The rain continued all afternoon, and as I made my way to Cam’s room to run lines, raindrops pounded against the large glass windows of the hotel stairwells, and then a loud clap of thunder landed hard enough for the building to shake. I jumped from the noise and stopped on the stairs to catch my breath.
Cam said he also had a suite with plenty of room to spread out, but a floor above me, on the third floor. I felt a little awkward coming here at his invitation, but I wasn’t about to suggest we run lines in the lobby or the rooftop bar amidst other random people, and the rain prevented us from finding a more public but quiet space outdoors on the hotel grounds. It seemed our options were his room or mine.
After I took the birdcage elevator down with Tate, I’d regrouped in my own room for a little while before walking up here. I was still puzzling over why Gloria had brought up Gaitlin. But I’d come up with no real answers, and now I clutched my script in hand, hoping that a least one thing Gloria had said today was actually true: I had everything I already needed to pull off the role, even without her cooperation.
But I felt this weird sense of dread as I reached the third floor, and I stopped walking and decided to text Will to see if he wanted to meet me after this for dinner. At least that would give me something to look forward to.
I waited a moment, but he didn’t immediately text back, and then I put my phone in my pocket and knocked on Cam’s door. He opened it quickly, and he was casually dressed in workout clothes and had his face covered in what looked like a Korean sheet mask.
I laughed before I could stifle it. “Am I interrupting your skin care regime?” I asked as he opened the door wider so I could step inside. It appeared Cam had an identical suite to mine, only in reverse. His windows faced the stream out front, while mine faced the woods on the back of the property.
“Give me a second to get this off,” Cam said, and he jogged back toward the bathroom.
I put my hand to my own face. I was, always much to Jase’s dismay, notoriously unconcerned about my body. I supposed I had good genetics, and a good metabolism. But I never dieted, aside from trying to eat healthy and vegetarian to begin with. I only worked out when forced, and I didn’t do much more for my skin other than simple soap and water before bed. After Jase got cast as Dr. Ryan, he’d started going to the gym twice a day and definitely started looking down on me for not joining him. Judging from the workout clothes, I would bet Cam was in that annoying phase right now too. I understood, of course, that I was in a business driven by appearances, and yet, I loved acting for the way it made me feel to become someone else. I didn’t have it in me to stress over all the superficial stuff, and I was lucky that I could still get away with looking good without obsessing over it.
“Sorry, I was just about to take that off when you knocked.” Cam walked back in, patting his face with a towel.
“Your skin looks great,” I said, only half joking. I mean, his skin looked fine, but it wasn’t something I would normally comment on if he hadn’t made it such a conversation piece.
“Really? Do you think so?” He walked up to the small mirror on the wall above the couch to examine his cheeks closely.
“Yep.” I stifled another laugh, but he was too busy checking out his pores to notice.
I stared at him, staring at himself, and I supposed Cam was attractive in a classically handsome kind of way. But there was something about him right now that reminded me so much of Jase when Dr. Ryan first started to gain popularity. I couldn’t help myself, it kind of made me hate Cam a little. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and glanced at it—still no text back from Will—before putting it down on the coffee table.
I cleared my throat. “Should we get started?” I flipped open my script. “Where do you want to begin? Filming starts when they move into their new house—scene twenty-six. We could start there?”
Cam finally stopped examining his face in the mirror and flopped down on the couch next to me. He sat close enough so our thighs were touching, and then he casually draped his arm around my shoulders.
I gently removed his arm and slid over a bit, flipping my script to scene twenty-six. But he made no move to grab his script off the coffee table and instead slid closer again and put his arm back over my shoulders.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“We’re husband and wife, right? I know my lines. I’m sure you know yours. Let’s figure out how to be comfortable together instead.”
I thought about how ridiculous he’d made me feel when I’d told him last night we were not having sex. But now I wondered if my initial instinct hadn’t been so far off base.
There was nothing about any of this that felt comfortable to me. And suddenly I regretted agreeing to run lines in his room alone. Rookie mistake, and I should know better. I did know better.
I shook off his arm and stood. “Let’s just run the lines, okay?”
“Okay,” Cam said. “If that’s what you want.” But he made no move to pick up his script. Instead, he stood up and grabbed me in a hug, circling his arms around my waist, holding on tight. Yesterday he’d said he was a hugger, but this felt over the line, even for that.
“Cam.” My body flooded with uneasiness, and I tried to tug away, but he held on too tightly. He locked his arms behind my waist and dipped his face down like he was about to kiss me, but then he stopped a few inches from my lips and gave me a little arrogant smirk before he suddenly let go.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I said as I stumbled back a little bit, weightless, and grabbed onto the side table to keep my balance.
“Sorry,” Cam said, and he almost did sound sorry. “I was trying to make you feel more comfortable with me, and I think maybe I did the opposite?”
I sighed, remembering that Cam was younger, newer at this than I was. “Why don’t we run a scene?” I said, struggling to keep my voice calm and kind. “You get into character as George. I’ll become Gloria, and lets just get comfortable together running lines, like that.”
Cam nodded and finally did pick up his script. Then he closed his eyes for a moment, took a breath, cleared his throat. He opened his eyes again, shot me a smoldering look and patted the couch seat next to him. “Come sit next to me, wife.” His voice was filled with urgency, longing. And maybe that was the way George would’ve spoken to Gloria. But I was having trouble channeling Gloria, and I stood there frozen, feeling a little nauseous and unnerved by our whole interaction.
My phone suddenly dinged with a text, vibrating against the coffee table, and I pushed past Cam to grab it.
Will: I can meet you up in the bar whenever you’re free.
I texted Will back: Free right now. Meet you in 5 mins?
“I have to go,” I said to Cam. “My agent,” I lied. “Something urgent came up. I need to go call her and figure some things out.”
Cam shrugged easily. “Sure. Text me later. We can do this whenever you want today.” Then he added, “But not after nine. I need ten hours every night to look my best.”
All the glass walls in the rooftop bar were closed today and awash with so much water, I felt like I was trapped inside an aquarium. I was weirdly shaken by my strange and stupid interaction with Cam—both the way he’d acted and my own inability to slip into the Gloria persona and deal with it. I sipped a glass of water and tried to calm down while I waited for Will. But my mind suddenly flooded with doubts—if I couldn’t get anywhere with Gloria, and if I couldn’t figure out how to play what was written in the script either, what was I even doing here? Sure, part of why I’d wanted to take on this role was the potential for it to be huge for my career, but if I did a terrible job, if critics hated me, it could actually have the opposite effect.
“What’s wrong?” Will was suddenly standing in front of me. It was loud in here with all the retractable glass closed and the rain and I hadn’t even heard him walk up.
I smiled at him and motioned for him to have a seat.
“You look upset. Was my mother mean to you again?” He frowned as he sat down across from me. “I’m starving,” he added. “Do you want to share some guacamole?” I nodded, and just being this close to him, listening to him order guacamole as the waitress came by, I suddenly felt more at ease.
“Gloria wasn’t any more difficult than she’s been all week,” I said when he finished ordering. “And I’m fine. Really.” It was only half a lie because I did feel kind of fine, now that he was here.
“Tate said she was being weird when she went back for Jasper’s raincoat. And that you started asking her about my mother’s cane and she told you to ask me. I thought you knew about that?” I shook my head. “Yeah, the car accident that Aunt Marge mentioned. Her leg got crushed. She’s used a cane ever since I can remember.”
So the cane was a part of Gloria, a part that had remained hidden in her Oprah interview, her public persona and from her memoir? When Will had mentioned she was in a car accident when he was little I hadn’t quite put two and two together, that the cane was connected. If the effects from that accident were this lasting, it seemed even weirder not to have included it in her memoir. I said that to Will now.
He shrugged. “Well, she doesn’t like to talk about the accident.”
I guessed that made sense. It had probably been traumatic if her injury was bad enough to be this long-lasting. And I supposed that on top of everything else, Gloria would never want an accident or an injury to define her. Besides, her cane felt drastically out of place with her Queen of Romance persona. But the more I learned about her, the more I truly was agreeing with Will about her memoir being fiction. Her memoir focused on the amazing life she had in her few years with George—when exactly in there had her leg gotten crushed?
“Anyway—” I realized Will was still talking. “Sorry I never texted you earlier. Gloria was in top form with me today.” He rolled his eyes before he continued. “But, I have something you’re going to like.” The light glinted off the green of his eyes through his glasses as he smiled warmly now.
“What’s that?” The waitress set down our guacamole in the center of the table. I grabbed a chip, dipped and nibbled slowly.
“I think I figured out who the guy in my mother’s picture is.”
I had not been expecting him to say that. “Really? How?”
“I recognized the knotty wood paneling in that bar in Emily’s Polaroid. It’s a little place in downtown Seattle called Up and Down. The walls and booths still look like that.”
“Oh, I bet that aged well.” I laughed a little and ate another chip. I was starving. I hadn’t felt this hungry for months, since before my mom died.
“It’s actually a pretty popular bar. It has that vintage/kitschy thing going on now and the drinks are still very cheap but also good. Anyway, I stopped in yesterday when I went to the city to swing by my office and I talked to the owner, showed her the picture to ask her if she had any ideas.”
“And did she?” The picture had to be around thirty-five years old. Even if that man had worked there, as Emily sort of remembered he might have, I couldn’t imagine the current owner would remember him.
He shook his head. “She did not. But her mom used to own the bar back in the ’80s and she told me she’d email her mom a copy of the picture.” He paused for a moment and smiled. “She called me this afternoon. It turns out her mom does remember him, and now we have a name—Max Cooper.”