And They Had a Great Fall

Chapter Fifteen

chapter fifteen

T he pinging was incessant. Jake looked around to see a game show all around him. In order to win, he had to act out a scene from a random movie in fifteen seconds or less. An annoying tone would sound every time the scene changed. He felt an inescapable panic and could not control the game. The Godfather … ping … Karate Kid … ping … Pulp Fiction … ping … The audience was cheering, but he just wanted it to stop. How could he make it stop? Why wouldn’t it fucking stop?

“Jake!” His eyes flew open to see Kat sitting up in bed. “Who’s texting you?” she asked, reaching over him to pull his phone off the nightstand. She thrust it into his hand before flopping back down on her pillow.

He shook the dream out of his head and swiped open his phone. Putting on his glasses, he looked at the time: 6:30 a.m. He had a dozen texts, most of them from Cindy.

C: Hey, call me when you’re awake, doesn’t matter the time.

C: There are a few things surfacing. I want to know what you want to do.

C: There are two different reports.

C: One is that you’re filming in Copenhagen. No shit, right?

C: One is a leak from the set that you had a woman with you last night and you both seemed very “close.”

C: Assuming that’s Kat but let me know if there’s someone new I need to know about.

C: Good news: The exposure is limited for now.

C: Bad news: it’s only a matter of time …

C: We should get ahead of this … please.

“Shit,” he said and let out an audible sigh as he rang Cindy. He put her on speaker. Kat was giving him a questioning look, and he motioned for her to slide next to him.

“Hey,” Cindy answered on the second ring.

“How bad is it?” Jake asked her, blowing past any normal pleasantries.

“Hold on, I’ll send you a screenshot.”

His phone pinged with a picture of the tweet.

E XIT25 T EA

Good authority says that Jake Laurent has been seen on the set of Zero Code kissing a mystery woman. Is he finally off the market?

He rested his free hand on Kat’s thigh. He knew, no matter how little this was, it would upset her. He heard her take a sharp breath.

“This seems harmless,” Jake said, giving Kat a reassuring look. He had seen more salacious tweets connecting him to women he wasn’t actually sleeping with, which made this speculation seem innocuous.

Cindy continued, “This is a Danish gossip blogger. The tweet has limited retweets, but once a US fan retweets it—which will happen—it will get a lot more visibility.”

“How much visibility? Like thousands or millions?” Kat asked Jake.

Cindy chimed in. “Oh, Kat is there with you? Good,” she said. “It’s tough to tell. The last dating rumor was retweeted sixty-two thousand times. Views were probably in the single millions, but he has a much bigger fan base now.”

Jake felt Kat push his hand off her as she pulled her knees up to her chest. He threw his arm around her and pulled her closer. He wasn’t going to let her retreat. Not because of one hundred and forty characters of gossip. This was nothing, and he doubted it would go further than the normal rumor cycle of the internet, which had a shelf life of a few days, max. Once she’d arrived, he’d expected this to happen. He was surprised it took this long.

“This seems pretty normal. Is there anything we should do, Cindy?” Jake asked, turning his attention back to the phone.

“No, we’ll monitor it and let you know if it escalates or if anything comes out that starts to confirm your relationship or identify Kat. Honestly, I don’t foresee it lasting long—a flurry of retweets, some speculation, and in thirty-six hours everyone has moved on. Exposure is never bad for you Jake, so this should be just fine.” Cindy continued, “Jake, what I want to talk about … we discussed this … if you’re together, which it sounds like you are, it’s only a matter of time before something does come out. I wish you would let us get ahead of this, control it.”

Kat’s eyes widened, and Jake went to protest, but Kat jumped in first. “What does that mean?” she asked Cindy.

“Well, Kat, everything Jake does is of interest to his fans, whether it’s friends, relationships … you name it, they want to know. I guarantee you, there will be a point where something gets out, and we’ll need to navigate the fan interest in your relationship. I suggested to Jake that we just do a well-timed social post or leak to an entertainment site—control the narrative so it doesn’t get twisted. You two have a really intriguing story between his emerging stardom, your past … it reads like a goddamn novel. It would be great for Jake. It’d make him seem a little more serious,” she said. “For you, the connection to Jake would make you semi-famous, and who doesn’t want that?”

“Me,” Kat said. “I don’t want that. And I can’t have that, especially right now.” Jake could hear the edge in her voice. “And I want some control, some say in this,” she looked at Jake. “Jake and I don’t even know if we’re—”

Cindy interrupted. “Yes, and I wish we all had a say in what’s picked up by the press and social media,” Cindy said with her usual brashness, “but it doesn’t matter what you are. We live in a society where perception trumps reality. Kat, you shouldn’t even be there if you’re so worried.”

Jake knew he needed to end the call before Cindy tried to push Kat any further. Cindy could be a lot to take, and although Jake was used to her brashness, Kat was visibly bristling.

“It’s only a matter of time, Kat. You seem smart. Surely you know this,” Cindy said.

“Yes. I’m not an idiot. But now is not the time,” Kat stated with a firm voice.

“Cindy, we talked about this, and we’re not doing anything that will identify Kat. This will blow over, as you said, so we’ll just lay low until it does.” With that, Jake hit end, and he threw his phone to the end of the bed.

He put both arms around her and let out his breath when she leaned into him. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I should have been more careful on set yesterday.” He tightened his hold on her, waiting for her to pull away.

“We knew this could happen,” she said without emotion. “I thought it was a closed set, NDAs and all. I’m surprised this happened so fast.”

“True, this shouldn’t happen, but it does. And it does happen this fast,” he said. He needed her to understand how he lived. He didn’t disagree with Cindy’s idea to get ahead of the narrative. He would talk to Kat about it in time. It was inevitable, and the worst thing they could do was let others speculate—it made the swirl last even longer.

“This is my fault. There were almost one hundred crew members on set.” He let that hang in the air for a second. He should’ve known that at least one of them would text a friend, wanting the immediate glory of a celebrity scoop, and in this age of technology, information traveled at light speed.

She was so quiet it unnerved him. He couldn’t read her face or emotions. “Kat, talk to me, what’s going on in your head?”

She didn’t reply right away. “Well,” she started and then hesitated, “I certainly shouldn’t come to set again.”

Jake didn’t agree, but he wasn’t going to argue with her. He felt her shrug off his embrace and lift her head off his shoulder. She turned so they were face-to-face.

“I think I should go back to New York or at least stay in a hotel,” she said.

It was like she dropped a bomb right into his brain. He reached out and grabbed her hand. He needed to quell his own panic by physically connecting himself to her so she wouldn’t just evaporate before his eyes.

“No Kat, come on, don’t do this,” he said, his voice nearly pleading. “This is nothing, it’ll be over in a day, and no one will figure out who you are.” He was frustrated that something this small would make her retreat.

“And what do we do when it is something?” she challenged. “Cindy is right about one thing: I shouldn’t be here right now, with everything at stake.” She paused and took a deep breath. “I’m not going to be here much longer anyway. You seem fine now, and this is just a distraction.”

Jake clenched his jaw and breathed through the hurt and frustration he felt bubbling up to the surface. He blew out a breath, reached over, and pushed her chin up and made her look in his eyes. “Do you honestly believe this is just a distraction?” he said, and he could feel the tightness in his throat. “Because if you do, you should leave,” he said.

When she didn’t reply, he continued, “This is not just a distraction to me.” This was him, bringing forward all his complicated, messy life, just asking her to take a chance. He didn’t know if she would, or if it was even fair of him to ask. All he knew was that he needed her, starting in those early days of the pandemic, when the only place that had felt right was wherever she was.

It seemed like forever before she spoke. It came out so quiet, he would have missed it if they weren’t the words he desperately wanted to hear. “This is more than a distraction,” she said, putting her forehead against his. “But I don’t know how to do this.”

He brought his hands up to the sides of her face and kissed her. “My sweet Kat, you don’t need to do anything.” He sighed. “I’ll protect you, if you’ll just give it a chance, give me a chance.”

“But I don’t see a way that I—and Becca—won’t be in the public eye,” she said, “and it scares me more than you know. I fear that it will be the thing that tears us apart, and I don’t want to lose you.”

Jake knew this moment was crucial, because safety and protection were the only things Kat craved in this world, and his life was the ultimate risk. But he couldn’t change what his life had become and the realities of being with him.

“I’ll be honest: I won’t be able to keep you secret, nor do I want to,” he said. “I’ve come to learn the difference between secret and private. They’re not the same, especially to me.” He looked at her and made sure he was making sense. “I can keep us private. I have a whole team of people I can use to keep you and Becca protected from the circus.”

She looked at him and he could see the skepticism on her face. “How, Jake? This all seems uncontrollable. We were on set together for only a few hours and then.…”

Jake didn’t have a plan, but he did know the resources he could use to give her the level of protection she wanted. He couldn’t make her anonymous, but he did believe he could bring her into his life without compromising hers or Becca’s safety.

“Kat, I’ve had to figure out how to navigate the world differently. And, because of that, I have a lot of resources at my disposal—”

“How?” she interrupted.

He was reminded that she lived in specificity and didn’t exist in the gray. “Kat, it’s about creating my— our —own bubble. I’m learning how and when I need it. Think about it this way: if there’s anything we need to do, I’ll hire someone to do it. If something gets out and you’re worried about Becca’s safety, she’ll have security. I can and will do anything you need.”

Kat nodded and he could see her trying to process the world he was proposing. He was only asking her to try. That was all he really wanted—a chance for them to be more than a distraction or an escape from life. He wanted to try to be something more to her, to be something to Becca. But most of all, he just didn’t want her to keep running away from him. He couldn’t chase her forever. But he knew he had to be honest with her and himself about the realities of living a life in public.

“But why can’t I just be with you and stay anonymous?” Kat asked him as she rested her forehead on his shoulder. Jake heard and felt her sigh. “It was so much easier when we could be a secret.”

“Kat, please don’t run away because this is no longer easy,” he said, taking her hand, almost as if holding on to her would keep her from running. “Given the importance of the public side of my life, even if we are private, I can’t keep you anonymous. Our relationship, and you, will come into the spotlight.”

There. He said it. The big elephant they were always dancing around. He pulled it out of the tent and plopped it right down in the middle of the apartment.

She didn’t respond, but she also didn’t pull away. He continued, “And even if we could, I don’t want us to be a secret. I want to be able to be more than some neighbor to Becca. I want to be on a set and look up and see you there. Last night was one of my best nights because you were there. I don’t believe that a secret will ever result in anything more than stolen moments. I want all the moments.”

He caught her eyes and put his hand on the side of her face, rubbing her temple with his thumb. He wanted to believe that he could protect her, and that they could find a common ground between his public life and her private nature. He was pushing her toward a risk he didn’t know if she’d be willing to take.

“All the moments,” she whispered, repeating his words. “You’re killing me, Jake.”

He wasn’t sure how to interpret her statement, but when she moved into his lap and brought her lips to his, he felt her answer. As he leaned back against the headboard, melting into their kiss, he stopped thinking.