summer. “They drink beer all day and float down the river, flirting with boys, and then everyone meets up at a bonfire, where my sisters trade in their Baptist roots to become river whores and hook up with every cute guy they bump into.”
“Sounds fun,” I’d said, and she punched me in the arm.
“Ow!” We were watching a movie in my trailer, something so boring we’d long since lost interest in favor of making out. At fourteen and fifteen, nobody knew who we were yet, but we wanted the fame, we craved the industry recognition, and we were willing to work like hell to get there. The movie we were filming together then was ultimately a flop, but we weren’t the stars so it didn’t reflect on us.