Chapter Eight
Eight
With that sorted, I feel a certain amount of tension evaporate from the air around us.
We leave our things and wander over to the rock shelf only a handful of yards away, watching the tide ebb, exposing the famous local tide pools.
For the next hour, we clamber around the rocks, sharing every discovery: fluttery anemones, tiny rocklike barnacles, silvery fish, and coral.
When the sun is high, we head back to our spot, spreading our towels out beneath the umbrella and staring at the unending cycle of waves.
He reaches over, pulling my hand into his lap, spinning the one ring I wear around my ring finger on my right hand. It’s a simple band of sapphires.
“Who’s this from?”
“My parents.”
“Pretty.” He touches my fingers, then turns my hand over, running the pad of his thumb over my wrist. “Birthstone?”
I nod. “September sixth. You?”
“April eighteenth.”
I do a double take. “It was your birthday the day we flew to LA?”
He nods, laughing. “I don’t usually make a big deal out of it. Sunny always goes overboard no matter what.”
“Well, then it’s a good thing you have a sister to make you celebrate yourself.”
He kisses my wrist before releasing my hand. “Do you ever wish you had siblings?”
I nod. “I used to a lot. Now I have Eden, and she’s like an irritating younger sister, even though she’s a couple years older than I am.”
“Will I get to meet her tonight?”
Squinting out at the water, I calculate whether she’ll be home later. Today is Wednesday; she usually works, and unless we’re back by four, we’ll miss her. “I don’t think so.”
“I’ll leave her a note.”
I lean over, bumping his shoulder with mine. “She’ll die. I’m serious.”
He grins down at my hand.
“What’s your favorite project you’ve ever done?”
Alec quirks an eyebrow over at me. “I thought you googled?”
“It was only a panic-google. I skimmed just enough to feel sufficiently mortified for asking whether you still skateboard.”
He laughs the open-mouthed laugh I love. “That was possibly my favorite part at the bar.”
I reach over, smacking his arm.
“I mean it when I say I’ve loved everything I’ve done,” he says, “but I really love West Midlands. It’s fun to do something where we develop relationships with our costars over time, and this cast is amazing.
” He reaches for my hand again, weaving our fingers together, resting them on his thigh.
“The early stuff all feels a little blurry. It was so exciting but so crazy. I got the role in Saviors, and I know people say this all the time, but it felt like everything changed overnight.”
“Do you like it, though? I bet it’s cool to be recognized.”
“Yes and no,” he admits, releasing my hand to dig into the backpack for our waters and granola bars. He passes me mine and then takes a long drink. “At first it was exciting, but it can be draining, too. And the press in London are unrelenting.”
“Oh. I hadn’t really thought of that.”
He lifts a wry eyebrow. “It makes it hard to be in a relationship, for example.”
I carefully steer away from the personal aspect of this minefield. “You dated your one costar, though, right?”
“Park Jin-ae? Yeah. For a couple years.” He grins at me. “I see you read that Google result carefully.”
“I probably don’t need to tell you that when you type ‘Alexander Kim’ on Google, ‘Alexander Kim girlfriend’ is the first option that autofills.”
This makes him groan. “That relationship—we actually had to do a press release,” he tells me.
“Every interview, someone would bring it up. They even asked our current and past costars so much about it. Finally, we acknowledged we were together. It’s a big deal to do that, and as a rule I don’t share personal things publicly. ”
“I’m sure it’s hard to trust.” He goes quiet at this, and I can feel him staring at me, trying to figure me out.
“I can see you looking at me, thinking that I must be talking about myself right now.”
He laughs, and I know I’m right. “You said you only broke up with your ex a few months ago?”
“Yeah. Six months now.”
“How long were you together?” he asks.
I wince because I already know how this answer will land. “About six and a half years.”
As expected, Alec goes still next to me. “Wow.”
Nodding, I say, “I hate how much time I gave him. I think I was over him a long time before everything fell apart.” I take another sip of water, clearing the heat in my throat. “I’m not mad at him as much as I’m mad at me.”
“Why?”
“For being lied to for so long.”
He leans in to catch my eye. “You didn’t do the lying, though.”
“True,” I say, and finally look over at him, “but it would be the same for you. To be with someone who was lying to you for a year. Acting a part for a year and somehow you didn’t pick up on it.
You’re an actor. It’s your job to know when someone is acting.
I’m a journalist. It’s my job to see the story underneath. I didn’t.”
His mouth forms a little ah of comprehension. “I get it.”
“And it’s hard to imagine that none of our friends knew. I wonder if some of them did and were trying to help Spence get back on his feet without telling me.”
“Ouch.”
Nodding, I say, “So it’s hard to trust my instincts.”
We stare out at the water for a couple quiet moments.
“Well,” he says, “my instincts tell me it’s time for us to go play in those waves.”
I want to kiss him for this easy redirect.
We grab a couple of pool noodles and slowly inch our way into the freezing Pacific, carefully dodging the huge crashing waves, diving under them and pushing past where they break, out to where the water is clear and calm.
From out here, the people on the beach look like tiny dots.
Tucking the long foam cylinders under our arms, we float facing each other, catching our breath.
I want to bottle this feeling so I can sip from it in the days and weeks and years to come.
I keep pushing it down, but the awareness that Alec is genuinely perfect rises up in unexpected moments, shooting a spear of pain through my chest.
And then he meets my eyes, and my lungs do a tender wilt at the piercing realization that he brought me out here specifically to talk. I liked our Laguna Beach bubble.
“I have permission to tell you everything now,” he says quietly.
“Wait—why? What changed?”
“I told my source that I was talking to you specifically, and they told me it was okay to share.”
“Me specifically?”
He nods.
I don’t understand. But— “As much as it kills me to say this, you’ll have to tell me only as your two-week stand.” I try to smile. “Conflict of interest, you know?”
“Well, it would be off the record anyway.” He dips his fingertips in the water and lifts his hand, letting the drops catch sunlight as they fall.
“But I think it would feel good to tell someone who understands. And maybe the information can help you find something else, even if you can’t write up this specific account. ”
Gray area. The life of a journalist. “Tell me anything you’re comfortable sharing.”
“I’m not sure of the best place to start.” He stares up at the sky for a beat before taking a deep breath. “Okay.” Alec blows his cheeks out as he exhales. “An old uni friend of mine from the UK is a man named Josef Anders.”
He glances at me, logging the reaction I know I can’t hide. My stomach positively bottoms out and I feel shocked blankness take over my expression.
He smiles sadly. “I take from your reaction that you’ve heard the name.”
“I have. A lot. He’s one of the owners. His name is all over this.”
Alec places a hand over his brow, squinting over at me. “I suspect it is.”
Thunder. My heartbeat feels like thunder beneath my breastbone.
“During college I had a group of friends with whom I was very close,” he says. “And then when I returned to London after my time in South Korea, a few of us reconnected. I mean, we were all busy, so we weren’t as close as we had been, but we would see each other once a month or so.”
“I swear I’ve looked at every photo of Anders online, and haven’t seen any of the two of you together,” I say, confused. “I never came across this connection.”
“Because our friendship is older than either of our careers,” he says. “We didn’t go out together for photo ops. The group spent time together at each other’s homes.” He swallows, blinking past me. “In the way that my family isn’t photographed at home, we all protected our old friends.”
A ball of black tar settles in my stomach. I am dying to know everything Alec knows but am also preemptively devastated over whatever it is that he might share about a once-close friend.
“Also around the time I moved back to England, Sunny began modeling. She was making a small name for herself in the industry. My friends would spend time at my family’s home.” He swallows. “And at some point, Josef and Sunny began dating.”
“Oh wow.” I mentally scroll through my file on Anders. “I had no idea.”
“You wouldn’t. Sunny’s private life is even more locked down than mine.
” He nods, dipping his chin beneath the water’s surface.
“But this would be maybe two years ago? Of course they’d known each other since Josef and I were at uni together, but he met her when she was thirteen, so that was a little weird.
” Alec looks briefly at me, and then away again.
“At first they kept it from everyone. Not even the other guys knew. We would all get together for dinner or to watch a match, and he never said anything about it. She was the one who told me, after they’d been together several months. ”
“Were you mad?” I ask.