“Next time you make it to Georgia, we can play. You can sneak me into Augusta and I’ll see if I
can work on that swing of yours.
” I grin at him.
It’s a joke, but only kind of.
It’s been
my dream to play there since the first time I
saw it on TV when I
was a kid
.
“You live in Georgia?”
“I do now. I go to Greenview.”
“Gr
eenview? Well, I’ll be damned.”
H
is oldest daughter is
c
urrently scouting colleges and harbors
some fantasy of going to school in the South. Thirty minutes later,
after imparting some of my infinite wisdom about the mysteries of teenage girls (after all, I’m still technically one),
we’re old friends
.
“Ok, ok, you’r
e softened me up.” He hands
a credit card to the scantily cla
d waitress and turns to Marcus.
“Your
little ringer here should have handled the negotiations, though. She got me to admit my real handicap and managed to soothe the nagging thought that my daughter is secretly involved with a cult, so I can only guess how much money she could have taken out of my pocketbook.”
Marcus gives me a sidelong look and then turns back to Alan. “The last offer stands.”
Alan groans. “Fine
. I’ll get our lawyers to send a copy to
you first thing in the morning. G
et it signed and everything will be ready for the press conference on Friday
.”
Marcus slaps Alan’s hand and grins at him. “Then, we have a deal.”
Alan turns to Chris, then. “I’ll think about your
ideas about James.” H
e turns to me with a smile
.
“
I will consider
your notes on the script
, too, even though I still think you’re wrong about the Jane angle
.
”
I grin at him
before he addresses Chris again
.
“
I’ll be at t
he press conference Friday
to introduce you before you ans
wer some of the questions. There’s the read
–through in a couple of weeks
, so you better get your ass ready.
I’ll be in touch
with Marcus
.”
Chris shakes his hand
. “I’m looking forward to it, Alan.”
Alan
barks at the waitress. “Bring them another bottle of champagne. And anything else the lady wants.” He winks at
me as he gets up from the table, and I stand up to shake his hand, but h
e
pulls me in for a hug instead.
“Good luck with Lily
.
I promise that
it’s all downhill from here. I think you’re through the worst of it.
And tell her to text
me
when she gets the visit date set up, so I can blow up my air mattress for her. I do think she
would really like Greenview.”
“
I’ll do that. And y
ou a
nd I need to have a golf date.”
“
I offer reasonable rates on
lesson
s.” I should have just shut my mouth. I’m sitting here, teasing the big-time Hollywood director like he’s no one at all. I cover my mouth in horror.
Instead of
getting
angry, he merely smiles.
“
I’ll have to take you up on that
.”
He looks at Chris and opens his mouth as if to say something, but just shakes his head again
and looks at Marcus
instead
. “Ah, Marcus, to be young again.”
Marcus gets up with Alan. “
Young and foolish.” He slaps Chris on the back. “Let’s
leave the kids to it, then.”
He air kisses my cheek and leans in to whisper in my ear.
“The offer still stands. I may have to up it to one of the first-tier shows
, judging from your little performance with Alan
. Come on. Ev
eryone wants to be an actress.”
I slap his arm away, because he’s joking. At least, I think he is. “Maybe I could be an agent instead.
”
He laughs and it’s the first genuine sound I’ve heard from his mouth. “Now, that
could
be arranged.” He leans closer to whisper again. “As long as
you drop my boy here, that is.”
I glance at him, and his eyes are serious. “Nothing personal, sweetheart,” he adds, throwing his hands up. “But love is a far more dangerous thing
that other kinds of addiction.”
I shake my head and shrug in response.
He’s an asshole, but he’s trying to protect Chris, which
is kind of sweet i
n a weirdly deranged way
.
Marcus is still hustling
Alan about another one of his actors as they make their way through the restaurant, which makes me smile
.
After they leave,
I grab the bottle of champagne gre
edily and pour myself a glass.
All
of the food had come in
portions
that hardly filled a fork and had
layers of foam and li
ttle clear beads of chemicals, so I
also
take the opportunity to dig into the bread basket
. I’m shoving the bread into my mouth and washing it down with the champagne when I realize that Chris is staring
at me
.
“You’re amazing,” he says
softly
.
“No, you’re amazing. They absolutely loved you. Alan even said that he would think about changes to the script.
So, maybe you won’t be the star of the worst-written action series of all time, after all.
”
I grin. “Seriously, though. You killed it.”
“You just made me look good.
All that stuff about Greenview? He was practically eating out of your hand.
”
I shake off the compliment.
“It’s nothing.
He seems like a pretty good dad, and it sounds like Lily would really like Greenview, so I was happy to try to sell it to him.
I’m a Greenview ambassador anyways, so I host
visiting students all the time
…”
I’m babbling again,
and he silences me with a look.
“I’ve never even seen Alan laugh before
.
And I’ve certainly never seen anyone call him out on his bullshit.
How did you know that he was lying about the gold?
”
“
There’s
no way he shot an 83. Not at freaking Augusta. No way.
I knew it from the second he showed me that terrible grip. He definitely
crosses over on his swing
, and there’s no way you get around Augusta at 9 over
or 11 over or anything under 100
with that grip
.”
Chris laughs in amusement, and covers my hand with his.
He
glances at his phone
, which is buzzing at him
. “It’s Diana. I’m just going to
tell her that it went okay,
so she doesn’t go crazy
.
”
I take another long sip of champagne
as he talks to his sister. I use the opportunity to stare at
him
. If it’s even possible, he gets
more handsome
each time I
look at
his face
. I slide my hand under the table to touch his thigh as he hangs up and he grabs my hand in his and kisses my palm. I take a deep breath.
“Five days,” he says, looking at me directly in the eye.
“And then you become a movie star and I go back to
Sophia
’s,” I say, trying to make my voice bright. Five days. It would have to be enough.
“
Hallie
, I want to talk about what this is. What we are.”
I put my finger to his lips. I don’t want to hear promises. I want to be with him in the here and now.
I tell him that
. “Can we not talk about the future for five days?” I take a deep breath and look deeply into his eyes, willing him to hear me. “
I’ve spent nearly all of my life planning for the next day, and the next month, and the next school, and the next life event. I really just want to be here with you, in New York, for right now. No future, no past. Just a few days of nothing but the present.
James Ross is exempt, of course.
I can tease you about that.”
“But…”
He starts to speak, but promptly shuts his mouth when he looks at my eyes. “No past, no future. For five days. On Friday, after the press conference, all bets are off. And the past and the future will exist again.”
I nod, because he’s right. Five days could pass in the blink of an eye. Or they could last a lifetime.
“For right now, all I am thinking about it how to get the fastest cab driver in the city so that I can get you back in my bed. If we only have five days, we better make them count.”
I grab his hand. “Race you?”
I’m sprinting through the restaurant and Hostess-Who-Needs-A-Sandwich gives me the dirtiest look she can muster, but it bounces off me.
Five days it would be.
Chapter 20
CHRIS
Hallie’s
tangled in my arms and I kiss her gently.
She smiles up at me.
“You know, I think I could get used to this whole perfectly happy thi
ng.”
Her words are light, but
there’s a melancholy expression on her face that belies their meaning.
“You can get used to it, if you’d let me tell you about…”
Her finger on my lips silences me.
“Last day, Christopher.”
I
t was. The last four days had been the best of my life.
The kind of days that last forever and pass in little more than a heartbeat.
We had fallen into a little routine—
I would try to convince her to stay in bed each morning, and she would try to convince me to get out of it. We spent long hours debating politics and sports and movies and books and music and long hours doing nothing but wrapping ourselves in each other.
She
had
managed to
talk
me
in
to get
ting
out of bed for
a brief outing each day--
we’d
been to the
Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, a Broadway show, dancing at a club, Chinatown
, and to my favorite coffee shops and cafes
.
Everything was new. Every corner of the city felt alive with something that had never been there before.
“You know, we could sign a temporary exten
sion of the five day contract.”
“You become James Ross tomorrow, so that’s not going to be possible.”
“Why did you have to remind me of that?”
Marcus hadn’t quite let me forget it. Each day, there had been phone calls (which I ignored) and angry text messages (also ignored) and faxes. Hallie made me sign the contract that had been hand-delivered by a messenger. I had barely glanced at it before starting to sign it, but she had grabbed it from me and pored over every detail.
“
You just can’t sign something without reading it,
”
she had told me.
“
That’s what Marcus does,
”
I had told her. After she had checked it to her satisfaction, she had looked up at me in shock.
“
Chris! Do you have any idea of how much they’re going to pay you for this?
”
Trying to feign interest in anything but her, I had looked at the number, which, I have to admit, caused my heart to beat a little faster.
“If someone wants to give me a ridiculous pile of cash to pretend to be someone else for a couple of months, that’s thei
r prerogative. It’s only money,
” I told her eventually, after I wrapped my head around the number of zeroes.
“It’s enough money to buy a private island!” she had exclaimed.
“Hmm, that’s tempting,” I had told her, dragging her down with me.
“No one else is going to let you forget it, either.” Hallie pokes me in the arm, snapping me back to the present. “So, what’s the plan for our last day? I may even let you convince me that today’s outing can be to the kitchen and back. I could maybe be convinced that staying in bed is a good idea.”
Now, she wants to stay in bed. Great.
“
I have a surprise for you.”