Falling Into You (23 page)

I wrap my arm around
Hallie’s
waist and we head for the exit.

“They hated me,” I say with a sigh once we’ve hit the street.

“Impossible.”

“Possible.” I touch the tip of her nose, which makes
her
smile.

“I don’t believe that they hated you. Tell me about it. What went wrong?”

“I have a better idea. How do you feel about ice skating?”

Chapter 15

HALLIE

An hour
after leaving the audition
, we’re ice skating in Central Park
, despite my
claims
that
Chris
was going to have to pick me up off the ice no fewer than a hundred times
.

It’s not quite at the century mark after fifteen minutes of skating, but I’ve already fallen four times and I’m definitely going to be paying the next day with some serious bruises.
Given the years I spent in dance class, y
ou’d think I would have a
better idea of how to do this
.

I careen into the barrier and he’s laughing at me.

“I can just imagine you with a hockey stick.” He’s taunting me, turning gracefully around on his skates and
remaining just out of my reach.

I manage to catch up to him, and as I feel myself slipping, I drag him down to the ice with me
.
He’s kissing me and
we must look ridiculous, but I can’t seem to force myself to care. I finally manage to get back on my feet after I notice that many of the perfectly coordinated people who are actually able to stay on their skates are giving us dirty looks.

“Ice skating is clearly not my forte.” I shrug at him and laugh.

“
So, we may need to add ice skating to the list
.”

“I told you. You should invest in a paper company or something
if you’re going to write down all of my flaws
.”

I almost fall again when a girl executes
a perfect double axel directly in front of us
and a cloud of ice shoots into my face
.
Chris manages to keep me on my feet by grabbing both of my arms and wrapping me up in his.

“Get a room!” someone shouts as they whip past us.

“That’s totally the sign that we need to get off this ice before the police arrest us for being a public nuisance.”

Even ice princess
is staring now
.

“Nope. I’m a good teacher.
Hands off, I promise.
” He skates backwards
,
curving his skates in and out. He
holds out his hands to me.

“
Show off!
Well, I’m glad we didn’t start a list of things that you’re not good at, because it woul
d have been very short indeed.”
He sticks his tongue out and I take
his hands
cautiously. “At least I can set the world record for falling on the ice. That’s something that I’m good at.”

Half an hour later, I’ve finally got the hang of it and
I haven’t fallen again. It’s a minor accomplishment, but it still feels pretty good
.

“See? Double axels in no time. Told you.”

“Someone
happens to be a good teacher.”

“Or I just had a very good student.” His phone is buzzing, but he ignores it.

“That could be Marcus!”

He shakes his head. “I really don’t want to talk to him right now.”

“What did they say in the audition?” I know I’m prodding him for details, trying to figure out why he thought that he screwed up any chance to play James Ross, but I want to know anyways. He is James Ross. No one else could possibly play that role, and his assessment of the audition doesn’t quite jive with Sarah’s whispered words—
“
They said to get his agent on the line. Don’t say anything yet, but that’s always a good sign.
”
             

“They didn’t
say anything.” He’s frustrated
and I want to blurt out what Sarah said to me, but she made me promise that I wouldn’t. I don’t want to get his hopes up when they might be crushed.

“It can’t have been as bad as that. You should have put on the Boudreaux accent.”

He puts it on. “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a shit if they liked me or not. I have bigger plans for the day.” He wiggles his eyebrows suggestively at me. Ok, so we wouldn’t talk about the audition anymore.
He lets out a low groan. “We have to get out of here.” He grabs my hand and skates effortlessly to the exit of the rink, dragging me behind him. When we’re safely off the ice and in no danger of causing a major traffic jam, he laces our fingers together and kisses me hungrily.

That
I could definitely do all day.

We spend the rest of the afternoon in Chris’s New York, taking the subway first downtown and then up
town
. We’re sitting on the stoop of a beautiful old brownstone on the Upper East Side
, watching the kids in uniforms and people walking their dogs and I start to imagine a life in the real New York, which is becoming
more
like the fantasy city in the movies I’ve been watching for years
and less like the impenetrable world that I glimpsed at Sophia’s party
.
I turn to look at Chris, and his face is pensive.

“I don’t even know if I’m happy or not that I blew the audition,” he admits, looking at me.

I’m cautious. “Why?”

He takes a breath. “I love acting. I never expected to, but I do. Still, though, there’s something about pretending to be someone else that makes you less and less sure of who you really are.”

“I don’t know if it’s possible to ever be who you really are. It seems to me that the characters you play are just as much a part of you as anything else.”

“That’s a cryptic statement if I ever heard one.”

He’s right; it is. I try to explain. “I’ve thought about it a lot, though, who people really are. I’m not sure if people can ever be exactly themselves.” While my words don’t make a lot of sense, he looks at me like every word is precious and important and I just want him to keep looking at me like that forever. “Maybe we’re just trying to cobble together pieces of ourselves from scattered moments. Maybe we’re always trying to be ourselves for someone else.”

He’s still looking puzzled and I shake my head in impatience. I shouldn’t have ever started talking in the first place. Normally, I try to ration my words in conversations, because I know that I talk too much. I usually have to mutter my little mantra,
Talk less and listen more
, but he’s staring at me with enormous emerald eyes and so I keep going. Just dig a bigger hole of craziness, H
allie. That’s a brilliant plan.

I need an example.
I point at a man walking hand-in-hand with a little girl. He pulls something from out of her pocket, and she laughs in delight. They’re obviously related; both had a red riot of curls and their faces hold matched expressions of joy.

“He knows who he is in that moment, and it’s not a stockbroker or a teacher or a dentist. He’s her father. He’s defining himself in relation to her. And she’s not a ballerina or a violinist right now, she’s his daughter. So maybe we’re always defining ourselves in terms of what we are to other people.”

He lets out a whoosh of air but continues to stare intently at me.

I can never seem to say exactly what I mean. Maybe
it’s
because language isn’t exact, either. “
I don’t think anyone’s ever sure of who they really are. It changes every daily, because of the people you meet and the things you say and the experiences you have. You’re an actor, so playing other people adds another layer to the person that you are and want to be. James Ross or not, it’s what you should be doing. I’ve seen you, remember? You’re magic.”

He brushes a piece of hair from my face and smiles at me. “I think you’re pretty magical
,” he says quietly,
glancing
at me from the corner of his eye.

His gaze is intense, and unable to say anything in response, I avert my eyes and twist the bracelet my father gave me right before he died around my arm again and again. “Even when you’re rambling,” he adds after a minute, which makes me lift my face to his.

“I knew you liked the rambling,”
I say, trying to make my voice light. This is too much, too fast for me. “
It was definitely the rambling about the secret cat painter that got you to attack me
.”

“No,” he says, taking my chin and turni
ng my face to his. He keeps his own voice light. “Definitely the candy blob rambling. No doubt.”

When he touches his lips to mine, I think
that maybe days of perfection aren’t so rare after all.

Until my phone rings.

“You shouldn’t get that,” he mutters.

“I really should.
The
people who live here are probably going to be mad if they come home to find a couple of people loiteri
ng on their steps, so we’d better get a move on anyway. It’s probably my mom, checking to make sure that
I haven’t been killed by one of the millions of New York muggers
.
”

He hisses in frustration
.
I grab my phone and pull it to my ear.

“Hello?”

“
Hallie
, where are you? We are too young and beautiful and
fabulous
to let the city wait
for another minute
.
I’ve been here for like three hours already and you aren’t here.”

Sophia’s
probably been waiting for a
grand total of thirty seconds.
I scramble to think of something to say.

“
Sophia
…” I look up at Chris, and he’s rolling his eyes. “I’m um, close to your apartment.”

“Well, get your ass back here. Sam’s having a party tonight, and it’s going to take at least a
couple of hours to get dressed. W
e
also
need to pregame.”

“Just a second.”
Chris is
shrugging. I haven’t thought about
Sophia
once since my worries about her fascination with him the night before. A sliver of
jealousy
slices in my gut.
Party
, I mouth at him.

“I guess,” he whispers it, but
Sophia
catches the noise
of his voice
and hisses at me.

“Who was that?”

“It’s
your…
Chris.” I start to say your friend Chris, but I don’t want him to belong to her anymore.

“Didn’t you see him yesterday?”

And last night
and this mornin
g
and th
is afternoon.

“We’re just hanging out. He’s made an excellent tour guide.”

Chris is leaning
into me as I say the last words.
I smile at him
and hold out my hand to keep him an arm’s length away
. “
I’ll head back
soon and we can go to the party.”

Her voice is suspicious. “Hanging out?”

Chris is making faces at me, and
I turn my
head
to keep from
laughing
. “Yep. See you in a few minutes.”
I hand up the
phone and turn to him. “Sophia requests my presence.”

“Same old
Sophia
. And it’s a command performance, not a request,
” he says
. “There’s no way you were gett
ing out of going to that party, so to Sam’s we shall go.”

The word
“
we
”
sends a little shiver up my spine. He’s tweaking my nose. “It won’t be all bad.
Sam has a pretty
fabulous
view from his roof. There are l
ots of empty corners.”

He winks suggestively at me and yanks me bac
k to him. “Now, where were we?”

After another round of kisses that stretch a few minutes into almost half an hour, I’ve pretty much forgotten my own name, let alone the fact that
Sophia
Pearce is probably going to kill me. Pati
ence is not one of her virtues
.

“She’s going to kill me.” The words slip out when I’m eventually able to break
away from him.

“
That’s probably an understatement. But I think it was worth it.
Come on,” he says, pulling me to my feet. I’ve also apparently abandoned my sense of propriety, because we’re still sitting on the steps of the brownstone. “Time to face the music.”