Chapter 5
FIVE
Katie
I had listened to Seven Dog Down over the years. Everyone had, because they were hard to escape. Their music was on commercials and movie soundtracks. The five members of Seven Dog Down were celebrities and sex symbols. Their tours were sold out. Then, two years ago, the band broke up.
The stories that came out after that got weirder and darker. The band had sued their management and their record company for screwing them over, which led to countersuits. The band members had nothing good to say about each other in interviews. Seven Dog Down’s guitarist had referred to Travis White as “fucking deranged,” and Travis had responded in his own interview by saying, “If you’d had to spend ten years trapped with those guys, you’d be fucking deranged, too.”
It was nasty. And then Travis had made it worse.
His pop-star girlfriend, Sabrina Lowe, had broken up with him, saying she “wished him well,” which is PR codespeak for He’s an asshole. Travis hadn’t badmouthed Sabrina—thank God—but he had punched his former agent in a fistfight in his front yard in Malibu, which had gotten him an assault charge. Then he’d skipped his court appearance for the assault and had turned up in New Orleans to drunkenly trash his hotel room and rack up a second charge for disorderly conduct.
He hadn’t denied any of it or tried to cover it up. He hadn’t blamed anyone else. He’d made all of his mistakes in public, where anyone could see them. I didn’t know whether this made him honest or not very smart. It didn’t matter, because he was perfect.
I wasn’t a sports girl, and this was my first Lakers game, but that was part of the story. Stella and Jonathan had organized the tickets, and all I knew was that I’d taken a friend’s ticket last minute when they couldn’t make the game. It was out of character for me, a moment when I impulsively tried something new. When Travis and I would later tell the story of our meet cute, we wouldn’t have to stray far from the truth.
I had dressed carefully in jeans and a casual tee, my hair in a ponytail. I wore sneakers and my everyday makeup, because I was just a single girl having a night out, unaware she was about to meet the man who would sweep her away. I took a selfie and posted it to Instagram— Off to my first ever basketball game! Go Lakers! —and it got over a thousand likes in the first five minutes. I was ready .
Travis was late.
As the first period played out in front of me, I kept my eyes on the game. I clapped and cheered, but inside I started to boil. Where was he? Stella told me he’d been given all the details—we’d used intermediaries because when we exchanged numbers tonight, I wanted it to look real. It wouldn’t be real if I already had Travis’s number and was texting him before he even arrived.
There were always celebrities at a Lakers game, which meant there were always press and people celebrity-watching at a Lakers game. I wasn’t treated like a big deal, but I could tell in the air around me that some people knew me. The reality of being a celebrity in the age of cell phones and social media is that when you’re in public you always have to assume that someone, somewhere is taking a picture or a video of you. It isn’t the old days of paparazzi chasing you down. Instead, every person you see when you step out the door is paparazzi. All the time.
So I didn’t want to restlessly check my phone for messages from Stella. I wanted to stay in character. But the later it got, the more I fumed. I was going to give in and pull out my phone when I heard a murmur in the crowd around me.
It was like an ocean wave rolling through everyone—people shifting in their seats, turning, their attention moving. This was an L.A. crowd impossible to impress, and yet people were craning their necks, because Travis White was making an entrance.
An usher directed him down the row of seats, but instead of being annoyed, everyone he stepped over seemed delighted. People grinned up at him as they moved their knees. They fist-bumped him and said hi. And I watched in awe as Travis White, the rock star, dazzled them without trying.
He wore dark jeans, a black leather moto jacket over a gray tee, and a belt with a silver buckle. Ray-Bans were pushed up into his hair. It was an outfit in stark contrast to everyone else’s athletic look, and it oozed unstoppable sex appeal. He looked like no one else in the room. The people around us watched as he reached the empty seat next to me and sat. Cell phones were discreetly aimed at us. The guy on the other side of Travis—a C-list celebrity who had won a reality show contest—introduced himself and took a selfie.
Travis complied, and then he turned to me.
Stay in character, Katie. Stay in character.
“Hi,” I said politely.
He nodded. “Hi. I’m Travis.”
“I’m Katie.”
“Hi, Katie. Who’s winning?”
He was following the script without a hitch. “Um, the Lakers are up by ten. But they’ve been fouling, so the Celtics are getting free throws. The coach just called a timeout.”
“They’ve been fouling a lot this season,” Travis said, sitting back in his chair to watch the action. “Or so I’ve seen on TV.” He shot me a sideways look with a grin.
“That isn’t your usual seat?” I asked. “I wouldn’t know, because I’ve never been to a game before.”
“Me neither. My friend gave me his ticket for tonight.”
“Same here.” I gave him a quick, shy smile before darting my gaze away.
We sat in silence for a few minutes as the game resumed and everyone’s attention moved off of us. “You’re late,” I said to him under my breath, still watching the court.
“It worked, didn’t it?” he shot back.
I pressed my lips together, because it killed me to admit—even to myself—that he’d made a bigger entrance than I’d planned. “You could have told me.”
“Yeah,” Travis agreed, his eyes on the game. “I could have.”
I wiped my palms nervously on my thighs. According to the script, we were supposed to start talking, looking more and more engaged. Travis was supposed to make me laugh at least once. I hoped he’d make me truly laugh, because I didn’t want to have to fake it. Fake laughing was one of the skills I needed to work on.
The halftime show ended and the third period started. Neither of us was talking. I kept my gaze ahead, wondering what Travis was doing. I couldn’t tell from the corner of my eye. He seemed to be relaxed in his chair, watching the game. One of us had to talk, or this would all be over. Hadn’t he paid attention to the script?
I would have to talk first. I was trying to come up with something believable to say when I felt Travis lean toward me, his shoulder pressing into mine. Suddenly I could smell leather and aftershave and male attraction, the scent sharp in my nose.
“Katie,” Travis said close to my ear, “you’re very fucking sexy.”
I froze in shock.
This wasn’t in the script. We were supposed to talk and laugh. He wasn’t supposed to?—
“Are you coming on to me?” I hissed.
“Yep.” His breath touched my neck. “I think we should get naked. Preferably right after this game. Actually, let’s not wait until it ends. Let’s bail out right now.”
I was hot all over in a flash, and I hated it. Travis White had just called me sexy. Was he acting? He had to be acting. Men didn’t use that word for me. I was the nice girl, not the hot girl. Maybe he was confused and had forgotten his lines.
“We don’t hook up yet,” I said in a whisper, hoping to be helpful. “That’s later.”
His breath feathered over my neck again when he spoke, and I felt my skin flush hot. “Actually, it doesn’t specify in the script when exactly we fuck. But you said you wanted to be bad for once. So I suggest tonight.”
“Wait—for real?”
“I’m always for real.”
I didn’t know if he was confused or just messing with me, and suddenly I didn’t care. “Travis,” I said, just loud enough for him to hear and no one else. “Fuck off.”
Travis leaned back and laughed. A real laugh, not offended in the least. A few of the people around us turned, distracted.
I put a hand over my mouth. “Sorry.”
Travis’s laugh eased off. “Sorry? Why?”
I shook my head. The apology was a reflex, ingrained. Good girls always apologized when they were rude.
“Why not?” he asked good-naturedly. “Name one reason why we shouldn’t hook up the first time we meet.”
“We’re supposed to talk first.”
“Katie, we’re talking right now.”
I sighed. “Stop being obtuse.”
“Stop being evasive. See, I can use big words, too.”
I had no comeback for that. I just turned back to the game, fuming.
Travis waited me out, and even without looking at him, I could tell he was amused.
Finally, he said, “At least give me your number, Katie. It’s inevitable. You wrote it into the scene.”
“That was a disaster,” I said on the phone to Stella later that night. “We need to call off the plan.”
“I don’t see why,” Stella said. “You two met, you talked, you gave him your number. Everyone saw you at the game. What went so wrong?”
I was home in my apartment, where I had swathed myself in a bathrobe and curled up on my pretty cream-colored sofa in a position distressingly similar to fetal. Now that the night was over, it was hard to describe in words why Travis had made me so mad. “He was late,” I said lamely. “Really late.”
“That just means everyone noticed when he arrived.”
I hated it when she was right. “He didn’t charm me,” I said. “He didn’t make me laugh. He just…breathed in my ear.”
“Katie, I’ve been divorced and trying to date in L.A. for four years. Trust me when I say that Travis White could breathe in my ear anytime.”
“You know what I mean. He kept going off-script. We were supposed to talk and hit it off. There was no spark. ”
“What did he say to you?”
Even now, I couldn’t repeat exactly what Travis had said, word for word. It felt strange to admit he’d called me sexy. He had to have been joking. “He suggested we change the script and hook up the first night we meet.”
“So he tried to screw you?”
“ Fictionally. Not in real life.” Except that it had been real, according to him. Unless he was acting. This was already confusing.
“Hmm. Has he texted you yet?”
“No.” The bottom dropped out of my stomach. “Wait. What if I get ghosted by my fake boyfriend? I’ll never get over the humiliation.”
“He isn’t going to ghost you. I don’t think.”
“You don’t think ?”
“Well, he’s Travis White. No one knows what he’ll do. I’m checking his Instagram now—he didn’t post about going to the game. He hasn’t posted at all in six months.”
I sank further into the sofa. This was the end. I was the terminal good girl, and instead of having a wild fling with the sexy bad boy, I’d get ghosted by him after telling him to fuck off, giving him my number, and waiting for him all night. I was the real life embodiment of a Taylor Swift song.
Stella could probably sense my spiral over the phone, because she said, “Don’t panic, Katie. It really isn’t—Oh.”
I closed my eyes because I couldn’t face the world anymore. “What does oh mean? Forget it, don’t tell me. No one ever speak to me again.”
“I searched Travis’s name on Instagram and someone posted photos of you two at the game.”
“What were we doing? Looking awkward? Because I think we just looked awkward, and that’s why he’ll never text me.”
There was the chime of a text coming through on my phone. “Look at that,” Stella said, her tone smug. “ No spark , my ass.”
Reluctantly, I took the phone from my ear and tapped her text message. Then I stared in disbelief.
Someone had taken shots of us from across the court, zoomed in. Saw Travis White at the Lakers game tonight, the caption said. I don’t know who she is, but I think he’s smitten.
The first one was of Travis laughing. I had my hand over my mouth. It was after I’d told him off. It didn’t look awkward. It looked, in fact, exactly like we were hitting it off.
In the second photo, we weren’t talking. I was staring at the game in what I believed was an awkward moment. My expression was rapt—thank you, acting training—but my posture was tense, and my hands were on my thighs because I was quietly wiping my palms.
Still, I was obviously watching the game. But Travis wasn’t. Travis was looking at me.
He was relaxed in his seat, but his head was turned, his blue gaze fixed on my profile. He was stunningly gorgeous, and he was ignoring the game completely, as if he couldn’t look away.
From me.
I put the phone back to my ear in shock. “What the hell is that?” I asked Stella.
“ That is spark,” was the reply. “The kind you can’t buy. Jimson Greer can eat my ass, because we don’t need him. We have Travis.”
I pulled the phone away and stared at the photos again. I stared at them so long that I had to put Stella on speaker so I wouldn’t have to stop looking. Travis and I didn’t look like two strangers bickering about my script. In these photos, we looked like we had instant chemistry.
“Are you seeing your Instagram?” Stella asked.
I had turned off my Instagram notifications years ago, because even though it was nice that a lot of my fans followed me, it was too much to get notifications all day, some of which were mean or upsetting. I didn’t need my phone notifying me at three in the morning that someone thought I was fat.
So I had given Gwen, my part-time assistant, access to all of my social media in case there was something I needed to be alerted to. Like now.
As if on cue, a text came in from Gwen. Check your IG. It’s poppin! Gwen was younger than me, and her texts regularly made me feel ancient.
I opened Instagram and stared at the notifications clicking in. People identifying me in the photo and tagging me. People resharing the photo. People posting their own photos and tagging me.
“It won’t go viral,” Stella said on the speaker. “We’re not there yet, but this is just the first meeting. It looks good. Stick to the plan, Katie. I promise you it will work.”
After we hung up, I closed Instagram and stared at the photos again. I couldn’t get over Travis’s expression as he looked at me. How had I not noticed it? How was he that good of an actor? Because he had to be acting. Yet the look on his face was so convincing. Did he?—
My phone chimed with a text from an unknown number, and I immediately knew it was him.
I’m leaving L.A. tonight. Want to come with me?