Chapter 8
Luke is wearing the same outfit as earlier, except now the sleeves of his shirt are pushed up, so I can see more of his tattoos.
His hands are clasped in front of him. It feels impossible that he’s standing here, in my house.
“Oh,” I say, stopping short. “Hi.”
From behind me, Thisbe woofs and careens down the stairs toward him, her tail wagging furiously.
“Claire,” he says, when he sees me on the stairs. I appreciate that he made the name switch so quickly, even if it does sound
strange coming from him. “Hey. I’m sorry to drop in on you like this. Is this a bad time?”
As he bends down to say hi to Thisbe, I’m suddenly hyperaware of myself, and not in a good way. I’m wearing a pair of three-sizes-too-big
orange-and-black Halloween pajama pants I stole from Nicky, which are covered in a thick layer of Thisbe’s blond fur. My hair
is in a messy bun and I’m pretty sure mascara is smeared underneath my eyes from the water I splashed on my face.
“It’s not the best time,” I say. “How do you even know where I live?”
“I went looking for you earlier, but you were gone. The guy you were with wouldn’t let me leave until he’d given me your contact info.
He was very thorough. But don’t worry,” he adds, when he sees the look on my face.
“I didn’t say we knew each other. I said I was looking for you because I thought you were cute. ”
Jesus Christ, Johnny. He gave out my home address? If Luke weren’t an old friend, I’d be having words with him. Plus, he could
have at least warned me so I wouldn’t have looked like this.
“Why didn’t you . . . you know, call or text me first?”
“I tried. It said you had notifications silenced.” I can tell I’m starting to make him feel uncomfortable. Good. Now he knows
how I feel. “I’m sorry. I’m realizing this was a bad idea.”
Mom comes down from upstairs. When she reaches me, she puts a hand on my shoulder and squeezes. “Claire, why don’t you invite
Luke in?”
“Would you like to come in?” I ask robotically.
“I didn’t mean to intrude,” Luke says. “I should have waited for you to text back, like you said. I’ll go.”
“No,” I say. “It’s okay. Stay. I’m just surprised to see you here.”
“Do you want something to drink, Luke?” Mom asks. Both Luke and I trail after her into the kitchen like we’re two small children.
Thisbe is right on our heels. “Or eat? We have leftover tamale pie from earlier.”
“He can’t have that,” I say without thinking. “It has cheese in it.”
Luke smiles at me, as though he’s both flattered and surprised that I remember he’s lactose intolerant.
His teeth are white, but he still has the chip in his canine from when he face-planted while we were filming the third season of Bricks.
I’m glad he didn’t get them capped or veneered or whatever celebrities do to make their teeth look so cartoonishly perfect.
“Good memory.”
“I’m sure I could put something else together if you’re hungry,” Mom offers, going over to open the fridge.
“No. I’m good, Mrs. L,” Luke says. “I mean, Ms. Hopper. Shit. Sorry. And sorry for swearing.”
“Please, call me Nina.” She closes the fridge. “It’s great to see you, Luke. I’ve got some invoices to take care of upstairs.
Yell if you two need anything.”
And with that, she calls for Thisbe to follow her and leaves us alone, Luke on one side of the kitchen island and me on the
other.
“Sorry again,” Luke says. “For dropping in like this. I obviously didn’t think it through. I went to look for you as soon
as my meeting was over, but you were gone.”
“It’s fine.” I slide my hands down my thighs, surreptitiously trying to shake loose some of Thisbe’s fur. “So what’s up?”
He looks at me for a long moment, and I can’t figure out what he’s thinking.
It goes on for long enough that I start to feel nervous, when he finally shakes his head.
“Sorry. I still can’t believe it’s you. That you live here.
In this town. I remembered you’d moved to Connecticut, but not that you were here here.
I was actually—” He clears his throat. “I was planning to reach out to you. I got your new number from Elaine, who
got it from your dad.”
It all clicks. I try to imagine whether I would do the same thing if I were visiting Los Angeles. Luke probably has layers
of assistants and managers who field requests like that. Even if I wanted to see him, I doubt I would have been able to get his number.
“And now here we are,” he adds. “In good old Glenridge, Connecticut.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“No, I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just . . . so different. Do you ever miss LA?”
Of course I do. I miss a million things about it. I miss the way the mountains turned pink when the light was just right.
How they could be snowcapped in the winter, but it was still warm enough to swim in the ocean. I miss the energy, the creative
buzz of the city, and I miss the tacos—oh, the tacos! Most of all, I miss how innocent I felt back then, how excited I was
to be chasing my dreams, booking a principal role on a show after only two years of auditions and commercial work. Back then,
the world felt like a freshly baked pie, waiting for me to eat it.
But then bad things happened, I grew up, and I can’t go backward. I can’t undo anything that’s been done. This is the after I’ve created for myself. And you know what? It’s not terrible. It’s so much easier to be Claire Hopper than CeCe Lafayette.
“Sometimes,” I say truthfully. It’s wild how Luke just being here, standing in front of me, is kicking up the silt of my past.
I cut right through it as best I can. “What are you doing here, Luke?”
It comes out more direct than I mean it to, and his face changes, almost imperceptibly, but I see it. Something goes up—an
invisible wall, a new distance—that wasn’t there before. A small part of me regrets it, regrets not grabbing his hand, pulling
him to the couch, and asking him every question I’ve been wondering about since we stopped talking. I regret not asking how
his grandfather is doing, if Luke still draws his silly comics, whether his mom’s ancient cat, Bruno—who always loathed him,
despite Luke trying everything in the book to win his favor—is still alive, if he knows whether the rumors about his television
dad from Bricks having an affair with the actor who played his older brother are true.
But the other, much bigger part of me just wants him to go away. To leave me alone. I wish I could say it was all water under
the bridge between us, but it’s not.
“I’m here because I was hoping you could help me,” Luke explains.
“With what?”
“With my role.”
Now that surprises me. “How? I don’t act anymore. I’m not in the industry at all. My life here is—”
“Normal. I know. It’s not an acting gig or anything like that. It’s because your life is normal now that I need your help.”
I wait for him to go on.
“So I don’t know if you know anything about the film I’m here to do, but I’m playing a high school student.”
“Everyone around here knows the story.”
“Yeah.” Luke runs a hand through his hair. His fingers are so . . . long. His nails are neatly trimmed, clean half-moons.
“And one of the things we’ve talked about is how it might be helpful for me to shadow a student for a couple of weeks. Just
so I fully understand the experience, since I never experienced it. The idea got put on the back burner, but then I ran into
you. And I realized you were the perfect person to ask.”
“Sorry,” I say, trying to get it straight. “So you want to, what, shadow me? To see what it’s like to be a normal high school
student?”
“Yeah. I want to see things from your perspective. See how you spend your time. I never ended up going to high school. I’ve
only ever had a tutor.”
“It’s not that interesting,” I tell him, warmth spreading from my face to my neck. I think about the twins I babysit, about
classes, about how I basically spend my life on a secondhand couch watching television. “And I already told you. I don’t want
the attention that would come with you tagging along to school with me. People would ask questions.”
“I wouldn’t need to go to school with you,” he says. “After hours would be fine.”
Now I’m really blushing, and I hate myself for it.
“After school hours, I mean,” he adds with a grin, catching himself. Then his expression becomes earnest. “Listen, this role is huge. My
manager wants me to be more seriously considered. He wants me on the Oscar track. If that’s ever going to happen, it’s this
movie. The screenplay is incredible, and this is the deepest, weightiest role I’ve ever had. Even though I’m playing a high
school kid, it’s not a high school movie.”
Having read the book, I know he’s right—it is a weighty role. It’s got Oscar buzz written all over it. It’s surreal to hear
that my closest industry friend—who I acted with at the same level less than six years ago—is now at a place in his career
where he can say the words “Oscar track” without people laughing at him.
“And so when Tommy, the director,” he adds for unnecessary context, as Tom Vaccari has both an Oscar nomination and a critically
acclaimed Showtime series under his belt, “pitched the idea for me to find a coach, I jumped at it.”
“I’d like to help you,” I say. “But I don’t think I can.”
“Why not?”
Because you remind me too much of the past, I think.
Because you hurt me, and it’s painful to be near you, painful to remember how we left things, to think about how messed up my life was when I knew you, of all the what-ifs and should-haves.
Because I want to go to college in New York City, and to do that, I need to make approximately a million more dollars.
Because I was asked to come in for a trial shift at Java Hut.
They want more hours from me than I thought they would, and more hours mean more money.
I can’t turn that down. Between that, and working for Mom and Johnny, and babysitting . . .
“Because I’m not exactly swimming in free time” is what I end up saying. “I’m about to start my third after-school job. I’m
sorry, Luke. I just don’t think I can fit it in.”
Genuine surprise registers on his face. I suppose I can’t blame him. Back when we were kids, I would have done anything for
him. Maybe he hoped that after all these years, I still would.
“Oh. No problem. It was a lot to ask.”
There’s a stretch of silence. I have no idea what else to say.
“Well, I should let you get back to your night,” Luke finally says.
“Sure, yeah.” We both start walking toward the front door. “It was good to see you, though.”
“Maybe we can get a coffee or something soon,” he says.
“Sure. I’d like that.”
At the door, he stops and opens his arms. “Is it okay—”
“Sure,” I say again. We hug. We didn’t hug much as kids—as preteen best friends, that would have been too weird. His body
feels entirely alien to me.
And then he leaves.
It takes everything in me to not lie face down on the floor right here in the front hall after the stress of that interaction. But I don’t. I gather myself and go to make a cup of chamomile tea with honey. I’m just starting up the stairs when the doorbell rings.
I can see through the glass panes at the top of the door that it’s Luke.
I pull the door open, and with it comes a blast of cold air. “Everything okay?”
“Hey,” he says. “I’m sorry to keep doing this. But I just made a few phone calls, and long story short, we’d pay you. Like,
we’d hire you to help. The production team, I mean. If you still don’t want anything to do with it, no worries, and I’ll leave
you alone for real. But I thought I would at least put it out there.”
Pay me? Immediately, I start rearranging things in my mind. The pay must be better than the minimum wage I’d be getting from
barista work. Maybe I could collect a paycheck from Luke’s production team, and I could start at Java Hut a few weeks later
than planned. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself. “For how long? And what’s the pay?”
“Not long. Only a couple of weeks. As for compensation, how much do you want?”
“Well, I don’t get out of bed for anything less than thirty grand,” I joke.
Luke scrunches up his face like he’s thinking. I’m about to be serious and tell him that thirty an hour would be ideal when
he says, “I mean, that’s high, but I bet we could make it work.”
“Wait,” I say. “No. That’s way too much. I was kidding.”
“That’s not the way to negotiate, Cee,” Luke says. “You’ve got to stick to your guns.”
“You’re not being serious, though, right?” I ask him. “You wouldn’t pay me that much, would you?”
“Sure we would,” he says simply. “As an EP, I have some discretionary funding I’m in charge of. I’ve done other films where
they’ve had to hire coaches and experts to help with authenticity. It’s not cheap. And I know we haven’t seen each other in
a while, but I trust you,” he adds, before I can say anything. “We basically grew up together, so it wouldn’t get weird between
us like it might if I had to ask for help from some random student.”
“Right.” I motion for him to come inside, so we can stop letting all the cold air in. I shut the door behind him. Now I’m
really rearranging things in my mind. Obviously I’d need to get in, but thirty thousand is basically half a year’s tuition at NYU.
It’s the equivalent of working at Java Hut for an entire year. “You’d actually pay me that much? That just seems so extreme.”
“Again, you’re not excelling in your negotiation skills here, but yes. If that’s your number, it would be worth it. For the
role, I mean.” He pauses. “So what do you think? Will you do it?”
He fidgets while he waits for my answer.
I don’t want to let Luke back in my life.
I don’t even know if I’ll like the person he’s grown into.
Maybe all the recent fame and adoration has made him insufferable.
But something about his expression is so uncomplicated in its hopefulness that it reminds me of when we were kids.
It’s a flash of the old Luke. When he was all exuberant and floppy-limbed, like a puppy with too-big paws.
The goofy, hyperactive kid who could rarely sit still and was always getting in trouble for knocking over props, for running too fast on set, for being too wiggly in the makeup chair.
The fact that the Luke I knew, the Luke I loved, is still in there, still accessible to me, makes my heart almost hurt.
And this much money could change everything for me. It could reset my future.
“I’ll do it,” I tell him. “But we’re going to need some ground rules.”