Chapter 7 #2
“Of course,” I said. “I’m not going to . . .” My heart was beating so loud I was sure they could hear it. “I mean, I don’t know what you’re talking about. What I would even keep quiet.”
She was talking about me and Gabe. When they were in Mexico, I must have missed turning off one of the cameras.
Was the footage just out there for anyone?
It couldn’t be—if Dan and Lauren had known, they wouldn’t have hired me back on the show.
It must just be Maggie and Jason. They’d had all holiday season to reveal me, and instead they’d held on to it. For leverage?
“We understand each other, then,” Maggie said.
I left the kitchen in a daze, almost walking right into Rahul, who caught me before I could knock over his lights. “Awkward in there, huh?” I shrugged, then nodded. He scratched at the stubble on his jaw. “What’s up? You’re being weird.”
I looked around the foyer. David, the new camera assistant, was doing something on the floor, maybe taping a wire.
Lauren stood by the bathroom, nodding along to someone talking through her headset.
I didn’t care about David—if he went the way of the other assistants, he’d be gone in a few weeks—but I didn’t want Lauren to know I was worried.
Lauren was a hawk. She heard everything.
And I didn’t trust the Honeymoon Stage house, not anymore.
Not after I would have sworn on my grandmother’s grave that I’d turned off the breakers, and somehow Maggie still knew I’d been with Gabe.
“Just tired,” I told Rahul. “Learning things I’d rather not, you know?” He raised his eyebrows, but I wouldn’t say more.
“Whatever you say.” He patted me on the shoulder, a wry smile on his face that made it clear he thought that what I’d said was bullshit. Lauren watched this interaction, face impassive, biding her time.
On the way home that night, I called Gabe from the car. He picked up a few rings in, voice groggy.
“Did I wake you?” It was only eleven. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
After our weird coffee date, I had been waiting for a real reason to call him. Cruising down the mostly empty 101, I was all set to dish on Maggie’s implication, but something stopped me.
“Sorry,” I said again.
“Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, I guess I just didn’t realize how late it was.
” Suddenly, I didn’t want to bring Gabe into my Honeymoon Stage drama.
What use was burdening him with the knowledge of something he couldn’t control?
I wasn’t Maggie—I could take out my own trash.
All I had to do was keep quiet about Jason and Maggie’s marital troubles, and the tape of me and Gabe doing whatever it was we did that night in their pool would never surface.
“It’s cool.”
I wasn’t sure what to say now that I wasn’t going to spill about work. I couldn’t tell if his own reticence was just because he’d been asleep or something greater.
“I’m off next Tuesday if you have some time to get together,” I said. Mine was the only car on the expressway, and this made me bold.
“Lemme check, but I think Tuesday might be booked,” said Gabe. I sighed, and he heard me through the phone. “I swear I’m not blowing you off,” he said, now sounding fully awake. “I want to keep this going. I want to see you. Let me see what I can do.”
The next morning, I woke up to an email from Gabe: Tuesday won’t work, I can’t get out of my thing. I promise I am not blowing you off. What about that Monday night?
Maggie kept a grueling schedule, but she was contractually committed to film for us a certain number of hours per week. In mid-January, she had a gig in Kansas City performing at some company’s corporate retreat, and for the first time in my tenure as a Honeymoon Stage PA, I got to go with her.
It was no great treat to leave Los Angeles for Missouri in winter. At the airport, other travelers gawked. I pushed the luggage cart—that same cream leather suitcase—while Maggie stopped to sign her name on people’s plane tickets. Someone asked her to autograph the inside of a hardcover novel.
“Like she reads,” Dan scoffed. He was annoyed by the fans’ attention, rolling his eyes and all but saying Let’s get on with it, but Lauren loved the crowds.
She kept directing Rahul to get certain shots of people noticing Maggie and nudging their traveling companions, digging through bags for their digital cameras.
One little girl even cried. “Next time we’ll fly private,” said Dan.
Except we were already flying private, or as private as I’d ever flown.
Once we’d gotten through security, we went into an exclusive lounge for VIP airline patrons, and the guys were allowed to turn off their cameras.
While the rest of the crew debated whether or not they had enough time to order and eat full burgers, I went and sat a few seats down from Maggie.
This whole time at the airport, she’d had on a baseball cap and sunglasses, which only seemed to draw attention, given the cameras accompanying her every move.
She kept the accessories, even in the mostly empty lounge.
I was still thinking about the argument she’d had with Jason.
I wanted to reassure her she had nothing to worry about on my end.
I just wanted to clear the air. But with those sunglasses on and her mouth the careful neutral of someone who’d just spent the past hour smiling at her fans, Maggie was unapproachable.
I tried again on the plane. There were enough of us tagging along that I was pretty sure we weren’t having the full fancy private-jet experience, though the seats did all face one another, which was new.
I’d ended up diagonal to Maggie, who sat next to Brent, her hairstylist. Sally Ann had called in sick, so someone else was meeting us there to do makeup.
Maggie had, at first, been apoplectic at the news, then resigned.
As someone who regularly did my own makeup and didn’t see that much of a difference between the pink eyeshadow smeared onto Maggie and the stuff that I bought at the drugstore, I was glad she’d landed on the side of reason.
Turbulence kept sliding her undressed salad around on her tray.
Brent whispered something that made Maggie laugh. When he got up to use the bathroom, I figured this was my chance. From across the aisle, Lauren shot me a look as I leaned forward.
“Hey,” I said. “About the other day.” Maggie slid her sunglasses down her nose.
Her blue eyeliner was expertly applied. “I just want to make it clear, you know, that I’m not going to .
. . I mean things that are none of my business—” One would think that with the time I’d had to consider what I’d say to Maggie, I’d have come up with something more eloquent, but I could barely make a coherent thought. She raised her perfectly plucked brows.
“Cassidy, come help me with this.” Lauren sat empty-handed, not even pretending to have an excuse for calling me away.
“I mean, I’m really sorry if I—”
“Cassidy.” I unbuckled my lap belt and went over to Lauren. “Stop bothering Maggie.”
A few months ago, I would have taken this comment as an insult.
After half a season on Honeymoon Stage, I knew that Lauren was keeping me from contaminating her sample.
Honeymoon Stage was a science to Lauren, and the more we treated the cast like they were our friends, the less conclusive our experiment would be.
Lauren patted the empty seat next to her, and I, a good assistant, sat down.
We were back in LA less than twenty-four hours later, after watching Maggie gargle salt water and glad-hand and sing a few power ballads on the convention center stage.
Presumably, the money she got from one day of fawning over medical-equipment salespeople was more than my annual salary.
I came home with a sinus headache that lasted into the weekend—Saturday, when we filmed Maggie and Jason at a roller rink, and Sunday, when Maggie hosted her parents for dinner.
By Monday afternoon it had developed into a cold, and I knew I was too sick to go to Gabe’s. I texted to let him know.
Bummer. He got back to me immediately. Want me to bring you anything?
I was tempted to take him up on his offer, but I wasn’t going to have him drive all the way out to Silver Lake to bring me some sympathy soup.
I wanted the next time we got together to be perfect: my hair flat-ironed, my conversation sparkling, my outfit impeccable. I went home to lie down in the dark.
A few hours later, I awoke to someone knocking.
“Cassidy?” Jen cracked the door. I wiped drool from where it had pooled on my pillow. “Your . . . Gabe is here.”
“I’m sorry, what?” I’d passed out on a knit blanket, and when I raised my hand to my cheek, I could feel the pattern pressed into my skin.
My hair was an unwashed disaster. “Can you delay him or something?” Gabe had seen me grimy from running around all day on the Honeymoon Stage set; he’d seen me in sweats; he’d seen me tipsy and naked.
But this, to see me not only unvarnished but at home in my tiny bedroom, with its old mugs of tea and dirty laundry and clean laundry that, instead of folding, I had piled onto a chair—this was a level of vulnerability I hadn’t anticipated.
Jen mouthed an apology, then moved back from the door to reveal Gabe behind her.
“Hi.” I tried to casually adjust my shirt to make it less obvious that I wasn’t wearing a bra. “I didn’t expect you.”
“I know,” Gabe said. “I’m sorry. I was just going to drop this off, but then I had to buzz the door, and your roommate said to come up, so . . .”
“No, it’s good. I just . . . didn’t . . . you know.” My underwire bra sat at the top of the clean-laundry pile, a conquering hero. Outside, a truck sang backup with an ear-shattering beep. Whatever cold I was dealing with hadn’t moved into my chest, but my breathing was shallow. “Welcome, I guess.”