Authors: Karen Booth
G
raham
Now that Terence had just been informed that his new girlfriend would be kissing Chris, he was more irate than I’d ever seen him.
"Hold on a minute, I'm supposed to sit by and let Christopher Bloody Penman kiss my girlfriend?" Terence asked, his voice straining. "I don't care if they're supposed to be acting. I'll never get her back."
Gigi rushed over to Terence's side and looped her arm in his. "Don't say that. It'll be fine. I can be a professional about it. I swear."
Under any other circumstances, I'd probably be having a good laugh over this one. Terence wasn't wrong. He might not get his girlfriend back. The thing was, I was too fixated on wanting my own back. My real one. Angie.
I shouldn't have gotten angry with her when I'd arrived. I was already regretting that. But why did she have to be so stubborn about her job when it came to me, and the second some hot-shot video director took a liking to her, she cast everything aside? Why was she so willing to give the rest of the world a break, but I had to be bloody perfect? It wasn't fair. And that was what made me angry.
At least I was going to get a goodbye kiss. I hadn't even had that to count on an hour ago.
The band set up on stage with our equipment and the girls took their places, Angie sitting at my feet. She didn't seem horribly pleased by the prospect, but she did it anyway. We took several takes, but I just couldn't get into it. All I could think about was how wrong everything was right now and how I didn't have much time until she'd be out of my grasp, again. I saw the life ahead of me as a desolate landscape. She was irreplaceable. Besides, being on the road was no place to find someone to love, someone who would love me back. I already knew that for certain.
"Graham, is everything okay?" Liam asked, after the fifth or sixth take. "You seem very stiff."
I wanted to scream that I absolutely wasn't okay, because the woman I wanted more than anything was within arm's length and it felt as if she was already a continent away. I wanted to scream that Angie and I should just say "fuck it" to our circumstances, deal with them, and stay together, all because we loved each other.
Why the fuck isn’t that enough?
"I just don't like this business of the girls acting bored. It feels all wrong."
Liam paced closer and nodded, pinching his lower lip. "Okay. We'll switch to the shots where the girls are quite taken with you. Maybe that will help. Angie, Gigi, I want you two standing right next to your guy, maybe holding on to their arm, running fingers through their hair, smiling, being flirtatious."
"While they're performing?" Angie asked. "Seriously?"
Oh Good God.
Now I was wishing we could go back to bored.
"Yes, seriously." Liam's tone cut right through the air, making Angie wince.
All I wanted to do was protect her. And punch Liam. I did have a bit of a desire to do that as well.
"Look, I've directed dozens of videos that have done incredibly well on MTV,” Liam continued. “You're all just going to have to trust me. Once it's edited together with the other footage, it'll be a masterpiece."
"Right then," I said. "Let's get on with it."
Yes, let's see how much more awkward things can get between me and the girl I love.
Angie stood up, right next to me. "It was dumb of me to agree to this, wasn't it?"
“Depends on which part of it you’re regretting.”
She grinned. A soft blush colored her cheeks. “The part where I pretend like I have any business being in a music video.”
A smile and a few words from her and I felt as if I had a tiny sliver of a chance. “I’m glad you did it. At least we’re talking. And it's a cute story we can tell our grandchildren."
She rolled her eyes. But I could also tell she was hiding a smile—that sent tiny zips of electricity through me. She somehow thrilled me even when she wanted to be annoyed. "You don't give up, Graham Whiting. Do you?"
"No. I don't. The question is whether you're going to give up."
Liam clapped his hands. "Alright. Let's do another take. Girls, start flirting."
We were talking, you git.
I took a deep breath, cursing Liam and his desire to stay on schedule. The playback began and I grabbed the microphone in its stand. Angie was tentative at first, rubbing my arm so lightly that I almost couldn't feel it. I started lip syncing along to the song, feeling more relaxed than before, but mostly out of amusement at what Angie was being asked to do. She fumbled with my hair a bit, stood closer to me, awkwardly brushed her nose again my cheek.
"Cut!" Liam shouted, shaking his head and marching toward the stage. "Gigi, you're doing perfectly."
"A little too perfectly from where I'm sitting," Terence chimed in.
Angie's shoulders slumped. "I take it that means I'm doing it wrong?"
"You're wound too tight. It's all I can see on the monitor. You need to loosen up."
Angie turned to me and grimaced. "Maybe I'm wound too tight because this is stupid," she muttered under her breath.
"So it isn't just me who thinks that?" I asked in a whisper.
"No. But I suppose he knows what he's doing."
"The record company is paying him like he's going to cure cancer with this video."
Angie laughed. She didn’t even try to hold back. "I suppose I'd better try harder, huh?"
"It's not that difficult to pretend that you like me, is it?"
She stood perfectly still, looking up at me. "It's not hard to pretend that I like you. Like I said, it's hard to pretend that I'm the sort of girl who would do this in the first place."
"And that's what I adore about you." I pressed a kiss to the top of her head. "No worries. You'll get it."
"Let's try this again," Liam said. "Action!"
This time, Angie was unguarded. She didn't merely flip through my hair, she dug her fingers in at my nape, clutching the back of my neck. It made it hard to focus on my job, especially the part where I remembered the lyrics. She huffed hot air against my ear, rubbing her leg against mine, making me wonder if she was going to climb me like a tree. I could definitely be up for that.
When the song got to the slower instrumental part, she ran a finger along my jaw and I followed her cue, which meant following her hand. Our gazes locked on each other. I went back to faking my way through the lyrics, her impossibly blue eyes searching for answers, or at least that was what I wanted to believe. All I could hope to convey with that single look was that there might not be answers to everything right now, but we could find them together.
The song came to an end and Liam lunged out from behind the camera. "Yes! Yes! That's exactly what I wanted. I loved the intensity, Angie and Graham. You two are naturals at this."
A flush of red again colored her cheeks, which made me lose all sense of time and place. "My mum will be so proud."
"That really was great," Liam said. "Since it's so late in the afternoon, we're going to set up for the shots back in the alley. It's time we capture a kiss."
A
ngie
"Talk to me, Ang," Chris said, knocking back a beer as he perched in one of the director's chairs. "What in the hell is going on with you and Graham? For the record, he's driving us all barmy."
I glanced over at Graham, who was arguing with Liam. "That thing this morning at the hotel was wretched. I'm still reeling from that."
"I understand, but you know that Graham would never wish for something like that to happen. And not because he was worried about getting found out. He simply wouldn't want you to get hurt." Chris ran his hand through his unbelievable hair. Somewhere in the world was an incredibly lucky girl who had no idea what was in store for her with Christopher Penman. "Graham's not capable of being anything but entirely truthful."
"Yes. I know." I did know that, with every fiber of my being. He'd never lied to me. Not once. "So I guess it's just my job to get over all of this?" I waved my hand in the air. "I'm just supposed to live with the whole rock star thing?"
"If you want Graham, for now, then yes." He leaned forward and rested his hand on my knee. "I can guarantee you one thing. Your life will never be dull. And remember, this could all be gone in a month or a year. Don't base your future around something that might very well be temporary. There will come a day when nobody cares about Banks Forest. Screaming girls and limos are not lasting things. But true love is."
I found it nearly impossible to breathe.
Holy shit.
Chris was right. He was really fucking right. I’d been so focused on the things I didn't want to deal with that I hadn’t realized they weren’t permanent. I’d been treating the realities of Graham’s career like they were a life sentence. I would miss out on the most amazing man I'd ever met, just because I was faulting him for pursuing his dreams and ways that might make life crazy. Crazy could also be wonderful if I'd just relax and stop trying to plan every damn thing.
The truth was that I didn’t know what the future held. Nobody did. Somebody you love falls ill, you get a dream job, you find a way to forgive someone who’s hurt you. The future was going to be anything but what I expected, and it would mean nothing if I didn’t have the only man I’d ever loved along for the ride. If I didn’t have Graham.
"Alright everyone," Liam shouted. "We're ready to start out in the alleyway. Graham and Angie are up first, but I want Chris and Gigi out there as well so they can see where we're going with all of this."
Chris hopped out of his seat. "Great. I can't wait to kiss Gigi so Terence can be pissed off at me forever." He pulled me into a hug. "I know you'll do the right thing. Together or apart, I just want you two to be happy."
The alley was no different than any you might find in London—brick walls, rubbish bins with dodgy smells, and car horns in the distance, not the place for a proper kiss or for love to bloom, for that matter. In fact, for Graham and I, it was more like the place that love had fallen apart, like the alley back in Liverpool. That night belonged where it was—in the past. Today, we could write a new history. This alley story would end with a kiss. And Graham would hopefully know how I felt after it was done.
Thunder boomed overhead and Liam looked skyward. "Now, Angie. You're a photographer. The light is perfect right now and it's going to be gone in a few minutes if we don't get this shot. Especially if this storm rolls in. I need you to get this right on the first take. I need you to listen to me." He turned to me and gripped my shoulders as if he was going to shake these directions into me. "I want you to think to yourself, this man is the love of my life and I might lose him forever if this isn't the best kiss ever."
Lose him forever.
Not if I could help it. I nodded eagerly. "I've got it. I'm ready."
"Action!"
I peered into Graham's warm eyes, setting aside every stupid thing in my head, the things that weren't going to go away. Chris was right. That stuff was temporary. All that mattered was the man standing before me and I wanted him—I loved him—more than my brain would ever fully understand, but my heart knew the reasons and that was enough.
Resting my forearms on his shoulders, I rose to my tiptoes and raked my fingers into his hair. His arms wrapped around my waist. My eyes fluttered shut. We fell into a kiss as if we weren't meant for anything but exactly that, breathing be damned. My insides were turning to a quivering, melty mess. Tears leaked from the corners of my eyes. After everything, after the ridiculous things I'd been willing to let stand in our way, he wanted to kiss me back. He didn't hesitate. He wanted me, too.
"Cut!" Liam shouted.
Breathless, I reluctantly cut myself loose from the kiss, only to see tiny raindrops land on Graham's nose. "It's starting to rain," I muttered.
One of the production assistants frantically threw a jacket over the camera. "Everyone inside!"
I scanned Graham's face, wanting nothing more than to sink back into that kiss. From everything in his eyes, I could see that was all she wanted, too.
"Back inside?" Graham asked.
I shook my head, not letting go of him. I wasn't about to let him go. We were going to rewrite the memory of the night when everything went wrong, dammit. That could be enough to let us move forward. Not because I wanted to give him a free pass. It was because I wanted to forgive him, once and for all. "No. I don't want to go back inside. I want to be out here. In the rain. With you."
The production assistant ran up to us. "You have to get inside now. Your makeup will be ruined. Your hair, too." He frantically hopped from foot to foot, his arms wrapped around his waist.
Graham didn't move, thank God. He kept his eyes glued to me. "Tell Liam and Reggie that we're done for the day. I've had enough. I'm bloody exhausted and so is the rest of the band."
"But we have an entire day of shots to finish tomorrow."
"Precisely. An entire day." A thick lock of Graham's hair fell down onto his forehead in a twist, dripping water down his cheek. "Now sod off so I can kiss her without a blooming camera on us."
I smiled so wide that rain water dripped into my mouth. "Yeah. We need a kiss with no cameras."
The production assistant grunted in frustration and left us. Alone. In the alley. The rain was getting heavier, the wind picking up.
I peppered his face with kisses, warm rainwater coating his face, my lips, our hair. "I love you, Graham. That's all there is to it. I love you and I don't want to lose you."
"You're sure?" He kissed my nose, clutching the back of my head. "Things haven't changed since our conversation this morning. My life is insane."
"I know. And we'll have to learn to compromise. I'll have to come see the band on weekends or try to coordinate out of town assignments. Anything. I just want us to be together. It's the only thing that makes any sense."
"Finally, you see things my way." He smiled, his eyes gleaming through the rain.
"You know, I think the reason I had such a hard time getting over you was because I didn't want to. Deep down in my heart, I didn't want to get over you. I wanted us to figure out a way through this. But that seemed so impossible. Now I realize that the obstacles don't have to be problems if we decide that they aren't."
He clasped his hands on both sides of my head and kissed me so hard I thought I saw stars. "You have just made me the happiest man on earth."
"Good. Now let's go to the hotel and fall into bed and order room service."
"Sounds bloody perfect to me. Let me go tell Reg we're ready to go." He reached for the warehouse door, but I stopped him with my hand.
"No. Graham. Let's walk." I looked up at the sky and let the drops ruin my aqua eyeshadow. I was beyond caring at this point. I was too giddy in love.
"In the rain?"
I smiled. "Yes. It's not that far."
"We could buy umbrellas, I suppose."
"Bloody hell, Graham. I'm trying to have fun. We're not buying blooming umbrellas. You and I are walking to the hotel and we're going to get soaked and we're not going to care about anything other than just being together, the two of us. Nobody else."
The look on his face said he was already on board with my ridiculous idea. "But Ang, you hate the rain."
"And your point would be what?"
"I have to say I love this side of you."
"Good. Because I love every side of you."