Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
Katie
Mom smiled at me as she peeked around the door. “Oh, good,” she said. “You’re awake. I thought you might be.”
I smiled back, smoothing the covers down on my bed. “Mom, it’s only ten o’clock.”
“True. I guess we keep early hours compared to what you’re used to.”
My parents still thought that my life involved a lot more partying than it actually did. I had explained to them about long shooting hours and early calls. I’d brought them to visit me in L.A. only twice over the years, because every other time I’d offered, I had been turned down. Neither of my parents had seemed happy when I brought them to Hollywood. They had been bewildered, as if they weren’t sure why they were in such a strange place and only wanted to go home.
I loved my parents, but there was an essential piece of me that they didn’t understand and never would. Ever since I had first seen The Wizard of Oz on TV as a kid, I had wanted to be an actress. I had wanted to play Dorothy and make magic on a yellow brick road. I’d been willing to work hard to make that happen, first by joining theater club at school, then begging my parents for acting and dancing lessons. I’d modeled, taken bit parts, and worked as an extra—anything that would get me onto a set and in front of a camera.
I didn’t do it for attention—I did it because acting made me happy and because I was good at it. Through acting, I could lead dozens of lives, hundreds even, instead of one. I could tell stories and make people feel things. Going to Hollywood had seemed like success, and it was, but it also meant I had to work even harder than before.
But part of me was still a Minnesota girl. The people in Hollywood didn’t understand my Minnesota side, and the people in Minnesota didn’t understand my Hollywood side. I was starting to suspect that the only person who could fully understand both was the man who was currently hiding under the bed, where he’d rolled just as Mom opened the door.
I shifted on the bed, silently pleading with him to stay quiet. It shouldn’t have mattered so much that Travis was in my room—he was right about that—but it did. I would unpack it some other time. In the meantime, Mom crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed, taking my hand and patting it.
“It’s so nice to have you home, honey,” she said. “I love it when you visit.”
I squeezed her hand and swallowed hard. The old sadness came over me—the feeling that the real me lived both here and in L.A., and nothing I ever did would make the two sides come together. I would always be turning my back on one or the other. “Thanks, Mom.”
“And you brought a boyfriend. You’ve never done that before.”
I had never brought Jeremy to meet my parents, even though we had dated for a year. Something had always come up. Jeremy had never been interested in my Minnesota life. Travis had jumped at the chance to see it.
I pictured Travis under the bed, with a good view of Mom’s ankles as he listened in. “Um, right,” I said.
“I like him.” Mom squeezed my hand, and I realized that this conversation was the reason she had come in here. She wanted to talk about Travis.
“That’s great,” I said, cutting her off. “Okay, then, I think?—”
“He’s sweet,” Mom continued, as if I had asked for her opinion. “He was a little high, I think.”
Oops. I should have known Mom would catch that. Travis had been so polite and spacey that I had caught on right away. He must have had a gummy in one of his pockets. “He doesn’t do that often,” I rushed to explain. “I think he was just nervous.”
“I don’t know why,” Mom said. “He’s very famous. Still, it gave him an appetite. I refilled his plate three times.”
“Great,” I said. “Okay, well?—”
“He likes you,” Mom went on. “I can tell from the way he looked at you. Scott said that you two are all over the internet lately, so I was worried that he’s shallow. But even though I just met him, I don’t think he is.”
No, Travis wasn’t shallow. He just pretended to be, and very effectively, too. “Travis isn’t shallow,” I said clearly enough for him to hear. “He’s very smart.”
Mom gave a skeptical blink. “What matters is that he’s nice to you,” she said noncommittally.
“He’s nice to me,” I said, enunciating so that he could hear me under the bed. I had never regretted anything in my life more than shoving Travis under the bed. If Mom had come in to find Travis in bed with me, we wouldn’t be having this awkward conversation. I really needed to get over my good-girl instincts sometime. “Travis is a great boyfriend,” I said.
“I just like to see you having fun for once,” Mom said. “That’s what I came in here to say. You’ve always been so serious and so driven, ever since you first discovered acting. You never took time to explore or act out, like most young people do. You’ve been the same with boyfriends—you either date someone seriously, or you don’t date at all. It’s nice to see you just have fun with someone, even if it’s just for a little while.”
I stared at her. Mom thought I didn’t have fun? Okay, she was mostly right. But she thought Travis was nothing but a bit of fun. And she thought we were?—
“What do you mean, just for a little while ?” I asked.
“Everything doesn’t have to be so serious,” Mom said, patting my knee. “Even in relationships before you settle down. Travis is showing you that, and I’m grateful for it. Having fun with a man like Travis is something every girl needs at least once in her life. He reminds me of the college boyfriend I had before I met your father. He wasn’t husband material, but he was something. And by the time James came along, I knew what husband material looked like, and that’s what I wanted.”
“Mom, please.” Travis was hearing this. Hearing my mother talk about him as if he was a short-term fling. It was getting worse by the minute. “This is awkward. We need to change the subject.”
She waved me off. “I know you don’t want to talk to me about this stuff, but I’m right. If I could pick a man to show you a good time for once, it would be Travis. He’s perfect.” She gave me a sidelong look. “He’s easy on the eyes, too. Not just the front, but the back.”
“Mom, stop.” I nearly shouted it. I grabbed the bedcovers and pulled them halfway over my face. “Stop.”
“I’m just saying, good lord.” She grinned, enjoying my embarrassment. “The way he walks—I saw you looking. I bet you’re sorry we put you two in separate bedrooms.”
“ Stop. Please.”
She laughed, then stood and walked to the door. “Night, honey.” She closed the door behind her.
Under the bed, Travis cleared his throat. I heard shuffling as he maneuvered himself out of there.
I dropped the blanket and watched him unfold from the floor, brushing dust off of his sleep pants. “That wasn’t great,” he admitted. “At all.”
“I’m sorry.” I flung off the bedclothes and stood to help him brush off. “I’m so sorry. You shouldn’t have listened to me. We should have just embarrassed her. I was totally wrong.”
“I’m actually impressed at how clean it was under there.” He swiped his hands through his hair. “Still, I’d rather not know that your mom clocked my ass. Also that she figured out the weed. I’m sorry about that. I’ve never met a girlfriend’s parents before, and I didn’t want to say the wrong thing and come off like an asshole.”
“She isn’t usually like that,” I said. “She’s never talked like that about someone I’m dating before. I don’t know what came over her.”
Travis’s gaze skated away from mine and moved around the room, focusing on nothing. He was covering it, but his feelings were hurt—probably at my mother implying that he was stupid or calling him a short-term fling. Everything had been going so well. What was wrong with people?
The silence got thicker, heavier, and I had the instinct to pretend this wasn’t happening. I could change the subject or kiss him, and we wouldn’t talk about it, and we’d carry on with this visit as if everything was fine. I couldn’t stand that idea. The look in his eyes ripped my heart out.
“Travis,” I said, “please don’t listen to my mother’s stupid opinions. She doesn’t know you.”
He nodded, still not looking at me, and then he winced as if he was thinking something harsh.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s cool.”
“Travis, look at me.”
He turned those blue eyes to me, and there was so much happening behind them that I couldn’t name it all. He focused on my face, and his eyebrows twitched down in a frown. He was working up to something.
“I don’t think we should break up,” he said. He took a breath. “You know—yet.”
I stepped closer to him. “Neither do I.” I put my hand on his wrist, needing to feel how solid he was, how real. “Stella thinks we should,” I admitted.
Travis nodded. “So does Jonathan.”
“What?” I was offended, even though Stella had said the same thing to me. “Excuse me? Why does Jonathan think we should break up?”
“Because of the tour, and you going to Budapest, and once you’ve shot with Edgar Pinsent, you’ll have a lot of offers.” Travis dropped his gaze. “He says that celebrity relationships are the hardest to manage, mostly because of the schedules. He says they almost never work out, so it’s best to manage the breakup instead of being surprised by it.”
That was so exactly what Stella had said to me that I wondered if our agents had talked about it behind our backs. I wouldn’t put it past either of them. I had a secret suspicion that Stella and Jonathan were hooking up. I would deal with that later.
“Everything is so confusing,” I said, keeping hold of Travis’s wrist. “I don’t know what’s real and what isn’t. I don’t know what’s just for the cameras or the internet or our agents or our parents, and I don’t know what’s just us.”
Travis looked around the room. “Katie, none of those people are here. No one is watching. There are no cameras. There’s only us in this room.” He swallowed. “And I don’t want to break up.”
I stepped close to him, sliding my hand down his wrist to his hand and clasping it in mine. “Neither do I,” I told him. “So we don’t break up. You’re right—there’s no one here. We write this script, Travis. Together. We don’t want to write the ending yet. So we won’t.”
His hand unfolded against mine, and as his eyes met mine, his fingers gripped me back. “It’ll be difficult,” he said, though there was hope in his voice. “We’ll be apart.”
“So we’ll talk,” I said. “Often.”
“We’ll be in different time zones. And Edgar Pinsent might not want you talking to me while you’re shooting.”
“He can’t control who I talk to,” I said. “He’s a director, not my jailer. If I have to get a top-secret burner phone to talk to you, then I will.”
Travis stepped in so that his body was lightly pressed to mine, his warmth against my skin through our clothes. “You’ll meet some prestigious Oscar-winning actor, and he’ll ask you to run away with him,” he said in that Travis way of his, flippant and anxious at the same time.
“Will I? Then I guess he’ll be disappointed,” I said. “I can resist Mr. Gravitas if you can resist half-dressed groupies.”
Travis rolled his eyes. “Please.” And I believed him. It was crazy, but I did, just like he believed me. It was a leap of faith—and it felt good.
I tilted my chin up and brushed my lips over his. “So we agree. No ending yet,” I said against his skin.
He let out a soft breath. “No ending yet,” he agreed, and he kissed me.