Catch a Falling Star Read online

  Adam stopped accosting his phone. “Where were you?”

  Sidestepping the attitude, Parker asked, “You two getting to know each other?” Adam ignored the question. Parker wore a cream linen jacket over his jeans, a pale T-shirt silk-screened 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 seventies 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 sorting, 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.

  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:

  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 connection. Leak news to Bonnie (Twitter-obsessed 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 forward, 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 back of the garden, a sprinkler came on, its hush-hush-shush sounding, 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 specific 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 rustling 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?”

  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 several 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, finally, noticed Adam. Her expression, like one of those stop-motion videos, went through about twenty emotions — confusion, surprise, recognition, delight — before she entered into full-blown spaz mode.

  She screamed, the stainless cup leaping from her hands and clattering to the floor, dots of frothed milk scattering the walls, espresso machine, counter, and Chloe herself. Obviously, Chloe + Adam 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 everyone 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.

  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 conversations 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 disappearing 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.

  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 showing 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 pictures. “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 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, just kept prepping for tomorrow. Adam, though, gave a small jolt when he saw Jones, probably because Jones had more tattoos than half the NBA and a face that looked like it had been used as an ashtray. In truth, he was a huge softy and taught yoga at Juvenile Hall every Thursday, but Adam wouldn’t know that. On our way out, I gave Jones’s arm a little squeeze, and his smile softened the rough edges of his unshaven face.

  Outside, small crowds were forming — on the patio, in the two parking spots just outside the back door — mostly familiar faces, but also some clones of Stan and George. Raggedy guys, cameras dangling over stained T-shirts. My heart felt tight. How had it all happened so quickly?

  The black Range Rover zipped into one of our two parking spots, nearly missing a squat photographer. In the driver’s side sat an enormous wrecking ball of a man who could only be described as some sort of Nordic god. He hopped out, surprisingly agile, to open the doors for Parker, Adam, and me.

  As Adam slipped into the backseat with me, he gave me a nudge. “You ready for this?”

  Something told me, suddenly, I was not.

  The Nordic god dropped me off at home a few moments later, jumping out to open my door for me. Adam leaned over. “We’ll pick you up in the morning. Parker will text you the time.” The door slammed, and the Range Rover pulled away as quickly as it had arrived.

  Dazed, I looked around my neighborhood. My neighbor trimmed his roses in the warm evening light, a lawn mower buzzed somewhere in the distance, the smell of barbecue tinged the air. Nothing had changed.

  And everything had changed.

  For the next few weeks, I would be a self-absorbed movie star’s girlfriend. I sat down on the front steps of my house, my head spinning. A few minutes passed before I became aware of footsteps padding up the hill, the huffing sound of someone walking quickly in my direction.

  Chloe.

  “See, this is what I’m talking about,” she gasped before even reaching me, her short brown hair sticking out in tufts. She must have closed the café in record time. Either that, or Dad had let her go. Probably the latter. She stood in front of me, her hands on her hips. “One of those times a text is in order? Oh, guess what, Chloe? I’M DATING ADAM JAKES!!! All CAPS!”

  I smiled weakly up at her. “Nothing so far really calls for all caps.”

  “Not the point.”

  “It happened sort of fast.” From the angle where I was sitting, Chloe’s whole head was highlighted by sky, the sun just starting to color the stretch of clouds pink behind her.

  “How did it happen? is what I want to know.” She blinked at me, waiting. “How did you go from It’s just ice, Chloe to, oh, um — I’m going out with Adam Jakes?!”

  “Now I can get you Adam ice whenever you want,” I tried brightly.

  “Spill it.”

  “The ice?”

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “You’re stalling.”

  “Okay.” I practiced what Parker had told me to say. “After we made those salads for the crew, he asked to meet me.”

  She shook her head, confused. “Salads? He wanted to meet you because of salads? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “You asked!”

  Her eyes were now slits. “And …,” she prompted.

  “And so we hung out and got to talking.” The stain of clouds deepened behind her. I took a long breath, trying to steady the dizzy spin of my head, the jolt of guilt at lying to her.

  Chloe tapped her foot, impatient with me. “What did you talk about?”

  “Um.” I licked my lips. I cou
ldn’t tell her that we talked about the script that would be dictating the next few weeks of my life. “Just stuff. Movies. My dog.”

  She crossed her arms. “Extra Pickles?”

  I improvised. “He likes dogs. He wondered about his name, and I told him our first dog was named Pickles so this one was Extra Pickles.”

  “That,” she sniffed, “doesn’t sound interesting at all.”

  I shrugged, knowing Chloe didn’t mean it how it sounded. “It’s the truth.”

  Only it wasn’t.

  Sighing, she plopped down beside me, deflating like a balloon. “I can’t believe it. He asked to meet you? You?!”

  “Now you’re just hurting my feelings.”

  She gave me a withering look. “You know that’s not what I mean.” But it kind of was what she meant. And in her defense, it was basically true. I’m not the type of girl guys notice. In my entire high school career, I’d had one date junior year with Tad Ballard, a lunch at Subway and a matinee of a superhero movie. He was nice enough, told me he liked my eyes, but he never called me again. A week later, I saw him making out with Stacy Merchant next to the girls’ locker room. Subway Tad and that lame kiss with Alien Drake in eighth grade. Not exactly the ideal setup for dating Adam Jakes. It was like asking a fourth-grade swimmer to suddenly take a shot at the hundred-meter freestyle at the Olympics.

  My phone buzzed in my hand.

  Chloe’s eyes widened. “Is that him?!”

  I showed her the screen: 8:30.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “That’s what time he’s picking me up tomorrow morning. We’re, uh, hanging out again. Before he starts shooting.” I couldn’t actually remember what we were doing and didn’t have the script to tell me.

  Sighing as if I’d told her we were flying to Hawaii in a private jet, she sank down onto the steps next to me, her chin falling into her hands. “You are the luckiest girl in the world.”

  She was right. It was luck. Only not at all how she meant it.