8. Taylor
8
TAYLOR
I could tell Maya was worried, as she sat in the passenger seat beside me—she kept glancing out of the window, drumming her fingers on her knee, her eyes scanning the streets as though she might see her little boy wandering alone out there at any second.
“He’s going to be fine,” I told her gently, and she jumped, her head whipping around to face me.
“I—I know,” she replied, clearing her throat and trying to gather herself. “It’s just…it’s just him and me at home, you know? And I worry about him. I worry that I’m not doing enough.”
I grimaced. That was an all-too-familiar sentiment, at least when it came to my life. Ever since Emily and I had split up, and I’d been left with Martha, I felt like I couldn’t do right for doing wrong. Every choice I made, I found myself second-guessing it a thousand times over, my mind reeling with all the ways this could go wrong, with all the ways I could blame myself.
“You are,” I told her. “Trust me. You are.”
She peered at me for a moment, probably able to sense that there was more to what I was telling her than just mere comfort.
“Is it just you at home with your daughter too?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Just me.”
She let out a whistle through her teeth.
“Damn, I have a hard enough time handling everything just being a makeup artist,” she remarked. “I can’t imagine how you balance it, being a whole movie star.”
I chuckled slightly.
“Well, I have some help,” I replied. “I’ve got some staff who do what they can to make life easier for me.”
“Some staff? As in, multiple?” she exclaimed.
I nodded. “I have to. Only way to keep on top of everything, unless I want to start bringing Martha to set.”
“I guess,” she agreed, furrowing her brow slightly. “And you don’t—you don’t want anyone to know about her, right?”
I shook my head. “Not if I can help it.”
“Why so?”
“Because I know that she’ll have a hard enough time having a normal life as it is,” I replied. “And I don’t want to make that any more difficult for her than it already is.”
“That’s really sweet,” she mused. “You sound like a good dad.”
“I try.”
“Is her mom around?” she asked, and then she shook her head, wincing as soon as the question was out of her mouth. “I’m sorry, that’s none of my business…”
“No, she’s not.”
It was still strange for me, to admit that Emily and I were over. It’d been years now, but I still couldn’t believe the mess it had all turned into. Emily cheating, lying, going behind my back… Even as my career was blowing up, she was ripping apart everything that I had worked so hard to build at home, acting as though my late nights were an excuse for her to go out and hook up with anyone she could get her hands on. I gripped the wheel a little tighter, pushing the thoughts to the back of my mind. None of this was Maya’s problem, and I wasn’t going to turn it into one for her.
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
She seemed to sense that she had stepped into some tender ground for me. As we drew up to a stoplight, I looked over at her.
“What about your kid? Is his dad around?”
She hesitated for a moment before she answered.
“It’s…it’s complicated,” she admitted. “Let’s leave it at that.”
I turned my attention back to the road, and we headed the last few blocks over to the school. When we arrived, she practically leaped out of the car and rushed to the reception area, where her son was waiting for her already—I didn’t follow her in, not wanting to draw any attention. I had been way too hasty, thinking I could pull Martha out of class myself without making some kind of scene. Better for me to just keep my head down and send a nanny over as soon as I got the chance, and hopefully that would be enough to keep her from getting sick. I hated seeing her ill—and besides, I knew damn well that I would catch whatever she ended up with, and that was the last thing I needed right now.
Maya emerged a few moments later with her arm around her son, who looked to be about six years old—a few years younger than my girl, so it didn’t seem likely that they’d know each other. Which was something of a relief, because I didn’t want him stringing the pieces together about who I was and feeding all of that back to the rest of the students at the school. A small handful of people knew who I was, but I tried to keep that under wraps as much as possible. I wanted Martha to go to a normal school, to have a normal life—as far as that was possible for her—not one where she was constantly being interrogated about her father and his work.
They headed toward my car, and I stepped out to open the door for them—but as soon as her son laid eyes on me, his legs faltered out from underneath him, and his lips parted in utter shock.
“What—you?—”
He stuttered a couple of times, leaning on his mother, clinging to her like his whole world had stopped making sense in a matter of seconds. Maya urged him forward.
“Come on, sweetheart,” she told him softly. “Let’s get you home.”
“Hey, buddy,” I greeted him as she steered him toward the car, climbing into the back seat alongside him. He didn’t take his eyes off me for a moment, clearly utterly boggled by what he was seeing before him.
“I’m sorry, he’s a big fan of your films,” Maya explained apologetically. “Aren’t you, Matty?”
Matty could only nod as he stared at me, like he was waiting for me to blink out of existence at any second. I grinned at him.
“Thanks, buddy,” I told him. “That means a lot.”
Matty just nodded again, and then looked to his mother. Lowering his voice, though I could still hear them, he began to talk to her urgently. “What is he doing here?” he demanded, shooting another look toward me.
“I work with Taylor right now,” she explained. I didn’t blame her for not telling him about the job she’d been doing on set—I could only imagine how keen he would have been to come join her the first chance he got, and she was clearly trying to keep her professional and personal life separate, the same way I was.
“On another film?”
“On…on another film, yes.”
His eyes widened, as though something had clicked for him. “The trio…?”
She bit her lip. I could tell she didn’t want to lie to him, but she knew that admitting this was going to make it even harder for him to keep calm. Finally, she nodded, and he let out a squeak of shock.
“Why didn’t you tell me!”
“Hey, don’t get noisy,” she warned him gently, squeezing her arm around his shoulders. “This is my work, remember?”
“Yes, but you should have?—”
“Hey, you need to get some rest,” she told him firmly. “Calm down, honey. We can talk about this later.”
“I want to see the film!” he exclaimed, his voice rising in that way that little kids did when they were getting way too excited for their own good. I could still remember the way my daughter reacted, just like this, when she had seen the pony toy set she’d asked for beneath the Christmas tree on Christmas morning a few years ago.
“You will, you can see it when it comes out, like everyone else,” she assured him. “But until then?—”
“But what about before then?” he asked, his eyes widening excitedly. “Can I visit your job, Mom?”
She hesitated before she responded, clearly not wanting to promise anything that she wouldn’t be able to follow through on.
“We’ll see,” she told him, and she buckled him in. “Just take a breath, sweetie, please. You’re not well…”
She gave me directions to their place, and soon we arrived outside their apartment building—it wasn’t exactly the nicest place, but I guessed that was what she could afford for them, especially if the father wasn’t part of their lives. I felt a twinge of sadness for this little boy, who’d lost out on having a father figure in his life, one way or another. He deserved better than that, better than to just be dumped by the person who was meant to be there for him, no matter what.
As she fussed and got him out of the car, I gently caught Maya’s arm and drew her in close to me. She stared up at me, confused—I noticed, close-up, that her green eyes were marked with little flecks of gold that glistened under the midday sun.
“I can get him in to set, if you like,” I told her quietly, not wanting him to overhear and get too excited if that wasn’t something she wanted to go through with. She frowned at me, shaking her head.
“You don’t need to do that. He’s just excited because?—”
“No, I know,” I replied. “But if he wants to visit for a day, I could make that happen. The studio’ll pretty much let me do whatever I want, as long as I make sure shooting stays on schedule. If he wants to come down for an afternoon, meet the three of us, I could fix it for him.”
A small smile curled up the corners of her lips. I couldn’t help but notice what a cute smile she had—the way it seemed to brighten everything about her, like the clouds had moved and allowed the sun to shine through.
“He would love that,” she admitted, biting her lip. “Let me…let me think about it, okay? I don’t want to say anything to him before I know for sure. And he’ll probably run riot around that set, he’ll be so excited.”
“I have a daughter,” I reminded her. “And I’ve thrown nine birthday parties for her. I know how to handle some overexcited kids.”
She laughed. “Well…thank you,” she murmured, finally. “For helping me out today, I mean. It’s really…it means a lot.”
“Anytime,” I replied, and I meant it. To my surprise, she leaned up and wrapped her arms around me, giving me a tight hug. The smell of her perfume, something light and sweet, briefly clung to me as she pulled back, and I realized in that instant just how long it had been since a woman had hugged me like that.
“See you soon,” she told me, and she took to the stairs to take her son inside. I watched her as she went, the scent of her still filling my senses, before I climbed back into the car and headed back to set. I knew I would have to invent some reason as to why she hadn’t come back with me, but I was happy to cover for her. God only knew how hard it could be in this industry as a single parent, and if I could help her get through it a little easier, then I would do just that.
And if I could spend a little more time with her in the process? Well, that would just be the cherry on top.