Chapter 19 #2
“Favorite show?” Nora repeated, giving it some thought.
How was it that no one had ever asked her that question?
Not Leo. Not her agent. Not any casting director she’d auditioned for.
She thought about it for another moment.
“Rent,” she finally said. “My dad took me to New York as a high school graduation gift, and it was the first show I ever saw on Broadway.”
“So it’s as much the show as the memory of the trip?” Dev said.
Nora nodded. That was true. She’d done theater in high school, marveled over movies and productions with Grandma Vera her whole childhood, but she would never forget the experience of being in the rush of New York City for the very first time at the age of eighteen, walking inside the Nederlander and seeing Idina Menzel perform live onstage.
“Well, then for me it would have to be Cats,” Dev said.
“Cats?” Nora snort-laughed.
“My grandma Claire took me to see it on Broadway when I was ten. First show. First trip to New York City.”
“Ooh, she corrupted you at the age of ten,” Nora joked. “I like this Grandma Claire.” She suddenly thought about Grandma Vera introducing her to Barbra Streisand when Nora was around that same age, and she had the urge to tell Dev everything about her.
Dev smiled. “Yeah, she was the best. She raised me after my parents died in a car accident when I was eight. Saint Claire, my cousins and I always called her.”
“Wait—Saint Claire? So that’s not your real last name?”
Dev shook his head. “Stolarski. Mom, and Grandma Claire, were of Irish descent. Dad, Polish.”
“Devlin Stolarski,” Nora said softly. Then she held out her hand across the table. “Well, it’s nice to meet you. The real you.”
Dev stared at her for a moment before he reached out his hand and took hers, clasped it in his own for a moment before letting go.
“What’s he like? Tell me everything,” Julia said to Nora a few weeks later in Coronado, pulling a bag of marshmallows from her travel bag and throwing them across the patio to Emily.
Emily tore open the bag with her teeth and then delicately pulled marshmallows out one by one, lining them up at her usual s’mores-making station by the firepit.
“What who’s like?” she asked. If Nora was dating someone, she would be the last to know.
Not that she had told her sisters anything she’d been up to lately.
So, maybe it was fair, if not also annoying, to be out of their loop.
“Devlin St. Claire!” Julia exclaimed. “Em, didn’t Nora tell you that she just filmed a movie, costarring with him?”
“Who?” Emily repeated as she started layering the s’mores. She vaguely knew Nora had been in LA, filming something Nora had called small, but hadn’t paid that much attention to the details.
Nora tucked her legs underneath her on the lounger and said, “Costarring is an overexaggeration, Julia. I have a very small part in a movie that he’s starring in.”
“You’re in the same movie. I will not rephrase when it’s technically, factually true.”
Nora laughed. “Okay, whatever, legal eagle.”
“Is he that guy from The Wizards of Central Park?” Emily finally seemed to be catching on.
“You’ve watched it?” Julia raised her eyebrows, surprised.
Emily shook her head, but she didn’t explain that Cecile had watched most of the series last fall when she’d been up late at night, as Mikey, and then Jim, had both gone into sleep regressions after getting sick with, and then recovering from, swine flu.
She’d recounted the episodes to Emily every morning at work, popping into her office without even knocking, often with Emily’s favorite pumpkin spice latte in hand.
Maybe not a raise, but Emily accepted the free coffee.
(I don’t get what everyone sees in Devlin St. Claire, Cecile had said then.
He’s so… ordinary.) Emily had googled him, and the show after that, and she had agreed that he didn’t really appear to be anything special.
In fact, she couldn’t exactly remember what he looked like in any sort of distinct way.
She was going to need to google him again now that Nora obviously was infatuated.
“I don’t know. He’s… nice,” Nora finally said.
“You know… we had three scenes together. We had dinner once.” She shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant.
It wasn’t that she didn’t trust her sisters, it was more that she had gotten used to hiding stuff from them over the years.
The way she had felt about Nate in her teens and most of her twenties, for one thing.
Her on-again, off-again affair with Leo, who was married, for another.
Nothing had even happened between them, but the truth was Nora hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him since she’d left LA a few weeks earlier.
She had poured her heart out to him while drinking sangria her last night there, and now he knew everything about her: her mother’s death, her love for Grandma Vera.
He’d nodded with such understanding in his eyes, she had never felt closer to a man in her life.
But the night had ended with a chaste goodbye hug before she’d gone back to her hotel after midnight.
Then, the next morning, she’d flown home. And when she’d arrived back at her apartment and checked her email, there was one waiting from Devlin with the subject line Miss you already.
Set isn’t the same without you. — xD
She’d written back, to let him know she missed being on set too and that she’d gotten home safely. And they had been emailing each other a few times a week ever since.
The truth was, she was starting to think she might actually like Dev, for real. And that was exactly why she was scared to admit any of this out loud to her sisters now. “Dev is just… a nice guy,” Nora finally repeated, which also was not a lie. “Like really genuine for an actor.”
“Nice? Genuine?” Julia raised her eyebrows. “I’ve been married for ten years. Let me live vicariously through whatever you have going on, Nora.” She let out a little sigh, and Emily and Nora exchanged a look.
“Everything all right with you and Ted?” Emily asked, handing Julia the first s’more.
“Of course,” Julia said quickly. “It’s just… ten years of marriage and we have a kid and busy jobs and it’s not like we’re, you know, jumping each other’s bones all the time.”
Nora shook her head, feeling embarrassed for Julia. “Oh my God, Julia. No one says that.”
“So the two of you aren’t fucking anymore?
That’s what you’re trying to say,” Emily said, handing the second s’more to Nora, who promptly took a bite, realizing if her mouth was full with gooey marshmallow and chocolate, she would not be able to say anything to her sisters for a few minutes. Thank God.
“Em!” Julia admonished. “Don’t say it like that. You make it sound so… so… crude.”
Emily shrugged unapologetically. “Have you gone to counseling?” she asked.
“We don’t need counseling,” Julia said emphatically. “We’re just normal boring married people.”
Cecile and Rick had been in counseling since the twins were born, but Emily decided not to cite that as an example, especially because she also knew it hadn’t done much to improve anything between them.
Plus, it would open her up to a lot of questions she didn’t want to answer about why she knew so much about their marriage.
“Hmmm,” she said instead, then took a bite of her own s’more.
“Nora, did you buy any wine earlier when you picked up the graham crackers?”
Nora shook her head. “Let’s go walk to Vons and get some now,” she said, happy to be off the subjects of both her and Dev, and Julia’s sex life.
Julia yawned, stretched, and pronounced herself ready for bed. “You two go on without me,” Julia said as she stood, and gave each of her sisters a quick hug. “But don’t stay up too late. There’s a lot on the agenda tomorrow.”
Yes, there was a run on the beach starting at seven, followed by breakfast at Clayton’s. At least Emily and Nora knew they would have pancakes to look forward to in the morning.
An hour later, Nora and Emily were back by the firepit, each with a Solo cup of cheap grocery store Pinot Noir.
Though neither of them had ever admitted it to each other, this was their favorite part of their Coronado weeks.
The night was quiet. The sea air was cool and familiar.
The wine was smooth. Julia was asleep, and they were both feeling loose, easy.
It was the moment of truth. The one moment a year when Nora and Emily remembered how to understand each other again.
“Tell me a secret,” Emily said after she finished the first cup and poured herself a little bit more wine.
Nora finished off her cup too, considered pouring more but then decided against it. She already felt warm, relaxed. She put her empty cup down on the patio, lay back in the lounger, and closed her eyes. “No,” she said to her sister. “You tell me a secret first.”
Both of them were silent for a few moments, and then Emily finally spoke softly. “I think I’m in love with her,” Emily said.
Nora didn’t have to ask with whom. She had already known for at least two years that Emily had a crush on her married boss. “That’s not a secret,” she said, opening her eyes. But then she added, “I think I’m in love with him.”
Emily laughed wryly. “Well, that’s not a secret either.”
“But I don’t think I’ve ever been in love with anybody before,” Nora blurted out.
What she had with Leo was never love. What she’d always felt around Nate was a one-sided teenage crush.
This felt altogether different in the way it completely consumed her, and even thinking about Dev now, she suddenly found it harder to breathe.
“And Dev is like… Hollywood royalty. He can’t possibly ever love me back. ”
“Why not?” Emily asked. Then she added, “At least he’s not married.”
“Married people get divorced all the time,” Nora said, though she thought about Leo and she was suddenly glad she’d never told Emily about him.
She sighed. “Honestly? I might be more terrified of what could happen if he does love me back. I wouldn’t even know what to do or how not to mess it all up. ”
Emily nodded. She had, in fact, been in love before.
And she understood the terrifying part. Loving someone meant that it could destroy you if they abandoned you, when they abandoned you.
It was so much safer never to love anyone than to risk your heart.
But Nora didn’t know what Emily knew; Nora wasn’t haunted the way she was.
“Nora,” Emily finally said. “That Hollywood royalty would be the luckiest fucking man alive to have the privilege of loving a gorgeous, talented bitch like you.”
Nora laughed. “Takes one to know one.” She picked up her empty Solo cup and tapped it to Emily’s. “And it doesn’t matter anyway,” she said. “Filming is over. I’ll probably never even see him again.”
But in September, Dev was in New York to do a press junket in Central Park for the special-edition DVD release of the final season of Wizards.
Though they had emailed a bunch in the last few months, Nora was still surprised when Dev showed up unannounced at her apartment.
It was nearly midnight, and they had tentatively planned to have dinner the following day, after he was done working.
She knew for a fact that the studio had paid for his hotel. What was he doing outside her door now?
“Can I come in?” he asked, smiling widely as soon as she greeted him.
For a moment, she forgot to be embarrassed by the shabbiness of her apartment, because she was just so shocked to see Dev standing right here, in Brooklyn Heights.
She nodded, opened the door wider, and suddenly she realized she was wearing ratty sweats, her curls piled on top of her head in a messy bun. She put her hand up in an awkward attempt to do something (anything) with her hair.
Dev closed the door behind him, then reached up and gently caught her hand. He smiled and brushed a wayward curl off her face. “You look beautiful, Nora,” he said gently.
She laughed. “I definitely do not. But you actually look beautiful.” And that wasn’t a lie. Somehow even after a cross-country flight, Dev’s wavy hair looked perfectly styled, his face was smoothly shaven, his skin wrinkle-free and flawless.
“My God,” he said, leaning in closer, touching his forehead gently to hers. “You are everything.”
No more perfect line could’ve been written for him, even if someone had tried. And some screenwriter somewhere probably had. Nora felt her breath suspend in her chest. She wanted to say something, but every coherent thought escaped her.
And then he kissed her. His lips felt warm, electric, like Nora was suddenly being kissed for the first time in her life at the ripe old age of thirty.