Where You Are

Me: Yep

Brooke: That answer doesn’t leave me with warm fuzzies

Me: Are you capable of warm fuzzies? I’m thinking cold ice shards.

Brooke: Do you ever STFU??

Me: Quit freaking out. I’ll handle it.

***

Emma and I are on our second day of local television morning show interviews. These are like an annoying, unnecessary rehearsal for the ones that matter—the nationally syndicated talk shows, the late night network and cable shows.

Most of these local morning anchors will never make it out of their thirties in front of a camera, especially the women. Not because they can’t do the job, but because there’s always some fresh-faced, ambitious twenty-something who wants that job, will take less to do it, and will look hotter doing it. No wonder some of them look at Emma and me like they’d give anything to just punch us in the face.

I may be exaggerating a bit.

This morning, though, the female anchor is interrogating Emma as though she’s personally responsible for a host of swept-under-the-rug hate crimes. Leaning so far forward that Emma moves closer to me, Wynona narrows her overly-lined, heavily-mascaraed eyes. “Emma, you can’t tell me there isn’t something going on between you two. Look at the photographic evidence!”

Without her eyes ever leaving Emma’s face, she points to a huge monitor in between her chair and our small sofa. I stifle a laugh. The cell phone photo I suspect Brooke of taking during Walt’s show? Really? Everyone saw and picked apart that photo, months ago. “Um…” Emma says, and I lean up, chuckling slightly.

“Wynona.” My voice is like honey and her attention swings to me. Professional thirty-something women aren’t quite sure how to react when I take such a familiar, somewhat condescending tone. “That’s a really old, really fuzzy photo.” I shrug. “As we’ve said in previous interviews, the whole cast got along really well during filming. We were all very close.” When Emma almost turns to look at me, I press my knee against hers and she freezes in place. Good girl.

“Reid, I believe you had an old flame in the cast, as well?” Wynona clicks the device in her palm and the photo on the wall is suddenly a four-years-younger me, leading Brooke by the hand as we leave some LA hotspot. Both of us are smiling—me, right into the camera, and Brooke, looking at me. I haven’t seen this photo in a very long time.

“Yes.” My smile is similar to that of the boy on the screen, if Wynona doesn’t look closely enough. That boy is not yet the uncaring bastard sitting in front of her.

She scoots an inch closer. “Were you and Ms. Cameron in contact between your tween romance and the filming of School Pride?” I can tell from her cold eyes she knows damned well we weren’t tweens in that photo, but I ignore her pointless taunt.

“Sure,” I lie.

Ignoring me, she asserts, “Because there are rumors that the two of you had—issues—on the set of your recent film.”

I laugh complacently and match her icy gaze. “There’s a reason they’re called rumors, right?”

She looks like she wants to bite me. And not in a good way. “What about now? Do you consider yourselves to be—friendly—now?”

What a bitch. I decide to throw her a fast ball, which turns out to have perfect timing. “Yeah. We hung out this past weekend, in fact.”

Thank God I’m occasionally truthful, because just as I admit this, she click-clicks and up pops a photo from three days ago in which I’m entering Brooke’s apartment. She’s clearly visible in the doorway, admitting me. I wonder if Brooke knows about this. I wonder if she even set it up with that photog girl she has on payroll. How else would this shot get into the exclusive hands of a common local news station when Star or Us would have paid a shitload of cash for it?

Wynona’s façade crumbles a little at the edges at losing the element of surprise, but she rallies and turns back to Emma. “So if you and Reid aren’t involved… is this due to your involvement with a—” she glances at a card “—Marcus Hoffpauer?”

The photo on the wall changes to Emma looking bored to death, arms crossed, standing next to that conceited prick at his prom. That must have been a pity date.

Emma is speechless, so I laugh and gesture to the photo, grinning conspiratorially at her. “Ah, I remember this—the community theatre guy, right?”

Emma nods, her lips compressing when she glances at the photo. “Yes, at his prom.”

I shake my head, smiling and staring daggers into Wynona. “If he wanted to score points, he could have—I don’t know—introduced her to his friends? That’s what we do when we invite non-celeb friends to our parties.” A glance at Emma makes it clear that she’s grateful for my interruption.

I turn and give Wynona a mesmerizing smile. “So, about School Pride. We’re both really excited about the upcoming release and ready to talk about the film. We brought several clips—I assume we can show your viewing audience a couple of them now?”

***

Emma breathes out a deep sigh the moment we shut the car doors and I start the engine, letting it idle and purr for a moment. “Wow, her face…” Her mouth turns up on one side. “I kind of expected her head to start spinning around at one point.”

Wynona was tough, but I’ve had more hostile question-answer sessions than that. No need to pass that info on to Emma, though. “Courtesy never works with people like her, so I don’t bother. If you want to shift topics, you have to force it. With a smile and an angelic look, of course.”