Gage

“This is heavenly,” Ellie sighs as she sits back in her chair and adjusts the blanket around her shoulders that the hotel staff brought out once the night breeze picked up.

“You’re sure you’re not cold?”

She smiles and sips her wine. “No. I’m happy.”

I start to argue that that might be the wine, but since I’m happy too, for reasons that have nothing to do with the sauvignon blanc we’ve been enjoying with dinner, I don’t question her statement.

I do, however, take advantage of the opening to get to know her better. Actually, scratch that—I know Ellie. And she knows me. Which is ridiculous, given the short amount of time we’ve been a part of each other’s life, but I guess it’s like that sometimes. Some people just get each other.

But it doesn’t mean I don’t want more. To understand why she won’t give us a chance.

“Question,” I say, swirling my wine and keeping my gaze on hers.

“You’ve already asked, like, a million.”

“Yes, and now I know your birthday and your favorite movie, and how you like your coffee, but now I want to get at the good stuff.”

She tenses slightly, a little bit wary. Good. Maybe she should be.

“What do you want most?” I ask.

She blinks. “Um, that’s a little vague. You mean like in life? Right now? For Christmas?”

I smile. “You strike me as the type of woman who has always had goals, always had a plan. To what end?”

“Ah,” she says, not pretending to misunderstand me. She sets her glass aside. “All right, then.” Ellie takes a deep breath and looks out at the water, illuminated by the moon. She’s silent for so long that I think she’s not going to respond.

At last she does. “Stability. I want stability. A life I can count on, at least as much as life allows itself to be reliable.”

It’s not the answer I’m expecting, and she sees it on my face when she glances my way. “You’re surprised.”

I lift a shoulder. “A little. Entrepreneurs are known more for risk-taking than stability. Why not buckle down with a nine-to-five and a 401(k)?”

“Well,” she says, leaning forward and crossing her hands on the table, “that’s what everyone assumes. Heck, it’s what I assumed. And I tried it. But you know what happens when you rely on someone else for your savings account and your healthcare and the paycheck that feeds you?”

I understand instantly. “They can take it away.”

She nods. “Bingo. Trust me, when I graduated from college, I took all the advice. I took the marketing job with the big company instead of the scrappy start-up. I maxed out my 401(k). I networked my ass off to figure out how to move up the ladder. I was the superstar on my team and everyone knew it.

“But…” Ellie takes a sip of water. “In the end, it doesn’t matter how good you are if it’s someone else’s company. My firm merged with another one. They only needed one marketing group, and the other company was bigger, so…” She spreads her hands. “My whole team got the axe. I walked away with a fat severance and a hell of a life lesson.”

“But working for yourself is not without risks.”

“No, definitely not,” she agrees. “At least I’m calling the shots, though. If I succeed, it’s on me. If I fail, that’s on me too. Well, me and Marjorie. I guess…I don’t know, I guess it’s about the control, you know? To be totally in charge of my own life.”

I see the server approaching with dessert menus, but I catch his eye and shake my head. Not yet.

“Sounds a little intense for someone in her twenties. Isn’t this supposed to be your chance to goof around? You can be responsible later.”

Ellie’s smile is sad. “Spoken like someone who’s probably taken stability for granted.”

She doesn’t say it as an attack, and I don’t take it as such.

“What was your upbringing like?” she asks, glancing at me.

I drum my fingers on the table. “Probably about like you’re expecting. Somewhere between middle-class and upper middle-class. I don’t really know the distinction there, but growing up was…comfortable. I didn’t get everything I wanted for Christmas, but I got a lot of it. Food was always on the table, and so on.”

She nods.

I wait for her to say more, but she doesn’t.

“You want the stability you didn’t get growing up. The stability your mom didn’t offer you. Or your dad, when he bailed.”

She taps her nose with a sad smile. “Nailed it. It’s a cliché, I know. The girl who never knew where her next meal or her mom’s next job was coming from grows up into a boring, cautious adult. The whole slew of ex-boyfriends bailing on me whenever the next best thing came up didn’t help either.”

Then she grins and spreads her hands wide. “Gage Barrett, meet Ellie Wright’s baggage. I don’t travel light.”

I don’t smile back, because I’m starting to get a very stark picture of why she refuses to consider me as a part of her future. I may have a shit-ton of money, but that’s not the kind of stability Ellie’s talking about. She wants someone to count on, someone who will be there.

A full-time actor who’s away on set isn’t the man for the job. We both know it.

“What about you?” she asks, her smile dimming a bit. “What’s your heart’s grand desire?”

I feel a quick stab of desire to be honest—to be brave, as she just was, and lay out that part of myself I buried deep after Layla left me.

But the desire to play it safe is just as strong. Stronger, apparently, because when I open my mouth, it’s not the truth that spills out.

Or rather it is, but not the whole truth—not the truth that matters the most.

“I want to be a silver screen legend,” I say with a wink. “I want to be remembered along with Humphrey Bogart and John Wayne. I want my name to be uttered in the same breath as those of Harrison Ford and Clint Eastwood and Paul Newman.”

“Ah yes, the almighty Oscar hunt,” she says, resting her chin on her hands.

“Not so much,” I correct. “I wouldn’t mind, and I sure as hell intend to have one of those on my mantel someday. But what I’m after is more than a statuette or the label of Best Actor next to my name. It’s more. It’s…”

I break off, not really sure how to explain, and too embarrassed to admit that nobody’s ever asked me this before.

“It’s a feeling,” she completes for me. She’s smiling a little, but it’s not mocking. “You want people to feel something when they hear your name. Or more specifically to remember how they felt when they watched you in a particular movie.”

My smile slips, a little unnerved at how much she gets it.

“Yeah, exactly.”

This time I don’t catch the server’s eye in time to shoo him away, and he approaches with the dessert menus, although other than telling us the pineapple upside-down cake with lime crème anglaise is their most popular dessert and is “not to be missed,” he doesn’t linger.

I tell Ellie to choose, and she alternates between chewing her lip in consideration and musing out loud whether she’s in a “chocolate mood” or a “fruit mood.”

It doesn’t matter. I’ll order her both. I’d order the whole damn menu if she wanted. But she doesn’t want. The stuff will never be enough for Ellie. Not the five-star resorts, not the lobster entrées, not the whole dessert menu.

Ellie wants what I can’t give, and the real kicker? I want what she can’t give.

That truth I wasn’t brave enough to tell Ellie?

I want someone who wants me in spite of the actor stuff, not because of it. I’m not an idiot. I know that along with the perks of being in a relationship with an actor comes a whole bag of shit. Months spent apart. Walking the red carpet even when you’ve got the flu. Missing birthdays and holidays because a night shoot runs over. Knowing that your significant other has to film a sex scene with a beautiful actress and then having to watch that sex scene at the movie premiere. Strangers demanding selfies when you’re trying to have a date night.

The list of bullshit is endless. I know that. Layla didn’t want it. Ellie doesn’t want it. I don’t blame them, I get it.

But once, just once, I want someone I care about to look at the crapshoot that is my life, to take in the Jilted contract and the Killboy movie shoots and the never-ending tabloid rumors and say, “Yeah, that stuff sucks, but Gage is worth it.”

I want to be worth it.

Just once.