Rainer is called back to L.A. the following week to do press for a movie he filmed last year. It sucks. I don’t want him to go, and he doesn’t want to go, either. But regardless, later tonight he’ll be on a plane headed east. He’ll be gone for eight days. They are going to L.A. and then New York and then London before flying all the way back here. “I wish you were coming with me,” he says. “It’s a rush. All those people. All that energy. I can’t wait for you to experience it. It’s like getting the biggest hug in the world.”
“Soon enough,” I say. We’re standing in the lobby of the condos, waiting for his car to come around.
“What are you going to do this week?” Rainer asks. His tone is casual, but I know what he means. He wants to know about Jordan. Rainer would never admit it, but I can tell it bothers him that I’ve been going to see Gillian and that Jordan is usually there. Jordan always looks at the dailies.
“You don’t have to worry,” I say. I lift my hand to touch his shoulder.
“I know,” he says.
“Hey.” I tilt his face down. “We’re all stuck in this hotel together. I’m just trying to be friendly, that’s all.”
“And you should,” he says. Something passes across his face, but it’s gone in a flash. “You should be friendly. I’m sorry.” He shakes his head. “I’m just jealous of anyone who gets to spend time with you when I don’t.”
“Jealous?”
Rainer loops his hands around my waist. “Surprised?” he asks.
“Maybe.”
He shakes his head. “Paige Townsen, you still don’t get it.”
“What?”
“I like you. A lot.” Then he yells out, “Hey, everyone, I like Paige!”
I shake my head and feel his lips in my hair. “Stop,” I say. “You’re embarrassing me.” But inside, my chest is soaring.
His car pulls up just as I see Jordan round the corner into the lobby. He pauses, leaning against a pillar. I can feel his eyes on us. Rainer notices, too. I feel his jaw clench. I untangle us but keep a hand on his arm. “Have a good trip,” I say.
Jordan peels himself off the wall. “Where are you off to?” he asks. He keeps his tone level but lets his eyes drift over my hand on Rainer’s shoulder.
“Press,” Rainer says through his teeth. I feel his body tense up beneath my fingertips.
Jordan nods. I half expect him to say something like “I guess you’re stuck with me, then,” but he doesn’t. Instead he says: “I’m going to visit Gillian. Come down after if you want.”
I look at Rainer. He hands his bag to the driver. “Yeah,” I say. “Okay.”
Jordan leaves, and then Rainer’s kissing me again, his hands in my hair. The driver next to us clears his throat.
“Mr. Devon,” he says. “We need to leave now, sir.”
Rainer nods. He presses his forehead to mine. “Be good,” he says. “Stay safe.” I lean into him. I wrap my arms around his neck. He’s home here. But the driver is standing five feet away, and I pull back.
“I will,” I say. “Hurry back.”
“Always.” He kisses my nose. I laugh as he ducks into the waiting town car. And then he’s gone.
After I watch his car pull away, I head down to the editing rooms. When I get there, Jordan is seated at Gillian’s desk. He swivels around as I come in.
“Hey,” he says. “Rainer get off okay?”
I try to read his face, but it’s blank. “Come on,” I say. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?” he asks. His features are still impossible to read.
“Pretend that you care.”
Jordan shrugs and holds out a chair for me. “Here,” he says.
I sit and then glance back at the door. “Where is Gillian?”
“She’s not coming,” Jordan says, beginning to flip through footage.
“But you just—”
He turns to look at me. His eyes are dark. Stormy. “I know what I said. I thought your boyfriend might like it better if we had a chaperone.”
“But we don’t have a chaperone.”
He keeps looking at me. It makes my chest feel tight, my breath come short. “Do we need one?”
I tear my gaze away from him and look back at the screen. “He’s not my boyfriend,” I say, like that’s some kind of explanation. But it’s low. Barely above a whisper. It’s true we haven’t had any kind of official talk yet, but it’s almost irrelevant here, in this context. And Jordan knows it, too.
“You can call him whatever you want,” he says. “It doesn’t make any difference to me.”
Something inside my stomach sinks, but I try not to notice. I try, instead, to focus on the pictures on-screen. We’re looking at a scene Rainer and I filmed last week. Some stuff on the beach and the scenes we filmed with actors who came out for a few days to shoot the islander portions.
“Can you show me how this works?” I ask.
Jordan turns to me. His eyes flit briefly over my face. “Yeah,” he says. “Sure.”
He stands up to give me his seat. Then he leans over me and puts his hands on the controls. “This is how you get to the next shot,” he says. His breath comes in my ear. I feel his body behind mine, warm, like he’s emitting heat. “This is how you split the screen.” He clears his throat. “I only know the basic stuff.” His voice is so close I can feel his words landing on my neck.
“Thanks,” I say.
He sits down next to me, and I feel the air leave my body in a rush. “You should just come in here and play around,” he says.
“Is Gillian okay with that?”
His piercing black eyes look into mine. “If you’re with me.” I look away, but I can feel his gaze still on me. “Listen, I’ve been wanting to tell you—”
I swallow. “Yeah?”
“I’m sorry if we got off on the wrong foot.”
I shake my head. “You saved my life,” I say. “I think all is forgiven.”
“Good point.” He swivels his chair to face mine. He’s serious all of a sudden. Brow knit. “But that Rainer stuff. It’s not your problem.”
“I know,” I say. I turn to face him, too. Our knees are inches apart. “But it feels like it is.”
Jordan shakes his head. Then he looks up at me. His face is steady, calm. “You’re his girl,” he says.
My throat constricts. I can feel the inches between us like the air is on fire. “It’s not…” But I don’t know what to say. He’s right. I am.
“It’s true,” he says. He’s still looking at me. “But it doesn’t mean I have to feel about you the way I feel about him.”
We look at each other, and I swear the silence passes between us like water. It has depth, weight. I can feel it flow from my chest to his.
Jordan tears his eyes away first. “We should get out of here,” he says. “Our call time tomorrow is five AM.”
I exhale. It feels like I’ve been holding my breath for hours. “I guess no time for morning ocean, then. Too bad.”
He looks at me. He leans forward. “There is always time,” he says. “If you want it.”
“You’d wake up at three AM to surf?”
He turns back to the controls, his cool demeanor back on. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
The next morning it’s just Jordan and me on set. We haven’t filmed anything just the two of us yet, and being around him still puts me on edge. But I’m also a better actress around him. Better (although I would never admit this out loud) than I am with Rainer. It’s like his presence next to me challenges me to try more, work harder. To play at his level.
We’re filming on the beach today. It’s the scene where Ed arrives on the island and August sees him for the first time. And they kiss.
“This is someone you really care about,” Wyatt tells me. “You love Noah. But you also love Ed. And you’ve missed him.” Wyatt is wearing black jeans and a plain gray T-shirt. There is no band logo to be found on it, and I’m not sure how to take this. I’m not the only one who is different around Jordan. Wyatt is different, too. He’s not less intense, exactly, but he screams less. Or it could be that I’m better, so there isn’t so much need to correct. I’m not sure.
August is supposed to run into Ed’s arms, and he scoops her up. They kiss, but just briefly. The kiss isn’t as significant as the one with Noah in the hut we filmed a few weeks ago. It’s softer, too. Not as charged.
“It’s not as passionate as what she has with Noah,” Wyatt tells us. “It’s familiar.”
Familiar. Right. Me and Jordan kissing. Totally an average day.
Jordan actually smiles at me when he gets to set. “Hey, Paige,” he says. “Morning.” His casual tone, his easy demeanor, take me by surprise. He’s a different person. He jokes with Camden, slaps a call sheet playfully out of Jessica’s hands. Is this all because Rainer isn’t here?
“Let’s go, guys,” Wyatt says. “Run it a few times.”
Wyatt sets us up. Jordan has to lift me, and we’ll kiss in the air. It’s a reunion kiss. “It’s sweet,” Wyatt keeps saying. “But for August, it’s also sad. She’s letting go of Noah here.”
Usually Rainer whispers to me when we’re filming. Between takes he’ll make jokes, try to get me to laugh, that sort of thing. But not Jordan. From the moment Jordan walks in front of the camera, he is Ed. And today is no exception.
Jordan doesn’t hesitate; he lifts me up easily. He wraps his arms around my waist and gathers me to his chest. I can feel his heart beat. I expect it to be like his eyes—solid and steady—but it’s not, it’s erratic. It’s thumping like mine, like it wants to get closer to something. The sound, the feeling, makes everything else dissolve. Even when the camera comes, close up on my face, I barely even notice it’s there. I feel last night between us. This burgeoning familiarity and something else, too. Something I can’t even admit to myself in the privacy of my own head.
Jordan sets me down, and then, without warning or direction, he pulls me into him. His lips are like the silk ribbons tied around presents, and he kisses me so gently I can barely feel the weight of them. The impact makes me lean forward, wanting him closer. He follows my lead.
My hands start moving on their own. First up to grip his shoulders, then to his neck and finally threading through his hair. I don’t even hear Wyatt call cut. I don’t hear anything but the crash of the waves behind us, and his ragged breathing, the same as mine.
When he pulls back, he keeps me pressed up against his chest. I feel his lips brush over my forehead.
Wyatt is standing next to us, a look of bewildered fascination on his face. “That was good, but let’s try a shorter take this time, okay?”
Jordan hasn’t let me go, and when I look at him I see his eyes fixed on mine. Something in them has softened again, like a pond thawing in spring, and for a second I can almost feel myself falling inside.
Jordan lets his arms slacken slightly as Wyatt returns to Camden. I hear Camden say, “Are you sure it’s not those two together?” I know I should correct him. I should untangle myself from Jordan and explain that, nope, no feelings! Just really good acting! I’m with Rainer! But I can’t, because when Jordan releases me a moment later, I’m completely tongue-tied.
“Let’s go again,” Wyatt says.
I clear my throat. “Nice work,” I say to Jordan, which is quite possibly the most ridiculous thing you can say to a guy who’s just had his tongue in your mouth. Even if it was acting.
Not surprisingly, he doesn’t respond.
We film again. And again. And again. Every time his lips touch mine, I feel like I’m moving closer to something significant, something I’ve been trying to get to the entire time I’ve been on this island, and possibly long before that. It’s like kissing him explains it all. Why I’m here, why I got this part. That maybe everything that has happened in the last six months has been to get to this moment.
I remember something that Wyatt said to me when we were filming the Noah kiss scene. Something he referenced when trying to get me to understand what was going on in August’s mind. “She finally understands what it means to fall into someone,” he had said. “That part of loving someone where you’re totally consumed by them.”
We have off the next day, and it’s pouring. We can’t make it rain with sticks and potions and African dances, but the second we stop filming, the heavens open up.
I spend the morning in my condo, looking over the stacks and stacks of magazines that keep arriving in the mail from the various subscriptions I thought it would be a good idea to order. Then I try to organize my DVD collection, refold the clothes in my drawers. I’m determined not to have to go outside. The rain doesn’t scare me so much as who might be out in it. I’m avoiding Jordan. Not because I don’t want to see him—every single fiber of my being wants to sprint down the hall and find him—but I don’t know what I would say. Or do.
Not that it matters. There’s Rainer. Rainer, who is sweet and sexy and wonderful and who actually for some totally insane reason wants to be with me. And besides all that, Jordan probably has chemistry with a doorknob. It was acting, obviously, but I can’t stop thinking about being that close to him. Is this why actors are constantly breaking up and cheating on each other? Is it this intimacy? Is this intimacy? I can’t wrap my head around the possibility that Jordan didn’t feel it, too, but maybe after you do this for a long time you learn to separate it out. Maybe I have it all wrong. Maybe it’s really just playing pretend.
I wish Rainer were here. I’m sure this is all happening because he is gone. If he were here, I wouldn’t be feeling this way. I wouldn’t be feeling like I wanted to see Jordan. I wouldn’t have to put myself on house arrest.
By two or so I’m going stir-crazy and the only thing left in my fridge is a bottle of mustard and a jar of pickles. I asked them to stop the magical food deliveries. I felt bad that so much of it went to waste, but now I wish I hadn’t. Unfortunately the time has come to leave the premises. I brace myself against the elements with rubber flip-flops and a rain jacket. Then I pull the door open and head downstairs.
I wolf down a sandwich from the shops and then zip up my raincoat, the heavy-duty Oregon one I brought out here on a whim. It’s pretty dry inside, and I decide instead of going back upstairs I’ll take my chances and walk the beach. I need to clear my head, and if I haven’t seen him in the lobby or at the shops, Jordan’s probably in his room.
It’s nice to have sunshine, don’t get me wrong, but there’s something about the rain that makes me feel at home. It’s the smell. Even here, where the salt water threads its way into almost everything, it still smells the same. Like cool moss or strong pine or the heady, calming scent of lavender. The clouds roll in, my nervous system relaxes, and things feel quieter, less intense. Like the world softens.
The beach is pretty much deserted. I set my flip-flops down by the rocks’ edge and sink my toes into the sand. The rain makes tiny pinpoints, nipping at my legs like insects. I start to walk west, down to where the beach curves around and then stretches forward. It’s hazy, and the rain picks up, beating down in long, diagonal sheets. I walk with my chin tucked in, hands firmly in my pockets.
“Hey!” A voice comes from behind me, and I turn around to see Jordan jogging, a blue hoodie soaked through and pulled up over his head. The sight of him makes my stomach lurch forward. My veins feel like electrical wires.
“Jesus, I’ve been calling you for five minutes.” He’s panting.
“I didn’t hear.”
He steps closer to me. I can see him breathing. The slow rise and fall of his chest. The raindrops that hang on his forehead and his impossibly long lashes. “I saw you come down,” he says.
“You’re drenched,” I point out.
He looks down at his sweatshirt, then glances around the deserted beach. “Come on.” He grabs my wrist and pulls me up the beach. His fingers are cool, but his palm is warm on my freezing hand. His fingertips find mine, thread through them. I can’t even see where we’re headed through the rain.
I look up to see a line of cabanas being beaten down by the rain, strung across with rope. Jordan unclips the rope and holds the canvas flap open.
“It’s hotel property,” I say.
He gives me a look to tell me just how lame he thinks that response is and if I want to stand out there in the pouring rain, that’s cool, but he’s not going to. I duck inside. Jordan follows, looping the rope and knotting it back together once we’re in. It’s like a tiny tent inside, two beach recliners pushed together. They are covered with damp towels, and Jordan hands me one before using another to dry off. He unzips his sweatshirt and hangs it over the back of his chair, then runs the towel over his face and hair. I notice how his shirt clings to him. The outline of his chest and arms. Arms that, just yesterday, held me close to him. On set, I remind myself. In a make-believe world.
He looks at me. “Are you okay?”
I realize I’m sitting there, still in my raincoat, holding the towel and staring at him.
“Yeah.” I take off my jacket and set it down. It’s cold now, and the wetness seems to have soaked into my bones.
“Here.” He takes a folded towel from the foot of the chairs, opens it, and reaches across to drape it over my shoulders. His arm skims mine, and I can feel his damp skin, the remnants of rain. It makes my goose bumps perk up even higher.
“Thanks,” I say. I lay the second towel on top of me, tucking it down around my feet and pulling it up to my chin.
Jordan looks at me. “Snug as a bug.” He lies down next to me, shoulder to shoulder, and does the same.
I laugh. “Did that seriously just come out of your mouth?”
“I have a little sister,” he says matter-of-factly.
We’re silent then, and I focus on the sound of the rain on canvas. Small, melodic beats.
“I like being in the editing room,” I venture. “I like that you’re showing me that stuff.” Jordan doesn’t say anything, but I can feel him inhale next to me. “I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said. About art not existing in a vacuum.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.” I roll over onto my side to face him, and he turns his head, his eyes meeting mine. I’m incredibly aware of how close our faces are now. No more than inches. I think about what it felt like to kiss him yesterday. How soft his lips were. How strong his arms were. “It’s interesting,” I say. “It makes me want to learn more about the whole process.”
“You should,” he says, his face still turned. “That’s the best part about this kind of art. It’s collaborative. Everyone relies on everyone else. You get to form a community.”
“I like that,” I whisper.
“I’m glad.” He turns his head up to face our tiny hut roof. “I think a lot about why I’m here. Why out of everyone I’d be chosen to do this. You know what I mean?”
“Yes,” I say. I don’t have the heart to tell him that for me it’s more a constant fear that someone will realize they chose wrong. That I’ve been miscast. That I’m not their August after all.
“I used to think I didn’t belong in Hollywood,” he says, like he’s reading my thoughts. “But now I just feel a crazy amount of gratitude.”
“You don’t take it for granted, do you?” I say.
He rolls over to look at me, and when he does, I see something close to disbelief on his face. “Never. I know what it’s like to have nothing. I’d never forget it. You have to keep reminding yourself of what’s real,” he says. “Who you really are, the people you love, your family.”
“Family?” I remember that he’s supposed to be this money-hungry bad boy who is suing his parents. That he’s cut them out of his life entirely. Lying next to him now, his eyelashes blinking raindrops, it’s hard to imagine.
“Do you want to ask me something?” he says, still looking at me.
I bite my lip. “Your family,” I say. I jump in quickly, burying the words I just said. “My parents are clueless. And my brothers are crazy. My family is totally screwed up, too. And… I’m rambling.”
“It’s okay. I don’t read tabloids, but I know what people say about me.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, pulling the towel up closer to my chin. “You don’t need to tell me anything.”
He scans my face. “I didn’t sue for emancipation because of money. Money is a nice side effect, but it’s not why I do this job.”
“So what happened?”
His eyes settle on mine. “My dad isn’t a great guy. He tried to take everything, and then when I wouldn’t give it, he turned on my mom.”
My chest feels tight, heavy. I want to put my hand on his cheek and hold it there. “What did you do then?”
“I had to get her away from him. I had to get all of us away, actually, and the only way to do that was to make sure I could support them.” He inhales. “My sister and mom. I did what I had to do.”
My eyes roam over his face, settling on his scar. Without even thinking I reach out and touch it, run my hands down the silver line of his jaw and down the back of his neck. He closes his eyes. “Did he do this to you?” I ask.
He nods, his eyes still closed.
A hot bolt of fire shoots up from my core. Anger. I want to find his father and kill him for what he did to Jordan. To his mom and sister, whom I’ve never even met.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” I’m aware of how lame my voice sounds. Of how stupid and small my questions seem now.
He opens his eyes. “To the press? I would never do that to my mom.”
“But she—”
“Has pride,” he says, like there’s nothing more to discuss.
“That must be hard,” I say. “Don’t you ever want to tell people the truth?”
He shifts his arms and puts one hand down on the space between us. “As much as I’d love to get back at my dad for hurting us, it wouldn’t be worth it. And the people who I really care about know.” He searches my face again, like he’s looking for something. “That’s good enough for me.”
Something hits me, sharply, like the water on a cold morning. “How come you’re telling me?” I ask. “I could tell anyone.”
He looks at me and blinks, a raindrop sliding down his cheek like a tear. “You could,” he says. “But I don’t think you will.”
Without even realizing, I’ve inched closer to him. My body is moving on its own, like when it’s really cold in the winter and you go straight for the radiator. Like he’s the only source of heat on this rainy, freezing beach. He is. “Why?”
He looks at me in a way that makes the world stop. Like some higher power has hit the pause button, and for a second I think he’s going to say something. Something I really want to hear. But he doesn’t. Instead he takes my face in his hands. He cups my chin with his palm, and gently brings my lips up to meet his. Everything fades. The sound of the rain, the cold chill, the goose bumps on my arms and legs. The only thing I’m aware of is how it feels to be close to him. His lips move against mine. They feel even better than yesterday. So much better because it’s just us here now. We don’t have to pretend to be August and Ed. There is no one watching.
His lips leave mine and find my neck. He trails kisses down to my collarbone and I gasp, my fingernails digging into his shoulders.
“Jordan,” I breathe, but his lips are on mine again, devouring the words. He rolls me toward him and then I’m on top of him on the lounge chair. I feel his hands move on me. They grip my shoulders, then move down my back, pressing me against him. I can feel everything. His hip bones, the hard muscles of his abs. He keeps one hand on my side and with the other brushes my hair out of my face as it swings forward. I keep kissing him. I want to bottle this feeling. To have it forever.
Then he pushes me back gently, cups his hand to the side of my head, and tucks my hair behind my cheek. He drops his gaze down, lets his hand fall. “We shouldn’t be doing this,” he says. His breathing is labored, and I can feel the frenzied beat of his heart a few inches below mine.
“No,” I say. It’s the first thing I think. I say it automatically. The truth is when something feels this good, this right, it’s hard to remember why it should be different. What reason could there possibly be that we shouldn’t be here, right now, together?
But I know; we both do. Rainer. He doesn’t deserve this. Even the thought of it, of him finding out, of what it would do to him, makes me feel like I’m going to be sick right here in the sand.
Jordan straightens up, and so do I. We untangle ourselves so we’re just sitting side by side, not touching. My body aches for him. It feels like I’ve severed something. A limb, maybe an organ.
“Why couldn’t you have come sooner?” I ask.
Jordan smiles. “I don’t know,” he says softly.
He shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter,” he says. “I can’t go through this with him again.”
“But I thought you said you never dated Britney.”
“I didn’t,” he says. “But he doesn’t believe me.”
I clear my throat. “I want—”
But he reaches over and grabs my hand before I can finish. I want him. I want a different situation. I want to go back and rearrange everything. Make this feeling possible for more than this minute.
“Paige, don’t,” he says. He drops my hand. My heart sinks, like it’s been submerged in freezing water. I don’t know how it’s possible to go from pure elation to devastation so quickly.
He sits up and pulls back the canvas flap. “Looks like it stopped,” he says.
The light comes flooding in, bright and unwelcome, and I know that we’re leaving.
He folds his towel and tucks it neatly at the edge of his chair, then he reaches across, his hand brushing my shoulder, and slides my own towel down.
“Thanks,” I say. I try to hide the disappointment in my tone, but I know it comes through. I can feel it in the way he looks at me. His eyes seem to say it for both of us: I wish things were different.
He folds my towel and then stands, holding out his hand. I put mine in his, and when we touch, I feel it again. Like the final puzzle piece snapped down into place.
But it doesn’t matter now. It’s like an umbrella in the middle of a rainstorm after you’re already wet. It’s exactly what you need, what you want, but it’s come too late.