Chapter 43
Josh
Imake it back to Elle in twelve minutes. No way in hell will she ever get to doubt me again. If that’s the way to earn her trust back, I’m there: I’ll show up, again, and again, and again.
I’ve got my bag with me, but as I sit back down beside her and lift her legs so they’re draped over mine again, I have a surge of doubt.
This thing could backfire.
Like, big time.
It could make her run for the freaking hills.
I reach into the bag. She’s smiling at me like it’s Santa’s bag of presents I’ve got here, and I hope it goes some way to show her how bright this flame I’ve carried for her has shone all these years.
‘This may seem cute,’ I tell her, ‘or it may make me look like that psycho blonde guy in the movie Bodyguard.’
‘Creepy stalker guy?’
‘Yeah. Him.’ She can’t say I didn’t warn her.
Her eyes widen, and she smirks. ‘Okaaay. I’m definitely curious now.’
‘Here goes.’ I sigh and pull out the first book. Lay it on her lap. There’s a photo of us on the front, a selfie from that walk we took around the cape in Antibes. The first time I kissed her.
She looks down at it and then up at me. Her fingers stroke the photo. ‘What’s this?’
I clear my throat. ‘Um. It’s my Elle book. My scrapbook of you. Of us. There may be’—I glance at the bag—‘a couple more.’
Her jaw drops. ‘You’re a scrapbooker?’
‘Don’t say it like that. It’s not who I am. It’s just something I do.’
Jeez. Way to make a guy feel emasculated. I rub the back of my neck.
‘If you say so.’ She shuts her mouth and opens the book.
I’m big on chronology, so the first pages have my ticket stub from the Gracie premiere as well as the gilt-edged invitation to the Vanity Fair party where Elle Hart shook her hot little ass against my dick.
I’ve also printed out a screen-shot of my Busted, dude reply to Perez’s tweet, and there are a couple articles stuck in from French newspapers the next day with photos of the two of us dancing.
Elle touches the Gracie stub in wonder and smiles up at me. ‘This is amazing! I can’t believe you kept all this stuff.’
I nod at her. ‘Keep going.’
The following pages are a trip down a French memory lane: press coverage of the two of us at amfAR, more photos from our walk, the receipt from our dinner in Le Suquet and a coaster from the Martinez.
I’ve devoted a few pages to coverage of her Best Actress win as well as a lot of print-outs of photos we took on our phones.
My favourite is a selfie I took where I’m giving her a kiss on the cheek while she holds her award up in the air, looking shell-shocked. It’s awesome.
If Elle was paying attention, I reckon she’d notice how well-thumbed the pages of this book are.
But from her expression, she’s struggling to take it all in.
She’s getting close to the end of our time together now.
As she looks through the pages of her trip to Maryland, complete with a piece of the banner decoration, the hand-lettered menu Mom had done for the Monday night cookout, and our photos as well as professional photographs from the night (Mom again), there’s conflict on her face.
I get it.
It’s bittersweet.
And it’s tough looking at those photos, the both of us so tan and happy, knowing what came next for us.
Or didn’t, I guess.
Elle closes up the book, a wistful expression on her face. She smooths her hand over the cover photo again.
‘Thank you for showing me that. It’s so beautiful, Josh. They were happy days.’
I swallow.
This is awkward.
‘Um. There’s more.’
Her eyebrows shoot up. ‘More?’
Oh, shit. This is where she takes out a restraining order against the creepy stalker guy.
‘Yeah. I kinda kept on… collecting stuff. About you.’
‘Seriously?’
‘I missed you so much. I was torn apart, baby. And at the same time, I was so goddamn proud of everything you were achieving. Staying away from those Academy Awards was the toughest thing I ever did. But it would have been so fucking rude of me to show up on your big night.
‘And everything I scrapbooked reminded me of how well you were doing. How much you were killing it without me. It helped remind me why I stepped away. I knew you’d fucking fly without me weighing you down.’
Her adorable little bottom lip is wobbling, and God, I wanna kiss her, but instead I reach back down into the bag and pull out the next book. Lay it on her knees. It has a Getty image of her holding up her Oscar on the cover. I love that photo—it shows her as the fucking queen she is.
Elle shoots me an I’m not sure about this look, but she opens the book, and her hand flies to her mouth when she sees the first page. It’s coverage of our breakup.
But only the stuff that praises her.
And the pieces that trash-talk me.
I know. I’m a fucking masochist.
She looks over the print-outs of magazine articles discussing my substance abuse, hailing her as the next Emma Watson, and banging on about what a lucky escape she had.
After those, there are pages of the editorial coverage.
Coverage she deserved, dissecting what made her performance in Gracie so on-point, and requesting her viewpoints on everything from philanthropy to sexism in the movie industry.
There are even two Vogue covers, cut from magazines I bought: the US and British editions.
She’s not the only one remembering.
Fuck, I remember how it felt to hold those Vogues in my hands.
To contemplate what a sought-after actor and icon my girl had already become.
To know I was voluntarily missing out on all of it. On all of her.
Elle’s laid herself bare for me these past couple days, and I’m doing the same for her. There’s no denying the strength, the consistency of my commitment to her, even though I couldn’t show it in the way she claims she wanted at the time.
By being there for her.
But I’m here now.
She takes a page-by-page tour of her Academy Award win, her casting in Fae, and all the rest, right through to the news in the final book that we’d both been cast in Grosvenor.
I can’t lie. I couldn’t find an article that didn’t totally obsess over how much of a shit-show it would be, having us act opposite each other.
Some of the more salacious headlines make her smile, and that’s a good thing.
‘I can’t believe you did this.’ She reaches over and takes my hand. ‘I’m blown away, Josh. I would never, ever have imagined you cared this much.’
‘Always.’ I brush my thumb over her knuckles. ‘Always. I’m not expecting a free pass—I know I’ll never make it okay, what I did—but I hope it shows you I was always thinking of you. I’ve always been your biggest cheerleader. And I’ve never gotten over you.’
‘Yeah.’ She fingers the cover and then shoots me a mischievous look. ‘Full disclosure: I didn’t scrapbook about you.’
‘Voodoo dolls felt more fitting, right?’
She grins. ‘Exactly. And more effective. I hope you felt it when I stuck the pins from my noticeboard in your eyes.’
‘Damn, girl.’
‘But I don’t get it—what is it with you and scrapbooking? I would never have made that connection. Ever.’
I think about how to explain it. ‘I think all kids like collecting stuff. Right? Making memories. I used to scrapbook all our family trips. And it was just for fun, at first. But then I started to notice the memories I had from looking through my scrapbooks were a helluva lot happier than the ones I remembered straight from the trips. It was like I was re-remembering them.’
‘Because the mind doesn’t remember things as they actually happened.’
‘Exactly. And it felt like if I made all these pretty scrapbooks, I’d genuinely enjoy reminiscing about trips where really I’d been exhausted from filming, or Mom was being a total bitch, or Katie and I were fighting.
Does that make sense? The memories didn’t have to be accurate for me to enjoy them.
I was happy to just look at the photos and not dig too deep on what was going on behind those smiley faces. ’
‘It makes me sad you had to do that. From where I’m standing, it seems you grew up with a lot of privilege.’
‘Privilege, definitely. Happiness, joy, just being a kid: not so much. But with you, the books were more about celebrating you. And remembering what we had. I didn’t need to rewrite history with those.
Every memory is perfect as it is. But the books allowed me to remember without it being tarnished by what came after, by all the loneliness and fucking desolation and bleakness. ’
‘I know what you mean. That was another reason I was angry with you. You robbed me of those memories, because I never knew if they were real. I never knew if you were stringing me along the whole time, so I couldn’t trust myself to enjoy them.’
‘They were real, baby.’ I gaze into her beautiful, clear blue eyes. ‘Even more real for me than for you, if that’s possible.’