Chapter 14 Los Angeles #2
His sister, wearing a Minions hoodie despite the heat outside, watched him with open resentment.
Natalie had ordered lunch because breakfast had been only coffee and hotel fruit and the kind of pastry that looked better than it tasted.
She had intended to order something light and adult. But then the menu had arrived, and all her self-respect completely disappeared.
Now in front of her sat a plate of truffle fries, a chicken Bercy sandwich with mushrooms and melted cheese, and a chocolate almond bread pudding she had not ordered so much as surrendered to.
Beside the plate was a milkshake called the Chocolate Brownie Bark, crowned with whipped cream, brownie pieces, chocolate bark, and a straw that seemed decorative because no liquid on earth could reasonably travel through it.
She took one bite of the sandwich.
It was good.
Not refined. Not subtle. Not the kind of food Aaron would have chosen. Good in the direct American way: hot, salty, rich and excessively caloric. Food that was necessary to ignore the health effects before consumption.
She took another bite.
Outside, through the restaurant windows, CityWalk moved in a bright, restless stream.
Families passed in clusters. Parents with strollers and lanyards.
Children with souvenir wands. Teenagers taking photos beneath signs.
Someone walked by with a giant pink doughnut box from Voodoo Doughnut held flat in both hands like a holy relic.
A woman in mouse ears that technically belonged to a different empire posed anyway.
Across the walkway, the Universal Studios Store was swallowing tourists and spewing them back out with plush toys, water bottles, hoodies, and bags printed with dinosaurs, wizards, sharks, and Minions.
The Minions were everywhere. On backpacks. On balloons. On shirts. On a child’s yellow hat with little silver goggles that made him look like a very small safety inspector.
Natalie watched a mother kneel to zip the jacket of a little girl dressed as a wizard. The child kept turning her head toward the entrance arches, trying to see the park while her mother tried to make the zipper obey.
Natalie dipped a fry into aioli and ate it.
It was good.
Then she looked at the empty chair across from her.
Why am I alone? she asked herself. Why isn’t Aaron here?
Aaron was at a press conference.
Natalie understood.
Well, she tried to understand.
This was his job. His moment. His Hollywood introduction. Men did not become Aaron Lam by having empty afternoons to eat fries at CityWalk.
But, still, the empty chair remained empty.
She pulled out her phone, just to see how Aaron was getting along. She immediately found a live stream about the movie on the studio’s Facebook page. Apparently, the movie was a big deal, not just to her and Aaron, but to all 342 million Americans. It was everywhere.
LIVE NOW: AARON LAM AND SKYE MADISON TALK ABOUT THE GOLDEN HOUR FILM
She opened it.
The press conference filled her tiny phone screen. She flipped it to landscape so she could see better.
Aaron sat on a couch beside his co-star, Skye Madison.
Skye was beautiful in the way white American actresses are always beautiful: polished, golden, sexy, and somehow athletic even while sitting down. Her hair fell over one shoulder.
Natalie liked Skye. Skye wasn’t necessarily her favorite actress but Natalie had liked her in that movie where Skye was a cheerleader who goes undercover at her high school as a nerdy guy.
Behind them was a poster for the film: Aaron in a dark suit, Skye in a white dress, their faces passionate and close.
Natalie watched.
A reporter asked about their chemistry.
Skye reached over and put her hand on Aaron’s arm.
She laughed. “I mean, look at him. He’s gorgeous.”
The room laughed.
Aaron smiled and lowered his eyes in that modest way Natalie knew was not modesty exactly.
Another reporter asked if the rumors were true that their first real date happened during filming.
Natalie’s hand tightened around the phone.
Aaron looked at Skye.
Skye looked back at him.
It was only a second.
That look took far too long.
“We had dinner after a night shoot,” Aaron said. “I don’t know if we called it a date then.”
“But it was,” Skye said.
More laughter.
Aaron smiled at Skye.
Then he lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles.
Then Skye leaned over and kissed Aaron’s cheek.
The room reacted exactly as it was meant to.
Natalie sat very still.
In the press conference, Aaron and Skye were charming.
Warm. Easy.
A couple without saying they were a couple. Or saying it, but leaving just enough room to deny it later. Skye leaned into Aaron. Aaron kissed her cheek when she said something Natalie could not hear over the noise of the restaurant.
Natalie closed the livestream.
She stared at her drink. It was melting.
Her fries had gone cold.
She told herself this was business.
She tried to convince herself that Aaron had explained enough already without explaining this particular thing.
She knew Hollywood loved a real life story.
She knew Skye was his co-star. She knew that rumor and innuendo drew more eyeballs to premieres, interviews and red carpets and that was the point.
But the problem with knowing a thing was that it did not stop her body from feeling the thing.
Her chest hurt.
She picked up her phone again.
She saw that she had more than a dozen unread messages from Danny. When she and Aaron had gotten together, she had been afraid to open those messages and had always come up with an excuse not to.
But this time, to distract herself, she opened up the text messages and read.
The last message was three days old.
Danny Yeung: I just hope that you’re okay.
Before that:
Danny Yeung: Saw a painting today at the studio office. I understood maybe six percent of it. Progress?
Before that:
Danny Yeung: I’m not trying to make this harder.
Before that:
Danny Yeung: I want us to be friends. If you want. If you can.
Before that:
Danny Yeung: You don’t have to answer. I was angry. I’m still angry, I think. But I don’t want us to disappear from each other’s lives completely.
Before that:
Danny Yeung: That was a really shitty to do. Is this really the kind of person you are?
Before that:
Danny Yeung: Are you still my girlfriend?
Before that:
Danny Yeung: I’ve been looking all over for you. Where are you? Why don’t you answer?
Across from her, the couple in matching Universal shirts stood and gathered their bags. The man took the woman’s iced drink so she could tie her shoe. It was a small thing. Not worth noticing.
But Natalie noticed.
Her phone screen dimmed.
She tapped it awake and looked again at Danny’s newest message.
Danny Yeung: I just hope you’re okay.
She was okay.
She had Tom Ford sunglasses on her face, shopping bags at her feet, Aaron’s credit card in her wallet, and a car waiting whenever she wanted it. She was in Los Angeles. She was with Aaron Lam.
Natalie locked her phone.
She ate one more fry.
It was cold now, but still salty enough to be worth finishing.
Then she stood, picked up her bags, and walked back into the sunlight.
After that, she walked until her feet hurt.
At four o’clock, Natalie texted the driver to come pick her up.
At seven-twenty, Aaron arrived with dinner and flowers.
Natalie opened the door to her hotel room in the hotel robe.
Aaron stood in the doorway in a charcoal jacket and open-collared shirt, clean-shaven, hair perfect, still carrying the faint charge of cameras and studio lights.
“Hello, Natalie,” he said. “Did you have a nice day at CityWalk?”
He kissed her cheek first, then her mouth.
Natalie let him.
Then she remembered Skye Madison.
She stepped back.
Aaron noticed.
“What is it?”
“I watched the press conference,” she said.
Aaron set the flowers on the table. “Ah.”
“Ah?”
“I wondered if you had.”
“That’s all?”
He looked at her. “What did you see?”
“You and Skye.”
“Yes.”
“Holding hands.”
“Yes.”
“She said your first real date was on set.”
Aaron was quiet for a moment.
Natalie folded her arms inside the robe. “Was it?”
“In a way.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the truest answer I have.”
She looked away first.
Aaron moved the dinner dishes to the table, not to avoid her, but because he always did something useful when a moment became difficult. He removed the lids one by one.
“It’s from the Tower Bar,” he said. “Only the best for you, Natalie. Only the best for us.”
Steak. Sea bass. Potatoes. Salad. Bread. Chocolate cake.
Enough food for four people.
Natalie did not sit.
Aaron turned back to her.
“Are you and Skye involved?” she asked.
“I will not lie to you. ”
“That’s nice.”
“Yes, Natalie. Skye and I are involved.”
Natalie’s face fell.
His mouth tightened slightly. “Natalie.”
“No. I mean it. That’s nice. Honesty is great. Very refreshing.”
“The studio wants the audience to believe we carried something from the set into real life.”
“And did you?”
“Yes.”
Natalie swallowed.
Aaron came closer, but stopped before touching her.
He whispered, “I need this, Natalie.”
Then: “Hollywood has not decided what to do with me yet. In Hong Kong, I am Aaron Lam.” He paused. “But, here, I am a question. Can he speak English well enough? Can he carry romance? Is he too foreign? Do Americans want to see more of Aaron Lam?”
“But the movie is done. The critics are raving. The premiere is tomorrow and everyone will be there. They’ve decided.”
“This is just one movie.”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“No,” Aaron said finally. “Both Skye and I need this to work. With Skye, they understand me faster. She makes me more acceptable to the public. They say, ‘If Aaron Lam is American enough for Skye, then Aaron Lam is an American.’ And, yes, Skye needs us to be a couple for her own reasons.”
“She makes you bankable.”
“Yes.”
“At least you know.”
“I have known that since I was twenty-three.”
Natalie looked at him.
He did not sound proud. He sounded practical.
“I have spent my whole life becoming this man,” Aaron said. “If I fail here, I do not simply lose a movie. I lose the chance to become what people have been telling me I could never be.”
“A Hollywood star.”
“A romantic lead. An Asian man that American women are allowed to want without reservation. Do you know how groundbreaking that is here? An Asian man as the object of desire of a blonde American woman?”
She did.
She did not want to. But she did.
Aaron’s voice softened. “You loved me first as that man. The man on the screen. The impossible one. I cannot destroy him and pretend I am giving you something better.”
Natalie said nothing.
That was the terrible thing. He was wrong. Probably. Somewhere, morally, he was wrong.
But he was also naming something true.
Aaron stepped closer.
This time, he touched her face.
“Skye is public,” he said. “The film is public. The red carpet is public. Tomorrow night is about work.”
“And me?”
“You are not work.”
The answer came so quickly that it hurt.
Natalie closed her eyes.
“No, Natalie,” Aaron said, softening the blow. “You are what I chose of my own free will with nothing to gain. Skye was not.”
She opened her eyes.
“What does that mean tomorrow?” she asked.
Aaron’s hand fell.
“The obvious. The thing that will be because that’s the only way that it can be.”
He paused.
“You won’t walk the red carpet with me. You will go in the back entrance on your own.”
Natalie’s heart sank.
“You won’t sit with me inside. The studio has arranged seating. I’ll be with Skye and the director. You’ll have a good seat. Close enough.”
Then, finally: “But not with me.”
Natalie stared at him.
Close enough.
There were words that could hurt more than anything else that he might say.
“You brought me here,” she said.
“Yes.”
“But not there.”
His expression changed then. Not much. Enough.
“I brought you to Los Angeles because I want you here,” he said earnestly. “I want us to be together. But there will be some nights that we can’t be together. Tomorrow is one of them.”
She almost laughed. She almost cried. She did neither.
Aaron took both her hands.
“Natalie, tomorrow night is not about us. It is noise. Cameras. Contracts. Studio people congratulating themselves for risks they did not take. Skye and I will stand where we are told to stand. We will smile. We will sell the film.”
“And then?”
“Then I come back to you.”
He said it simply.
That was worse.
Because she wanted to believe it.
Aaron lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles, not for cameras, not for a room, not for anyone but her.
“Skye protects the dream,” he said. “You are why I want the dream to be protected.”
Natalie should have argued.
Instead, something inside her loosened.
There it was. The understanding she needed. Skye was the public story. Natalie was the private reason. Skye had the cameras. Natalie had this room.
Aaron kissed her again.
This time, she kissed him back.
When they finally sat for dinner, the food had cooled slightly. Neither of them mentioned it. Aaron poured wine, asked again about CityWalk, and listened while Natalie told him about the Tom Ford sunglasses and the Minions keychain and the boy whose milkshake had a cupcake stuck in it.
He laughed in the right places.
By the time dessert came, Natalie had almost stopped thinking about the press conference.
Almost.
Aaron cut the chocolate cake in half and slid the larger piece onto her plate.
“You see?” he said. “Private life has advantages.”
Natalie looked at him across the table.
Then she smiled.
For that night, she let it be true.