This Is What Happy Looks Like(35)
Author: Jennifer E. Smith

Graham didn’t answer. He reached into the mini fridge for a bottle of water, then sat down opposite his manager.

Harry smiled, but it was a smile with a warning inside it. “The redhead?”

Graham tipped his head back and took a swig of water, his eyes on the ceiling. When he’d finished, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said, in a voice that didn’t entirely sound like his own, “What redhead?”

“C’mon,” Harry said. “Everyone saw you chasing her earlier.”

“I wasn’t—”

“You’ve got to cool it with these locals.” He leaned back in his chair and scratched the back of his head. “You think I haven’t seen this happen before? You get out of L.A., and suddenly there are a thousand girls screaming your name—”

“It’s not like that.”

“I’m sure it’s not,” Harry said, though he didn’t sound convinced. “But the point is, this isn’t the right moment for you to suddenly turn into some kind of skirt chaser.”

Graham snorted. “When is the right moment for that kind of thing?”

“I’m serious. We’re at a crucial juncture here, and your image is important. I don’t need you out with a different girl every night.” He pulled a tabloid from beneath the stack of papers on the table in front of him, sliding it over to the edge. “Just one.”

Graham regarded it warily, surprised to see a glossy photo from yesterday’s shoot. It had been taken during the moment when he first lifted Olivia for the big kiss, the two of them still in motion, eyes shut, arms entangled, a moment that could easily be construed as more than just acting when taken out of context. The caption below read: “On-screen chemistry or real-life romance?”

“Nice work,” Graham said, letting it drop.

Harry beamed. “It’s why you pay me the big bucks, remember? Though you’d make my life a whole lot easier if you’d stop chasing the redhead and just take Olivia out to dinner one night.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s your job to make my life easier,” Graham said, standing up from the table. He reached over to toss his water bottle into the overflowing garbage can beside the fridge, and then, for good measure, sent the magazine flying in there as well. “And she has a name, you know.”

“What is it?”

But Graham was already out the door.

In the street, the set had come to life again. After a disappointing day out on the water, there was now an undercurrent of energy to the place, everyone moving with purpose, animated by the idea of a clean slate and a fresh scene.

It was almost fully dark, with only a pale smudge of pink along the edge of the water. A block away, enormous lights flooded the sidewalk in front of the bar, the site of Jasper’s unraveling, and Graham knew he should be turning his mind to the scene ahead. But he paused to slip his phone out of his pocket one more time, anxious to see whether there was any word from Ellie. Instead, he was surprised to find a message from his mom.

Up ahead, a wardrobe assistant was waving him over. But Graham made no motion to follow her, pausing to cup a hand around the glowing screen of his phone as he read. His eyes skipped over the words: a string of excuses, a list of previous plans for the holiday weekend, worries about air travel and the cost of the trip, suggestions that they might be out of place with his “movie friends” anyway, apologies and promises to make it up to him when he returned to California.

In spite of all this, it still took a moment for the full weight of the message to become clear to him.

They weren’t coming.

He should have expected it. There’d been no reason for him to think their answer would be anything but no. Still, it wasn’t until he lowered the phone that Graham realized—against all logic—he’d actually been counting on seeing them.

The wardrobe assistant was now standing before him, and she cleared her throat loudly. He glanced up, feeling a bit dazed. She was short and round-shouldered and at least ten years older than Graham, but she was still looking at him with a kind of awe, as if he were doing her a great favor by finally acknowledging her.

“They’re ready for you,” she said, and he nodded, tucking the phone back in his pocket, his face carefully neutral.

Even later, once his costume was on and his hair was gelled and he’d been deemed camera-ready, he wore a similar expression, a well-maintained blankness, a way of making room for someone else entirely: Jasper and his problems, Jasper and his thoughts, Jasper and his complicated feelings for Zoe.

But the rest of it was still there too, just below the surface: Graham and his problems, Graham and his thoughts, Graham and his complicated feelings for Ellie. And so much more: his reluctance to see Olivia, his annoyance with Harry, his disappointment with his parents, his impatience to get this whole damn scene over and done with so that he could find Ellie, the one sure antidote to everything else that was crowding his head.

They finished shooting early. But this time, it wasn’t because of the weather, or the lighting, and it definitely wasn’t because Graham couldn’t conjure up the right combination of emotions. In fact, as soon as they’d wrapped for the day, as an army of workers emerged as if from nowhere to begin breaking down the set, Mick walked over and clapped him on the shoulder.

“That was some pretty intense stuff,” he said. “Think we could see that kind of thing again tomorrow?”

Graham’s laugh was rough. “I’ll see what I can do.”

But what he was really thinking was this: He wanted just the opposite. He wanted calm. He wanted Ellie.

On the way to her house, he tipped his head back to gaze at the wash of stars above, which had been wiped out by the klieg lights on the set. Now they were thick as static across the navy sky, and Graham was reminded of the box in their basement at home where his father kept an antique telescope. The wood was intricately carved with little suns and moons, and as a kid, Graham had wanted nothing more than to haul it upstairs and point it out the window, to capture the stars in those curved panes of glass. But he saw it only once a year, when Dad laid a cloth across the dining room table and lifted the telescope as carefully as he might a dying person.

“Can’t we try it?” Graham always asked, leaning in close to watch as his father polished the wood and cleaned the lenses with the same velvety cloth.

“It’s too valuable,” Dad would say. “You don’t want anything to happen to it.”