How to Date a Millionaire (7 page)

‘Yep,' I answer her and, without stopping to think about what I'm doing, I reach forward, grab Seth's hand and drag him from his chair. It's only as I feel the warmth of his grasp that I realise what I've done and blush. Quickly, I let go of his hand. ‘Yep, we're coming. Now, um, scoot,' I tell him, my eyes darting away from his curious gaze. ‘You've got thirty-five seconds and counting.'

Seth shakes his head. ‘That's not even enough time to paint my nails.'

Pushing him through the doorway, I laugh. ‘Don't worry. The sailors won't be looking at
your
nails. They'll be looking at
mine
. And I had a manicure yesterday. Frangipani pink.' I hold them up for all the world (and especially sailors, who know a decent manicure when they spot one and obviously would stop to admire mine, maybe even to chat a little) to see.

I make sure I end up sitting beside Seth on the shuttle, though I take great care to make it look like a complete (whoops!) accident. Alexa sits in front of us, beside Nat (all the better to control her with doggie treats, seeing as we still haven't managed to buy a choker chain yet) and Jason and Connor end up pairing off behind us.

As the shuttle pulls out and heads down busy Kalakaua Avenue, Seth looks out the window and his expression reads he's a million miles away.

I'm determined to get to the bottom of this.

‘You've been working really hard the whole trip,' I say, making him turn back around to face me.

He nods.

‘On something for film school?'

There's a pause before Seth says anything. A pause in which I can tell he's not sure what he wants to say, or if he should say anything at all. ‘A screenplay. But it's not going so well.'

‘A screenplay. Really?'

Seth nods again. ‘I thought, after last time …'

‘You've written more than one?'

Another nod. ‘Two others. One I burnt, it was so bad.'

‘But the other?'

Seth glances back nervously at Jason and Connor, which is when I start to feel their eyes burning into the back of my neck. Hmmm. I think they might be listening in. He shrugs slightly. ‘The other one I really like.'

‘The three of us came up with the idea together. But Seth wrote it. It's amazing,' Jason adds.

I frown slightly. ‘So, if you really like it, what happens next? You need an agent, right? To shop it around?'

I don't know much about how to actually sell a screenplay. All I know is that people are forever trying to get Holly to read them. Including leaving them in such weird and freakish places as her drycleaning bag (the drycleaning guy's sister's best friend), on top of her ensuite toilet
cistern (the cleaner's cousin's brother-in-law) and under her dessert plate (various waiters – but at least the dessert tends to come free).

‘Yeah, we need an agent …' Seth starts, but is quickly interrupted by Jason.

‘Or some interest from someone important. You know, from a star.'

Both Alexa and Nat turn around slightly in their seats at this and I can tell they've been listening-in.

‘Maybe you could leave the screenplay in a star's drycleaning bag or something,' I say.

‘Yeah,' Jason pipes up from behind. ‘That's not a bad idea.'

‘I'd go for it,' Connor adds.

I turn around and look at Jason, but he just smiles and shrugs. Again, I get the feeling I don't like him much. Slimy, I think is the word. Or maybe sleazy. Something starting with ‘s', anyway.

When I turn forward once more, Seth is shaking his head. ‘You don't need to do things like that,' he says. ‘Not if your work's really good. Not if you're professional.'

I look at him. I like that take on things.

‘Yeah, right. And then you can sit around for a million years waiting for someone to recognise your genius,' Jason pipes up again. ‘You've got to be a player or you're out, man. This is Hollywood we're talking about.'

‘No you don't.' Seth shakes his head. ‘You just think you do.'

Riiiiight. Okay. I think we're getting down to the bottom of this whole falling out business now.

‘I think we should go the drycleaning option. At least it's
doing
something, isn't it?'

Seth looks out the window again, bored with where the conversation's going. I get the feeling he's heard this all a billion times before.

‘But …' Nat starts up and, instantly, Alexa and I focus on her and give her our best don't-you-dare mega-death-stare looks. We've had this talk. You don't tell people we're with Holly. Ever. Sure, it makes you feel important and everything and people jump when they know, but at the end of the day it's dangerous for Holly and it's dangerous for us. Holly's had her fair share of weird stalkers and even weirder ex-fiancés in the past. Plus, there's no denying she's a woman with a lot of money and a lot of pull in
Hollywood. Mostly, of course, people are nice. But there are the people who get desperate. Who, over the years, end up wanting things a little
too
much and will do some strange stuff to make those things happen. Jason looks like he might be one of those people. Perhaps not now, but give him five years. Maybe ten. He may very well have graduated into a fully fledged Hollywood freak by then, cleaning stars' pools and leaving his waterproof-bagged screenplays at the bottom of their sparkling blueness to find when they next have a dip.

Shudder.

‘Um … nothing.' Nat shrinks down in her seat. I think the death stares worked. And the talk we'd given her was a good and long one. I'm sure she's remembering it in vivid detail. ‘Do you have a lodge? In Maine? Where
is
Maine, anyway?' she says, trying to change the subject.

Oh brother. Will she give up on that movie already?

‘A lodge?' Seth starts to ask.

I wave one hand. ‘So what's the story about?' I try to change the subject again myself. Away from dodgy drycleaning dealings and lodges in Maine. This is getting too strange.

Seth sort of shakes his head as if he doesn't quite understand what's going on, but it's my question he answers. ‘Er, it's about a girl who hates Valentine's Day. She's had a few bad ones over the years and she's come to the point where she's given up on men entirely. Her friends are always trying to set her up and when one forces her into going on a blind date on Valentine's Day, she kind of loses the plot.'

‘Sounds good. I mean, everyone hates Valentine's Day, don't they? Even married people whinge about it. What's it called?'

‘
Hating Valentine's Day
.'

‘I guess that about sums it up.'

Seth laughs. ‘Pretty much, yeah.'

Funny, but he suddenly looks so unguarded – when he's talking about something he loves. But then, just as quickly, his guard comes back up again. ‘But it's impossible. It's practically impossible to get any film made, let alone one written by a nobody.'

I shrug slightly. ‘You have to be a Nobody before you're a Somebody. Every Somebody was a Nobody once.' Holly's told me this a million times before – at some stage or another we're all scabby-kneed boys or girls in the playground.

Seth thinks about this for a second. ‘I guess. I never thought about it that way.'

‘Unless they're Somebody's kid. Or Somebody's niece, or nephew, or cousin, or pool cleaner,' Jason adds.

Double shudder. Did he just say
pool cleaner
?

‘But you're not going to go very far if you're just Somebody's kid or whatever. Sure, it helps, but you still have to be talented, or you're never going to have a lasting career,' I turn around and tell him.

He just shrugs. ‘It's a start. And that's all we're looking for at this stage.'

I turn forward having heard enough. Sure, I think to myself, and you'll do anything to get it.

One thing's for certain – I am so never telling that guy who my stepmother is.

When we get to the Pearl Harbor Visitors' Center, Nat hustles us forward to join the queue to get our tickets to see the documentary and go on the boat ride to the memorial itself. I thought it would just be a museum, but
it seems the Pearl Harbor Memorial is much more than that. I knew the basics – that the USS
Arizona
had been bombed in 1941 and over 1,000 crewmen had lost their lives – but I had no idea the sunken
Arizona
itself
was
the memorial. Or that you could travel out to the site in a boat and actually stare down at it from the large white open-aired structure that's been specially built on top of it.

We get our tickets, check our bags and hang about the grassy courtyard for the fifteen minutes or so before our allotted documentary time comes up. The six of us then line up again, with everyone else in our time-slot, and are ushered into a theatre to watch the short film about what happened on the day Pearl Harbor was attacked.

Twenty-three minutes later, the whole theatre-ful of people walks out again looking more or less shell-shocked themselves. We should have known this wouldn't be a fun little day out, but it's hard to get out of that mind-set when you're living it up aloha style. We're directed onto a large white boat by sailors (I'd make some joke about picking one up later, but now doesn't really seem to be the time) and we shuffle along the benches until everyone's seated. It's a gorgeous, beautiful, blue-skied day once again and the
memorial, white and elongated – dipping in the middle and rising at the ends – gleams as it sits in the water in the distance. It seems kind of wrong that it's such a nice day, but I guess it probably was the day the
Arizona
was attacked too. Almost every day seems to be like this in Hawaii.

It hardly seems possible, but when I step out onto it, the memorial seems whiter than white. It's almost blinding in the sunlight, the structure spanning the mid-portion of the sunken ship, lying grey below. In contrast, high above, the American flag waves proudly. Slowly, people move through the memorial's different areas – the entry and assembly rooms, the observation area and up to the shrine room where the names of the crewmen who were killed are engraved upon a marble wall. Without talking about it, the six of us make the journey alone. It's not exactly something you can do while chatting about the latest movie you've seen, or where you're heading off to for dinner.

Ten minutes later, on my way back through the memorial again, I pause in the observation area and take another moment to look down at the
Arizona
. Small droplets of oil bubble to the surface, leaving a glassy sheen on the water.

‘The oil. It's strange, isn't it? Almost like a link between their time and ours.'

I turn to see Seth beside me. ‘That's funny. That's just what I was thinking.'

The two of us look back down at the oil again, forever bubbling up, drop by drop. After another few minutes of standing in silence, we both seem to know it's time to go, and push back from the side of the memorial at the same time, starting back towards the boat.

‘Thanks, Nessa. I'm glad I came today.' Seth gives me a small smile when we're sitting beside each other back on the boat again.

‘No worries,' I say as we set off and the breeze picks up. I smile. ‘You never know. Maybe I can convince you to have a frangipani pink pedicure tomorrow?'

The six of us grab some hot dogs for lunch from the snack bar and take a seat on the grass together, so we can enjoy the sunshine. I don't think any one of us is going to want to go home again any time soon.

As we sit around eating and talking, the conversation moves back to the boys' screenplay.

‘I was thinking about it again when I was looking down at the
Arizona
,' Jason says. ‘About how to get noticed.'

‘How respectful.' Alexa's eyebrows raise.

Across from her, Seth laughs. ‘Yeah, that's Jason all over.'

Jason doesn't seem to mind. He just shrugs.

‘What did you come up with?' Connor asks him.

‘We need to do something big. Like climbing the Hollywood sign.'

Now I snort. ‘I know someone who did that once. He didn't really get “noticed”, more like plain old “arrested”.'

The ‘someone' I'm talking about is Holly's ex-fiancé, Hollywood actor Kent Sweetman. What she was thinking being with him, I'll never know. I don't even think
she
knows. Unfortunately, I'm lying about the ‘noticed' thing. Kent got noticed all right. Mainly because he didn't just climb the Hollywood sign. He also managed to cover up bits and pieces of it and add some other writing, so it ended up reading ‘Holly come back to me' the day before she and my dad were set to be married.

She didn't.

Ha ha on you, Kent.

I watch Seth as he simply shakes his head and takes a sip of his drink. ‘It's a great idea. We'll get right onto it as soon as we get back.' Well, those are the words that come out of his mouth, anyway. His tone is more like, ‘never in a million years is that going to happen, Jason, though I'd happily watch you climb the sign and get stuck up there'.

‘And you've got a better idea?' Jason snorts.

Seth just looks away.

But Jason moves over closer to him. ‘Hey, are you feeling okay? You look a bit white.'

Everyone turns to look at Seth now and Seth's head whips back around to look at Jason. ‘What?'

Alexa and I glance at each other. He looks fine to us. Just like normal.

‘You look good to me,' Nat pipes up, but (thankfully) Jason is already speaking over her.

‘Have you taken your meds this morning? On time and everything?' Jason continues.

And, with this, Seth's whole demeanour changes. He gets this kind of confused, wary look about him. Not like he's sick, but like he's worried something's about to happen.

‘Maybe we should get you back soon.' Jason reaches over and pats Seth on his shoulder. Seth pushes his hand away. Meanwhile, in the background, Connor says his usual nothing at all.

Alexa and I shoot each other another look. What's going on here? And, as if he's heard our thoughts, Jason turns to us. ‘Seth probably doesn't want you to know, but he's not very well. He had a heart transplant a couple of years ago.'

I can't help it. I gasp.

At the same time, Seth kind of chokes. ‘What? What are you talking about? Why would you even say that? Don't be so stupid.' He reaches over and pushes Jason, so he's sitting back down again, instead of kneeling.

Jason shrugs once more. ‘I know you're embarrassed, but you shouldn't be.'

Beside me, I feel a hand on my arm. Alexa. I glance over at her again. And then I wake up to myself. ‘Did you …did you really?' My head turns back to Seth.

He doesn't look at me.

But I don't care. I keep going. ‘A heart transplant! I can't believe it! You're so lucky! I mean, not that it's lucky to have a heart condition or anything, but it's just such a coincidence. My mum was meant to have a heart transplant, you see, but she never got a heart in time. And I hope you're all organ donors here or that you're going to be. You should think about it, you really should. People really need those organs. People like Seth. And my mum, though, like I said, she never got one. But maybe if more people donated, she would have and …' Alexa's grip on my arm tightens.

Oh.

I think I might be gabbling.

Maybe just a little bit.

‘Um, sorry,' I say quietly. ‘Maybe you can tell me about it some time, Seth. If, you know, you don't mind talking about it too much.'

Seth stands up quickly. ‘Yeah, well, I mind. I mind a whole lot,' he says and stalks over to a bin, where he throws the remains of his lunch in. And, when he's done that, he doesn't come back. He just keeps right on walking.

Alexa turns to Jason. ‘You shouldn't have done that. He obviously doesn't like talking about it.'

Jason, super-shrugger, shrugs again. Honestly, it seems to be his first choice in communication. ‘I thought he looked sick.'

Alexa shakes her head.

But me, I'm still watching Seth disappear into the distance. Quickly, I get up and dust myself off. ‘I'm going to see if he's okay,' I say. After all, it doesn't look like Jason or Connor is going to go after him. And it might have made things worse – all the things I said about my mum.

Alexa says, ‘We'll be here waiting for you. We'd better catch the shuttle back soon, though. We're supposed to meet your dad and, um, your stepmother at 4.30.'

‘Okay. I won't be long,' I say, already heading off in Seth's direction.

I half-walk, half-jog over the grass in Seth's tracks, dodging people as I go. By the time I get to him, Seth has wandered off down a hill and is sitting, away from the eyes of most of the other tourists, staring out at the water.

‘Seth?' I come up behind him.

He glances up, shading his eyes. ‘Hey.'

So far, so good. I sit down cautiously beside him. ‘Are you okay?'

Seth sighs. ‘I'm fine.'

‘Sorry if I went on a bit back there.'

He turns around to face me now. ‘Oh, no. Don't think it was you. I'm not mad at you. It's Jason. I can't believe he said that back there, that …' his voice fades out.

‘That he told everyone?'

He looks away again, out over the water. ‘Yeah.'

‘I guess you don't like people knowing.'

Seth pauses. ‘I …'

‘I know it must be really hard. It must have been awful.'

He shakes his head.

Right, Nessa. Time to back off a bit. I know I want
to ask him a million questions, but that would make me just as bad as Jason, wouldn't it? But how weird that I've only found out about it now. It seems strange. I mean, it's such a big deal. Such a huge thing to have gone through. He hides it pretty well. I think back now to the time I've spent with Seth. At the pool, in the plunge pool, seeing him here and there around the apartment building. I realise then that at the pool, and in the plunge pool, he always had a rashie on. He never took it off. Wow. He must be really embarrassed about his surgery if he can't even show people his scar. Not even his friends.

‘Your mum needed a heart transplant, did she?' Seth says softly, drawing me away from my thoughts.

‘Hmmm? Oh, yes. She had viral myocarditis.'

‘Oh.'

There's something about the way he says the small, insignificant word. ‘Is that what you had too?' I ask him quickly.

Seth, however, simply shakes his head. ‘No. But I'm sorry to hear that. About your mum, I mean. I really am.'

I nod.

Seth keeps eye contact with me. ‘My mum died when I was seven. In a car accident.'

I try not to gasp again, but something quite like a gasp comes out of my mouth anyway. ‘I was six.'

Seth smiles a small smile. ‘Not such a great thing to have in common, huh?'

‘There are nicer things. Maybe you're a Taurus?'

‘Sorry. Libra.'

We both shrug. And then laugh.

And then, for some reason, without even thinking about it, I lean over and kiss Seth.

At the time, it just seems like the right thing to do. I almost do it automatically. Like we've kissed before. Plenty of times. But, of course, we haven't. Which kind of shows up in Seth's reaction.

‘Nessa, I …' He pushes himself back so he's sitting further away from me on the grass.

Oh.

My.

God.

I stare out at the water. Frozen. What? What am I doing? What did I just do that for? Because I felt sorry for Seth?
Because he had a heart transplant? Because our mothers died when we were practically the same age? Because what we saw today was so sad? Because it's sunny? Because I'm in Hawaii?

Because I'm
insane
?

I stand up. ‘Sorry, I … I don't know why I did that, I really don't. I …' I start off back across the grass towards the rest of the group.

‘Nessa,' I hear Seth say behind me, but I don't stop. I keep right on going.

I'd keep right on going to the end of the island if I could. And then I'd walk out into the ocean and keep right on going all over again.

Fifteen minutes later, we're all back on the shuttle bus. Alexa, Nat and I take the back seat, Jason and Connor sit two seats ahead of us and Seth sits in front of them.

Fine with me.

And I'm sure it's
more
than fine with Seth.

‘What's the matter?' Alexa whispers in my ear as the bus takes off. ‘Did you talk to Seth? Is he okay?'

I nod.

‘Well, are you okay then? Is it a bit much? You know, remembering everything that happened with your mum?'

I shake my head.

‘What is it then?'

I sigh. ‘I just … messed it up. I didn't say or do the right thing.'

‘Oh,' Alexa replies.

Yes, oh.

We spend the rest of the trip back to the apartment in silence, though at least this gives me the time and the space I need to work out why I kissed Seth in the first place. It wasn't because of the heart thing, or the mothers thing, or the Pearl Harbor thing or the Hawaiian sunshine thing.

It was because I like him. And because he was so obviously hurting.

I'd thought that maybe, reaching out to him, I could help.

Well, I thought wrong.

And I guess that's not so hard to believe. After all, it's only happened a million and one times before.