Untangling The Stars (13 page)

***

“What are you doing here anyway?”

He pressed a leftover kiss onto her cheek and leaned back. He took a sip of his coffee and winced—the coffee must have cooled during all the kissing.

Guy shrugged. “I texted you a few times, you didn’t respond. I got…concerned.”

“Concerned?” She must have slept through the buzzes. Go figure.

Was he blushing?
“A guy can’t get concerned when the girl he spent an amazing evening with doesn’t take his calls? I was worried that I did something to scare you off.”

Now
she
was definitely blushing. “I’m sorry; I must have slept through them.”

“So it’s a good thing I decided to track you down then. Would hate to have you wake up tomorrow morning with a stiff neck from sleeping on your desk all night.”

“True
that.
” Andie suddenly felt the need to stretch. She pulled her arms above her head, tugging each arm by its wrist. It felt amazing. She must have been asleep longer than she’d realized. Too bad she couldn’t reheat her latte. Still, a lukewarm sip was better than no sip.

“Scott didn’t happen to divulge the details of his secret chai latte recipe to you, did he?”

“No, ma’am. He did not.”

“Rats.”

“He did threaten to sic his guard dog on me, though, if I displayed any ungentlemanly behavior toward a certain blonde professor who is currently wearing an exceptionally darling pair of little earrings with—what are those, bunnies?” His eyes looked just beyond her face and pretended to study her ears as he pulled her chair into his, locking her knees between his.

“They
are
bunnies. And did you see his beastly guard dog then?”

“The ferocious yellow lab with the stuffed duck? He looked
vicious
.” He feigned horror. “I wish I had friends like that though. Those are hard to find.”

Andie gave him a questioning look. “Don’t you?”

Guy made a face that showed that he was shuffling through a mental Rolodex of names and faces. Then, “No, not like that. I don’t think I do.”

The confession made her sad for him. Andie had always been a bit of a loner and didn’t consider herself to be a woman of many friends. Yet the few she did have—like Scott and even Tandy—she held dear. Guy was right; they were hard to find.

The pity must have shown on her face because Guy shrugged, looking embarrassed. “I guess that’s Hollywood for you. Everybody—agents, directors, fans—wants something from you. Your name, your face, maybe your autograph—whatever. For a while, you tell yourself it’s great to be the center of attention, but, after a while, you realize they don’t actually want you. You’re just a prop.” His voice turned bitter. “They never want Guy Wilder. They want Silas Dove.”

It took a moment for Andie to digest his words. They stung—not a personal sting, but that particular kind of sting when your heart broke under the weight of someone else’s trouble. Empathy was a mother. She tried to find the right words. They should be comforting, but not flippant; supportive, but not chiding. And as much as she cared for him, it was no easy task to force herself to focus on Guy as a person, and not a research subject, so she had to calibrate her words for that too because the interview questions were already piling up in her head. She’d long suspected something along the lines of Guy’s admission, but never had anyone to ask. What an interesting thought, though, to be ostracized among the elite for being among the elite. It reminded her again of the community of social outcasts of Hilary’s
Beauty and the Beast
essay.

“Not everyone wants Silas Dove.”
It’s true
.

“Sometimes I don’t even know which one I am anymore—Silas or Guy. There’s so much pressure—I don’t know when the camera is off. So much of myself is…is…I don’t know—it’s like I don’t always know when I get to stop being in character.”

He took a deep breath and kept talking; his words sped up like this was a speech that he’d wanted to get out for some time. “Silas is a monster, right? He’s this dark, brooding, emotionally distant bastard who stays in the shadows as much by force of his nature as by his own deeply embedded securities. He’s a monster constantly fighting his own demons. And then, here I am—and I’m just a guy from small town Alaska who got his start doing infomercials and cheesy sitcom gigs, low-budget B-stuff, and somehow lucked into this. But, Guy Wilder and Silas Dove are both me. It’s not good for Silas’ image for Guy to be a smiley, huggy guy going around and—” He paused to flutter his hands in the air. “—I don’t know, just be a normal person. Gotta keep the ratings up, right? And fans want their Guy Wilder like they want their TV-playthings: dark and miserable. But that’s not who
I
am, or at least it didn’t used to be.”

It seemed silly that Andie should be crying, but, silly or not, her cheeks were wet with tears. She didn’t know the struggle, but the pain that Guy shared was raw and real and it was impossible not to feel it, too. “I’m so sorry, Guy. That’s a terrible situation for any person to be in. You should never have to choose between being yourself and being who other people want you to be.”

“That’s why I like you so much.”

“What?” She wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly.

He laughed out loud and pulled her knees closer to him. “You! You’re just kind and genuine. It’s refreshing. You say what you think, feel what you feel, you just
are.
You’re a beacon of light in my darkness, Andie Foxglove, and I'm like a moth to a flame.”

It was the best compliment anyone could have ever given her. “Thank you.”

Guy traced the back of her hands with his thumb, a careful smile lighting up the shadows on his face and adding even more contour to his sharp cheekbones. “So you’ll take the man over the monster?”

Andie couldn’t resist. She leaned in and gave him a light kiss on the perfect edge of his jawline. “Both are fine by me.”

“We’ll see about that.”

***

Another hour later and Andie had finally managed to shove all her papers back into her messenger bag. Classes would be starting up again way too soon, and she was ready to cuddle up in some fluffy pajamas and scrub off whatever traces of makeup were left clinging to her skin.

From the sounds of it, Guy could use a break, too. For the past thirty minutes, Guy had been crouched over a desk in the back corner of the classroom, arguing in brusque, hushed tones with someone on the other end of his cell phone. She would never say it, especially after his heart-wrenching and vulnerable confession earlier, but when his phone had lit up, he’d gone form Guy to Silas in about three seconds flat. “It’s my agent,” he’d grunted, and shuffled to the back of the room to take the call in private.

“Yeah, Mad, it’s me. Yeah, your favorite pair of blue eyes is fine. Yeah, I’m still in Denver.”

It had more or less been different varieties of that for the past half hour. The only difference was Guy’s tone had gotten more and more gruff and irritated until Andie was wincing every time Guy spoke, waiting for him to turn green and Hulk out in the upper corner. Whatever this Mad was grilling him on, it was apparently starting to piss him off.

“What I do on my own time is my business, Mad. I don’t give two shits what they run in
Star Talk
.”

Andie snuck a look up the risers. She knew
Star Talk.
It was one of the gossip rags in the checkout line at the supermarket—and not the good kind. He didn’t see her, his head was bowed over the desk, one arm clutching the edge of the wooden table on his lap. The hand that held the phone up to his head had white knuckles that she could see even in the dim light. She could almost literally
feel
the waves of anger and frustration vibrating down to her on the platform.

Whatever Guy said next—right before he jabbed his thumb onto the screen to end the call and shoved the phone into the back pocket of his dark denim jeans—came out in a growl. Andie didn’t show any signs she’d noticed he was off the phone, and made sure to give him a wide berth. If she knew one thing, it was never to poke the bear. They bite.

After a few long minutes, Guy rose and slumped down the stairs toward her. She stood as he reached her on the platform. When he was close enough to touch her, he did, reaching out and closing her in a circle of her arms. Andie stood comfortably nestled against the smell of musk and cinnamon of Guy’s chest, and let him hold her for as long as he needed. With her ear on his chest, she could count his heartbeats, first fast, and then slowing.
One, two, three, four…five, six…seven, eight…nine…ten.

Finally, he loosened his arms, but Andie stayed pressed against him anyway. “Everything all right?”

Gently, Guy tilted her head back so that she could see up into his face. He had always seemed so mysterious and distant before. Now he looked downtrodden, tired, and almost weary. Tired on a good night’s sleep. He didn’t answer.

“Let’s get out of here, okay?” she volunteered to fill the silence. “I’ll take you home.”

“Okay.”

He waited patiently as Andie shouldered her bag, turned off the remaining lights in her classroom, and locked the door behind them. She noticed he’d lowered his sunglasses back over his eyes, even though it was well past ten o’clock at night and they would be walking out of the building into near total darkness. “Hey, Corey Hart, you always wear your sunglasses at night?”

With a low chuckle, Guy wound his arm around the small of her back, and they walked out into the night.

***

“Heya, Dr. Foxglove! Hey!”

Andie was so startled to hear someone shout her name across the pitch-blackness of the empty courtyard outside the English building that she nearly tripped over her own feet. It was nearly eleven o’clock at night. Andie made nighttime commutes home on a regular basis, and it was one time in a dozen she ever saw another living soul out on campus this late other than campus security, and she couldn’t remember once when someone had yelled out to her.
Who the hell is that?
She didn’t have time to find where the voice had come from before she felt Guy’s arm drop from her waist and go stiff beside her. It felt like he was pinned to her side. Whoever had called her name was racing toward them. She could see the shape of a young man wearing a backward baseball cap and some kind of shiny athletic shorts, silhouetted in shadows.

“Let’s walk the other way.” Guy’s voice was a whisper, and had an insistent sound to it. With ice-cold fingertips on her arm, she let him guide her away from the body barreling toward them.

“Hey—Dr. Fox—wait up!”

Andie recognized the voice as the body drew nearer. “It’s one of my students.” She patted Guy’s arm reassuringly. Then, to the boy who just materialized before them, “Cody, hi. What are you doing on campus so late?”

Cody was breathless by the time he reached her, and he rested his hands on his knees to catch his breath. His head hung down between his thighs and his words came out in ragged gasps. “Late night practice—we’ve got finals in two weeks.”

Finals?
She noticed the shiny athletic shorts again.
Oh, basketball. Right.

“I saw you walking across the way, thought I’d give you an escort. You know—keep you away from stranger danger. Get a chivalry merit badge from the frat or something.” He flapped his hand in Guy’s general direction. “Didn’t notice you weren’t alone till I’d already started running, but then I was already committed, so…here I am.”

Andie shook her head. Merit badges at the frat house; that would be a first. “Well I appreciate the offer, but I think I’ll make it out alive.”

Cody laughed in that good-natured way that men do, but Guy stood as silent and rigid as ever. He looked like a spooked cat, the way he was standing all frozen-like with fingers splayed out. He might take off running at any second.

His awkward behavior gave him away. Cody took one look from Andie to Guy and did a sharp double take. “Holy shit, you’re Guy Wilder!” Cody’s eyes budged out and he clapped his hands together, then cupped over his mouth in a
whoosh
-ing sound. “Damn, Dr. Fox I didn’t know you were friends with Guy Wilder. Man,
the
Guy Wilder. I’m a big fan!”

Cody held out his hand to Guy. Guy looked at it as if it were a snake.

Well this is awkward
. “Guy, this is Cody Matthews. He’s in one of my classes—the Television and American Identity one you…you audited. Remember?” She gave him big imploring eyes.
Do something! Action!

Guy the Android seemed to finally boot up. He kept his shades down but gave one of those Emmy-worthy smiles, and it was all for Cody’s benefit. “Hey, that’s right! You’re the one who threw the afterhours birthday party, right?” He clapped Cody on the shoulder. For the first time Andie noticed how much Guy dwarfed the younger man, in both height and mass. Beside Guy’s dark leather and worldly confidence, poor Cody looked like an eager little boy in his cap and shorts. That familiar heat swirled in the bottom of Andie’s belly and her body seemed to thump inside Guy’s energy. It was remarkably easy to forget the outside world when she and Guy were alone (or not alone, apparently). In fact, she hadn’t given any thought, really, to being seen with Guy—not beyond his paparazzi comments at the hotel. But Cody wasn’t paparazzi; he was a student. Not a threat. And being spotted in Guy’s company wasn’t the least bit nerve-wracking. It was quite the contrary, actually—it felt good,
really
good.

Guy and Cody had been chatting idly back and forth. Suddenly they were both looking at her and she hadn’t heard what they’d said.
What?

“What?”

“I said, you’re a lucky lady, Dr. Fox. I had no idea you had such cool friends. Wow!”

She tried not to beam too brightly and wreck all their night vision. “Yes, I guess I am.” She avoided looking directly at Guy.

Cody shook his head and gave Guy’s hand one final shake. “I’d better get out of here and let you guys go. If you’re gonna be safe out in the night with anyone protecting you, it’s gonna be Silas Dove himself, right?” He smiled at Guy eagerly, looking for approval, but Guy only gave a small, acknowledging nod back. “It was really,
really
cool to meet you, Guy. See you in class, Dr. Fox.”