CHAPTER 59
“Tell me I’m an idiot.” I leaned back in the rocking chair and rested my feet on the railing, a beer clutched in my hand, half the label already picked off.
“You’re not an idiot.” Ben sat, dainty in his rocker, beside me. He sipped at ice water and adjusted his sunglasses on his nose.
“I am an idiot. I—” I closed my eyes. “I’m not even going to tell you the things I said to him. It’s embarrassing.”
“He’s Cole Masten, Summer. Don’t worry about it. He’s probably heard things your sweet little mind couldn’t even think up.”
I scowled and brought my beer to my lips, the ice-cold alcohol the only good thing about this moment. His comment didn’t make me feel better. It made me feel worse. Like I was one of thousands, just another stupid girl who fell victim to his sex appeal.
“When do you leave?” I took another sip and looked out across the fields, toward his house, his stupid red truck out front, Don’s rental beside it. I couldn’t wait for filming to start, for him to spend his days somewhere other than right there. Another stupid thought. Filming would put us face-to-face, words-to-words.
“Not ’til next week. Your trailer comes this afternoon. Take it easy on those beers, and we can run over there in a few hours.”
I rolled my eyes and finished off the bottle, leaning down and setting it on the porch, next to the first empty. I sat back and slid my palms in between my thighs, closing my eyes. My trailer. What a foreign concept. Ben had laughed when I had asked if I’d have a director-style chair with my name on the back of it. Apparently those don’t exist in the real world of Hollywood. Apparently a trailer is where it’s at—a place where I can shut the door and be alone in the midst of madness. It sounds like a lonely place. It makes me wish, for the first time in forever, that I had a friend, someone other than my mom, to show it off to, to giggle inside of. Someone to experience this journey with. Someone other than a gay man who was going to abandon me very shortly.
“You’re not going to get pregnant, are you?” He peered over at me. “Because that would make you an idiot.”
“No,” I said quickly. That was one thing I had already arranged. Driven all the way over to Tallahassee to grab a morning-after pill just so I wouldn’t start half the town talking. I didn’t mention to Ben the box of condoms I also purchased. I was still working over that impulse buy myself.
“Shit,” Ben remarked from beside me. “Maybe you should have another.” I glanced over at him and raised my eyebrows in question. “You’re moping,” he pointed out.
“I’m not moping,” I grumbled, further proving his point.
“You bagged a movie star. You should be throwing a fucking party and bragging on Twitter. What you shouldn’t be doing is moping, not when you threw him out of your house like a baller.”
I sighed. “I don’t think it came across as baller. I think it came across as a little psychotic.”
“No offense, but all women are a little psychotic.”
I glared at him. “No offense, but all gays are judgmental.”
“Guilty as charged.” He grinned at me, and I couldn’t help but grin back. I laid my head back on the chair.
“Seriously, Ben, how much did I mess up?”
“By screwing your costar?” He laughed and pulled at the bottom of his shirt, fanning it against his chest. “Honey, you wouldn’t be Hollywood if you didn’t bang a costar at some point. It’s nothing. Just don’t let it affect the performance.”
The performance. A stress point in itself, without adding this on. And as far as being Hollywood? From what I could gather of it so far, I was anything but. I wanted another beer but already felt woozy. I reached out and asked for a sip of Ben’s water with an impatient wave of my hand. He passed it over, and I took a big sip, reluctantly returning it to him.
“It’s nothing,” I repeated his words and tried to find solace in them.
“Right. Just don’t let it affect the performance,” he said again.
“Yeah,” I mumbled. Good thing my performance was of a woman who didn’t like Cole’s character. That should make it a hell of a lot easier.
I closed my eyes and tried to breathe normally, to let the stress melt off me in the hot summer air. Couldn’t, no matter what I tried, get the image of Cole out of my head. It wasn’t the shirtless Cole who’d stood at the end of my bed, his hand reaching out for my ankle. It was the man in my kitchen, his eyes vulnerable and weak, his voice catching… that was the image I was stuck on. And I had told him to leave. Had picked a fight and yelled and done everything I could to get him out the door so I wouldn’t crack and give the poor guy a hug.
I understood cheating, understood the betrayal that you went through when you found out. Understood the lows that your self-esteem struggled with, the validation that you tried to find, the loneliness that haunted your nights as you mourned a future that, in an instant, disappeared.
I’d kissed Tim Jeffries the night after I’d found out about Scott. I’d never told anyone that before, not Mama, not even Hope Lewis—the one friend who had stuck around after the Rehearsal Dinner from Hell. I’d thought about telling her, but then her boyfriend got a job offer in Atlanta, and, just like that, Hope was gone. I’d kissed Tim Jeffries with my princess-cut diamond twinkling out from its platinum setting, Tim’s sweaty hand brushed it when he grabbed my hand and pushed it to the crotch of his jeans. We’d been sitting in the front seat of his truck, behind the Circle K, his smoke break turned illicit, my gas station stop turned disastrous. Tim had been a high-school flame that had petered out after only one date, and he had smiled at me in just the right way, and I’d been weak and vulnerable and when he’d asked if I wanted a smoke. I’d said yes, even though I didn’t smoke, and I’d smelled trouble. He must have smelled something on me, the scent of desperation, of insecurity. I wasn’t sure. I just knew that he felt bold enough to try, and I felt low enough to accept.
And now, I couldn’t help but feel like I was Tim Jeffries. Slightly chubby, I’ll-take-him-cause-he’s-there, and toss-him-out-later Tim Jeffries. And Cole was me, spinning out of control, the sting of betrayal hot and consuming, on his way to a Rehearsal Dinner from Hell of his own.
My Rehearsal Dinner had haunted me for three years. His might implode more quietly, on a small-town stretch of Georgia dirt, the only casualty a Southern girl’s heart.