Chapter 20 Emmy
Chapter 20
Body language! Proximity! Breath mints!
Emmy
I GET UP early the next morning to make arrangements for my extended stay. The mom guilt is real, but Peyton doesn’t seem to mind because Josie is going to take her and her BFF to a waterpark. Josie is paying, and I’m grateful for that because my checking account is gasping for air. I’ve got to talk to Jill about when the royalties will start rolling in. It’ll be nice when my income is steadier.
I reschedule my flight for the Sunday night red-eye. That will give Jason and me all day today and tomorrow to work on his social media presence. He video chats me as I’m about to call the front desk and move my checkout to Monday morning. “Hey there! I texted you my address. What time are you coming?”
He’s as effortlessly handsome as ever, and I have to reroute power to my shields just to look at him through a screen. Meanwhile, all of Val’s pixie dust from last night has worn off, and I’m plain old Emmy again, in jeans and a sloppy bun. Unfortunately, I can’t afford a stylist 24/7.
“I don’t know how long it’ll take to Uber it to your place, but I can leave in the next fifteen minutes or so.”
“It’ll take over forty minutes up US-1 with traffic.” Jason squints into the phone screen. “It’d be better if you were staying here in Santa Monica. Actually, I have four bedrooms in this house. Why don’t you just stay here?”
If I had bothered to get a coffee this morning, I would have aspirated it. “Are you serious? You want me to stay with you ? In your house ?”
“It’s no big deal. No one will know. Paparazzi don’t come to your house—by law. Besides, I have my son this weekend. I only get him every other weekend… Hang on a sec.” The phone jumps and sways, and I hear him talking to someone in the background. A moment later, he appears onscreen again, this time with a little boy’s curly head next to his—an adorable, brown-eyed miniature version of him. “It’ll be better if we cut out the travel time.”
“Okay.” I find myself smiling at the view of him holding his little boy. I’ve never seen this side of him. He and Margarita have taken care to keep their son out of the media.
“Okay, well, hurry over. We’ll see you soon! Wave bye, Mattie!” The little boy’s fingers curl in a shy wave.
“Bye.” I wave back. I’m still staring at the screen long after it goes dark.
I finish my packing and get checked out. On the way to Jason’s house, Jill calls. She’s never called me on a Saturday before.
“Emmy!” she shrieks, like I’ve done something terrible. “What on earth happened?”
My pulse ticks up a beat. “What are you talking about?”
“That contest thing you posted! What happened with Jason?”
I glance out at the Pacific Ocean meandering alongside me, huge and cold and immovable. “Nothing happened. He just lost.”
“Girl!” This time she sounds like I’ve done something asinine. “There’s no room for that. You are number two on the New York Times bestseller list right now. Did you even realize that?”
I pop up in my seat, almost hitting my head on the car’s ceiling. I’ve been so busy here in LA that I haven’t even checked the week’s numbers. “Oh my God! That’s amazing! We’ll go up even more after the movie launches, right?”
“Oh, hells no!” Now you’d think I’d done something criminal. “The premiere isn’t until December. That’s four months away. You’ve got to keep the magic going or we could lose all the momentum we’ve built.”
“Okay…” I’m confused. “So, do you want me to do another book signing?”
“No, no, no! Forget all that. You need to play the celebrity crush angle harder, Emmy. No more contests where he loses. No more awkward displays like that whole hair thing. Uh-uh. Nobody exists but this guy. And you two are falling for each other. Big-time.”
My stomach twists. “I feel like maybe it’s enough. My fans are happy.”
“Emmy, don’t be so selfish,” Jill says, and my face gets hot. “Every woman on the planet wants to be you right now. We don’t get to do it, but you do! Why are you holding out on us?”
The driver looks at me in the rearview mirror. I duck down in the seat, take Jill off speaker, and press the phone to my ear. “Jill, he’s a human being, not a line item in a marketing plan. What do you want me to do?”
“You’re a beautiful adult woman! I shouldn’t have to tell you. Body language! Proximity! Breath mints!”
Suddenly, I’m reminded of Ursula, the sea witch. At least I still have my voice. “He’s trying to clean up his image, and I feel like this is getting in the way of that.”
Jill makes an exasperated noise. “So we’re going to miss out on hundreds of thousands of dollars in book sales and the number one slot on the New York Times bestseller list so Jason Connor can just screw up again with the next girl? Emmy, come on.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing, and at the same time I can. This is how other people see him. Is Jill right? Am I being naive? Am I sacrificing for a selfish, spoiled man-boy who doesn’t deserve it? Who doesn’t even care about me?
Hundreds of thousands of dollars is a lot of money. But even worse, I don’t want to miss my shot at getting back into Hollywood. I blew it in college over a guy. I don’t want to make the same mistake.
I breathe out a long, slow yoga breath. “What do you want me to do? Specifically.”
“Get something juicy for social. A kiss. Touching that’s not scripted. A blog post about how good he is in bed would be nice.”
“Ugh, Jill!”
“What? People need to know that it’s possible.”
“That what’s possible—the height of tackiness?”
“For a movie star to fall in love with one of us! For Nora’s story to be our story. A hope, Emmy. We just need a hope.”
“I’ll figure something out.”
I hang up. I can’t believe I’m number two on the New York Times bestseller list, and the movie isn’t even out yet! I’ve got to keep the momentum going. But how do I make Jason look like a gentleman on his social media while planting the seeds of something else on mine?
I don’t want to do anything incriminating, but I also can’t throw away my opportunity. I’m not a Chosen One. The only way I’ll break into the Hollywood scene is if I play all my angles. Dig in my footholds. Jill’s right—I’m almost there. Now is not the time to chicken out. Once I hit number one on the bestseller list, maybe I can relax. But until then, it’s Cali against me.
As far as Jason goes, Amanda straight up told me I’ve got no long-term prospects with him, and the way he acted during the hugging contest proves she’s right. I’ve just got to keep my eyes on the prize. Jason will be a moment in time—just like Rhett was—and I won’t lie to myself that it’s more than that. Besides, I’m leaving in two days. My real life is all the way across the country. Not to mention that, eventually, Jason Connor is going to finish my book and hate me. Yeah, I keep forgetting that part.
The truth is I’ve got nothing to lose.
I turn my camera on selfie mode. Pinch my cheeks to give them some color. Purse my lips. I snap the photo and then send it to him with a message: On my way!
I can’t wait , he texts back.
My insides swirl like the guts of every unfortunate redshirt headed into a dark cave on a lonely crash site with nothing but a retro-futuristic flashlight and a bad feeling. But I can do this. I know what I’m getting into, and the prize is so much bigger than a movie deal. I’ve got the movie deal. This time, the prize is knowing that Hollywood didn’t beat me after all.
I can still carve out a place here for myself if I play the game right. I’m sorry if Jason Connor is one of the pieces I need to move, but he’s playing his own game.
Whoever cares most gets to win, right?
In this case, the one who cares most is me.
I ring the doorbell of Jason’s sprawling Spanish-style bungalow. He answers wearing sweatpants and a Stranger Things T-shirt with a frying pan in hand. I swear, this guy doesn’t look bad ever.
“Come on in! I’m so glad you’re here!” With his free hand, he drags my suitcase just inside the doorway. I follow his bare footsteps to a kitchen with distressed cabinets and lots of chrome. It smells like sausage. My stomach revs like a car engine.
He glances down at it. “You hungry?”
“Starving.”
“Good. I made breakfast.”
The kitchen offers a view into a sunken den with a TV where Mattie is watching cartoons and playing with toys on the floor. I ease myself onto a bar stool that bellies up to a breakfast nook and watch Jason cook. I can’t help noticing how comfortable the vibe in here is. How normal and relaxed. Not what I imagined—but then again, what did I imagine? A disco ball? Twenty-four-hour bar? White tiger on a leash? At the same time, I feel kind of small wondering what he would think of my trailer. It’s quaint and beachy and fun, but it’s not this.
Then I imagine both of our little families here, together: Peyton playing on the floor with Mattie, me opening cabinets alongside Jason, knowing exactly where he keeps the plates. The thought is a dangerous pebble tossed into the water.
To distract myself, I gather up the pile of books on the counter in front of me and sort through them.
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle.
Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak.
On the bottom, #CelebrityCrush by Emmy Ellison.
My heart jumps in my chest. Page 101 is dog-eared. I already know the bar scene starts on page 213. He won’t get to it until long after I’ve left, hopefully. When I look up, he’s eyeing me with a sexy half smile.
“I’m loving it. I really am,” he tells me.
I smooth out the folded triangle marking his page and close the book. “Seriously, you don’t need to read it. You filmed the whole screenplay. I mean, why do you need to read the book?”
“Because you wrote it.”
I can’t stop the tide of feelings his words elicit. God, he’s a charmer! Maybe I should just tell him about the scene. Ruin everything now, before…
Before what?
He turns back to the stove, his muscles tensing and relaxing under his T-shirt with each shift of weight. The sweatpants don’t do his butt justice, but I admire it anyway. The curls on the back of his head are tantalizingly mussed. When he turns back toward me, our gazes meet, and I realize I’m biting my lip. I avert my eyes and curl my legs around the stool.
Maybe I could hide the book instead.
He drops a plate in front of me and tips what looks like a veggie omelet and two sausage links onto it. “Coffee? Orange juice?”
“All of it.” I match his grin as he slides a fork my way. I feel both comfortable and completely out of place at the same time. I never pictured being at his house. With his kid. And him making me breakfast.
No, that’s a lie. I did imagine the breakfast part.
My coffee and orange juice arrive with a small bowl of sugar, yellow and pink artificial sweetener packets, and oat milk on the side. He fills a second plate and drops onto the stool next to me. I take a bite of omelet, and three chews in, I think I’ve died and gone to vegetarian heaven. I push back from the counter, my eyes widening. “Is there goat cheese in here?”
He nods, his fork poised to dig into his own plate. “With tarragon, chives, and roasted red peppers. Do you like it?”
“Wait! Stop! Where’s your phone?” I spot it before he says anything, dive for it, and then aim it at him. “Smile, Jason Connor! You’re sharing this recipe with Instagram today. It’ll be our first post in Operation Keanu Reeves. We’re going to make you into somebody that everybody can’t help but love!”
“Operation Keanu Reeves, huh? I like it.”
He gives me a meme-worthy head tilt and a grin. I snap the picture. Somehow it transports me to backstage on The Terica Show , waiting in the shadows, bingeing on Lost Star memes, not even knowing he was there. Now I’m here. In his house. Plotting a social media campaign with him like we’re two ex-browncoats running a job together. It’s Jason Connor and me against the world.
Come to think of it, I haven’t looked at one of his memes in days. I haven’t needed to. All the expressions I love are right in front of me.
The TV in the den distracts me, breaking the spell. I glance at his son watching cartoons. “Isn’t Mattie going to eat with us?”
“Oh, that kid only eats Cap’n Crunch for breakfast.” Jason scoffs. It’s the same scoff he does on TV. And it’s adorable.
God, who am I kidding? I’ve fallen for him for real, and hard. If I’d ever convinced myself I could rein it in, I was a fool. I should have gotten on that plane this morning. Instead, here I am.
I make a production of doctoring my coffee with sugar and oat milk so I have a reason not to look at him. My bite of omelet is robotic. Beside me, Jason eats in silence, completely relaxed in his own space. I’m not going to come out of this whole. I just know it. Yet there’s no way I’m walking away.
“You said you had a daughter, right? Peyton?” Jason asks me, spearing a sausage with his fork.
“Yes.” He remembered her name. That’s really nice.
Stop it, Emmy!
“You have a picture?”
“Sure.” I fumble my phone out of my purse and open Snapchat, favored app of tween girls across the galaxy. I flick through the saved ones. Some are of her. Some are of me. Some are of the two of us together, puppy ears and all. Somehow looking at pictures of Peyton with Jason makes my stomach clench. Their universes don’t intersect.
He studies her photo. “She’s almost as beautiful as you.”
I smile as warmth floods across my chest. “Would you like to meet her?” I hold my finger over the VIDEO CALL button.
One eyebrow goes up. “Of course. If you’re okay with that.”
“She’d never forgive me if I said no.”
I tap the button, and Peyton picks up right away. “Hi, Mom!”
“Hey, nugget. Guess what? There’s someone here who wants to meet you.”
“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God! It’s Jason Connor, isn’t it?” She squeals so loudly I have to bump the volume down.
Jason leans in. “Hi, Peyton. Thanks for making room in your schedule. I’ve been trying to set up this meeting for days.”
Peyton fangirls hard, rattling off all the movies and TV shows she’s seen Jason in and telling him how much she loved him in each of them.
Jason nods and chuckles his way through her monologue. “Thanks! Wow, some of those were…” He throws a heavy glance my way. “Not for kids.”
“My mom covered my eyes for all those parts. But you were awesome in the rest!”
“So what about you?” he asks. “What do you like to do? Sports? Clubs?”
“TikTok!” she replies without hesitation. “The retro dances especially. Like the Renegade!”
Jason pops up from his seat with genuine excitement. “I actually know that one!” He props the phone against his coffee cup and launches into the moves with her. Joy floods through me as I watch them interact, but a thread of uneasiness weaves its way in a second later. This isn’t right. It’s one thing for me to risk my own heart, but I can’t risk my daughter’s.
At a natural pause in their conversation, I smile at Jason and reach for the phone. “It’s time to go, honey,” I say to Peyton.
Peyton shouts a goodbye to Jason and tells me she loves me.
“Love you back, nugget.” I hang up.
“She’s great,” Jason says, forking up more eggs.
“I wish…” The words pop out of me before I can stop them.
He’s fast. “You wish what?”
I can’t say it… that I wish this was for more than a weekend, that he’d have a chance to get to know Peyton for real, and we could have an actual future. If I say it, I’ll look like some naive, dumb fangirl who doesn’t understand how the world works. I should understand how it works because I’ve fallen into this trap before. And this is Jason Connor, notorious lover boy. Let’s face it, charm is his default. All the feelings in the room are mine.
“I wish…” My brain grapples. “I had some sour cream.”
His brow crinkles. “Sour cream?”
I double down. “Yes, sour cream. It’s great on omelets.”
“I have sour cream.”
Great. Now I have to ruin this amazing omelet with sour cream. While he’s getting it, Mattie comes wandering into the room. When he sees me, he runs to his dad. Jason swings him up into his arms as he brings me the sour cream I don’t even want.
“This is Emmy.” Jason rubs Mattie’s back as he hides his face in his dad’s neck. “Do you want to say hi?”
“Hi, Mattie,” I say, calculating how much sour cream I need to put on my plate to not look like a total psychopath. Mattie peeks at me, and his big brown eyes take on the same playful coyness I’ve seen in scene after scene of Jason’s work. “Looks like he’s got the Connor gift of expressions,” I chuckle. “Lucky boy.”
“Well, let’s hope he didn’t get the bad stuff.” Jason swings him in the air until he giggles. “So, what’s on the agenda today? You said something about TikToks?”
I’m busy smearing sour cream around on my plate so it looks like I ate some. “Yeah, so I see us recording three different TikToks with some dance moves from Lost Star and Hashtag Celebrity Crush . And then maybe you can be a guest on my yoga vlog, if you don’t mind. And I have, like, ten other ideas. If you have any ideas, we can do those, too. More is better. We’ll just take off and nuke the entire site from orbit…”
Jason nods, tickling Mattie. “It’s the only way to be sure.”
Oh to the snap. He finished my favorite Aliens quote. I’ve been waiting my whole life for someone to do that.
He stares at me as I sit, frozen. “Is everything okay?”
“You Michael Biehned me,” I finally say.
“You Sigourney Weavered me first.”
I let my eyes play over him. Teasing smile. Child in arms. T-shirt clinging and draping in all the right places. The light from the kitchen window fuzzes all his edges, and I want to cross the room, grab his face, and kiss him long and slow and fearlessly. I want to ask him to forget everything else and to please, please be mine… totally and forever.
Mattie squirms out of his dad’s arms and grabs my hand, dragging me off my stool. His timing is good. I’m done eating, the sour cream is sufficiently smeared, and I need a distraction big-time.
“Libro! Libro!” he shouts.
I recognize the word from what Josie has taught me. “You want me to read you a book?”
Jason nods. “Go ahead. That’ll give me time to clean up. The babysitter’s coming at ten. Then we can work.”
I gather up the books on the counter and follow Mattie to the den, where I plop down on the sofa next to a truly awful-looking doll. While Mattie peruses the bookshelf, I glance toward the kitchen to make sure Jason isn’t watching. Then I stuff #CelebrityCrush under the couch. Mattie hands me a Mo Willems classic, The Pigeon Needs a Bath! His warm, little body curls into mine as I open the book to the first page. Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve done this.
It’s a fun book. It’s so easy to do the voices and make him giggle, although I imagine Jason does it better. When I finish, the doorbell rings, and Jason lets the babysitter in. Mattie runs to her. I’m still in a blur, but it’s a good blur. A dizzy, “just got off the Disney teacups in the Happiest Place on Earth” blur.
“Why don’t I give you a quick tour, and you can tell me where you want to film?” Jason asks.
I shake off the fogginess and find him standing by the couch. I smile at how he calls taking videos with my phone “filming.” His eyes drop to something beside me, and he grabs Mattie’s doll.
“Sorry about that. Possessed Baby is hard to stomach before noon.” He shoves it onto the bookshelf, facing the wall. “I honestly think it’s haunted. It always shows up somewhere I don’t expect, threatening me with its dead, empty eyes.”
“That’s a great way to sell me on sleeping here tonight.” Too late, I realize I’ve set him up perfectly.
“I didn’t know you needed an incentive.”
He’s deadpanned it, which somehow makes it worse. Now the ball’s in my court. I scour my mind palace for a witty reply and come up empty. I laugh uncomfortably instead.
He scratches the back of his neck. “Tour?”
I jump up from the couch. “Absolutely!”
I’m introduced to Leah the babysitter, the dining room, and the three smaller bedrooms. Across the hall is the master bedroom, complete with a view of the pool and the ocean. It has a sprawling bed covered in a rumpled white duvet. I can’t help but imagine waking up in that bed every morning and eating breakfast with that view. I’m being foolish and naive and cruel to myself, but I can’t help it. I let myself imagine it. Like Jill said, people like us just need some hope.
I follow Jason as he pushes open a set of French doors, revealing the gorgeous pool deck with its keyhole alcoves, oversize wrought iron furniture, and stunning view of the Pacific Ocean.
“We’ll do the TikToks out here,” I say immediately.
He goes to find his phone while I haul a few chairs out of the way. When he returns, I’m all business.
Or mostly business. The blinking heart on my wrist is the only thing giving me away.