Movie Star By Lizzie Pepper (2 page)

A
s always, Aurora was right. The call came without warning. But what she failed to anticipate was that it would come at seven a.m., at least two hours before what I consider to be daybreak. My phone vibrated on my bedside table as I groped for it in the dark room.

“Elizabeth. It’s me.”

Me.
Because he knew I would know.

“Hey,” I whispered, hoping my half-awake croak would pass for sexy.

“Can I steal you away?” This guy had spent too much time reading scripts.

“Um, what did you have in mind?”

“Let me surprise you. Come downstairs. Your chariot awaits.”

Downstairs? He was downstairs? “I’m . . . I’m just waking up. And if this surprise is going to run past eleven, I have a few things to cancel.”

“Cancel,” he said. “I’ll wait.”

I peeked around the edge of my curtains. There he was, on the street ten flights below, leaning against a lamppost. He saw me at the window and waved.
Crap.
Did
every
moment in his life seem like it came straight out of a movie? He gestured to a limo parked outside my front door. My “chariot.”

“Be right down,” I said into the phone.

Ten minutes later I slid into the backseat of the limo. It took me a second to process that I was the only passenger. Where was Rob? “Wait!” I said to the driver. I thought there was some mistake. Maybe I’d hopped into a limo someone in my building had summoned for a trip to the airport.

“It’s okay,” the driver said. (His name, I would later know, was Lewis.) “He wanted me to give you this.” He handed me an envelope and we started speeding toward the highway.

“Elizabeth,” the neatly written note read, “I’m sorry it has to be like this, but it will be much better for both of us if we aren’t seen together. Yet. Now please look out the passenger-side window.”

I turned to my right and there, driving in the lane next to us, was another black Escalade with Rob sticking his head out the back window. He gave me a thumbs-up, a questioning look on his face. I smiled gamely and returned the thumbs-up. What choice did I have? I couldn’t turn back now. I grounded myself by composing a text to Aurora in my head.
i am living your fantasy.
Rob’s car pulled ahead of mine, and he stuck his arms out toward me, as if we were being tragically torn from each other. I couldn’t suppress an internal swoon.

I still had no idea of our destination, but it dawned on me that Rob was right to arrange for us to travel separately. Nobody was following us. Nobody had whipped out their phones to take pictures. Nobody wanted an autograph. We were free. This was a feat. The tabloids had barely gotten over my embarrassingly public breakup with Johnny Flaim. (“
Lizzie’s Flaim Out
”—which tabloid
hadn’t
had that headline at the ready?) The moment they caught me with someone new, they would have a field day. No, I realized, I would no longer be the lead. I may have been a star, but Rob was the sun. The headline this date would have generated wouldn’t have started with me. It began and ended with Rob Mars.

An hour later we arrived at a harbor, still and gray in the morning fog. I was getting hungry and hoped we were there for a romantic breakfast at some restaurant by the shore followed by a quick ride back home so I could spend the rest of the day by myself squealing loudly into my pillow, but instead we thanked our respective drivers and Rob led me down the docks to a waiting yacht. I’ve been on yachts before—mostly for parties—and it wouldn’t have surprised me if Rob owned this one. A captain greeted us, and we climbed aboard. Rob led me to the upper deck. I caught a glimpse of the living room as we passed the main deck. It was stark and formal: black enamel paneling and white leather furniture. Up on the top deck, a bottle of champagne was chilling in a bucket. I mentally texted Aurora:
definitely a date
.

Rob poured me a glass of champagne, but instead of serving himself one, the captain came out and handed him a jugful of something green and foamy. I raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t drink much,” he said. “This gives me incredible energy.”

Something about the preplanned champagne for me, green smoothie for him was disconcerting. What exactly was I doing here? “Are you trying to get me drunk?” I said.

He put down his glass. “Elizabeth, that is the last thing I would do. I want to know you. The real you.”

“Okay, well, then I have to tell you. The real me thinks saying things like ‘the real you’ are kind of cheesy.”

He froze and looked almost hurt. Then he stared deeply into my eyes and said, “Guilty as charged.” His face broke into a smile, and suddenly Rob Mars the movie star and Rob Mars the person simultaneously merged and separated. His expressions, his smile, his manner—all were familiar to me from his movies. No actor can transform himself entirely.
But in that moment I also had a flash of recognizing the divide between who he was and what he brought of himself to his characters. I saw that—right now, at least—he was not acting for me. Then, for the first time, I allowed myself a tiny, internal “wow.”

He lifted his green jug to my crystal glass. “Requesting permission to be cheesy?”

I smiled in spite of myself. “Granted.”

I had assumed we were alone on board except for the captain, but we hadn’t traveled far from shore when another man came out onto the deck. He wore jeans and a light yellow cashmere sweater. He looked sort of beige and featureless, like a soulless Wall Street guy on his day off, nondescript except that one of his pale eyes had a patch of brown in it. He was sucking vigorously on a mint, which I could smell as he approached. He stopped sucking, smiled politely, and then quickly, as if it were a tic, flipped the mint in his mouth with his tongue.

“Elizabeth, you remember Geoff from our meeting,” Rob said.

“Of course I do.” I didn’t. Clearly I’d been otherwise focused or I would have remembered the mint-sucking. As I watched, the stranger opened an Altoid tin and popped two new mints in his mouth. The guy was chain-mint-sucking.

Was Geoff one of Rob’s agents? Maybe this wasn’t a date after all.

“Welcome aboard,” Geoff said. “I won’t disturb you, but I wanted you to know how happy we are to have you as our guest.”

Apparently this man was my host. I automatically thanked him and complimented the boat. Then Rob touched my chin and turned it in the direction we were heading. Rising before us was an island. It was lush and green, and appeared deserted except for one enormous white stone building, which cascaded like a snowcap down the highest peak of the island.

“This is Century Island,” Rob said. “Geoff is kind enough to let me use it.” If anyone would own an entire island, just miles off the shore of L.A., it would be Rob Mars or one of his associates. Was it even on maps?

“I’ve never brought a guest here before,” Rob went on. “You’re the first.”

I liked the sound of that.

On the island, Rob and I followed an old, rough boardwalk that clung to the rocks. We came to an overlook that jutted out over the rough water below.

“Let’s sit,” Rob said.

“Is it safe?” I asked.

“Trust me,” he said, and led me forward. Sitting side-by-side on a driftwood log (too perfect!), we were mostly quiet. I reminded myself not to romanticize the whole thing. I was on a fantasy island date with a fantasy man. I wasn’t about to be seduced by all this perfection. Besides, not everything was perfect. I was freezing. Then, out of nowhere, a massive wave crashed spectacularly against the rocks, nearly sweeping us out to sea. I screamed and jumped to my feet.

“You’re drenched! I’m so sorry,” Rob said, wrapping his coat around me.

“I’m totally fine,” I said, but as we headed back off the promontory, I slipped on the now-wet rocks.

“I gotcha,” Rob said, catching me with a strong grasp. He put a sturdy arm around my waist and guided me to safety. There was a reason Rob had been cast as Jesus. He radiated supreme confidence, as if he understood the world on another level. Life, death—he walked the line without recklessness or doubt. He expected my trust, and I gave it. I leaned against him, sinking closer to this increasingly familiar stranger. Cautious though I was, and far out of my comfort zone, I suddenly felt brave,
safe, or both. I had just walked out onto a cliff with this man. Where else would I follow him?

Looking back on it now, I still remember that feeling and what it triggered in me. I was a girl who’d always done what was right and best. My parents had the greatest faith and confidence in me, and I lived up to that. I was their wonder child, achieving their dreams for me without even trying. Now here was a man who opened my world in just the way I was ready for it to be opened, at just the right time. I was practically handed to him on a silver platter. As it turned out, this was true in more ways than I knew.

After a while, we climbed the road up to the fortress. Rob had called it “the Lodge,” which was like calling Versailles “the Country House.” Thankfully I was wearing flats (Aurora had nailed that one). “Welcome,” Rob said, opening the oversize front door.

We were standing in a great room, all white, surrounded by glass walls showcasing the panoramic view. Lounge-y couches faced outward, and the centerpiece of the room, on the inside wall, was an unusual, vast stone fireplace. A massive fire blazed, though not a soul was in sight to credit with having built it. I held my hands out toward the heat, trying to stop shivering.

“This fireplace is cut into the mountaintop. See?” Rob thumped his palm on it. “It was my idea. One solid piece of rock.” Then he interrupted himself. “I’m a jerk. What you need is a hot shower.”

Rob led me downstairs to a bedroom. The floors were polished concrete, smooth and shiny as an ice rink. One wall was the rough rock of the mountain; the rest were glass. The room jutted out over the uninhabited wilderness of the island. All the furniture was white and gray, and on the dresser was a steel vase, cut in jagged lines echoing the mountain vibe. In it were a dozen perfect roses.

“There’s a bathroom in there,” Rob said. “Take your time.”

When I emerged from the shower, my wet clothes had disappeared from the bed and a white robe, which seemed to have been pre-warmed, was spread in their place. I put it on, took a picture of myself in the mirror, and forwarded it to Aurora with a text:
am at crazy private island with boy wonder.
more later.
I rejoined Rob on a monolithic balcony that overlooked the harbor, where the yacht was docked next to another, smaller boat, so far down they looked like bathtub toys. Rob handed me a glass of water and took my hand. We sat watching the sun move across the sky, and my phone started chiming. Text after text, streaming in from Aurora. I slid my hand into the robe pocket and shut her down. Poor Aurora. I was torturing her.