CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Life proceeded as normal over the following weeks. Well, as normal as it could be when your boyfriend starred in major motion pictures. I went to school, did my job, volunteered at the Foundation, and spent whatever free time I had with Chase. He had an unpredictable schedule, so we squeezed in time together whenever we could. We stayed in mostly. Played video games, watched movies and TV (especially Jeopardy!, although as soon as the theme music played, Chase would call out “Who is Alex Trebek?” every time we watched), and spent a lot of time kissing until we were breathless.
I didn’t spend as much time with Lexi or my family as I normally did, but they seemed to understand. Especially Lexi.
The one serious problem I had was that I didn’t want our nights to end. I hated leaving him. And Chase didn’t make things better by telling me how much he wanted me to stay. Not to fool around or take things further than I wanted but just because we loved being together.
If this was how addiction worked, I was beginning to understand how hard it had been for him. I had teased him about going to Zoe rehab, but I might seriously need Chase Covington rehab.
One morning after another late night with my boyfriend, Lexi pulled me out of bed. “Come on, Chase Covington is on The Helen Show.”
“Yeah, I . . .” My voice trailed off as I realized what I had almost admitted to. That I knew he had already filmed the interview that aired that day. He had started a press tour for his newly released movie, Shadow of Time, and would have to leave for Europe soon. I was dreading it.
I grabbed my bowl of Lucky Charms while Lexi commanded the commercials to hurry up. “They had Amelia Swan on earlier, and you should be glad the TV is still in one piece. Skank. They’re doing the press tour for that new time-traveling movie where he comes from the present to the 1940s to stop World War II, and she’s the stupid tramp he falls in love with.”
They showed a clip from the movie, with Chase looking extraordinarily dashing in a mid-twentieth-century army uniform, saying goodbye to Amelia Swan’s character. Then he crushed her against his mouth and kissed her desperately.
I dropped my spoon. It was like somebody had punched me in the gut. Hard.
Lexi muttered some unkind things under her breath. I was starting to share in her hatred of Amelia.
“Please welcome Chase Covington to the show!”
Chase walked in, and the audience went bonkers. Like, I expected underwear to start flying through the air given how they screamed. He flashed them my favorite charming grin, waving as he went over to Helen and hugged her hello.
“So it must be rough to be so unattractive that nobody can stand to look at you,” Helen teased, and Chase laughed as the audience of women started screaming all over again.
“How are things? How are you?” the hostess asked once the hysterics died down.
“Good. Good. And you?”
“Nobody is watching right now to find out what’s going on in my life. They want to know about this.” Helen pointed at the screen behind them, and I stopped breathing when I saw the picture. It was one of the Disneyland photos. Not our private ones, but one taken by somebody in the crowd.
“About Disneyland? I highly recommend it,” Chase said.
“That’s not what I meant. Is it?” she asked the audience, and they all started screaming again. Helen waved her hands, trying to get them to calm down. “I mean, is this your girlfriend? Are you seeing someone? Do you have a significant other? Is there someone special in your life? If I knew another language, I would ask you in that.”
The audience chuckled, and Chase didn’t hesitate. The genuine smile never left his face. “I’m not seeing anyone. I don’t have a girlfriend or a significant other. There’s no one special in my life. Sorry to disappoint you.”
That earned him more screams, whistles, and catcalls. A concrete brick settled in the pit of my stomach, and it was like someone had sucked all the oxygen from the room, making it impossible to breathe.
“If you don’t mind me asking, since that’s kind of my job, who is the girl in the pictures?”
“Just someone who used to work for me.” He sounded so nonchalant.
My brain reminded me, Chase lies about personal things in interviews. But my heart said, He doesn’t feel about you the way you feel about him.
He talked more about the movie and waved off rumors about him and Amelia by saying, “We’re just friends. She’s a talented actress I admire and respect, but there’s nothing else going on.” Then they went to commercial, ending Chase’s segment. Lexi clicked off the TV.
“I’ve got to get ready for my improv class,” she said, standing up. “Come talk to me while I do. Tell me how things with you and Noah are going. I feel like I hardly see you anymore. Which means things must be going good.”
I was so distracted by Chase’s announcement that he didn’t have a girlfriend that it took me a second to remember she wasn’t actually talking about Noah from work. “Things are good.” This morning notwithstanding. I stopped by our room to grab my cell phone. Somebody had some explaining to do.
Lexi headed for the bathroom, and I saw her plug in her flat iron. “And have you had the talk?”
“Birds and bees?” I asked, sitting on the side of the bathtub and turning on my phone. “Had it when I was twelve.”
“I meant the talk where you define the relationship. You mentioned he’s commitment shy. Is that still the situation?”
The guy who just announced on national television that I wasn’t his girlfriend? “The only thing he’s committed to right now are his commitment issues,” I muttered, opening my messaging app. I texted Chase.
She grabbed a lock of her hair and clamped the iron around it. “He must be serious about you.”
“Right now I feel like I’m in this alone. Like his feelings aren’t as strong as mine.”
Lexi met my eyes in the mirror. “Zoe, don’t. Don’t go there.”
Problem was, I already lived there. It wasn’t like it was a long commute. “We’re in this, like, bubble situation. Everything’s good when we’re together, but we don’t really discuss the future or where things are going.”
“Things can’t stay that way forever,” she said and put down her iron to turn and face me. “Like on that shark show you made me watch. You have to keep moving forward or you die.”
My phone buzzed with Chase’s response.
I knew that, because One-F always copied me on Chase’s schedule. I still felt frustrated, though. I had just seen him kiss someone else and deny my existence. I felt vulnerable and needy and insecure, and I didn’t like it, and it ended up making me upset. I mumbled something to Lexi about needing to get dressed.
And once I was dressed, I decided to bake something, as that was the only thing that could calm me down when I was mad. The more time passed, the more pissed off I got.
Lexi left but not before giving me a hug and saying it would all work out. I made chocolate-chip cookies and root beer–float cookies and snickerdoodles. I was too angry to even eat them.
By the time my phone rang, I was like a volcano, ready to erupt.
“Hey, babe. What’s up?”
“What’s up?” I repeated, seething. “What’s up? Why would you even care? I don’t mean anything to you!”
There was a long pause. “I don’t know what’s happening right now.”
“I saw you this morning. Telling Helen you don’t have anybody you care about. No girlfriend. No one special. Did you stop and think how that would make me feel?”
“Hang on.” There were some muffled sounds like wind, and then I heard a car door slam. “Did it ever occur to you that I was protecting you? The second I give the press any hint that I’m dating someone, your private life is over. They will find out everything. They will camp out at your apartment and go through your trash. They’ll bribe anyone who might possibly know you into telling them stories. They will follow you everywhere you go. Do you think I want that to happen to you? It’s bad enough it happens to me. Do you really think I want it to happen to someone that I . . .” His voice trailed off, and he let out a huge sigh.
That took some of the righteous indignation out of my sails, but I was still upset and still wanted to fight.
“Even if that was your reason, I had to watch you kissing that Amelia Swan.”
“What? When?”
“On that clip today!” I said, stirring snickerdoodle dough harder than I needed to. “From your movie!”
“Are you serious?” Now he sounded mad, which for some reason I found satisfying. “I didn’t kiss Amelia. Hank kissed Lorraine. The character I was pretending to be kissed the character she was pretending to be.”
“Yeah, but he did it with your lips.”
“I can’t even tell you how unsexy those scenes actually are. They’re so technical. It’s all choreographed beforehand, done over and over again, and there are thirty people watching you do it. I wish I could explain it better, but what it comes down to is this is my job.”
While I logically understood his argument and knew it was his profession, how many other women had boyfriends with jobs that required them to kiss and have pretend love scenes with beautiful actresses?
“I know it’s your job,” I said in a resigned tone, recognizing my own irrationality.
“Where is all this coming from? You’ve seen me kiss other people before.”
“Yeah, but that was different. That was before . . .” I didn’t finish my sentence. Before you were mine. “It’s just hard.”
“I know it is, babe. And I’m sorry. It’s weird. But I love my job, and I’m good at it, and I want to keep doing it.”
Did he think I wanted him to quit? “I would never ask you to give it up.”
“I know you wouldn’t. I just hope you can find a way to be okay with it.”
With a sigh, I sat down at the kitchen table, holding my forehead in my hands. “I’m sorry I overreacted.”
“It’s kind of nice. The jealousy thing.”
“You won’t think it’s nice when I’m boiling Amelia Swan’s bunny.”
He laughed, and I knew things were okay again. “You still planning on coming over tonight?”
Chase had mentioned yesterday he had a big date planned for us, along with some surprises. “Of course.”
“Good. Because now that we’ve had our first fight, you know what that means. The make-up hug is going to be amazing.”
I brought Chase some of my anger-induced cookies, and he showed me his surprise. He’d hired a famous television chef who was known for his love of swearing to give us a private cooking class. The chef turned out to be a total sweetheart and attempted to teach us how to make pan-seared chicken breasts, rosemary mashed potatoes, and green beans with almond slices. We didn’t get cussed out once, and there were only two minor mishaps involving fire, so I counted that as a win.
Chase walked the chef out, and when he came back into the kitchen, I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and hugged him. “You don’t have to keep doing stuff like this. It’s so sweet and thoughtful, but being with you is impressive enough for me.”
His arms were around my waist. “I’m just trying to . . .”
“What?”
“I told you, this is why actors have writers,” he said with a self-deprecating smile. “You’re different. And special to me. I want to show you that.”
My heart grew ten sizes bigger. “You don’t need a writer. That was pretty perfect. So, what else do you have on the agenda for this evening?”
He twisted his mouth to the side and raised his eyebrows as if thinking hard. “Strip poker?”
I just shook my head. “I don’t even know how to play regular poker.”
Chase shot me his best leer. “Then most definitely strip poker.”
He laughed when I smacked his arm, then he gave me that blinding grin that always made my knees buckle. “I do have something planned. But I have to give you something first. Stay here.”
He ran upstairs, and I put some of the dishes in the sink and filled the burned pans with water. Next time I saw Sofia, I would ask her the best way to clean them, because I hoped there were more burned pans in our future.
“Close your eyes.”
I put my hands over my eyes and turned toward the sound of his voice. “So . . . I don’t know how you’re going to take this . . . uh . . . the thing is . . . .see? I do need a writer.” He let out a little laugh before continuing. “But I don’t want you to think this means something it doesn’t . . . and . . . I . . .”
Now he was starting to make me nervous. “Consider the suspense built! Can I open my eyes?”
“Okay.”
I blinked a couple of times in confusion. “You’re giving me a board?”