Jane Austen Goes to Hollywood (28 page)

“Four in the morning, scraping you off the floor at some club?” Brandon looked amused. “Sure, you’ve been hanging out drinking hot cocoa and knitting.”

Hallie managed a smile. She curled up in the seat and took a long breath as they turned back onto Sunset Boulevard, bright with billboards and headlights. It felt like she’d been in that club for a lifetime, bouncing between insincere smiles and vicious bitchy showdowns, and now, now, her head was finally clear. She rested her cheek against the cool glass, watching the city slip by.

“I didn’t say welcome back.” Brandon glanced over as they paused at a red light. “Did you have a good time in New York?”

“Not at all.” Hallie sighed. “Dakota . . .” She paused, embarrassed. “We kind of —”

“It’s OK.” Brandon cut her off. “Amber came over to gossip with my mom. I kind of overheard. . . .”

“Oh.” Hallie flushed. “Yeah, it didn’t really go the way I planned.”

“Sorry,” Brandon offered, with another awkward smile. “I know you wanted to make it work.”

“Understatement,” Hallie agreed. “But, maybe it was for the best, to have it thrown in my face like that. I mean, at least I know it’s over now. For real, this time.” She gazed out of the window — they were heading down into Beverly Hills now, but Hallie felt something pull her in the other direction, back up into the hills.

“Would you mind if we made a detour?” she asked suddenly. “I know it’s late —”

“You mean, early.”

“Sorry,” Hallie said again. She knew she should just head home, and not test Brandon’s chivalry any further, but there was a restlessness still in her veins; a sharp itch she needed to set to rest. “It won’t take long, I promise. It’s just, that way.” She pointed behind them.

Brandon looked at her for a moment, then sighed. “You’re lucky I’m an insomniac,” he told her, pulling a U-turn in the middle of the street.

They parked off the side of the road, up on Mulholland where Dakota had taken Hallie that first night, a lifetime ago. She left Brandon by the car and made her way out to the edge of the cliff, shucking off her shoes so she was barefoot on the gravel and rocks.

Hallie gazed down at the snaking lights of the freeway and felt an unexpected calm. It was all still here. The sprawling, glittering grid; the dark horizon. Dakota may be gone, but all of this — the world — was still right there like it had always been.

Just because she’d built all her dreams with him beside her, it didn’t mean she couldn’t go on and make them come true on her own.

“Hey.” Brandon’s hand was tight on her arm. “Watch the edge.”

“Why?” Hallie laughed. “You think I’m going to throw myself off or something?”

There was a pause.

“I don’t know,” Brandon replied, his expression even. “Would you?”

“No!” Hallie spluttered. “I would never . . .” Her protest died as she took in the calm set of his face. “I wouldn’t!” She tried again to reassure him. “Really!”

Brandon nodded slowly, but the grip on her arm didn’t loosen until Hallie drew back from the cliff edge.

She stood there, shaken, suddenly remembering every time she’d claimed she’d die without Dakota; every desperate sob that life wasn’t worth living without him. Hallie was horrified. When had she become the girl who talked like that?

And, worse still, when had she become a girl who would even
consider
it?

“It’s late,” Brandon told her. He slipped off his hoodie and draped it over her shoulders. “We should get back.”

Brandon headed for the Jeep, but Hallie lingered a moment, thinking back over the last months of listless wallowing with fresh shame. All the time that had slipped past; all the agony Hallie had clung to — holding on for dear life, as if her misery were somehow noble. As if weeping for hours in a dark room were the only way to make her wretched love mean anything at all.

She hadn’t been the brave heroine, in the play of her life. She’d been the fool.

Hallie finally joined Brandon back in the car. “I need you to know, I wouldn’t do anything like that,” she told him. “I know I said some stuff . . . but I was just being dramatic. I didn’t mean it. I promise.”

He nodded, but didn’t start the engine; instead, he sat in silence, staring straight out into the valley. She could tell he wanted to say something, so Hallie waited, seconds ticking past before he finally cleared his throat.

“I thought about it,” he said in a low voice, still not looking at her. “When I first got back. When I was out, surfing sometimes.” Brandon paused. “A wave would break over me,” he told her, “and I’d think about not swimming. Just, going under.”

Hallie caught her breath. His tone was so matter-of-fact, but that was Brandon all over: he didn’t exaggerate, or make a scene, even when his words were the most dramatic thing she could imagine. Hallie instinctively reached to cover his hand with hers. “What stopped you?” she asked quietly.

Brandon shrugged. “A bunch of stuff. My family, the guys we lost out there. They would have kicked my ass for even thinking about it.” He gave her a wry smile. “In the end, I guess it was just . . . hope. That I wouldn’t always feel that way. That the world would start making sense again.”

Hallie nodded slowly. “And does it?”

Brandon glanced down at their hands, then back to her. “Sometimes.”

Hallie looked at him, really looked: the square of his jaw beneath the five-day stubble, the harsh red line of his scar. For the first time, she recognized his quiet self-possession: not creepy, or unnerving, but something stronger. A hard-won calm after the storm.

“Good,” she said, giving his hand a brief squeeze before releasing it. “I mean, who else would come get me from my . . . knitting parties?”

Brandon laughed. “Sure. Priorities.”

“Exactly.” Hallie smiled, just to cover her shame. Priorities. She hadn’t had any; she’d been so deep in self-pity, she hadn’t seen anything at all. She changed the subject quickly. “And don’t forget Amber’s big plans for the holidays. She’s talking about some Hanukkah-slash-Kwanzaa party, with a ten-piece carol choir and a hog roast stuffed inside an ox. You want to be around for that.”

“It’s the simple things, that make life worth living,” Brandon quipped back. Hallie gave him a look to let him know she didn’t mean all this joking; that she understood the weight of what he shared. Brandon nodded slightly, then started the ignition. “You won’t say anything, will you, about —?”

“No!” Hallie exclaimed. “I promise, that’s just between us. And if you ever need to talk,” she added, “I’m here. Anytime.”

“Right next door.” Brandon smiled slightly.

“Exactly,” Hallie agreed, surprised to find that thought reassuring. “Right next door.”

After all the drama of New York and her return to L.A., Hallie was relieved to find Christmas and New Year’s pass uneventfully — save, of course, for Amber and Auggie’s blowout holiday party. Two hundred of their closest friends crammed the house and backyard, partying until dawn under the vast swathes of Christmas lights and inflatable reindeer perched on every square foot of roof.

Hallie didn’t mind. It was good to be surrounded by noise and laughter — rather than stuck alone wondering what exclusive party Ana Lucia hadn’t invited her to. Besides, half those friends of Auggie’s turned out to be producers and casting agents, who offered Hallie their cards the minute Amber started gushing about what a talent she was, and about how she had
just this very minute
decided to try her hand at acting.

“You don’t have to say that.” Hallie pulled Amber aside, embarrassed. Ana Lucia’s comments were still burned in her memory; the last thing she wanted was to make a nuisance of herself. “Please, let’s not even talk about me acting at all. These are your friends.”

“Exactly!” Amber cried, flushed and tipsy as the party whirled on around them. She wore a silver-sequined minidress, reflecting the holiday lights like a walking mirror ball. “And I bet every one of them got where they are today because someone helped them starting out.”

Hallie wavered. “Are you sure? I don’t want to make things weird, or uncomfortable —”

“Honey, no!” Amber cried. “You’re doing
them
the favor. They’re all looking to find the next big thing. Trust me!”

So Hallie let Amber sweep her off on another round of the party, throwing her in the path of every available agent and manager she could find, until Hallie was weighed down with a confetti of business cards.

It felt good, Hallie realized, to have some purpose again, and as the weeks passed, and she chased down her new leads — turning e-mails into meetings, into afternoons spent waiting in the bland back hallways of every audition in town — she was reminded again just how much she had let fade away in the face of her grief over Dakota.

What had she been
doing
?

It had been her mistake too, she could see that now: not the end, but everything that came after. The further Hallie got from it, the clearer it became, like those paintings that are just a blur up close but take on new shape and meaning from across the room. Sure, it still hurt; she still missed him, but when his absence hit her at night with a hollow ache in her chest, Hallie climbed on out of bed and went to watch TV with Brandon, or pulled out her latest audition script to memorize. She didn’t sit around, thinking about the time they spent together, anymore. No, the key was not to think of him at all.

“How’d it go?” Grace met her at the door after Hallie’s latest audition.

“Good!” Hallie dumped her bag and kicked off the heels Amber had insisted she wear. “Socialites-slash-cat-burglars don’t wear sneakers!” she’d cried, and she’d been right: the waiting room had been filled with girls in their best stilettos. Hallie massaged her poor arches. “Actually, I think I nailed it, but you never know.”

“This was for that cable crime show, right? Dead Sorority Girl Number Three?” Grace followed Hallie into the kitchen, where she made straight for the fridge full of — yes! — cold pot roast and Rosa’s famous cheesecake.

“No, that was this morning,” Hallie replied, her mouth already full. “This was the big one, it’s one of the main parts on a new heist show. I wasn’t even supposed to be there, but Amber does her strip-hop dance class with one of the executives’ wives and managed to get me in for a first read.” She collapsed at the table and began to eat, straight from the Tupperware containers. God, that was good! The months she’d spent limply wasting away, barely eating a thing, were a distant dream. If there was one thing she could say for sure about mental health, it made her
hungry.

“And a first read . . . ?” Grace joined Hallie at the table, pushing aside the stack of Amber’s magazines. Hallie forgot, her sister didn’t read the trades like she did.

“Is like the very first stage,” Hallie explained. “Then you get callbacks, until you make the short list, then cast reads — where they have you try out with the other people they’ve already hired — and then you get test shoots, in front of the camera. And then, if you’re still in the game, you read for the producers and network heads.”

“Wow.” Grace blinked. “That’s . . . a long process.”

“Yup.” Hallie scooped up a spoonful of creamy topping. “But I made it to the third round of callbacks on the last thing I went out for, remember that cough syrup ad?”

“The taste to chase your tickles away,” Grace quoted. “You were saying nothing else for two days straight. Believe me, it’s burned into my brain,”

Hallie laughed. Sure, these weren’t the Oscar-worthy roles of her dreams she was trying out for, but everyone had to start somewhere. These were the bit parts that would get her an agent, which would get her speaking roles with more than five seconds of screen time. Who knew? By the end of the year, she might even have more than ten lines of dialogue in a major network show!

Grace glanced absently at the pile of magazines, then froze.

“What?” Hallie asked.

“Nothing!” Grace yelped, flipping the magazine over.

Hallie sighed. “It’s OK. I know they went to that premiere of hers together. The photos are all over the Internet.”

Grace looked at her cautiously. “You can talk about it, if you want. You haven’t really said anything for a while about . . . him.”

Hallie rolled her eyes. “You can say his name. Or just call him the Heartless Sellout with No Soul. Either way, talking won’t help. Double-double-chocolate cheesecake, on the other hand . . .” She took another mouthful. “What about you? Have you heard from Theo since New York?”

There was a pause. Grace took a spoon, carved out a chunk of dessert, and then shook her head, mouth full. “Lucy’s e-mailed a bunch of times, though,” she said, swallowing. “You know she quit to go work for Portia? Portia looooves her theories on organic early-childhood education. They’re practically new BFFs.”

“Bitch.”

Grace didn’t disagree.

“So what now?” Hallie asked.

Grace shrugged. “I don’t know. Back to normal, I guess. School. Work. Friends. The usual.” She glanced at her phone. “I should go meet Palmer. We’re going to go see a movie at the Grove, maybe get some food.” She paused, looking at Hallie again. “You can come, if you want?”