Without Chase (4 page)

Chapter Seven

Jamie

Manhattan Beach is a small community just south of L.A. It’s a place where middle class families raise their children inland, with the area gradually becoming more expensive and younger the closer you got to the beach. The place Jamie shared with her brother was close to the ocean, and close to the strand of bars, coffee shops and restaurants packed with singles on the prowl during the weekends.

But early in the morning, the beach provided glimpses of what life must have been like fifty years earlier; when the area was inhabited by locals watching the surfers. This was Jamie’s favorite time to go to the beach, and she gradually began extending her morning jogs just to spend more time out there. Even though she knew it wasn’t helping her, she also liked being out there because it reminded her of Chase. They discovered the area together when he first moved out here from North Carolina, and every time she went out here, she felt a little bit closer to him.

She was walking home from one of these workouts when her phone buzzed with a call from her mom. “Hey mom.”

“Hello sweetheart.” Frances Cameron never called her children by their names. They were honey, darling, sugar bug… and of course, sweetheart. “How are you this morning?”

“I’m ok.” Ever since she and Chase had broken up, her mom made it a point to talk to her every day. And though she would never admit it, Jamie grew to rely on these phone calls as a lifeline to the people who loved her, and would never leave her.

They exchanged the typical information between mother and daughter; her upcoming travel schedule, her mother’s latest book club selection. Then:

“Honey, I’m so glad you’re going to be in town for a while.” Frances paused awkwardly, and Jamie’s mom radar immediately went on red alert. “You know, your daddy and I have gotten close to this nice couple; the Bixby’s. Have I told you about them?”

“I think so---Lynn Bixby is the state Senator, right?”

“Yes, yes, that’s right.” Another pause.
This can’t be good, Jamie thought.
“Well, the Bixby’s have three boys, and the youngest one, Adam, is moving out to L.A.---”

“Mom! No.” She couldn’t think of anything worse than being set up by her mother.

“No to what? I’m just asking you if you can be nice to him when he comes out there---he won’t know anyone, and it may be nice for him to meet you AND your brother.”

“So why aren’t you having this conversation with Luke?” Jamie jumped up on one of the retaining walls to watch the waves. She had a good point, and her mother knew it.

“I’m not trying to fix you up, dear, just trying to do something nice for a friend.” Jamie knew this was true---her mother prized honesty above just about any other characteristic---but perhaps there was a wish in there for her to move on from Chase. “Of course it’s up to you, but I think it would be a lovely gesture for you to invite him someplace fun.”

A lovely gesture… someplace fun. God, what she would give to live in her mother’s world, where everything and everyone was so
lovely
.

The bitterness of her thoughts made Jamie feel guilty. If her mother saw the world this way, perhaps it was because she had earned that right, by always seeing the best in everyone. It wasn’t her mother’s fault that Chase left her. Feeling like a jerk, Jamie tempered her voice and said pleasantly, “OK, mom. Why don’t you give him my number, and I’ll take it from there.”

Less than a week later, Jamie opened the door to find Adam Bixby at her front step. Even though it was his mother who was the Senator, Adam had a name, face and demeanor that was made for politics. His angular face, large ice blue eyes and closely cropped wheat colored hair brought to mind old photographs of World War II heroes returning from home. That, and according to Google he had a sweet smile that could charm almost anyone.

“Hey Adam,” she said to him, awkwardly shaking the hand that was being offered. “Nice to meet you.” Even as she said it, Jamie felt as if something was off---it didn’t feel as if she were meeting him for the first time. “I mean, we are just meeting, right? You look so familiar…”

Adam nodded, a mischievous grin on his face. “We might have before. I mean, since our parents know each other and all.”

Jamie led him into the kitchen, then out to the backyard where Luke was tending to his beloved barbeque. “Luke, Adam’s here.”

Judging from Luke’s overly friendly demeanor, Jamie realized that her mother wasn’t the only one who was hoping the two of them would connect. “Hey, how’s it going? Beer?”

“No, but I’ll have what you’re drinking.” Adam gestured to a bottle of water next to Luke.

Luke reached into the cooler and tossed it. Adam caught the bottle mid air with one hand. “Good catch, man.”

Is this some kind of primitive ritual involving fire and skills testing?,
Jamie thought as she watched the two of them.

“How long have you been in LA?” Luke asked him.

“I’ve been out here a couple of times, interviewing and all, but I moved into my condo last Thursday.” If Adam felt he was being sized up by her brother, he didn’t show it, his smile never wavering.

“Cool. Well, we’ve got a couple of our friends from back home coming, so you’ll get to know a lot more people real quick.”

“ I ‘ppreciate that.”

Later, when the barbeque was in full swing, Jamie found herself spending a lot of time with Adam. I’m just being polite, she told herself. He’s our guest after all. But as she walked around picking up empty serving bowls and a few forgotten water bottles, he came out with a garbage bag from the kitchen. “Need a hand?” he asked politely.

“No… um… yeah, actually, that would be great.” They walked through the house together, and she marveled at how natural he seemed with her, with Luke, and with their friends. It’s no surprise, she told herself. We come from the same background. Of course he’d fit right in.

Chapter Seven

Chase

Without school, without a job, Chase felt lost. Steve Green was working on projects for him, and occasionally they would meet with an ad agency or sports marketer, but for the most part Chase’s life revolved around two things: his workouts and his social life.

Because of this, his relationship with Amy became more established and a bigger part of his life than his emotions would have wanted. He worked out, he trained, he hung out with his friends. But it still left plenty of time for her. She tried hard to make him happy, and for the most part being a part of her life was fun. Free perks, free meals, free travel. It was also better than being alone even though he had to admit that she was just as much of a stranger to him as when they first met.

Today, Amy greeted him at the door with a warm hug as if they were some kind of long established couple. It reminded him of the way Jamie used to greet him when he came home from a road trip. “Are you hungry?” she asked with a knowing smile.

Chase pretended to be shocked. “Damn, baby, let me get inside the apartment first,” he joked. Jamie would have had a comeback for that; Amy only shook her head impatiently. “No, we’re going to a dinner party. With some actor friends of mine.” She kept her arm wrapped around his waist as if she were afraid he was going to run away from her.

“A dinner party? Uh, that’s not my thing,” he told her firmly. He gestured to his casual clothes. “Besides, I’m not dressed for it.” Chase immediately regretted giving her this excuse because she swatted it away immediately. “No, no, it’s totally casual--everyone will be in jeans,” she insisted. “Please, Chase, I really want you to meet my friends, and they totally want to meet you.”

“Why is this such a big deal?” he was surprised at her reaction.

Amy looked at him, annoyed. “Because we’re supposed to be dating, remember? And this is what you do when you’re dating, you meet each other’s friends.” She moved towards him, the promise of sex in her eyes. “I know what you came here for, and you’ll get it.” Then her expression changed, hardened. “But we have stuff we need to do… for our
jobs
.”

He had to hand it to her, she was smart. If she had continued to plead with him, or thought she could bribe him with sex, Chase would have been out of there. But she brought it back to him, and his career, which was the only thing that mattered to him. He didn’t give a damn about making her happy, and they both knew it.

The playful tone in her voice gone, she explained, “look, you need exposure right now. I’m not sure what the strategy is, but if Helene Kehoe says to do it, I would.” Then she added, unnecessarily, “she’s damn good at her job.”

He nodded, understanding. “You use that word a lot.”

Amy reached for her purse by the door. “Job?”

“Yeah.” There was a part of Chase that liked how single-minded and focused Amy was. She reminded him a lot of himself---at least before he had gotten all domesticated with Jamie.

“It’s what I am, Chase.”

“You are your job?”

“Aren’t you? I mean, isn’t that what you are? A basketball player?” Amy sighed, suddenly looking older. “I’m an actress. That’s who I am; that’s all I’ve ever been. So, yeah, everything I do is to keep my job going.”

He asked the question he had been thinking about since the Founder’s Ball. “But why me? And why you for me? I don’t get it.”

She locked the door behind them and they walked out into the hallway. Amy was sometimes late for appearances, but unlike other women like his mother, that didn’t mean she had lost track of time. She knew to the minute what time she wanted to get somewhere even if that meant being seventeen minutes late. “Well… there’s the business side of it,” she continued. “People’s interests are like---they come in levels. Date a non-celebrity and no one cares. Date a minor celebrity and people care a little bit. Date a bigger celebrity than you, they care more. But date someone involved in a scandal, and someone younger on top of it, and suddenly people are very interested.” She spoke confidently because, like being good in bed, this was probably something she spent a lot of time studying. “I’m also getting too old to play someone in your age group. So instead of fighting it, Helene wants to highlight that, and transition me into the role of ‘the young mother’ or ‘the chick lit heroine’.”

He shook his head, disagreeing. “I think you’re too young for those roles.”

Ever so briefly, the mask dropped to reveal that he had touched her, and she looked at him gratefully as they got into the elevator. “Oh my god, thank you for saying that! But that’s kind of Helene’s strategy. I’ll be competing with older actresses for those roles, and one thing we know about Hollywood is, they always go with the younger actresses. So Helene asked me, ‘do you want to be young, or do you want to work?’ and here’s my answer.”

That definitely sounded like a Helene Kehoe strategy. “So what’s in it for me? I mean, besides getting laid.” Chase wasn’t trying to be rude, but he didn’t particularly care if he were. This blunt, aggressive, kind of talk was something he usually saved for agents, lawyers and opponents on the court. But he realized that there was nothing personal between them, and it would save him a lot of trouble if he started acting like it.

“What’s in it for you is that I’m giving you a stamp of acceptability and raising your profile. Before me, all people will know you for if basketball. After me, all people will know you for is being one of my ex-boyfriends.”

Chase rolled his eyes. “Sounds like a great deal.”

Amy paused as the elevator doors opened into the garage to look at him seriously. “Being famous is a great deal,” she said. “Being famous beats being just a basketball player because that lasts longer. And, as Helene would ask, do you want to be a basketball player or do you want to work?”

Chase smiled fondly at Amy. No, she wasn’t going to be his real girlfriend. But she would be a good person to have at his side during this time and that was even better because unlike a girlfriend, he knew he wouldn’t have to pretend with her.

They reached her car. “Good talk, coach.”

Amy rewarded him with her mega watt smile. “Yeah, you too. Now let’s get out of here.”

Forty five minutes later, they made their way to one of Brooklyn’s trendier neighborhoods, Amy behind the wheel of her SUV. She wouldn’t tell him who was going to be at the dinner, and once inside the five story historic brownstone, he could see why.

It was a children’s birthday party.

Liam Bettancourt, aged four, was the son of Rodrigo Betancourt and his wife Shelby. Amy had given him some background during their drive over. Rodrigo was the son of one of the wealthiest men in Spain, and a distant relative of the King. He met his American wife Shelby (whose family owned shipping lines) while they were both students at a tony prep school, and now they were considered one of the golden couples of New York. They were young, beautiful blue-bloods with an adorable son to match.

None of this was obvious when Shelby greeted them at the door. She welcomed them as if she were just another young mother, but Chase could see the difference. She wasn’t gorgeous like Jamie, or even pretty like Amy. Instead, Shelby could be described as stunning, in that everything about her had been honed to perfection. Her perfect nose and perfect teeth, and her perfectly shaped face, framed by her perfectly natural blonde hair could only have come from the DNA pool of generations of rich men choosing beautiful women to bear their children. And now she herself had borne a beautiful child: Liam, who was staring at Chase in open mouthed awe.

“Mommy! That’s Chase Reston!” Rodrigo was one step behind Liam. He, too, was casual and friendly, seemingly unaware that he was royalty. “Please excuse my son,” he said, shaking Chase’s hand warmly. “I’m Rodrigo, and you are obviously Chase Reston.” He spoke with a very slight accent. “Come on in. We’re just finishing up the children’s dinner, so the adults can eat.”

Amy turned to Shelby. “I’m sorry, are we late?,” she asked, knowing full well they weren’t.

Shelby gestured for them to follow her. “No, not at all! We just thought we’d serve the kids first so they can go home and go to bed.” She gave a slightly embarrassed laugh. “I mean, who has a child’s birthday party on a Wednesday at six at night, right? But this is Liam’s actual birthday day, and we wanted to celebrate, and of course, none of the dad’s were free until evening so… here we are.” They were now in the massive kitchen and family room area of the house. There were bright decorations with Liam’s picture in the center festooned all over the space. In a small table, covered with butcher block paper, were five children in various stages of cake eating. Chase noticed that each child had a woman hovering near them while off in the other side of the room were a group of younger women his age talking quietly to themselves. Seeing his glance in their direction, Amy whispered dismissively, “those are the nannies.”

Before Chase had a chance to comment, he felt Liam tugging on his hand. “Yeah, buddy?” he asked him.

“I have your wookie card,” Liam declared solemnly. “Wanna see it?”

Chase knelt down and met him at eye level. “You do? Hey, that’s great. Do you collect basketball cards?”

Liam turned to his father. “Dad, can you help me get my basketball cards?” Not surprisingly, Rodrigo agreed. “Let’s go upstairs and show Chase your collection, OK?”

Chase followed the two of them up two flights of stairs to the top floor, half of which was Liam’s space. He expected a child like Liam to have his card collection behind plastic cases, as serious collectors did with valuable cards, but he was relieved to see Rodrigo take out a simple large binder filled with plastic sheets with slots for cards. Just like he used to have.

“Aww man, this is great,” he said sincerely, sitting down on the rug. Liam sat close to him and opened it to the first page. “This is you.” Staring back at him was his rookie card, taken the first day of practice. The face was his, and yet it wasn’t. There was an openness and wonder in his expression that he knew wasn’t there now. Feeling Liam’s eyes on him, Chase forced himself to look away from the card and turn to the little boy in front of him.

“I’m on the first page? What an honor, Liam!”

“Yeah, this card isn’t worth as much as your real wookie--ROOKie card.” Liam’s face twisted with the effort. Chase wondered if the poor kid was going to a speech therapist for not being able to pronounce his “R”’s; something he remembered being teased about himself.

He nodded appreciatively. “Yeah, it’s not my official rookie card, but I like this one better, too.”

Liam beamed. “Who else do you have?” Chase asked.

For the next ten minutes, they went through his book, Liam explaining each player and which team they played for as if he were reading Chase a book. Because of his competitive nature, Chase used to go over all the scouting reports the team provided even when his teammates would just throw them away. He knew all the stats Liam was now reciting but still Chase nodded thoughtfully throughout, occasionally asking an easy question about the player that he knew Liam would have the answer to.

Rodrigo sat in a chair a distance from them, watching his son with a proud smile on his face.

Later, after Liam was being put to bed by his nanny, the two men walked out of the room together. Before they got to the kitchen, Rodrigo stopped and shook Chase’s hand in the hallway, the voices of the rest of the guests coming up faintly from the floor below. “Thank you...he’s going to be talking about you for a long time,” Rodrigo said with a father’s true gratitude.

Chase shrugged, guiltily remembering that he was no role model. “Yeah, well, I hope he isn’t disappointed when someone tells him stories about me.”

“You know, I think Liam does know.” Rodrigo met his eyes. “And he sees the world in black and white, but somehow he still thinks you’re one of the good guys. So maybe there’s something he knows that the rest of us don’t.”

He had never been an emotional type, so Chase was taken aback by the wave of emotion he suddenly felt. He had taken responsibility for what his mother had done so completely that it took a child to remind him that he was innocent after all. “He’s a great kid,” was the most he could say.

Rodrigo put an arm across his shoulder. “Come on, let’s go join the rest of the party.” As they walked into the dining room together, Chase saw that the rest of the guests were already seated at the table, waiting for them. “Everybody, this is Chase Reston,” Rodrigo gestured in his direction. “Chase, this is… well you’ll all have to introduce yourselves.” This was met with too-hearty laughter---like the kind at sports conferences when the reporters laughed at anything he would say.

He saw that the chair next to Amy was already taken, so he found his way to the only empty available chair before noticing the place card with his name on it. This explained why everyone else was already seated---Shelby was trying to keep him from embarrassing himself by sitting in the wrong seat. This was the kind of gesture only Jamie’s mother Frances had done for him before, and Chase suddenly felt more at ease in this couple’s home than he had felt anywhere else in a long time.

The rest of the dinner party wasn’t as boring as he thought it was going to be, and on the way home, when Amy asked what he thought, Chase could answer honestly. “It was cool, but those people talk way too much abut their kids.”

Amy nodded. “I’m used to it. I’m sure I’ll be the same way when I have kids.” She paused. “But you were so sweet to Liam...you’ll probably be the same way.”

“Probably. But that’s a long way away.” This last sentence seemed to add an unnecessary tension in the air that didn’t go away until they were back in Amy’s apartment. Instead, it seemed to trigger something else. Chase recognized it. He would get like that when his team was behind by ten points, and he’d decide that he would win the game on his own. Her wistful mood gone, Amy was now back in her sex-kitten role. As if to emphasize that fact, she turned on the TV and one of her movies came on.

Chase chuckled. “Do you just, like, watch these movies every night?” Amy looked hurt, as if she were about to deny it, but realizing that Chase could read her, shrugged good naturedly. “You’d be surprised how much I watch my old movies.” She handed him a beer and they settled into the couch together.