Chapter Thirty-Three
Ever since Singapore I’d felt like I was walking around with a stupid smile on my face.
A stupid smile that might as well be a sign saying I HAD ACTUAL SEX WITH ACTUAL JOSH SACCO.
Not even just once! Singapore was the first stop on the press tour, and since then we’d done sneaking around in Sydney, sneaking around in London, culminating in the last stop of the press tour: LA.
I’d wangled it so Chloe was on the plane with us. If the studio was going to cater to my whims once in a while, I might as well use it for my friend to fly on a private jet.
There were four seats on the plane: one for me, one for Josh, one for Chloe and one for Lisa from the studio, who spent a lot of time with her glasses on and noise-cancelling headphones in, replying to emails.
Chloe sat opposite her, in the seat adjacent to mine across the aisle, while Josh was opposite me facing backwards.
The three of us chatted amongst ourselves while Lisa worked, before she decamped to the sofa behind the seats when our chatting got too animated even for her noise-cancelling headphones.
I felt his foot come to rest against mine, a smile instantly creeping across my face.
In response, I moved my foot slowly backwards and forwards so he knew I knew his was there.
He deliberately avoided eye contact with me, smiling as he stared out of the window at the endless blue, and wispy white clouds.
With a lurch of my stomach, I noticed Chloe watching us and felt hot all over, like I’d just been caught stealing sweets (who am I kidding, I’ve never done that).
It wasn’t like me to be careless, but I hadn’t even been thinking for a second about the fact that other people were around.
When were we going to go public? Were we going to go public?
And if so, with what? What were we? Was Josh my boyfriend?
Could Josh be my boyfriend? Was Josh the kind of person that could be someone’s boyfriend?
While Josh was looking out the window, Chloe raised her eyebrows at me and mouthed, What the fuck?
I just smiled and shrugged, like it was no big deal.
It felt funny, after all this time, to surprise Chloe like this.
She’d seen, there was no point hiding it from her anymore and I might as well not feel guilty about it.
‘Can I interest you two in a drink?’ Josh asked, a knowing smile on his face. ‘Champagne?’
‘I think that would be delicious, thank you, Josh!’ Chloe said. While he was bending to extract the bottle from the fridge and fill three glasses, she leaned forward. ‘Since when has he been polite and helpful? And what’s more, what the—’ she started, but Josh was back.
The three of us resumed our chat, slightly giddy with the champagne and the fun of the barely kept secret, until Lisa, glasses pushed on top of her head, leaned across the back of the seat and said, ‘Hey, Josh, would you have a minute to chat?’ I wondered if this was the project he’d mentioned to me in Singapore.
The one with the stupid patriotic name. Rock, Flag and Eagle or whatever it was called.
Knowing how profoundly Orientations had changed the direction of my career, and knowing that Josh was at least slightly curious about trying something different made me worry about him jumping into another big-budget franchise. But it was Josh’s choice, not mine.
‘What’s up, Lisa,’ Josh said enthusiastically, following her back to the section behind.
Chloe looked at me, her mouth open in disbelief. ‘What the hell was all that?!’ she whispered. ‘Playing footsie with Josh Sacco! What is the meaning of this?’ She was absolutely vibrating with excitement.
I couldn’t stop myself from smiling, covering my face with my hands and looking at her through my fingers. ‘Look, it’s not that I’m keeping things from you,’ I said, finally dropping my hands.
‘Really?’ she asked, arching her eyebrows so high they almost disappeared into her hair. ‘Sure looks like it!’
‘No, I promise. I just barely know what’s going on with it all myself. It’s a whole new thing. Very undefined. I’m approaching with caution.’
‘That sounds more like the Emily Montgomery I know. But that is by no means enough details for me.’
‘It’s sort of been developing since this film .
. . the shoot didn’t start well but things sort of changed halfway through and the more I got to know him, and got a sense that maybe he was capable of being different to the person I’d decided he was.
I don’t know, I just found myself wondering about him. ’
‘Well I never,’ Chloe said incredulously, shaking her head.
‘Please don’t say anything to anyone,’ I begged her.
‘I won’t, I promise. Even though I’m dying to obviously,’ she said, clinking her glass of champagne against mine.
I sighed, happily. ‘I guess so.’
We touched down at Van Nuys, the private airport that served LA, and when we were shepherded towards separate cars, I was overwhelmed with the urge to kiss Josh goodbye.
I didn’t, I couldn’t, it was too soon, too public, we hadn’t talked about it and I didn’t want to go rushing into something like that the way the Old Josh would.
Instead I hugged him and said I’d see him for the press events the next day, leading to the premiere.
Even a goodbye hug was more than I’d have done on previous films. I couldn’t quite believe how much things had changed over the course of one movie after all this time.
The sun was setting as we drove to the Beverly Hills Hotel, traffic backed up on the I-405 and we idled alongside the scrubby hillside of the canyons.
British actors often hated on LA, called it soulless, but I loved the trips I took there.
I mean, I probably wouldn’t want to live there but you couldn’t deny there was something magic about it.
This part of the journey wasn’t necessarily magic, but once you got into the city, the palm trees lining wide city streets never failed to make me feel like I was somewhere special.
I mean, palm trees! Real palm trees! It seemed too good to be true, too designed to make everyday life feel like a holiday.
But they were real. Maybe Josh was like LA.
Often dismissed as shallow and vapid, of low cultural nutritional value .
. . and yet. A person that could make everyday life feel like a holiday.