6. James
JAMES
Icould’ve used four more hours of sleep, but Theo was already up, and the aroma of coffee was too powerful to resist. And were those sticky buns I smelled? I pulled on a pair of basketball shorts and a T-shirt and padded down the hall to the coffeemaker.
Last year, when Travis passed away, I took over sole custody of my nephew, Theo. But now that Theo was eighteen, he was legally his own guardian—a terrifying thought.
I doubted much would change. Theo was a senior in high school with exactly one plan for his future—form a rock band with his friend Raj and become disgustingly rich and famous.
“How was Coney Island?” I asked, pouring hot coffee over a mound of white sugar.
“It was okay.”
He shrugged, and I knew right away it was boy trouble.
“Did something happen with what’s-his-face?” I had trouble keeping track of Theo’s high school romances, which tended to burn bright for a week or so before flaring out.
“No, unless you count showing up to my birthday party with Chad Hollister as something.”
Theo tended to use full names like I had a clue who he was talking about. “You’re kidding,” I said.
“I’m not. I mean, yeah, we talked about opening up the relationship, but we never made it official, and it was my fucking birthday.”
“I’m sorry, bud. That sounds awful. And sorry I had to work.”
Theo pulled a plate from the cupboard and served me a huge, gooey sticky bun. “It’s okay. It’s probably better you weren’t there anyway. Brice showed up, and—”
“Brice was there?” I didn’t mean to sound surprised. Brice didn’t need to stop being friends with Theo just because we weren’t together anymore.
“I don’t think he wanted to break up with you,” Theo said, switching to his second favorite topic after his own love life—my love life. “I think he just wanted you to fight for him. He just wanted to see if you cared enough to stop him.”
It was too early for this. If Brice didn’t want to break up, then he shouldn’t have asked to break up—simple as that. I was too old for games. Of course, if Travis were still alive, he’d say, “That’s what you get for dating twenty-three-year-olds.”
“If you want him back, all you have to do is make some grand gesture. He told me he’s not seeing anyone else.”
I closed my eyes and washed the gooey glob down my throat with a gulp of scalding coffee. “That’s not how adult relationships work.”
“Yeah, well, adult relationships are boring. There’s no passion, no excitement, no risk. And you know what that means? No rewards either.”
I shrugged. What did Theo expect me to do, serenade Brice at the skatepark?
I was thirty-eight and no longer had the hormones for drama.
Theo wouldn’t understand that, though. He was eighteen and still believed falling in love was magical and fated and not just a cocktail of lust, hormones, and a need for validation.
“Oh my god, did you see TMZ?” Theo asked, changing the subject yet again.
“You know that guy who’s gonna play you in the movie, William Chapman?
Well, apparently he’s dating Ryan Ashbury, which is just ridiculous.
I mean, he’s nowhere near good enough for Ryan.
He’s not even that hot. I think Ryan must have a secret death wish.
Like, he looks all sweet and innocent, but really he’s a kinky motherfucker who gets off on bad boys and homoerotic asphyxiation. ”
I was pretty sure Theo meant autoerotic asphyxiation, but I wasn’t about to correct him, and I definitely wasn’t going to tell him that TMZ was full of shit.
William Chapman—who was about as far from a bad boy as you could get—was definitely not dating Ryan Ashbury, and he wasn’t playing me in the movie either; Ryan was.
Theo thrust his phone at me. On the screen, Ryan Ashbury held a car door open for William Chapman.
William’s back was to the camera, so I couldn’t see the wine stain, but that was my shirt all right, which meant the photo had been snapped as William left the party.
The headline read, “Ryan Ashbury Spotted Getting Cozy With Disgraced Actor William Chapman.”
I wanted so badly to set Theo straight. He was going to lose his mind when he found out Ryan was starring in the film.
But my position at the agency demanded total discretion, and Theo was the exact opposite of discreet.
He had no filter. He just said whatever popped into his head.
Plus, I had to watch my step around William Chapman.
In a little over a month, I’d be working for his mother, former Bond girl Donna Wells, who was producing Travis’s movie.
I’d pulled every string I could to land the gig as Donna’s domestic assistant.
That summer, I’d be caring for her medically fragile dog and overseeing her house on location in Vermont.
It wouldn’t be the same as being on set, but it was better than nothing.
I’d asked to be part of filming, but the studio claimed the intimacy of the difficult subject matter required a closed set, as if the “difficult subject matter” wasn’t my life.
I wasn’t going to take no for an answer, though.
Sure, I worried Donna might recognize me and fire me on the spot.
But I was using my mother’s maiden name, and even though I’d helped Travis write the book, my name was nowhere on it.
There was no reason for her to connect her dog-sitter, James Barrett, with Jimmy Young, the character in her movie.
The only real headache was Theo, who refused to spend the summer in Florida with his grandmother.
“I brought you home a present,” I said. “It’s on top of my dresser.”
Theo scowled. I’d already given him his actual present—driver’s ed lessons. He was eighteen now, and it was high time he learned to drive.
He disappeared down the hall and returned wielding the crystal tumbler. “You bought me a glass? What the fuck? It’s not even clean.”
“That, my friend, is the very glass a certain curly-haired vampire, who shall remain nameless, drank from.”
Theo’s eyes went wide, and his jaw dropped. “No way. You worked at Andy Chapman’s bachelor party last night? Did you see Ryan? Did you touch his hair? Is he really dating William Chapman? You have to tell me everything.”
I shook my head. “You know I can’t discuss work stuff with you.”
He buried his nose in the tumbler, closed his eyes, and inhaled. “I think I can smell his chapstick. Do you think it’s coconut-flavored? I bet it’s coconut-flavored.”
He threw his arms around me and squeezed with all his might like he used to when he was four.
“This is the best birthday present ever. We need to make a shelf for it. You know how to make a shelf, don’t you?
Or maybe a pedestal, like one of those marble-bust ones.
And we’ll need proper lighting, too—something warm so the crystal glows.
Or maybe a black light. Do chapstick smears show up under black light? ”
I sank into his hug and murmured, “I don’t know, bud.”
My phone chimed in my pocket, and I almost shat my pants when I saw how much money Esther had wired me. And that was only half of it. Damn, maybe I should’ve stuck with the paparazzi business, after all.
“Is everything okay?”
I ignored the brick of guilt in my stomach. “Yeah, everything’s fine.”
Before heading home from the bachelor party, I’d called Esther and begged her not to publish anything about William, but she’d refused.
“Are you kidding me?” she’d said. “Do you have any idea how much I’m gonna be able to sell this story for? Some of us gotta eat, you know.”
“My mom called me last night.” Theo carried his empty plate over to the dishwasher as if he hadn’t just pulled the pin from a grenade and set it in my open palm.
“What? How did she get your number?”
“I gave it to her. She DM’d me on Instagram.”
I would’ve responded, but Theo had rendered me speechless. What the hell was Emily up to?
“She said I can come stay with her this summer, so now you can shut up about Florida.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Did you know I’m gonna get two and a half percent of the movie’s budget? Oh, and apparently, I have a little brother. He’s almost three. His name is Wyatt, which makes him sound like a cowboy, but he’s not. Though he is really into Spider-Man.”
How the hell had she even found out about the movie?
“You’re gonna need that money to pay for school and buy a house and—”
“I already told you. I’m not going to college.”
I deflated. We’d already had this argument a hundred times. He didn’t want to plan for the future. He wanted to live in the now, which I understood. Theo feared he would follow in his father’s footsteps, and he wanted to make the most of whatever time he had left.
I couldn’t fault him for that. I just thought he was taking it too far. There was a fifty-percent chance he’d be fine, in which case he’d need to support himself. The money from the movie and Travis’s life insurance would only last so long.
While Theo was a minor, the doctors wouldn’t test him for the mutated gene, but now that he was eighteen, it was up to him, and I prayed to God he wouldn’t go through with it.
When we’d found out our father’s early-onset Alzheimer’s was genetic, Travis and I had both gotten tested right away, not even considering the consequences.
It worked out for me; I hadn’t inherited the gene. But Travis had, and he’d never been the same after finding out.
“She just wants your money, Theo. And it may seem like a lot to you now, but it’s not.”
“No, she doesn’t.”
“And you can’t be lending it to people.”
“I’m not. She hasn’t even asked me.” He turned on the Switch and passed me a controller. “She just wants to hang out. And she’s got her own house now. It’s in St. Albans, which is just—”
“I know where St. Albans is.” I selected Ryu. What was I supposed to do now, forbid him from going? Would he even listen?
He chose Link. “Apparently, it’s close to the lake, and you can go boating and everything there.”
“We’ll discuss it later.” Just what we needed: Emily trying to get her drug-addled hands on Theo’s meager inheritance.
“Oh, and Brady might come stay with us next weekend.” Theo was full of surprises that morning.
“Are you two getting back together?” Brady was Theo’s childhood nemesis-turned-first love, but he lived six hours north. Unlike Theo, Brady was headed to college in the fall.
“No, of course not. We’re just gonna hang out. And we were never officially together.”
“Will he be sleeping in your bed?”
Theo rolled his eyes. “Just because your heart has the attention span of a goldfish doesn’t mean the rest of us are the same way. It doesn’t always have to be all or nothing.”
“All right, whatever you say.”