Take Two (18 page)

“Tomorrow?”

I smiled and sipped my tea.

We rode back to the
dockyard
in silence.
The sun was beginning t
o rise and I could see how calm
the water was.
I stole glances of Matt
every few minutes, and I could feel his eyes doing
the same.

“
Do you and your sister have plans this evening
?”
he helped me down the steps
.

“
We’re going parasailing around five. She
has to do more
reading after we get back
so
I’m
going to relax
on the beach
.
”

“
She’s in college
?”

“
She
techn
ically
graduated
college
, but they won’t gi
ve her the degree until she finishes
her
research
study.”

“Tell her I said good luck
.”

“I will.”

“Do you want to join me at
a
bonfire
tonight?”

Matt

I walked around talking to a few locals, aski
ng them where the best place to start
a
bonfire
would be, but t
hey weren’t much help
. Th
ey just wanted
my autograph and
Joan
had to profusely deny
their picture requests
.

We’d released a statement to the press about me traveling to L.A. to have throat surgery. We even flew my security team to L.A. with a baseball-cap-wearing body double to make it as real as possible. We couldn’t afford for
a few
fans to tweet pictures of me in St. Barts—only words, because as Joan
once
said, “Words can be misconstrued
and questioned
, pictures can’t
.”

I was looking forward to
spending
more time with Melody. It was d
efinitely more than a crush on my end, but I wasn’
t
sure if she felt the same way.

“Joan, let’s get the daily updates out of the way. Could you google
me?”

I
’d gi
ve
n
up on googling
myself
years ago
—
almost
everything
that popped up was a lie I
helped to construct.

“
Certainly
.
According to TMZ,
you have officially checked in for throat surgery in L.A.
You are expected to check out in two days.
”

“
Great. A
nything else?”

“Selena finished her cover shoot for
Modern Bride
and
did an interview with
Cosmo
. Would you like to hear the quotes?”

“
Seriously?
”

“The gra
duation service for Sterling Dance Academy h
as
been
pushed up by one day.”

“Who the hell approved that?”

“The school board. The mayor
apparently
asked to use
the building for an address to the city.
Would you like me to prepare a statement for your absence?”

“No, we’ll
have to
leave tomorrow.”

I didn’t want to
disappoint the graduates. I had
never
missed a ceremony and I didn’t want to make this one the first.

I needed
to know if I had a chance with Melody though, if she would consider going out with me when we were both in N
ew
Y
ork
. I needed to pull out all the s
tops to make sure she said yes.

“
Nothing else is really new
,” Joan put away her phone. “
Just basic candid
stories. Yo
u were caught with cream cheese on your chin in Central Park
, you got a parking ticket outside of Starbucks,
and you signed an autograph for an elderly woman at Trump
SoHo
.”

“Life changing news
I swear. Thanks.”

It took Joan and I three
hours to find a decent location f
or a bonfire. It was
miles
away
from my yacht and
perfectly
s
ecluded from the hotels and vacation
homes.

While she
scurried off to grab a couple
things, I
began
dig
ging
a
hole in the
sand.

I couldn’t believe I was building a fire to impress
someone
. I didn’t normally have to put
in any work to seem impressive. W
omen just flocked to me and naturally assumed that I was. Melody seemed
somewhat
unfazed—except for when she was on my yacht. She was blushing the entire time.

Maybe that was just her nervous reaction to the polar bearing
..
.

As my hole got deeper, I became more nervous, more pessimistic. I wasn’t sure
what to talk about tonight, or why the hell I’d suggested a damn bonfire when I hadn’t brought the supplies.
I was
even
a
little
apprehensive about her past.
I wasn’t sure if she was completely over her ex-
fiancé
, and
if she was, I doubted she
’d
forgott
en abo
ut being left for someone else
.

All of a sudden I felt guilty for
one of the films I starred in last year:
Broken Promises
. I played
an engaged lawyer who fell for one of his
clients
and dumped his bride to be
. Of course, my “fiancé
” had been cheating on me the whole tim
e so that kind of evened things.

I wondered how Melody’s fiancé
broke it to her. Surely he told her in private
and
not in front of all the wedding guests like I did in my movie.

“I’ve got everything
here
,” Joan pulled up in a golf cart. “
I opened a tab i
n your name at the winery and
told them I’d call with the credit card tomorrow afternoon.”

“
Thanks…
Do you know how to build a bonfire?”

I wa
lked around
the
blazing
bonfire,
throwing wood chips towards it to ease my nerves. Joan was picking Melody up from her
villa
and it was taking forever.

I rea
r
ranged the
bench
.
I re-aligned the snacks on the small table. I changed the song on my iHome.
I thought about potential conversation starters, potential drinking games.

I saw moving lig
hts in the distance and stood still
. The golf cart stopped a few feet in front of me
and
Melody
stepped out
. As she walked closer I saw that she was
wearing a tight red dress
.

WOW
.

“Good evening, Melody.
”

I should’ve suggested a night on my yacht instead…

“Good evening,” she smiled.

Joan
flashed the cart’s lights twice,
her way of sa
ying “call me when you need me
,
”
and drove away.

“You want something to drink?”

“Sure,” she walked over to the
bench
and sat down.

“Would you like wine or a beer? I got the
lightest
stuff so you
wo
n’t fall
asleep
on me.
”

She blushed
.
“Wine’s fine.
How
was your day
?”

Absolutely perfect now
…

“It was okay. Joan and I just walked around the island.”

“
Are you
two
friends outside of your business relationship?”

“She’s pretty much my only friend. She does everything right most of the time so it doesn’t really feel like
business
. Whenever she wants a day off, I give it to her. And if she tells me she’s interested in a nice item or something, I never allow her to pay for it. We have our own way of commun
icating the friendship aspect.”

“Must be nice.”

“What about you?” I sa
t
next to her
and handed her a glass
of white wine
. “What’d you do today?”

“
I
did a three mile
hike and went
parasailing
with my sister.”

“
Sounds like a tiring
day,” I went over my list of conversation starters. “
Have you been here before?”

“No, this is
my first time
.
T
his is where me and my
fiancé
would’ve gone for our honeymoon.”

Damn. W
hat do I say to that?

Melo
dy continued,
“It wa
s an open ticket
so I waited
until now to use it.”

“When was the wedding?”

“Almost
a month ago. I can’t believe it’s been that long. I was
such
a mess after he left me. Everyone
was staring
at me with their pity eyes
.
”

“He left you
at
the wedding?”

“In front of everyone,” she sighed. “It was
right after we said our vows. The girl he
cheat
ed
on me with showed up and just like that, he didn’t want to marry me anymore.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault
. At least I don’t have to be in a
relationship with someone who i
s
just
pretending you know?”

“I can relate
to that
,” I sipped my drink
.

Should I tell her about me and Selena?
Do I possibly have a chance?
She’
s clearly still hurt by
her ex…

“Hey!
You
let me talk
about personal stuff!” she giggl
ed. “Don’t let me do that again.”

“I wasn’t going to cut you off. I want to know more about you.”

She’s blushing again…

“What do you want to know?”
she asked.

“For starters,
why don’t you
ever
go to movie premieres?”

“I just don’t see the po
int,” she shrugged.
“
It all seems so fake to me,
no offense.”

“None taken. I sometimes feel that way too
, but I
have to see my
fans.”

“Do the fans really matter though? Like, once you get to a certain point where movie studios are paying you ridiculous money and everyone knows your name, why
do you
even
care?”

I gave her my best “Did you really just say that?” look and shook my head.
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re a
cynic
?
Of course the fans matter. They’re the
people who
see the movies and actually
enjoy
them
,
unlike someone I know.”