Map to the Stars (16 page)

“Read
The Shadow of the Wind
. It's set here. Talked to Wynn. Obsessed over #Brigham on Twitter.”

“What the heck is #Brigham?”

I turned to him and scrunched up my nose as I told him. Then I added, “Hey, so Wynn came up with a couple name for us.”

“Oh yeah? Is it cool?”

I made a face. “Think more like . . . adorkable.”

When I told him about Grannie, his laugh was so loud I had to punch him in the ribs and point to the door my mom was sleeping behind.

In answer he pulled me up in a move quite unlikely to be executed by any senior citizen anywhere. He grabbed me by the shoulders and steered me to his room. When he closed the door behind us, he backed me against it.

“I'm sorry, but that's so damn cute. We are going to have to work extra hard to overcome it and prove to the world we're actually a sizzling-hot couple.”

“Oh yeah? I'm open to suggestions.”

“We should practice,” Graham said, with a very intent face. I giggled and wrapped my arms around his neck.

He pulled back with a small smile. “Can I say something?”

I nodded, waiting.

“I know this is so lame, but I'm kind of loving the idea of our couple name. I mean, I'm more loving the idea that we
have
a couple name. Or, I guess, just that we are one. Um, a couple, I mean. If you want to be, that is.”

His stumbling over his words was so completely endearing that I just wanted him to keep going forever, but I couldn't do that to him. Not when I felt the way I felt. I let my hand tangle in his hair.

“If you're asking me to go steady and wear your letterman's jacket and your class ring and pencil you into my date book for every Friday night, well, then, I'm all in for that.”

He grinned. “Excellent. I hope it won't be too crushing to learn that I have neither a class ring nor a letterman's jacket, but if it would make you happy I will call my agent first thing in the morning and tell him to make sure my next movie is set in 1955. You will have to teach me how to sock hop, though.”

“Is that a dance? I thought sock hop was
the
dance. You know, like the event itself, not an actual dance with steps. I could be wrong. Wynn would—”

“Annie?”

“Yeah?”

Graham brushed my lips with his. “Shut up.”

I shut up.

“Are you kidding me right now? Melba, your mom, my mom—
everyone
would kill us!”

Graham didn't even seem to register what I was saying. He was too excited for his brilliant plan to show me the Guggenheim.

“C'mon. We could totally pull it off. Melba and your mom are out shopping and I'm positive they'll get dinner afterward. And check out Roddy.”

I stole a glance at Roddy, sound asleep on the couch in Graham's suite with an episode of
American Ninja Warrior
blaring on the satellite TV.

I sighed. “Fine, but it's not even a question of getting past Melba. Or Roddy. Or my mom. It's what happens when we get spotted by anyone else out there. You heard what Ellis said about getting photographed with the same girl.
Especially
with the same girl in a different city. It would be like announcing to the world that you have a girlfriend!”

“Okay, but what if you weren't the same girl in a different city?”

“What do you mean?”

“Actually, what if you weren't a girl at all?” Graham said, sitting up straighter and smiling an evil grin.

“What are you even
talking
about?”

“Well, the way I see it, it might make headlines that I have a girlfriend, but no one would care if I had a
guy
friend. If we saw any paparazzi, and who's to say we even would, we could pass you off as an old friend visiting from LA and we're just taking in some sights together. No one would ever know!”

“Except Melba and Ellis. They'd be livid. Anyway, it's crazy. How am I supposed to pass for a boy?”

“I have a whole bunch more things with me I use for disguises when I go out. Seriously, I have tons of different hats, glasses, you name it. I promise I can do this and make it look real.”

Graham began talking faster, clearly getting all excited by his diabolical plan. “Okay, this could really work. You can't be this close to Bilbao and
not
see the Guggenheim.”

The Guggenheim.
It would easily be the biggest score on my architectural hit list. And to see it with Graham would make it so much more meaningful. But then again . . . “I don't know, it sounds too risky. Melba would be extra crispy if she found out.”

“So she won't. Look, I'm the one with everything at stake here, so I should get to be the one who decides. I'm going stir-crazy, no matter how cute my cellmate is. C'mon, haven't you ever done anything totally insane?” Graham asked me.

“My mom could lose her job if we get into trouble. So I have something at stake here too. Besides, Wynn nicknamed me Jiminy Cricket, if that answers your question.”

“No comprendo.”

“From
Pinocchio
? The little cricket that sat on his shoulder and tried to keep Pinocchio from getting in trouble?” I said.

“Oh yeah. Didn't Julia Roberts play her in the movie version?”

I sighed. “She played Tinker Bell in
Hook
. So not the same thing. Exactly the opposite, actually. Tink was always trying to cause trouble, not stop it.”

There was that wicked grin again. “Okay, well then, why don't you channel your inner Tinker Bell and we'll leave Jiminy Cricket back here at the hotel.”

I grumbled, “I never liked Peter Pan.”

“Of course you didn't. It's all about never growing up and you've been a grown-up since birth. And for the last nine years I have been too. I say what they tell me to say, I wear what they tell me to wear, I go where they tell me to go. Apparently, now I even date who they tell me to. But you know what? We're teenagers. We're supposed to rebel. It's like our God-given right. I say it's time to act our age for just one night. While still taking all suitable precautionary measures to ensure this does not have far-reaching consequences. Which is not even a true rebellion, I might point out. Just, like, a mini, harmless one. Who's with me?”

I made a show of looking left to right, highlighting the fact that no one else was privy to his grandstanding speech.

I sighed. “I am?”

“That's my girl.”

Well, that did the trick. Just hearing him call me his girl made me want to follow him to the far reaches of the earth. Or at least to the Guggenheim.

“Okay, fine, how do we do this?” I asked.

“Leave everything to me.” Graham cackled, rubbing his hands together like an evil genius and leading me off to the bathroom where his supplies were. Graham tucked my long hair into a short wig with a masculine haircut and slipped on a pair of chunky glasses with slightly tinted lenses that hid a lot of my face. When he tossed some of his clothes in to me and I slipped them on, I had to admit, no matter how baggy they were, they did the trick (I never thought I'd
actually
give thanks for being small-chested). I'd expected to look like an actor in a
Saturday Night Live
skit—all campy drag show or something, but this actually looked . . . real. The person looking back at me could have passed for my twin brother.

While I'd changed clothes, Graham had been outside the door, punching buttons on his cell phone. He nearly dropped it when I emerged from the bathroom.

“Okay, you are officially the cutest boy I have ever seen. And wow, is that a sentence I never thought I would utter. So, just how far are you willing to go along with my new bad boy act?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow.

I eyed him suspiciously, but he wouldn't comment further.

“What does that mean?” I asked, but he would only say, “You'll
see.”

I saw all right . . . when we got to the loading dock. By now, I was getting very accustomed to exiting hotels by any entrance
other than
the one designed for guests. (Although, knowing they were going to shepherd all their famous guests through their bowels, it would have been nice if the hotels could have hung a little art or something next to the employee time sheets.)

We escaped onto the loading dock to find it empty, except for a black motorcycle and a laundry delivery truck. I considered the truck, with its neatly stacked linens. “I'm really, really hoping that's our ride.”

Graham reached the bike and tossed me a helmet that I barely caught as he swung one leg over. “Not a chance. Don't worry. I learned to drive one of these for a role last fall. Tonight we're starring in
Rebels Without a Cause
.”

“More like
Grease 2
,” I mumbled.

I hadn't expected him to get the reference, so when he burst into “He's a cool rider, a coooooool rider, if he's cool enough he'll burn me through and through,” I almost dropped my helmet.

That was the moment I decided if I was going to burn in hell for lying to my mom and sneaking out and violating every sanction laid down by some Hollywood publicist, I was going to do it with this guy by my side. Because he was totally worth it.

And so, of course, was the Guggenheim.

I knew all kinds of things about the museum, like that it was designed by Frank Gehry and that all the curves that look random
were actually placed exactly like that to catch the light. I knew that the atrium in the middle of the museum was named “The Flower” because of its shape and that it was labeled by architects as being part of the Deconstructivist movement, even though Gehry doesn't associate himself with that style.

But knowing it and experiencing it were two different things, and I was so glad it was Graham along with me. My mom would have been patient . . . to a point. But eventually she would have gotten bored of me running my hand along every wall and window and gone off in search of the gift shop or the café. Graham didn't seem anything but amused that I was all over the building like seagulls on an unattended beach lunch. He said he was interested in watching another artist get inspiration and for the first time I stopped to think that maybe I actually was one. I'd never really thought of an architect as an artist, but it was hard to stand in the Guggenheim and say there was anything
but
artistry its design. And I loved that Graham saw me as an artist like him. I was as far as possible from a stereotypical headscarf wearing, coffeehouse frequenting, free-spirited one . . . but still. The building practically hummed a song only I seemed to be able to hear.

After two hours of walking every square inch while it grew dark outside, I finally turned my attention away from glass and titanium and toward flesh and blood. Graham lounged against a gallery wall, looking perfectly at home and heartbreakingly adorable, in a wide-brimmed baseball hat that hid his face in shadow. It looked way less itchy and hot than my wig.

“Wanna get some fresh air?” I asked.

“What I want is to kiss you. I can't believe how fun it was to watch you in here.”

I blushed and bumped my hip against his. We exited the building and wandered along the waterfront to a small park next door. I kept stealing glances behind me to take in the exterior from different distances.

The walkway outside was quiet and the park even more so. The streetlights didn't reach into its center where we collapsed onto stretched webbed netting that made up some kind of play structure for kids. For a moment we were completely tangled until we clawed our way into a seated position, letting the nets cradle us like a hammock. Graham tugged his hat off (how could his hair look so perfect after a whole day in that thing?) and I leaned back against his shoulder, pulled his arm around me, and said, “Thank you for this.”

He shrugged. “It was fun. And it was sweet to see you all lit up like a Christmas tree.”

“Don't you get to see me like that a lot?” I asked, feeling safe and understood. “I'm pretty sure it's how I look every time I see you. Why else would Melba give me the stink eye so much?”

I felt Graham shudder against me. “Let's agree right here and now that this night will have no more mention of Melba. Or parents, bodyguards, publicists, paparazzi, or anything remotely associated with Hollywood or the film industry. Deal?”

I held my hand out at an angle and his free hand snaked over to shake it. “Doesn't leave us a whole lot of words to work with, though,” I said.

“Yeah.” He was quiet for a moment. “So what's your favorite?”

“What's my favorite what?”

“Your favorite word,” he answered.

“What's my what what?”

“Your favorite word. For instance: mine is onomatopoeia. No one can ever win a spelling bee that contains it, it means something silly, and it's ridiculously fun to say.”

“Um, random that you've put real thought into this. But . . . thanks for sharing, I guess?”

“Seriously. I want to know.”

“Why, exactly?”

He turned suddenly serious. “Because. No one else does. No one ever asks anyone what their favorite word is, so no one else knows yours. And I will. It'll be like this secret part of you that only I get to share. Then, when I think about you, I can smile inside because I know something about you no one else does, and you know it about me.”

Why did this boy have to be entirely perfect? I mean, really, why?

I paused. “Okay . . . Um, I don't know if I've ever thought about my favorite word before. Hang on.” I tapped my finger on my leg while I pondered.

“It's not a graded assignment, Pickles,” Graham said, after twenty seconds went by.

“I know, but if it's gonna be our thing I want it to be a good one. Okay, got it. Authentic.”

“Authentic? Interesting choice. How come?”

“Okay, don't laugh. When Wynn's little brother was about four, he used to have this funny lisp/stutter thing he'd do when he tried to say ‘th' sounds. So we would play this ‘repeat after me' game where we'd throw every word with a ‘th' sound in it at him. He never caught on, but it was freaking hilarious to us. Authentic was a good one because the ‘th' was in the middle of the word and he'd be practically spitting by the time he got it out.”

“Okay, that's just cruel.”

“We were eight!” I protested. “But it still makes me smile every time I hear it. He was so cute back then.”

“I'll bet you were too,” Graham said, giving me a playful tweak on my nose. “Okay, so now we have a thing.”

“A sthsing,” I said, trying to mimic Wynn's brother's lisp.

“A sthsing,” Graham repeated, a small smile curving on his lips. “C'mere, you.”

He used the crook of his arm to pull me in and tilted my face up toward him with his other hand. As usual, when he was this close, my breath became shallow faster than a dog's ears perk up at the word “treat.”

Graham's lips were close to my ear when he murmured, “You look totally kissable. And I don't just say that to all the guys.”

“Have you ever kissed a boy before?” I teased.

“Actually, I have. But I was four and he was my cousin, so I don't think it counts.”

“Pretty sure it doesn't,” I said with a smile, placing a hand on his chest. Through his thin cashmere sweater, his heart fluttered under
my palm and it sent a sudden warmth through my belly.

Graham's grin faded as he lowered his face and pressed his lips onto mine. They moved softly, teasing mine open, and I was just losing myself to the sensation when he pulled back. I sought out his eyes, questioning. They were locked on mine and strangely serious. All of a sudden I couldn't breathe.

“Hi,” he whispered. He'd stopped
that
kiss to tell me hi?

“Hi.”

“Hiiiiiiiii.” He drew the word out, his voice soft, his eyes not leaving mine.

“Um, hi,” I sort of half said, half laughed.

He blew his hair out of his eyes and said, “Sorry. I'm just trying to work up the nerve to say what I really want to say. Bear with me.”

Oh my freaking God. Bear with him? There wasn't a chance I could move right now even if I wanted to. I reached up and touched his cheek. His hand caught mine. It was like we were in some romance novel or something. I could feel his heart through his sweater again and it was racing as if it were gonna burst out of his rib cage. Suddenly that made me feel incredibly brave.