Catch a Falling Star (9 page)

know each other?” Adam ignored the question. Parker wore a cream

linen jacket over his jeans, a pale T-shirt silkscreened with some

sort of beer brand logo, and what appeared to be the standard-issue

flip-flops. Taking in the lushness of the garden, he nodded at me.

“Carter.”

“Parker.” We sounded like the two leads on a remake of a sev-

enties buddy-cop show.

He held out a thick stack of white pages bound with brads.

“Look this over. We can sort out the details.”

I took the pages. I’d been briefed on the “ground rules”

already — no unscheduled kissing (
yeah, right
), no talking to the

press without direction, no other boys, no unapproved tweets or

social media posts, even though I didn’t have a Twitter or Facebook

account — so I wasn’t totally sure what other details needed sort-

ing, but I was a good employee, so I smiled and said, “There’s room

over there.” I motioned toward a weathered iron table with three

chairs, sitting as if waiting for us. Which, I realized, they probably

were. I had a feeling Adam’s life was often staged well before he

entered the scene.

Confirming this suspicion, the moment we sat, Bonnie

appeared at our side with chilled glasses, a carafe of sparkling

water, and some cookies. “Hey, sweetie,” she whispered to me,

setting the glasses down, her gray eyes bright, her blond hair piled

high on her head as always. “I made these. Chocolate chip.” She

glanced at Adam. “I read they were your favorite, Mr. Jakes.” Her

flushed cheeks showed she was trying really hard not to burst with

pride. Her little hotel garden, harboring a movie star.

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Adam flashed her a million-watt smile. “You’re a dream.”

Gag. A dream. What a phony. I bit into a cookie. “Thanks,

Bonnie.”

She clutched the now-empty tray to her chest. “I just can’t

believe it! You two right here in my garden. Imagine!”

I tried to keep my smile stuck to my face. “Well, you know,

life’s funny. . . .”

Adam reached across the table and rested his hand over mine.

“You never know where you’ll find someone, really connect, you

know? I thought I was just coming to shoot in some backwater

town, business as usual, but instead, I met Carter.”

Bonnie beamed. She was totally buying it.

Backwater town? My smile faltered, the cookie turning to

paste in my mouth.

Giving a last little hop of joy, Bonnie hurried off into the

house.

Adam retracted his hand. He leaned across the table and, in

a stage whisper, asked Parker, “You made sure she has a Twitter

account, right?”

“Why do you think I picked this place?” He nodded smugly in

Bonnie’s direction. “She tweets constantly.”

“You think she’ll just run in right now and tweet it?” I set the

rest of the uneaten cookie back on the table in front of me. “I’m

sure she has better things to do.”

Parker messed with his phone for a minute, then, smiling, held

it out for Adam to read. “See? Brilliant.”

He’d logged onto The Hotel on Main’s Twitter page, and right

there, seconds old:

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The Hotel on Main @BonnieOnMain

OMG! Adam Jakes is in MY hotel garden with a lovely

Little local! Can you say LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT?

#uhearditherefirst

I shivered. “How’d you know she’d do that?”

Parker tapped the pile of pages in front of me. “Scene one,

love. Adam goes public with Carter. Hotel garden.”

I flipped to the first page, trying not to cringe at the (working)

title.

A LittLe Love Story (working title)

On the next page it read:

eXt. HoteL GArDeN — DAy

Adam and Carter sit in the garden together. They met

the day before at Little Eats and had an instant con nection. Leak news to Bonnie (Twitterobsessed proprietor).

“Wait . . .” I flipped through some more pages. “Is this a script?

A script for . . . us?”

“It’s our story. What the public will see.” Adam leaned for-

ward, pushing his sunglasses into his perfect mess of hair. “Genius,

right? Parker’s also a screenwriter.”

Parker shrugged, feigning modesty. “It’s more of a treatment,

really, an outline.” He crossed his arms and leaned back in his

chair. Down by the thick edge of trees and shrubs blocking the

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back of the garden, a sprinkler came on, its
hush-hush-shush
sound-

ing, at first, like rain.

I flipped through some pages. “What is this?” I motioned to the

odd heading of a scene:
INT. LITTLE EAT’S — DAY.

Parker leaned over. “Those are slug lines. They tell whether a

scene is inside or outside, where it is, and the time of day.”

“But how did you write all this already?” I scanned the sixty or

so pages. “I only just agreed to this.” I noticed he’d mentioned spe-

cific things about me in some of the scene headings — the dance

class I taught at Snow Ridge, Sandwich Saturdays, and even Extra

Pickles. Apparently, we’d be walking him in scene five.

Parker and Adam exchanged amused looks. “The script’s been

written for a while, love,” Parker explained. “We just added your

name and some details.”

As I flipped through it, I noticed several places where it just

simply read
SMALL-TOWN GIRL.
The garden echoed in my ears,

the fountain gurgling, the sprinkler shushing, a slight breeze rus-

tling the leaves of an old maple above us. My head buzzed. “It just

seems so, well — staged.”

Parker frowned. “None of this can be accidental.”

“Can I keep this copy?”

Parker reached for the script. “No, I need that. It’s our only

copy. Can’t have this getting into the wrong hands. Besides, there

are always rewrites. I’ll be texting you scene-by-scene updates.”

“Okay.” My face must have betrayed my swirling nerves,

because Parker’s face creased the way Dad’s had earlier.

He leaned in, pushing his own glasses into his hair. His eyes

were river-water green. “You all right? No cold feet?”

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Swallowing, I tried for what I hoped was a bright, easy smile.

“I’m ready.”

Adam gave me the sort of slap on the back my brother had

stopped giving me when I was eight. “Excellent. So, next scene.”

Parker flipped open the script. “Little Eats, the café.”

Adam rubbed his stomach. “Great. I’m starved.”

Funny, I felt like throwing up.

I should have warned Chloe that Adam was coming.

Twenty minutes ago, we walked into the café, and in what

seemed like a month but was probably five minutes, the following

transpired:

Chloe, steaming some milk at the espresso machine, saw me.

Smiling, she gave a flip of her hair and, without taking her eyes off

the frothing milk, began greeting me in her usual way, which was to

start halfway into a sentence as if we’d already been talking for sev-

eral minutes. This time it was clearly about Alien Drake. “So, okay,”

she said over the espresso machine. “We’re going to try to find a spot

in the field up past Hounds Pond, but I told him we’re leaving if the

bugs get too bitey.” Another flip of her hair, her pixie face fixed on the

frother. When the milk finished, she glanced up and, final y, noticed

Adam. Her expression, like one of those stop-motion videos, went

through about twenty emotions — confusion, surprise, recognition,

delight — before she entered into ful -blown spaz mode.

She screamed, the stainless cup leaping from her hands and clat-

tering to the floor, dots of frothed milk scattering the walls, espresso

machine, counter, and Chloe herself. Obviously, Chloe + Adam

67

Jakes = dropping things. “Oh my God!! Adam Jakes!!” she screeched,

a huge blob of milk foam sliding down the wall behind her.

That Adam didn’t react, didn’t even flinch but rather grinned,

established how often he dealt with this sort of teen-screech

reaction.

The rest of the café, however, did not. At the moment of

Chloe’s shriek, several people dropped the mugs/forks/items they

were holding; two men leaped out of their chairs as if stung,

knocking the chairs to the ground; and a woman just trying to

enjoy a glass of icy lemonade and a novel while holding a sleeping

baby tightly to her chest now had to contend with a wailing infant

and a spilled drink. Dad hurried out from the kitchen. “Good lord,

Chloe, what on earth . . . ?” Then he saw me. And Adam. “Oh,

right. We close in twenty minutes,” he told me, nodding to the

clock over the door.

“Chloe,” I sighed as I helped a shaky Mr. Michaels back into his

chair. Then I added, rather unnecessarily, “This is Adam.”

Adam nodded, clearly enjoying this. “Hey. Chloe, is it?”

At the sound of her name cradled in the mouth of this movie

star, Chloe swallowed audibly and huddled close to the espresso

machine, her arms cemented to her sides. “Okay, wow, hi.” Then,

sneaking glimpses of him from beneath her shaggy bangs, she

scrambled to pick up the milk frother. Dad mopped up the various

bits of foam with a towel, then set about trying to make sure every-

one else recovered, refilling coffees, righting chairs, pouring a

new glass of lemonade. As I helped him, the woman took her baby

outside, but not before smiling in a sort of daze at Adam.

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Now, things settled, Dad brought Adam an egg, spinach, and

goat cheese bagel sandwich to where we sat toward the back of the

café. Parker positioned himself at a nearby table, a sort of human

shield, his phone glued to his ear. The rest of the café had taken to

sneaking quick glances at us, pretending to go about their conver-

sations as usual, but clearly texting about us, adding barely sneaked

photos of us to their Facebook pages. Adam didn’t seem to notice,

though he kept his glasses on. He ate the bagel sandwich with a

ferocious intensity, and people watched as if he were performing

surgery.

I fiddled with the straw of the iced tea Dad brought me and

watched Adam eat. “So, that happens a lot, I guess.”

He glanced over at where Chloe studied him from behind the

counter, her mouth slightly open. When she saw him look, she

hurried to finish erasing the daily specials board before disappear-

ing into the kitchen. “You mean your friend there?” He chewed a

piece of sandwich. “Yes. Yes, that happens quite a lot.”

“Must get annoying.”

He shrugged, shoveling the last of the bagel into his mouth and

pushing the plate away. In seconds, Parker had it cleared. “It’s

always been like that.” Adam slipped his glasses off, laying them on

the table like an upside-down crab. I noticed how his blue eyes,

always so electric in the movies, were almost turquoise up close,

shot through with some green and framed with thick, short lashes.

He had a smattering of freckles on his nose that didn’t often show

up in his movies, either. Little flecks of deeper brown against his

already-tan skin. He really was some sort of human work of art.

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Adam checked his phone. “You have about thirty seconds, just

in case you want to brush your hair or something.”

“Excuse me?” I leaned a bit closer to him, which caused Chloe

to gasp from where she’d been peeking over the napkins and straws

counter.

Looking up from his phone, he said, “Before they start show-

ing up.”

Moments later, two men in jeans and old T-shirts, cameras

slung around their necks, pushed through the doors of the café,

the one in front already shooting pictures of us.

“Hi, Stan,” Adam said, leaning back in his chair and putting his

glasses on again.

“Adam,” he said, nodding casually as he took a few more pic-

tures. “You care to comment on your relationship with” — he

checked what looked like a napkin in his chest pocket — “Carter

Moon. This her?” He frowned at me, clearly puzzled. I guess I

should have brushed my hair.

“We’re just hanging out, Stan. Her dad owns this café. They

helped out with some crafty for the shoot.” Adam shot me a smile

that suggested we were doing just a little bit more than hanging

out. Even though I knew it was a fake look, it still caught me and I

felt my cheeks warm. Stan took a few more pictures he could title

Carter Moon blushing like an idiot.

“How’d you meet?” chirped the smaller guy behind Stan. He

wore a dirty mustard-colored trucker hat and a ratty T-shirt that

might have once been black.

Adam stood up, Parker a split second behind him. “I don’t

know, George — how do people meet each other?” Cupping a

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hand under my elbow, he led me toward the kitchen. “Nice seeing

you boys.”

We passed by a stunned Chloe as Dad held the kitchen door

open for us. We hurried into the warm, sun-drenched space. I said

a quick hello to Jones, the ex-con who’d been helping Dad out in

the kitchen since I was a baby. He didn’t give Adam a second look,