Chapter 32 #2
“Um.” I had stopped thinking. I was wearing Rory’s black hat.
Not only was it a hat I had paid attention to throughout my teenage years and early adulthood, but it was a hat that now had its own fan-run social media accounts.
A hat I once wrote an embarrassingly atrocious poem about where I rhymed “black hat” with “flat on my back.” The tight fabric wrapped around my head.
It was the only thing I could feel. “Um, what?”
“Do you want the cheesecake balls?” the server asked, unaware that my brain had left my body.
Rory’s brown eyes were on me, studying me over the menu.
“Oh, yes, please. And can I get . . . I don’t know, a Stella or something?”
“You got it.” She turned to Rory. “Mr. Campbell?”
“Please, I’m Rory. This is Ellie. What’s your name?”
“I’m Tessa.” Her voice trilled like a nightingale.
“Nice to meet you, Tessa. Thanks for helping us out.” Rory turned back to me. “You want some buffalo chicken dip to go with those balls?”
I laughed. “A perfect pairing.”
He handed the menus to Tessa. “We’ll go with that, please, and I’ll take an old-fashioned. And if you golf at all, you should come back and hit a couple balls after your shift, if you want.”
Tessa was so flustered by Rory’s offer that I was secondhand embarrassed for her. Once she was gone, my eyes shot to Rory, and my mouth hit the table.
“What?” He smiled.
“Excellent moves, my friend. I just watched her fall in love with you.”
“Those weren’t moves. The goal is to get us some free drinks.” He laughed.
“Oh man, you’re lethal!” I pointed out the women who surrounded us. “I just watched about thirty pairs of legs part for you like the Red Sea,” I said.
Rory’s surprised laugh had him tipping forward.
My face flushed. “Sorry. I just remembered that you don’t know me anymore, and I don’t know you.
And we don’t say things like that to each other, nor have we ever.
So, I guess I can still embarrass myself in front of you after all these years.
That’s fun,” I said sarcastically. “Thought I’d grow out of it eventually. ”
“You know, I wouldn’t be mad if we said things like that to each other.
” Our smiles held before he leaned forward and threw his thumb back to Tessa, who was punching in our order.
“By the way, that’s gonna be delicious, but it’s also gonna be a gut bomb.
If I have to go to the bathroom every thirty minutes tomorrow on national television, I’m blaming you. ”
“You?” I scoffed. “I’m going to the pool in the morning! I had this cute one-piece lined up, but that’s now impossible. Running to the bathroom every thirty minutes while peeling in and out of a wet one-piece would be a nightmare.”
Rory leaned back with a sigh. “What pool?”
“Cosmopolitan. It’s where we’re staying. Zoe has all these hookups. We’re spending the day there. I don’t think it’s going to be crazy busy, but it’ll still be fun. What time do you tee off ?”
“Eight o’clock. Although now I kinda wish I was going to the pool to watch you fight with your bathing suit.”
“Listen, if you and any of your celebrity sports friends want to pop on by, I’m pretty sure I can get you in.” I winked. “I mean, I’ll be hiding under a towel in a cabana and terrified to make eye contact the whole time, but I’ll still get you in.”
Rory rolled his eyes. “Says the beauty who was dating Ben Winters. Who, by the way, has his face on a building wrap at Sunset and Vine right now!”
“Says the professional athlete who’s dating a swimsuit model! Who, by the way, is a LITERAL SWIMSUIT MODEL!” I cried out teasingly. I started vigorously shaking my head. “Nope. Never mind. You’re not invited. No pool party for you.”
Our eyes sparkled at each other across the table. My heart thrashed in my chest.
“Was dating, by the way,” Rory said carefully as Tessa arrived with our drinks. “I’m not seeing anyone right now.” He turned to Tessa with a nod. “Thanks.”
“Oh,” I said quietly. “Except for Tessa,” I whispered after she left, unable to concentrate knowing that Rory had gone out of his way to tell me he was single.
“Well, obviously,” he whispered back with a playful grin.
I took a deep breath before asking, “Have you been broken up for a while?”
“Yeah.” He tilted his head to the side, grabbed his drink, and took a sip. “I guess when your dad dies, you start to think about how you want to live your life, and who you want to live it with.”
For a long moment, we just looked at each other.
“So, how do you know what’s on the corner of Sunset and Vine? Do you go to LA often?” I asked.
“Every now and then.” His chest rose slowly and fell heavily.
“You never wanted to call me?” The question fell from my lips faster than I expected.
“I wanted to call you.” He kept his eyes locked on mine.
“Well . . .” I willed myself to just say the thing I wanted to say. “I wish you would have.” I grabbed my drink and took a sip.
Rory’s smile washed away, and the light that surrounded him dimmed for a moment.
He let out a weighted sigh. He closed his eyes and scrunched his nose, pinching his face together.
I watched him shuffle through a thousand emotions within only a couple of seconds.
It was as if the music had turned off and everyone around us had muted.
All I could hear was Rory’s deep breathing.
He opened his eyes again, and they landed on mine, then moved around my face.
He dipped his gaze to my mouth and then dragged it up to my hat. His hat.
He nodded at it. “That looks good on you.”
I nodded back to mine. “That looks good on you.”
Rory put his drink down, then took off my blue Dodgers hat.
He thumbed it carefully, looking at it. “I remember this, you know. When we were kids, you said you’d get one.
I know UCLA didn’t happen, but LA did.” He smiled to himself.
“I don’t mean this to sound condescending, so please don’t take it that way, but when I heard that you actually went, I was so proud of you. ”
“Well,” I said, my voice thick with regret, “LA hasn’t exactly turned out like I hoped it would.”
“Still . . . You said you would, and you did.” Rory was playing with the hat, adjusting the back so it would fit his head more comfortably.
“I said and did a lot of stupid things.” My chest hollowed out.
Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Do not cry.
“So did I.” Rory’s eyes pushed back up to mine. He cleared his throat, sniffed quietly, then looked back down at my hat in his hand. “You ever get that yellow Jeep?”
I took in a quick breath and shook my head. “You remember that?”
“I remember everything.” He put my hat back on his head, facing forward. “I’m keeping this.”
My stomach dropped. “Well, I’m keeping this.” I touched the brim of his black hat and tipped it slightly downward.
“I hoped you would.” His sad smile dipped.
Rory finally tore his eyes away from me and looked out at the field littered with golf balls and flags. He pressed his hands into his pants and stood up, then pulled one of the clubs from the bag he had just gifted me and said, “You’re up.”
Rory and I closed the place down. It was 2 a.m. We had moved to the same couch in our private bay.
The entire venue was empty except for the cleaning crew and a couple of other employees and managers, who told us not to worry or rush.
They promised they would kick us out when they themselves were ready to go.
Throughout the many hours that we’d been there, we’d played friendly competitions with Tessa, a few other employees, and the two parties in the bays next to us.
Closest to the flag, long drive, games like that.
They all loved it, and I could tell Rory was having fun, too.
You would never have known he was a sports celebrity.
They were strangers, but he was their pal, buying drinks, sharing food, telling inside jokes that developed over the course of the night.
It reminded me of how popular Rory was at his prom.
Everyone loved him. He was kind, funny, thoughtful, fun, and easy to love.
Rory had his arm draped over the back of the couch. It wasn’t around me, per se, but it was certainly behind me. I had my legs curled into my stomach and was turned toward him, with my head in my hand. My elbow was dangerously close to touching his outstretched arm.
“Do you think you’ll stay at your job?”
“Ugh.” I hung my head. “I really don’t know.
My boss, Ken Caplin, is an icon, and he’s kind and respects me.
He’s like a mentor, which I never thought I’d have.
And the kind of shows he’s making are exactly the kind of shows I want to make.
” I sighed. “But I take all the meetings, manage budgets, help with contracts, coordinate logistics with production managers, work closely with editors, writers, and the studio, and put out all the fires. Truly, the list goes on and on. I can’t turn my phone off, ever, because I’m always on call.
I’m essentially a producer, but I don’t have the title or make the money.
So I think part of me is biding time until I meet someone who’ll recognize what I do and poach me.
Or I’m waiting for Ken to give me a promotion, which I don’t think is coming.
He’s happy with how things are. It’s hard, because Ken is .
. . different from a lot of other people I’ve worked for.
” I swallowed, not wanting to dig any further into that powder keg.
“But I feel like I don’t quite know how to crack him.
I don’t know if he’s testing me or what. ”
Rory put his feet on the coffee table, which was still littered with empty glasses and plates of half-eaten food. “How quickly did you stop acting after moving to LA?”
“I figured out before I moved that I wanted to go into development. I was writing a lot. I guess that’s the truth of it,” I admitted. “I want to write. I want to be a writer. Everything else is just happening along the way.”