Map to the Stars (17 page)

“I think I might be falling for you.”

Except he didn't say the words. I did. They were out of my mouth before I could even pause to analyze them.

Graham's eyes opened wider, the whites of them ringing the gold-flecked hazel in stark contrast. “No fair, you weren't supposed to say it first.”

“As long as you were going to say something like that and not,
like, ‘Hey, are you hungry?'” I tried a joke. He chuckled, but then turned serious again.

“I was going to say . . . I mean, I was going to tell you . . . Damn. Okay, here goes: I'm pretty sure I'm in love with you, Annie. I can't imagine it feels any better than this, so if I'm not, I don't know what to call this.” He dropped his eyes to the ground.

I blinked a few times.

A boy just told me he loved me.

Not just a boy. Graham Cabot. Nope. Not Graham Cabot either. Graham. Just Graham. Graham loves me.

GRAHAM LOVES ME
.

I crashed my lips against his and the night air and his woodsy smell and the crazy heat coming from him took hold. I pressed into him with more urgency and our kiss exploded. My thoughts went from “he loves me, he loves me, he loves me” to foggy and dreamlike, but at the same time I was hyperaware of all the tiny details of the moment. His soft sweater brushing my arm, the contrasting hardness of his chest muscles pressed against me, the cool breeze tickling my flushed neck, the sound of gravel being crunched.

Gravel crunching?

I jerked out of Graham's embrace, and promptly got completely tangled up in the spiderweb of netting from the climbing structure we were nestled in.

“What is it?” he whispered urgently.

“I thought I heard something. Or someone,” I told him.

We lay perfectly still, just out of arm's reach from each other,
listening intently. There were no other sounds outside of our ragged breath slowing to normal. We were rooted to the spot, eyes locked. After a few moments of hearing nothing out of the ordinary, Graham's stare took on a different meaning altogether and not moving a muscle was no longer optional, as every part of me froze under its intensity. I didn't think I'd be able to take it for even another second when Graham closed the distance between us. In what felt like one movement, his hand was planted in the small of my back, the other behind my neck, and both arms were tugging me into his next kiss.

I placed my hands on his chest, our lips still locked. Every nerve ending buzzed.

Flash!

Even through closed eyelids, the light was intense. I jolted back as if I'd been shot and both Graham and I struggled to break free of the netting and turn to the source of it.

All we saw was the retreating back of a man, the unmistakable moonlit outline of a camera swinging from his left shoulder.

“Oh God. Oh God, oh God, oh God,” said Graham in a desperate tone I hadn't heard before.

I knew it wasn't good and all I wanted to do was protect him. I moved to put my hand on his shoulder, but he jerked away with an apologetic plea in his eyes. “Please. Don't. God, this is so bad. So, so bad.”

“I know,” I told him, hanging my head. “Melba's going to freak. And Ellis. And our moms.”

He didn't respond, just dropped his face into his hands. The bubble
that had been around us seconds earlier was good and popped. He couldn't even look at me.

I began babbling. “But, but, we can handle it. We can! What if we staged a huge breakup scene in public? We could make sure the press was there to capture it. Then you can call me a ‘summer fling.' One that's over now and you're back on the market. We could sell it, Graham, I know we could. No one will think I'm your girlfriend when we get done, I
promise.
”

“No one will think you're my girlfriend now, Annie,” Graham said, raising his head slightly from the cradle of his hands, his voice breaking.

“I don't—” I said, not sure what he meant by that.

“No one will think I have a girlfriend,” he interrupted, reaching over to pull my wig off with a rueful snort. “Because they'll be too busy thinking I have a boyfriend.”

Oh. My. God.

Of course we were fired.

Even Joe couldn't save us this time. And actually, fired wasn't quite the right word. Rather, it was made very clear by the formidable girl power team of Melba, Ellis, and one on-a-red-eye-Manager-Mom that the distance on my restraining order was being extended. By an ocean.

Mom was offered the opportunity to stay on, but my presence was not requested during any further legs of the Graham Cabot Press Tour Extravaganza. They treated me like I was a siren luring sailors to steer their ships into the rocks. Except in this case the ship was Graham's career. Or our relationship. Both appeared pretty equally wrecked.

And then Team Graham's disdain toward me pissed off Mom, who wouldn't have shipped me home alone anyway, but now stomped off in a tizzy of her own. At least Mom got in the last word, telling Melba that this was the kind of thing teenage kids did and she would be
damned if her daughter was going to take all the blame for this, while I couldn't manage much more that a gulped apology.

As much as part of me wanted to run home to Wynn, the thought of being so close to Dad with Mom on a quest to get us talking felt too overwhelming after everything else. In the end, I agreed with Mom that heading back to LA would be our best option.

That was all decided in the wee hours of the morning, following a return trip from Bilbao where all I did was savor the fleeting feeling of my arms around Graham on the motorcycle and pray his helmet wasn't fogging up from tears the way mine was.

We'd held hands as we woke up Mom but he'd dropped mine as we stood in front of Melba's door.

And that was that.

The studio had us on the first flight out that morning. We hadn't been privy to more than ten minutes of conference room calls before Mom had stormed out and I'd been dragged behind her. We were no longer part of the team.

After that, there was just silence.

Even from Graham. Especially from Graham.

I sat on the edge of my hotel room bed, packed and dressed, until the last possible moment, waiting for him to rap out “Shave and a haircut” on my door like we always did when we visited each other's rooms. I insisted on skipping the elevator, hoping he'd be waiting for me in the stairwell. Then I thought maybe he'd appear before our cab pulled away from the hotel. When he didn't, I convinced myself he was under room arrest and Melba wasn't taking any chances leaving
him unguarded.

I slept fitfully on the plane, dreaming of tabloid headlines and exploding flashbulbs for the entire flight from Barcelona to Atlanta. When we landed in Georgia and the seat belt sign dinged, I eagerly switched on my cell phone to see what he'd texted in the intervening hours.

One lonely text. Two measly words.
This sucks.
Well, duh! But what does that
mean
?

It took all my restraint not to text Wynn to tell her to drive over to Atlanta and pick me up. I could picture riding back to Shelbyville beside her in The Blue Beast, where my suitcase would have to fight for trunk space among her endless “to be returned” shopping bags. I could curl up on her bed and listen to her argue with her brother and it would feel like home. Then I remembered whose face I'd be looking at on her closet door.

As Mom and I walked to our connecting gate, I saw the first headline.

“
Triton
Star Has a Thing for Boys!”

Mom took one look at it and steered me away from the newsstand. She rubbed my back and assured me none of it was my fault. Even though part of it was.

The next few days were a nightmare. I was jet-lagged and heartbroken. I obsessed over conspiracy theories to explain why I hadn't heard anything from Graham past that one text. Stalking his Twitter account and Googling his name hourly landed me no new useful information. I cried a lot. Mostly to Wynn, on the phone, anytime she
wasn't working her cashier job.

On day five, my cell rang in the middle of the night. I caught my heel on my bedspread as I ran for it and answered with an “Oomph” as I hobbled on one foot back to bed.

“Hey.”

That was all. Just hey. But I didn't need anything more to know who it was. My heart tripped over the one word.

“Hey,” I answered. I had a million and one questions. What was going on over there? How was he handling things? Why hadn't he called until now?

Was he sorry he'd ever met me?

Instead I asked, “Where are you?”

“We're in Venice. I'm contracted to make an appearance at the premiere, so I couldn't get out of it. We got in last night after two failed attempts to leave our hotel the day before.” He made a disgusted noise. “I feel like a hunted animal.”

My heart broke for him. “How are you holding up otherwise? Is your mom still there?”

Another snort. “Yeah. She's here. Not that I've seen a lot of her. She's been holed up with Ellis and this guy from a focus research company she hired. It's a monumental disaster. I'm so sorry for all of it, Annie. Especially the way things ended.”

Ended.

The word thudded around my brain. I should have expected this, of course. I just . . .

He told me he loved me. I thought, maybe . . .

I know I'm way too naive for my own good, but the past few days I'd been hoping against hope that maybe that whole “love conquers all” expression meant something. But I guess not for Graham. This entire time I'd been convincing myself he couldn't call me or text me because he was being so closely monitored . . . really it was just that trying to make things work with me was too hard for him. He'd given up on us. I could hear it in his voice.

I fought the tears that hope had been keeping at bay, as he said, “Um, so, Annie? We need to talk.”

Here it was. I was getting my Dear John letter via phone. Really, are there worse words in the English language than “We need to talk”?

“I know,” I said with a heavy sigh.

“You know? How?” Graham sounded surprised.

“I just assumed.”

“You assumed that I'd have to come out the closet? I don't understand.”

“You—? Wait, what?”

He made a strangled-sounding noise through the phone.

“What were
you
talking about?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I answered quickly. “Graham, what do you mean ‘come out of the closet'?”

Another sigh. “So the deal is, this market research company they hired, they ran all these data points and they used a bunch of big words about analyzing trend statistics, blah, blah and, um, the thought is . . .”

I waited in silence.

“The thing is, they think I could recover from all of this if I just go along with the rumor that I'm gay.”

I practically dropped the phone. “What? I don't—”

Graham made a frustrated noise. “It's totally messed up. I get that. But, um, I guess I've picked up a new fanbase. According to this guy from the research group, I'm trending well among gay people. Apparently they're organizing group outings—no pun intended—to see
Triton
next week. Somehow I've become their new mascot.”

“But that's crazy. Graham, you can't . . . I mean, you aren't seriously thinking about this?”

“Well, according to Ellis, I don't have to come out and say I'm gay. I just have to be vague about it. Try to get the new fans without alienating the girls too much. More of a ‘no comment' kind of thing. They're saying it's my whole career down the tubes if I don't, Annie. Do you have any idea how many people are on my payroll? How many lives are affected by me being selfish and only looking out for me? Mom's given me a roster. She keeps talking about making lemonade out of limes. Or something. If I don't, everyone who depends on me for their living will be out of a job and my mom . . . my mom will be heartbroken. She's sacrificed a lot to get me here. What choice do I have?”

I felt sick. What about
me
being heartbroken? What about what
he'd
be sacrificing? I guess that didn't matter anymore. How had I let myself fall in love with someone who would even think about being so dishonest about who he was? I couldn't forgive my dad, who'd only lied to me and Mom and not the whole entire world. Did Graham
really think I'd be okay with this? Did he see any future at all for us?

I was so upset, I couldn't see through the tears that flooded my eyes.

But I was something else too. I was mad. I was finally,
finally
mad enough to not avoid a confrontation, like I'd been doing my whole life.

“How dare you?” I snapped.

“What? I—”

“You think your career is so important that you can just lie about who you are to everyone and live some sort of a sham life? How far are you going to take this? Are you going to swap Brigitte for Brad on the red carpet? And then what? Where does it end? Do you have a fake wedding to some guy and have affairs with the hot female nannies? Are you so deep into your world of make-believe that you can't see what you're getting yourself into? Your mom will be heartbroken?
HEARTBROKEN?
Are you freaking
KIDDING
me? She should be brought up on child-endangerment charges! And maybe you should too, considering all the gay kids who might see you as some kind of role model. Are you even thinking about how many people could get hurt here?”

Once I got started, I couldn't stop. It felt good. Really, really good. Well, actually it felt terrible, but holy wow, sooo therapeutic. Poor Graham was getting the wrath of years' worth of pent-up emotion. Screw that. Poor Graham, my ass.

Midway between my next few sentences, there was a click on the line, and when I paused and said his name, I heard nothing. A moment
later the phone went dead in my hand.

And that was that.

Again.

Only this time I wasn't waiting for the phone to ring and I wasn't pining. Well, I was sort of pining, but I'd moved on to a new stage of grief.

Anger.

I had a lot of it.

I felt it when Mom got ready for the crappy job she'd landed at a salon down the street. It wasn't even half as nice as the Curl Up and Dye. Joe had offered to help again, but Mom insisted she was done with the movie-industry scene. Which was fine by me! Though she assured me that didn't mean she wasn't totally committed to making a go of it in LA, regardless of what the future held for her and Dad.

I felt it when I got my schedule in the mail for a new school I didn't want to be going to in a city I didn't want to be living in.

I felt it every time I drove around town and had to see that goddamn giant
Triton
billboard. I'd have to catch my breath from the sucker punch that seeing Graham forty feet tall delivered. I knew I wasn't the first girl to deal with heartache, but I bet none of
them
had to encounter their ex's face at regular intervals on the 405.

I think Wynn was surprised to see my inner Hulk appear so frequently. She was used to a kinder, gentler me. I was Skyping with her one afternoon a few days after my midnight call with Graham when she interrupted me midrant.

“Whoa. Whoa. Um, Annie. Hold on, I need to grab the remote
and rewind this.”

“What is it?” I asked, but she'd moved off camera.

In the background was the escalating volume of the same annoying
Access Hollywood
music that had hummed during most of our homework sessions.

“Thanks for joining us from our studios in Hollywood. Tonight's show features an exclusive interview with the first man to attempt a solo flight straight into the stratosphere, but first, we have a story on teen heartthrob Graham Cabot. He's been decidedly noncommittal on his sexual orientation following some steamy tabloid photos showing him in an intimate embrace with another male that certainly led to some speculation. We caught up with Graham on the red carpet at the Venice premiere of
Triton
, where we asked him point-blank if he was gay and got only a smile in return. We'll let you decide for yourselves how to interpret that one. Next up, the red-hot star heads to Australia for a remake of
The Thorn Birds
. Filming starts next week and continues through most of the fall. Stay tuned—when we get back we're going to show the results of our online poll where we asked Who Wore It Best. . . .”

Wynn's breathing became heavy on the other side of the phone. “So he's really playing along with this.”

I wasn't nearly as shocked. I'd known from the moment he said it that he was going to do it. He didn't know who he was if he wasn't Graham Cabot, Movie Star, and he didn't know how to risk it all. Not for anything.

I was starting to accept this.

Joe helped a lot too. He was hanging around the kitchen a bunch
again, and one afternoon I came back from the library to find him with his feet up on our coffee table, swooping his arm in wide arcs as he spoke on the phone.

“Screw that. She's being a diva. Does she realize this is an animated show and we're just hiring her for her voice? Why the hell would we cover weekly skin peels in her rider? Forget it. Christ, we should just hire one impressionist who can do eleven voices and be done with it. The studio would kiss our asses for saving them so much on production costs and we wouldn't have to deal with these fucking prima donnas anymore.”

Hmm . . . perhaps Joe could be Yoda to my Luke in whatever the opposite of anger management lessons would be called. He didn't seem to have any problem expressing himself freely.

When he hung up, I moved the conversation quickly around to my favorite subject. Well, maybe not my favorite, but one I had a hard time staying away from.

“So, hey, Joe. I was wondering. You're gay, right?”

“Card-carrying member of the rainbow flag brigade.”

“Well, so, um, I was wondering what you thought about what Graham's doing. I mean, assuming you know Graham isn't really, you know . . .”