Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
Katie
By sunset, we were past Seattle, Travis’s Camaro growling hungrily over the interstate. My mood from the morning hadn’t completely dissipated, but I felt better than I had. The panic had become faint background noise instead of a deafening roar.
I needed to talk about it, and with real life disappearing behind us, now was the time.
Travis had caught on that I was preoccupied. He’d done an incredible job pulling me out of it, because he was pure magic. The rest was up to me.
As he drove, I connected my phone to the car’s sound system and played the song I’d listened to on repeat on the plane ride from L.A. It was from Travis’s album, and it was called “Been There.” The guitar was a catchy, snarly, low-key riff, the drums were irresistibly funky, and then Travis’s unmistakable voice came in:
I’m livin’ in nowhere
I told them I don’t care
The one that gets me there
Is you
I watched Travis’s brows rise in surprise as the song filled the car. Then he frowned, wondering what I was getting at. On the sound system, his voice growled the second verse:
I give ‘em a wry grin
I tell you I’m tryin’
The way I’m surviving
Is you
My heart sped up and the panic came back. I had listened to the album over and over. It wasn’t just good—it was really, really good. I wasn’t a music critic, but the songs were catchy, melodic, cool. Travis’s voice was a revelation, a sexy don’t-give-a-fuck drawl. The lyrics were honest, self-deprecating, witty. Travis saw this album as a silly project no one would notice, a hail Mary for his career, but I didn’t think so. I thought this album was going to be huge.
I sleep and I wake up
Beg you not to break up
I don’t want to take up
Your time
You’re my ambition
My luck and volition
It’s just a condition
Of mine
I paused the song. “Travis, you made this? Like—you just made it?”
His gaze was on the road, his jaw tight. “What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s brilliant,” I said. “I can’t stop listening to it. Are the lyrics about me?”
It was an egotistical question. Maybe he was writing about some other woman he knew, one he wished he had back. Maybe he was writing about a fictional woman, and the songs were just a story.
But this song—and all of them, but particularly this one—made me want to cry, not because I didn’t like the idea that he wrote about me, but because I did. I had never wanted anything as much as I wanted this song to be about me. If it wasn’t about me, it would crush me.
If the song was part of our fake relationship—something he’d come up with to sell records—it would crush me.
Travis was quiet for a long moment, probably sensing that this question was a minefield in a way he hadn’t figured out. “I wrote what I was thinking about at the time, so yeah, it’s about you.”
“It’s about the real me? Or the fake me?”
He shook his head. “I don’t understand. What are you getting at?”
“Are the songs about our fake relationship? Or our real one?”
“Katie.” He ran his hand through his hair. “You’re my only girlfriend. I was thinking about you when I wrote it. The real you. That’s the only you I know.”
He was as confused as I was, because the situation was confusing. We were supposed to be fake, but he’d written an album of songs about me, and I’d just spent an hour asleep against his naked body after incredible sex. Which meant we were real.
But he was about to become a superstar again, which meant publicity, tours, endless demands on him. Women and drugs thrown at him. He could be that guy again—the one he used to be. He’d have no room in his life for me anymore.
I told him the other thing I was thinking about, ever since I’d talked to Stella on the phone before getting on the plane in L.A.
“Edgar Pinsent is finished the script,” I said. “He’s leaving Romania and going into production. The money is lined up, and everything’s a go.”
Travis glanced at me, smiling, then turned back to the road. “That’s great news. Right? It’s what you’ve been waiting for.”
I nodded, slumping back in my seat. “Stella has already talked to his assistant, and Edgar wants a meeting with me in London. I’m going after this vacation. If he casts me, I’m in, and the movie will shoot in Budapest. For three months.”
“Okay.” Travis nodded. “That’s a long time, but we’ll make it work. I’ll come visit.”
“You can’t. Edgar’s film shoots are notorious. He always shoots in obscure locations and makes the cast and crew stay away from all of their families and friends. He says that it immerses them more fully in the art and makes them give a more honest performance. It’s how he gets so much intensity out of his actors onscreen.”
“Oh.” Travis blinked. “Well. I get that—I guess.” He thought it over. “Three months is long, and it’ll suck, being away from you. But it isn’t forever. And it’ll be worth it.”
We drove in silence for a moment as the sky darkened into night. I was most likely going on a shoot for three months, and Travis would go on tour. It felt like we were two trains pulling out of a station in opposite directions. I looked out the window.
The phone call with Stella at the airport had put my mind in a spin. Before Travis, my life had had a comfortable routine—I did one romcom after another on a steady schedule, shooting mostly in L.A. The material was familiar, the schedule sane, and I knew I was good at my job. Now Stella was inundated with potential scripts, I had turned down all the romcoms on the table, I had just shot a thriller, and I was about to spend three months on location for the biggest job of my career. Stella and I talked almost every day.
“Listen,” she’d said as I waited to board the plane, “I’m all for this vacation of yours, but check in with me daily, okay? We need to talk about the promo tour for Honor Student . I’m getting you on talk shows.”
“Right,” I’d said.
“We’ll get that done before you disappear to Budapest. We’ll also need to talk about the money you get offered from Edgar Pinsent when that comes through. I’ll negotiate for as much as I can. Do you think the breakup with Travis should happen before Budapest or after?”
I’d wondered for a second if I had heard the words right. “What?”
“The breakup,” she repeated, as if it was another item of business. “We should make a plan.”
“Why?” I was already on edge, and the thought made my panic notch up higher. “We don’t need to think about that yet. There’s no rush.”
“I didn’t say there was a rush,” Stella said calmly. “But you need to be strategic. You two are high profile, and the breakup will be news. I think we should maximize the benefits of the news breaking and use it to your advantage for extra publicity.”
My stomach turned, and I thought I might be sick. The idea of getting through the craziest, most stressful time of my life without Travis was unthinkable. “Not yet,” I said to Stella, keeping the desperation from my voice. “It isn’t the right time yet.”
“Maybe not, but it will be soon. Look, I know you like him, but Katie, please try to think logically here. You’re about to star in an Edgar Pinsent film. It’s going to win Oscars. If it’s the right role, you could be nominated. This is it, honey—your shot at the best career you could possibly have. You have to take the shot from the best position, because you might not get another chance this good.”
“I get that,” I said as cold sweat broke out on my skin and my chest constricted. “I can do all of that with Travis. We don’t need to break up.”
“You’re going on location, and he’s going on tour,” Stella pointed out. “He’s a rock star, honey. What if he cheats on you? Being the pathetic one in a cheating scandal is not the look you want. It’s best to protect yourself and get out before he has the chance to undo all of the good work you’ve done.”
I could barely hear her past the blood pounding in my ears. “Travis wouldn’t cheat on me.”
Stella sighed. “A lot of rock stars’ girlfriends have said those exact words. Just think about it. Look past how good-looking he is and make a plan. Are you looking to get married and have kids? Travis is just a stop on that road. Your relationship has worked perfectly. Now it’s time to make a perfect exit before things get messy.”
I looked over at Travis now, driving me to meet his parents. I had spent the plane ride after that phone call listening to the music this man had written, wondering if he’d written it for me. Then I’d jumped him in his apartment because I’d needed so badly to know he was real, to feel the real person in a way only I knew him. Travis had responded as he always did—with enthusiasm, with passion, with honest affection.
Here in this quiet car with just the two of us, with night falling outside, I could feel the complicated world falling away. I needed this. I needed him.
Travis is just a stop on the road. Make a plan.
Make an exit before things get messy.
No. Not now. I would put it off for a little longer. Right now I was on a road trip with my boyfriend to meet his parents. That was the only thing I wanted to think about. The only thing I had to think about. Everything else could wait.
“Do you remember when you drove from L.A. to Portland?” I asked him.
Travis nodded. The lights going by made beautiful shadows on his face. He hadn’t shaved in a few days, and he had a rasp of beard on his jaw, which I had felt prickling against my skin a few hours ago. “I remember,” he said.
“I was mad at myself for saying no,” I confessed.
He grinned, and I felt the warmth of it in my whole body. “I knew it. Well, now you get a redo. Road trips with me are fun. Is that why you said yes when I suggested it? To make up for saying no?”
“I would have said yes to anything you suggested.”
He glanced at me, something flickering behind those blue eyes before he turned his attention back to the road.
I watched him struggle silently, and then I said, “You’re really trying not to say something filthy, aren’t you?”
“It’s a sacrifice,” he admitted. “I can think of so many lines, all of them good. I can’t pick one.”
I felt myself smiling. “Make a list, then. I’ll read it later.”
He groaned. “Be careful what you ask for. My list is disgusting. Should we start at the top and go to the bottom, or should we start at the bottom and go to the top?”
That made me laugh. He had a talent for being funny and dirty at the same time. He was talented at other things, too. Maybe I’d make my own list.
Travis was smirking as he drove, but I thought that for a second I’d seen something serious in his expression when I’d said I would have done anything he suggested. That seriousness had vanished behind his dirty wit. I wondered whether I had imagined it. A moment of wishful thinking.
“I’m starving,” I said. “Let’s eat.” I held up a hand before he could speak. “I’m not talking about sex, Travis. I’m talking about food.”
“You’re stifling my genius for depraved conversation,” he complained. “But you win. Let’s stop for dinner.”
Travis’s mother was Jane—“Call me Janey”—and his father was Ed. They lived in an RV that was currently in a park deep in Washington, far from the nearest interstate or big box store. Janey had long, graying hair that flowed down her back, and Ed had a tidy paunch and a bushy beard. They were textbook hippie types, and they were also flaky, interesting, and weird. I liked them immediately.
As Travis had predicted, Ed showed off the weed plant he was growing in a pot on the patio and gave me a detailed explanation of his cultivation process. “It takes months to grow weed,” he said when I asked why the plant was in a pot instead of in the ground. “We don’t stay anywhere long enough for a full cycle. It’s the only thing I miss about having my own property and a yard.”
Janey had made her granola bars—Travis obviously knew his parents very well—and she hugged me tight when we were introduced, a genuine squeeze that made me feel warm. When she pulled away, she patted my face gently, her eyes crinkling at the corners. “My goodness, you’re beautiful,” she said, and in that moment, I believed it.
We sat in lawn chairs around the campfire behind the RV and talked late into the night. Twenty years ago, Ed had invented a component used in microphones, had sold the patent, and retired. “It was enough for us,” Ed said, gesturing expansively at the RV and the dark woods beyond. “I don’t need more than this. Working a job sucks. As far as I’m concerned, I’m the richest man alive.”
I glanced at Travis—who actually was rich, or had been. He didn’t look like he had taken offense. He was sprawled in his battered lawn chair with a glass of his mother’s hand-squeezed orange juice in his hand because his parents preferred weed and mushrooms to alcohol. He didn’t look like a rock star here in the wilderness, wearing jeans and a plaid flannel shirt, his hair mussed, scruff on his jaw, the fire licking light over his face. He looked like he belonged here, and I could see clearly that even though he had ended up as the frontman for a world-famous band, this had been his life growing up. He rolled his eyes good-naturedly. “You just have to say it, don’t you Dad?”
“You’re rich, too, Trav.” Ed gave him a pointed squint. “You have your health, your well-being, and now you have this lovely woman.” He gestured to me. “You’re the envy of any man on earth right now. What else do you need?”
“An apartment would be nice,” Travis said. “A bank account. A job.”
“The guy down the road pays ten bucks an hour to chop wood,” Janey said helpfully. “Cash. And you could get plenty of money for that car.”
Travis slapped a hand over his heart. “Not the car, Mom. Never the car.”
“All right, then,” she said. “There’s a bar on the way into town that advertises live music on Saturday nights. Go talk to the manager and get the gig. Problem solved.”
I sipped my drink, trying to figure out if she was joking. Was she actually suggesting that Travis White pick up a gig at a rural biker bar? No one was laughing, so maybe she was serious.
We’d taken a room at a motel half an hour’s drive away, because even if we slept on the floor, there was no room for us to stay in the RV. Instead of rolling out sleeping bags in the dirt, we sprang the money for a dank room with bed linens like sandpaper and wispy thin towels. We crawled into bed late, both of us smelling of campfire, fully dressed against the room’s chill. Travis pulled the polyester comforter over us and spooned behind me, snugging me into his heat.
“Okay, be honest,” he said against my shoulder. “Did you hate it?”
“Of course not,” I said in surprise. “Why would I hate it?”
“You’re roughing it,” he pointed out. “And my parents are weird.”
“They’re nice.”
“Nice and weird.”
I was getting used to this habit of his. Travis had a tendency to put himself down first, before anyone else could do it. It was a defense mechanism, and I wondered how he had gotten it, when he had gotten so hurt that he wanted to avoid it again. Did he think I would hurt him?
I stroked his forearm, running my fingers over the fine hairs. “I like them,” I said firmly. “They’re weird in the best way. They’re very…you.”
His body tensed against mine, almost a flinch, and then he held himself still. He didn’t speak. He thought I might be insulting him, but he wasn’t sure.
“What I mean is that I can see where you came from,” I went on. “Not physically, but who you are. How you roll with things so easily, how you aren’t hung up on material wealth.”
He huffed a humorless laugh. “Katie, I owned a house in Malibu and five cars.”
I stroked his forearm again. “Did you really lose everything?” I asked gently. Travis and I didn’t talk about money very often.
“Maybe?” He phrased it as a question. “It’s so fucking complicated, I don’t even understand it. There’s money I owe, money other people owe me, money that’s supposed to be split among the band members but no one can agree on the percentages. There’s money I never got paid, and then there’s money I got paid but might owe back. My former agent owes me money, but I have to pay enormous lawyer fees to sue him for it. And on, and on.” He sighed. “I made a mess of my career. If I’d met someone smart like you years ago, I might have avoided it, but money seemed like it was endless. For a long time, part of me couldn’t believe I hadn’t ended up playing a biker bar in rural Washington, so I just rode the wave.”
“Was your mom really serious about that?” I asked.
“Sure she was. They know I got rich and famous, but that was never important to them. They don’t listen to much pop music,” he said wryly. “The way my parents see it, Dad made a bunch of money and used it to live the rest of his life the way he wanted to. They assumed I would do that, too. Just take a paycheck and use it to do something that mattered. Get a cabin in the woods, chop wood, and play country music on Saturday nights. That’s their ideal life.”
“It’s so far away from Hollywood.” I said it aloud almost by mistake as the thought drifted across my mind, half asleep.
“So far,” he agreed. He rubbed his cheek against my shoulder through my T-shirt, as if reassuring himself that I was here. I was aware of him everywhere on my body, in every place he touched me, in the feel of his breath and the rise and fall of his chest, in his smell and the firmness of his arms. It wasn’t about sex in the moment, but I let the idea drift pleasantly across my mind. I could roll over onto my back and pull him down to me. I could kiss his neck and run my hands under his shirt, and he would say yes. Even in this shabby room, on this terrible bed, it would be sleepy and slow and sweet.
Then I remembered Ed telling Travis that having me meant he was a rich man. And Stella advising me to plan our breakup.
I fell asleep wondering if I would ever know what to do.