Chapter 4 #2
Ryder picked up a giant conch and pressed it to his ear, his eyes widening in exaggerated awe. “I can hear the ocean.”
I arched a teasing brow. “That might be because it’s right outside.” My shoulder brushed his as I tipped my head toward the street, the faint sound of the surf drifting in the open doorway.
He smirked and abandoned the shells to browse a rack of straw hats and visors, plucking out a hideous tie-dyed trucker hat with VACA emblazoned across the front in bedazzled rhinestones and plopping it on my head with a flourish. “This is very you.”
“You do realize ‘vaca’ means ‘cow’ in Spanish, right? I think I’ll pass on branding myself a heifer,” I said dryly, handing it back.
“You’d be such a cute cow, though.” He swapped it for one that read Beach Hair Don’t Care.
“Ugh, don’t remind me. This humidity is stressing me out.” I made a face at my reflection in the mirror. My curls had roughly doubled in size since I styled them an hour ago. “My hair has a mind of its own here. I’m so self-conscious about it.”
“What are you talking about? You look great.” He grabbed another one from the rack and held it up with a smirk: Resting Beach Face.
I swatted him with it. “That’s it, you’re in hat time-out.”
He selected a pair of Ray-Bans from a sunglasses display and slid them down the bridge of his nose. “Be honest: early Tom Cruise or bad eighties?”
I considered him seriously. “It’s giving Miami Vice.”
He winced. “But what if I need them to shield me from the paparazzi? Help us escape mobs of rabid fans?”
I made a show of looking around at the other shoppers, none of whom were paying us even an ounce of attention. “Yeah, that seems like something we need to be concerned about.” The chances of us being recognized seemed about as likely as winning an Academy Award.
Ryder decided to buy a Seafolly sweatshirt in a dusky shade of blue, and as I waited for him to pay, inspiration struck. “Wait, I just thought of something we have to do.”
“Eat lunch?” he asked hopefully, pocketing his receipt.
“Almost.” I grabbed his hand and tugged him toward the door, on a mission now.
A minute later, we stepped into Sandy Pages, the bell over the door chiming our arrival like it was happy to see us.
The place smelled heavenly, like coffee and old paper, a combination I’d bottle if I could.
After a quick wave at the proprietor, I made a beeline for popular fiction, clapping triumphantly when I spotted it on the shelf.
“There it is,” I said, grabbing a copy of The Lost Letter and holding it up like a trophy. “The book that started it all.”
Ryder plucked it out of my hands and started flipping through it, shooting me a conspiratorial look. “Confession? I cried when I first read it.”
“If you didn’t, I’d think you were dead inside.” I rummaged in my purse for my phone. “We’re going to send a picture to Nate.”
“Aww, Holden and Melody’s first selfie,” Ryder teased.
He traded me the book for my phone, then hooked his arm around my neck, fitting me snugly into the cradle of his collarbone.
“Say Seafolly,” he chanted, mugging for the camera.
I tried not to notice how good he smelled, even as I fought the urge to bury my face in his neck. Now my nose had a mind of its own.
“I have an idea,” he said once we were done, snagging a second copy from the shelf. “You write me a message in my book, and I’ll write one in yours. It’ll be a souvenir of our star-crossed summer.”
Which is how we ended up seated under the red-and-white striped awnings of the Seafood Shanty, scribbling away in our matching paperbacks. Once that was done and we were tucking into some lobster rolls, I learned quite a bit about him that I didn’t know.
Ryder grew up with a single mom who moved them around a lot, following what work she could find, until her precocious son begged her to move to LA so he could try his hand in the entertainment industry.
Almost immediately, he started landing commercials and TV guest spots—and I quickly learned just why he looked so familiar in that audition room.
“No! You were not.”
“Afraid so,” he said reluctantly, his cheekbones tinged pink.
“You were a regular on Kids Only Club?!” I shrieked, pounding my hands on the table. “Get out!”
He blew his straw wrapper at me. “Settle down.”
“That’s why you looked so familiar!” I broke into the theme song, complete with corresponding dance moves—I couldn’t help myself—and he gave me a droll look like, Are you finished? “I can’t believe I didn’t recognize you!”
“I wasn’t one of the most prominent cast members. My dancing skills were mediocre at best, so they mainly put me in the comedy sketches. You probably skipped past those to get to the musical numbers,” he said knowingly.
I grinned sheepishly; he wasn’t wrong. Kids Only Club was a long-running variety show on a popular children’s network—think Saturday Night Live but by kids, for kids, and with elaborately choreographed Glee-style musical performances.
The show served as a springboard for several child actors who went on to make it big and spawned some of the music industry’s hottest pop stars.
“Wow. I had no idea I was in the presence of pop culture royalty,” I said solemnly.
His warm, honey-brown eyes crinkled at the corners. “Go ahead, get it all out of your system.”
“You know, I might’ve even had your poster on my wall.”
That perked him right up, a cocky grin splitting his face. “Really?”
“Nah, I was more of a Joey Ashwood groupie.”
He gave me an exaggerated eye roll, scoffing as he took a pull from his bottle of Corona.
If he was this easy to tease, these next four months were going to be a bloodbath.
If there was one thing I’d learned from growing up in a family of six children, it was how to torture someone.
It was a troll-or-be-trolled world, and he seemed blissfully unaware that he’d just handed over priceless blackmail material.
“Anyway, when I eventually aged out of it—”
I cracked up. “You make it sound like the foster care system.”
He pointedly ignored my heckling. “I couldn’t get cast in anything afterward, so I decided to go back to high school and be normal for a while, graduate with my friends. I figured I’d take a break for a few years, give people a chance to forget my face, then try again as an adult.”
“Well, it worked. I watched that show religiously, and I never would have made the connection.” I leaned back in the booth, viewing him through fresh eyes. “So this is your second big break.”
I understood now—scoring the lead in The Lost Letter was his opportunity to reinvent himself as a serious actor. I’m not the only one desperate to prove myself. The spark of fierce determination in his eyes told me I was right on the money.
“You can see why I wasn’t exactly eager to get into all this at the audition.”
“You mean Nate doesn’t know?” I asked, wide-eyed.
“Of course he knows, but we don’t need to remind him!”
I let out a snort, and Ryder smiled bashfully, spinning his beer in a circle on the table. “Honestly, I’m still surprised he cast me.”
I made a noise of dissent. “I’m not.”
It’s true; I wasn’t just stroking his ego.
While it was comforting to know he was just as insecure about this job as I was, he had no reason to be.
There was definitely something special about Ryder.
He was talented, of course, but he also had that “it” factor, that certain je ne sais quoi, that kind of natural charisma and raw magnetism that commanded attention and drew people to him like bees orbiting a hive.
When he talked to you, he gave you his full attention, like you were the only person in the world, like there was nowhere else he’d rather be.
It was a heady feeling, like the sun was shining on you and you alone.
And it wasn’t just me—I’d seen the effect he had on the women around him.
He made them giggly, put a light in their eyes.
Earlier, when he grabbed my hand to cross the street, I felt a staticky buzz in my joints that caught me off guard.
In other news, I might be developing a crush on my costar. Do not develop a crush on your costar.
I cleared my throat and got us back on track.
“You were phenomenal in that audition. Plus, after reading the book, you really are the perfect pick for Holden, truly. And they wouldn’t have hired you if they didn’t think you were up to the task.
” I paused. “And in case you couldn’t tell, this pep talk is also for me. ”
He grinned. “But let’s just be real about it.
This face?” He made an exaggerated Zoolander “Blue Steel” expression, and I giggled.
“It’s not the face of a romantic lead.” I tried to object, but he wouldn’t let me.
“Come on, my eyes are set too close together, they’re squinty when I smile, I’m 170 pounds dripping wet.
Now J-Ham, on the other hand…” he said with a wag of his brows, and now I was the one throwing a wadded-up napkin at him.
He was talking about Jason Hamilton, our other main costar and the missing member of our fictional love triangle.
Jason—or “J-Ham,” as he’d told us to call him, not that I could manage it with a straight face—was the classically handsome, picture-perfect Hollywood heartthrob you’d imagine as a romantic hero, right down to his cleft chin and flawless dimples, placed like perfect parentheses around a dazzling smile.
He had one of those gleaming toothpaste-ad grins, where a cartoon sparkle twinkled every time he flashed his pearly whites.
Even his face shape was swoonworthy, all high cheekbones and blockish angles, like a Pixar-generated Prince Charming.
“Meh, that kind of perfection is boring,” I deadpanned.
“It’s not boring on you.”