Starstruck (25 page)

Madison laughed. “He wasn’t. Not until recently, anyway.”

“He is such a freak,” Emma said. “You think he looks all normal but I’m telling you, he is a total dork.”

“All right, all right. That’s enough. Let’s go sit down,” Ryan said, smiling indulgently at them. “But give your hands a rinse first.”

The girls scampered off, and by the time they returned everyone was sitting around the table in the back garden, which Mr. Tucker (“Call me Dan”) had set with blue-and-white Spode china and delicate goblets that glinted in the early evening light.

Madison listened to the family banter as they dug into their ridiculously delicious food. (“Oh, don’t praise me, I just follow Jamie Oliver’s directions,” Lucy had said.)

Was this what having a normal family was like? Madison wondered. Or was the Tucker family actually an abnormally good one? She smiled shyly at Ryan, who was sitting at the head of the table, looking like he couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. She felt a pang of longing, and maybe even envy; it seemed like her entire life, she’d always wanted to be somewhere else. Somewhere better than she was.

But what could be better than this? After dinner, after the cake and the round of “Happy Birthday,” Madison and Ryan were left alone to sip iced tea in the rose-covered gazebo. She had given him a wallet, which wasn’t a very good present, she knew that. Not nearly as good as the book of Robert Adams photographs his dad had gotten him, or the crazy poster portrait of him that his sisters had made. But she’d frozen up in the Nordstrom aisle: What did you get the guy who seemed to have everything, but who worked in a shelter in El Segundo and dodged cameras like their lenses might steal his soul? Madison had never met anyone like Ryan and she just wasn’t sure what to do with him.

Except kiss him
, said a little voice. But she couldn’t—not without knowing if he felt the same way about her. So she sat next to him, as chastely as if she were in Sunday school. They chatted in spurts, discussing Lost Paws’ newest dog, a Great Pyrenees named Chance, and gossiping about whether or not Sharon, aka the Raisin, had a crush on Stan, aka Forearms. Madison regaled Ryan with stories about various disasters on the set of
Madison’s Makeovers
, and Ryan admitted that he’d nearly flunked out of college because he had decided, on a whim, to spend two months bird-watching in Thailand.

They had so much to say to each other. As the night grew cooler and darker, and bats began to circle in the air above, Madison tried to remember the last time she’d just sat with a guy. Just talked. In the past, there had always been an undercurrent, a subtext—questions she asked without saying them out loud.
What will you give me? And what do I have to give to you to get it?

But she never had that thought with Ryan. Instead she thought:
I like you. I like myself around you. Are you ever going to kiss me?
But what if she was completely off? What if they were simply friends and she was reading too much into it? She really didn’t know what to think.

“It’s so nice here,” she said softly. “It smells like roses and the ocean.”

Ryan looked at her and his eyes were keen but warm. He seemed almost as if he wanted to say something, or to reach out and grab her hand. But he didn’t.

“It’s better than Columbus, Ohio, right?” he asked teasingly. “Even if that’s where the cameras are?”

“It’s definitely better here,” she said. “They don’t call that flyover country for nothing.”

“Have you ever been to Ohio?”

“No,” Madison said. “But I don’t need to. I’ve seen pictures!” Then she laughed at how snobby this sounded.

“Right,” Ryan said. “So I guess I don’t need to listen to your stories anymore because I’ve seen you on TV.”

Madison knew perfectly well that he was joking, but she felt a tiny stab of worry anyway. What if she was beginning to bore him? They’d never spent this long together before. What if this much Madison was just too much?

Beside her, Ryan yawned and then shifted in his seat. This confirmed her fears. He’d had enough of her and wanted to go to bed.

“Am I getting boring?” she asked. She tried to say it lightly.

Ryan shook his head. “Sorry, it’s been a long week. I’m tired.” He stretched his long legs out, and Madison noticed that his feet were bare.

She was exhausted herself, but she didn’t want the night to end yet. Not until she knew what was going on between the two of them. Just Friends didn’t go on weekend getaways together, did they?

“We could go in....” she said softly.

He shook his head. “Don’t mind me,” he said. “I’ll perk up.”

“How are you going to do that?” she asked.

Ryan turned to look at her. Madison met his gaze, holding her breath. In the fading light his eyes looked dark, almost black. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe this way?”

He leaned toward her, and his fingers felt their way toward hers, and then they were kissing. No longer sleepy, no longer uncertain, they wrapped their arms around each other, under the roses and the stars.

Kate sat in a cab, across the street from the house in which she’d grown up. She’d sworn she was never going back to Ohio (except maybe for Christmas), and yet here she was. She wasn’t really sure how she felt about it. Besides … coerced. And nervous, because the 4.6 million viewers of
The Fame Game
(according to last week’s ratings) were about to see exactly where she came from.

Her mother had placed two big planters of mums on each side of the front porch, the way she did every fall. The neighbor’s dog was barking as usual, and old Mrs. Hennick across the street was peering out her window, the way she did whenever she heard a car turn into their cul-de-sac. Kate’s world had been flipped upside down in the last few months, but here in her old neighborhood, everything was exactly the same. Seeing those gold and orange flowers, and that same dumb Thanksgiving flag her mother had hung by the door (a turkey wearing a pilgrim hat)—well, it made Kate feel kind of like a kid again. A kid with strawberry-blond pigtails and a big voice. A kid with a crazy dream to make it as a musician.

She stirred restlessly in the backseat of the cab. The camera crew was set up and ready to film her arrival, but since they hadn’t quite finished blocking her shot, she had to wait. She hoped Laurel had alerted the neighbors about the disruptions; otherwise Mrs. Hennick would be dialing 911 any minute.

Beside her, Laurel cleared her throat. “Allergies,” she explained. “Leaf piles.” She gestured toward the neat mounds of maple leaves that dotted the neighbor’s lawn.

“Too bad I’m not Gaby, the walking medicine cabinet,” Kate joked. (Too soon?)

“I’ll be fine,” Laurel said. “You about ready? We’re going to start in a few minutes.”

Laurel had gone over all of Kate’s story points on the second leg of their cross-country flight. Kate knew that she was supposed to tell her mother about how she was struggling to balance her restaurant work (even though she’d already quit) while also pursuing her music career. Then she’d been told to talk about the new friends she’d made in Hollywood, and their different personalities and quirks.

It was silly: They wanted her to talk to her mother as if the two of them hadn’t spoken since she moved to L.A., which of course they had. But as Trevor had reminded her, “If it didn’t happen on-camera, it didn’t happen.” So yes, she knew what to do. But she didn’t want to think about it, not yet. She had a few more moments of normalcy, and then she’d be on camera. Acting. Playing herself, but still acting.

“We used to play hide-and-seek all around here, because of the cul-de-sac,” Kate said, a trace of wistfulness in her voice. She was gazing absently at an elm tree she used to hide in when she noticed a familiar blue car parked in its shade: a beat-up Subaru wagon with a Phish bumper sticker. She gasped.

“What?” Laurel said. “You okay?”

“That’s Ethan’s car. Tell me you guys did not call my ex-boyfriend,” Kate demanded.

Laurel didn’t respond for a moment. Instead she took a long drink of her coffee.

Kate lowered her voice, the way her mother used to do when she was disappointed in her. “I’ve been avoiding him for weeks, and now you’re just going to spring him on me? That is so incredibly uncool.”

Laurel sighed. “I can’t always tell you everything, Kate. This is my job. I would never put you in a position that I didn’t think you could handle, but sometimes we just need a genuine reaction.”

Kate flopped her head back against the seat.

“I mean, come on,” Laurel said. “With the rest of the cast slowly immobilizing their faces with injectables, you’re kind of our last hope.” She laughed and gave Kate a nudge.

But Kate didn’t find it funny. She hated feeling like everyone around her knew a secret and was just sitting and waiting for her to be blindsided. “God,” she said, “it’s like some kind of mean-spirited surprise party. And, like, there’s a giant cake, but instead of a hot guy jumping out, it’s my ex-boyfriend.”

“It’s going to be fine,” Laurel said soothingly. “You’re going to be amazing. You’re a pro.”

“Whatever that means,” Kate huffed.

“It means that when it’s time to shoot, you shoot,” Laurel said. “Like right now.”

Laurel gave her arm a quick squeeze and hopped out of the cab. She went around to the driver’s window and asked that he count to ten before pulling up to the house. She pointed to a PA standing in the street. “Stop right in front of him,” she directed. And then she vanished into one of the production vans.

When the driver stopped at his mark, Kate took a deep breath, steeled herself, and got out of the cab. In a matter of seconds, she was opening the door to her childhood home and a life that now felt a million miles away.

In the entryway hung the same pastel seascapes Kate remembered, and the air still smelled like the Crabtree & Evelyn potpourri her mother loved. The living room seemed smaller and dingier, but maybe that was because it was full of cameras, tangled extension cords, lighting equipment, and strangers.

“Oh, honey,” her mother cried, coming out of the kitchen.

Kate rushed forward to hug her. “Hi, Mom,” she said into her hair. Kate wrapped her arms around her mother’s waist, and she could have kicked herself for thinking it, but she couldn’t help it:
Has Mom gained weight?

Her mom stepped away, holding her shoulders. “Let me look at you, my beautiful girl. Oh, I’ve missed you!”

“I’ve missed you, too.” And God, what was with those mom jeans? The waist of them had to be six inches above her belly button. Didn’t she understand she was going to be on TV?

“Come in, come in,” Marlene Hayes said, sounding flustered. “Are you hungry?”

Kate followed her mom into the living room and set her purse on the rocking chair that she used to sit in as she waited for the school bus. “No thanks, Mom. I’m okay.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to make you a nice salad? I have some lovely arugula from Hillsdale Market.”

“Sit, Mom,” Kate said. She heard the impatience in her voice. She didn’t want half of teenaged America to see her mother babying her.

Her mother did as she was told. Marlene was obviously nervous, but she was handling herself pretty well, considering. “You have to tell me everything,” she said.

What Kate most wanted to do was go upstairs and lie down. Then, after a nap, she’d come down and style her mother for her camera time. She thought of Cassandra Curtis, who was possibly the most glamorous forty-something on earth, and how Trevor had filmed her nibbling sushi at some fabulous Brentwood eatery. Couldn’t they have made Marlene Hayes look a little less … suburban?

Kate tried to banish these superficial thoughts. Tried to pretend there wasn’t a camera three feet from her face, waiting for her to Tell All. What would she do if she and her mom were alone? Maybe she’d crawl into her lap, and have her gently smooth the hair back from her forehead the way she did when Kate was little. Maybe she’d sigh dramatically and tell her mother about all the insanity of her new life: how it was wonderful and awful and exciting and terrifying, and how sometimes, when she looked at herself in the mirror in the morning, she felt as if she were looking at a stranger.

But the camera’s red light was blinking, and that wouldn’t be what Trevor wanted to hear. It wouldn’t be what Kate wanted to show, either.

“Where do I begin?” Kate asked, laughing in a way that she hoped sounded sincere.

“Well, gosh,” her mother said, “I don’t know.” But before she could make a suggestion (and hit her own talking points!), there was a knock at the door. Marlene turned around, trying to look baffled as to who might be stopping by. Kate felt her heart start to beat a little faster. They both knew who it was, but they had to pretend—for the cameras, yes, but even worse, to each other—that they didn’t. Her mother bit her thumbnail like a girl.

“Aren’t you going to get it?” Kate asked. She wished, for a moment, that she had the guts to defy Laurel and say,
Don’t answer it. It’s probably just the Jehovah’s Witnesses
.

“Ha!” Marlene’s laugh was a sharp bark. “Yes, silly me.”

Ethan Connor looked better than he used to—that was the first thing Kate noticed as he strode, smiling, into the living room. He had let his dark hair grow so that it curled at the collar of his flannel shirt. He was tan from weekends spent on the river, and it seemed as if he’d grown an inch or two.