Guacamole turned into a glass of wine. And wine turned into ordering salads for dinner, and then dinner turned into lingering for a little while longer over coffees. And by then it was dark, the rain had stopped and an eerily clouded moon shone in through the glass ceiling of the rooftop bar.
We had left the topic of Gloria and of Max Cooper behind somewhere right after we finished the guacamole. I’d tried to google Max on my phone, but it was such a common name—I didn’t get very far before I gave up. Will said he could get his assistant to try a public records search at the office on Monday.
For the time being we put Max and Gloria aside, and by the time the salads came, conversation turned. Suddenly we were just...talking. About ourselves. Will was telling me about how he decided to go to law school because he (weirdly) loved reading law briefs when he took an introduction to law class in college at Stanford. (Of course, he went to Stanford.) He may have grown up surrounded by romance novels, raised by the Queen of Romance, but he said that very few of his friends or colleagues actually knew this fact about him. And that he had always felt grateful for his mother’s ridiculously flashy pen name and the anonymity it gave him away from her. Law briefs were his comfort read, not love stories.
I listened, slowly sipping my wine, soaking up his quiet honesty, and I wondered if part of what he liked about spending time with me was that I actually knew he was Gloria’s son. And that I liked him, not in spite of or because of Gloria, but because Will was Will.
But I didn’t say any of that out loud. Instead, I found my own quiet honesty coming out of me as I finished off my wine. I told him about how I truly thought I had made it big when I’d been cast as Margaret Moon, and how in the ten years of ups and downs since, I’d realized how I was in this career for the long haul. Hard work, day after day, year after year, part after part. Rejections and small successes, followed by setbacks, more rejections and then, more and slightly bigger successes. “Sometimes it felt like I was slowly chipping away at an iceberg with a spoon,” I told him.
He laughed. “A slow build is much better than an overnight sensation,” he said with certainty.
“If you say so,” I laughed too. “I would’ve been more than fine with being an overnight sensation.”
He shook his head. “Too boring. Doesn’t suit you.”
I smiled, and then I found myself asking him if he’d dated anyone recently. He told me how the prosecutor he’d dated for four years had broken his heart about six months ago when she’d suddenly moved out of their apartment over her lunch break and then sent a text to tell him it was over.
“Ouch,” I said. “I’m sorry. That sucks.”
He shrugged. “I mean, at the time, it kind of did. But I realized in hindsight it was more of an ego blow than anything else. Now, honestly, I can’t even remember what I liked about her to begin with.”
I nodded, understanding because I felt a similar way about Jase. I was really mad when he cheated on me right after my mother died and it felt like the world as I knew it had entirely fallen apart. But once I’d moved out of our apartment, the truth was, I hadn’t actually missed Jase much at all. I told Will now that I wasn’t even sure what had kept us together for ten whole years. Except maybe it was just sharing our acting failures, our small triumphs, our commitment to our work, the Method. “But as soon as Jase’s career took off, he wanted someone younger and more plastic than me,” I said. “Could he be any more cliché?”
“Actors.” Will rolled his eyes. “Present company excluded, of course.”
I laughed, but then I told him I kind of agreed with him. And I spilled the details of my weird moments in Cam’s room before coming up here tonight.
Will cursed softly under his breath in response. “I thought he seemed like an ass yesterday. I’m sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?”
“My mother brought you both here, and somehow that makes me feel responsible, I guess.” Even though Will had seemingly disconnected from her in his adult attorney life, the real him, the one I felt I was seeing right now before me, was so intricately connected to her that he was in Belles Woods for the filming, apologizing for something completely out of his control.
I shook my head and grabbed the check off the table, happy I was finally able to treat him this week.
“Let me give you some money,” he said, reaching for his wallet.
“Nope. This one’s on me,” I insisted firmly. “And you have no reason to be sorry. I’ll deal with Cam. I’ve dealt with far worse.” Sadly he was not the first actor I’d ever worked with who’d made me feel uncomfortable. “At the end of the day, acting is a job, like anything else. Sometimes your coworkers suck.”
“Well, to be fair, some of my coworkers suck too,” Will said. “And for what it’s worth, I still think you chose wisely for your career.”
I laughed again and stood up from the table.
“I’ll walk you to your room,” Will said as he stood too, and then we walked toward the elevator together.
I was about to tell him that he didn’t have to walk me to my room, that it was totally unnecessary and I was perfectly capable of walking to my own room. But the truth was, I was enjoying his company too much to say that, so I kept my mouth shut as the elevator slowly descended to the second floor. We got off and walked down the hallway together and then we stopped in front of the door to my suite.
He turned to face me, and we stood there, staring at each other for a moment. The light in this hallway was dim, Will’s face shadowy. I thought again about kissing him in the tree house and that suddenly made me smile.
“I guess... I should...go,” Will said softly, though still neither one of us moved.
I glanced at my watch. It was just past eight. Tomorrow was Sunday and totally unscheduled for me. All I planned to do was run through my lines one last time as a final refresher. “It’s still early,” I said. “If you want to come inside... We could watch something...?” My voice trailed off as I remembered when he told me he didn’t watch much TV. “A movie maybe?”
“Do you even watch movies?” Will asked. I thought he might be joking but his voice sounded totally serious.
“Why wouldn’t I watch movies?” I asked.
“It’s not like an occupational hazard for you or something?”
I shook my head. “How weird do you think I am? I love movies.”
“Right. I was thinking it would go one of two ways. You’d either love them or you’d hate them.”
“You’re overthinking,” I said. But I took that response as a yes, pulled my key card out and opened the door.
Will followed me inside and shut the door behind him. Then he stopped there for a moment, leaned back against it, as if he wasn’t sure about following me inside any farther. So we stood by the door, staring at each other until he averted his eyes first and then stared at his sneakers.
I put my hand on his arm, and he slowly looked back up at me. “We don’t have to watch anything, though,” I said softly.
He gave me a half smile, and I knew he knew exactly what I was saying. He lifted his hand, like he was going to touch my cheek, and then stopped himself midway, leaving his hand suspended in the air. “Is this the world’s worst idea?” he whispered, like if he spoke the words any louder he’d have to admit they were true. In a whisper it could still be a question.
I bit my lip. Getting involved with the son of the woman I would be portraying in a movie, having sex with him tonight, felt at best like a misguided choice, at worst an unmitigated PR disaster for Liza to deal with should anyone find out. But standing here so close to Will, I didn’t have it in me to care about any of that. I just genuinely liked him. No acting, no pretending. I liked Will in a real honest way, as a person. For the first time in a very long time, I wasn’t thinking about my career at all. I was actually allowing myself to feel something entirely truthful.
“So what if this is a bad idea?” I finally whispered back to him. “I like you. What’s so wrong with that?”
His face softened and he moved his hand the rest of the way to my cheek now, stroking his thumb gently over the arch of my cheekbone. “I like you too,” he said.
We both smiled and stood there for another moment, as if what we were about to do next was so tenuous, that whoever moved first might accidentally break the whole thing apart.
“Okay,” he finally said softly. “Ground rules.”
I nodded. Lawyer Will was out again, and he was honestly sexy as hell. “Ground rules,” I repeated. Then I added, “Everything that happens tonight stays in this room.”
He nodded. “My mother never finds out.”
“No one ever finds out,” I said.
“If you wake up and hate me tomorrow, you won’t quit the film.”
“I’m not going to wake up and hate you tomorrow,” I said.
“But regardless, you won’t quit the film.”
“I won’t quit,” I echoed back.
“And—”
I cut him off by standing up on my toes and kissing him once softly. Then I whispered softly against his lips, “No more rules.”