“Why do you think your mother dislikes me so much?” I asked Will.
I was still puzzling over this a few hours later. Our little rooftop drink had broken up when after a full hour of Gloria practically gushing over Cam, I’d finally yawned and excused myself. I’d texted Will and told him to stop by my suite once he was free. It took two more hours before I heard a soft knock on the door.
I had opened another bottle of wine while I’d waited for him, and reviewed my script again, and by the time Will showed up, I felt a little tipsy. Or maybe just more relaxed than I’d felt all week. All month really.
I’d handed Will a glass, and he’d poured a little wine for himself too, sat down with me on the large couch in my suite. “I don’t think she dislikes you,” he said, answering my question. “Not more than she dislikes anyone else, anyway.” But he frowned a little as he said it, and it felt like he could see what I meant, even if he didn’t want to admit it out loud.
“She loves Cam. Like really loves him.”
He nodded and took a sip of his wine. “I question her judgment daily.”
“I mean Cam seems fine. But why does she like him so much better than me?” I heard the whine in my voice, and even as I spoke, I realized I sounded like a petulant child. But that didn’t stop me from continuing. “I just spent a few days with her, and I have been trying so hard. She’s been ice-cold to me. But she was hugging Cam and buying him Veuve?”
Will laughed. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my life, it’s that Gloria doesn’t make sense. Don’t try to make her rational. She’s not.”
I frowned, but maybe that was the truest thing I’d learned about Gloria all week. Romance itself was not rational, and wasn’t Gloria known as The Queen?
Will inched closer to me on the couch, put his hand gently on top of mine. “For what it’s worth, I like you much better than Cam.”
I laughed and turned to look at him. It was much brighter in this room than it had been in the tree house last night, and I could see every inch of his face clearly: the smallest bit of stubble on his chin that told me he hadn’t had time to shave today, the little lines that crinkled around his eyes when he looked at me and smiled. I looked at his lips for a moment and remembered the way they had felt on mine last night. It had been thrilling to kiss him up there in the tree house, somewhere secret, in the dark. But I realized, it would be thrilling to do it now, here too in the open. Just because it was him. It was probably the worst idea in the world to like the son of the woman I was supposed to be portraying, and yet, here he was. Here I wanted him to be.
He smiled, moved his hand back and shifted down the couch a little so we were no longer touching. “Your room is really, really nice,” he said, and he laughed a little nervously. “I have a regular tiny room on the first floor.”
I wondered if Gloria had a suite—she must—but then I suddenly didn’t want to bring her up again, not right now. Maybe it was the wine, or maybe it was that Will had been so kind to me this week, and it had been so long since a man, since anyone, had been that genuinely kind.
“Will,” I said his name softly. He put his wineglass down on the coffee table and looked back toward me.
“Oh, right, you wanted to know about the FedEx box from my aunt,” he said. I did want to know about the FedEx box from Aunt Marge, but that wasn’t exactly where I’d been going with this. Still, I nodded. “I have it in my room. I meant to go down and grab it on the way up here but then I forgot. I’ll show you tomorrow. It’s just a few pictures of me and my mother from when I was little and an old worn teddy bear I don’t recognize. But according to the note Aunt Marge included it was mine when I was little.”
“I wonder why that was in her attic?” I mused. Will shrugged. And, anyway, it didn’t seem to matter for my purposes. “I would like to see the pictures, though, if you don’t mind sharing.”
He nodded. “Of course. Unfortunately, I don’t know how much it’ll help you. They’re from about the same time as the photos Emily showed us, I think. My mother looks about the same.” His phone suddenly chimed with a text, and he glanced at it and sighed. “Speaking of the devil.”
“Gloria?” I asked. He nodded and stood. “Wait—are you leaving? Already?”
“She left her eye mask in my car, and she needs it to sleep. I suppose I should go get it for her and let you get some sleep too.”
That was the last thing I wanted him to do, leave, or let me get some sleep. But I nodded slowly.
“I’ll text you in the morning and we can find a time for you to look at those photos,” he said as he walked toward the door.
“Will—” I said his name again, and he stopped walking and turned back to look at me. Come back when you’re done. I’ll be waiting here for you. Stay the night. All of those lines ran through my head, but then I bit my lip.
“What?” he asked.
“Sleep well,” I finally said.
He smiled. “You too.”
I woke up late the next morning, with a dull ache above my eyes. Too much wine. Cam probably had the right idea about cutting back and trying to look his best right before the shoot.
I’d been having a weird dream, just before waking. But once my eyes were open I could remember the dream only in fragments. I was in my mother’s house in Pasadena, but then it wasn’t familiar at all. It was in fact a stranger’s house, a stranger’s kitchen, but my mother was there, cooking up a pot of her famous beef stew on the stove. Annie, you have to eat more, she said. I tried to remind her I was a vegetarian now, but no matter how many times I said it, she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, hear me.
I got out of bed and shook the strange remnants of the dream away. I wandered into the living room—the half-drunk bottle of wine I’d been sharing with Will last night still sat open on the coffee table, and I recorked it and put it on the bar. Then I opened the blinds in the living area to reveal another gray and rainy day. I missed LA, the sunshine. I knew a lot of people who hated LA, but I’d spent almost my whole life there, and no matter where I went, how far or for how long, LA always felt like home. Maybe I would fly back next weekend to check on the Pasadena house and Sebastian the cat.
I glanced at my phone, and I hadn’t really missed anything while I was sleeping. A text from Cam asking what time I wanted to run lines, but I ignored that for now. Nothing from Will yet. It was almost noon, and I wondered if he’d forgotten about the photos. No, more likely Gloria had kept him busy.
And then I remembered that Gloria and I were still supposed to meet at one today, at my request. No one had specified where, so I texted Tate and asked her.
Penthouse, she texted back quickly. Don’t be late.
This was my last chance to get something real out of Gloria. I would most definitely not be late.