Hollywood's Secret Baby

“But don't you have a movie to get back to? I thought you said you start filming next week.”

Cory doesn’t answer. He’s already got the phone to his ear. “Representative,” he says in the clearly enunciated way you do when speaking to a computerized answering system.

“Cory Grey,” I say in my best stern mother voice, using his real name and not his cool fake one. “You can’t cancel the ticket. We will still be here when you finish filming. You can just come back. We’re not going anywhere.”

“Neither am I,” he says out of the side of his mouth. Then he’s turning away from me, putting on a falsely positive voice as he says, “Hi, yes. I’m calling to cancel a reservation.”

But before he can give his name, I snatch the phone out of his hand and end the call.

Because it’s in this tiny slice of a moment, looking over my half-eaten plate, that I make a decision that really calls for more reflection and thought. But there’s no time, and besides, it's been a dream of mine since I was just a kid.

“You’re not cancelling your movie.”

“It’s okay, Hot Stuff,” he says trying to snatch his phone back from me. “That stuff doesn’t matter. All that matters is Lizzie.”

“So you’re forgetting about me?”

“When did I say that? I’m staying for her and you.”

“The movie. You said I could have the lead role.”

It’s here that Cory finally stops making swipes for his phone. “Are you serious?”

I finally hold my hand out, his phone between us. “Call and change your flight to tonight. It’s going to take us all day to pack.”

“Us?”

“Me and Lizzie.” With a simple lean forward, I kiss him on his lips. This time, I let it linger for just a half second too long. “It looks like we’re going on our first family vacation.”

Chapter 9

The next six hours is a frenzy of clothes thrown directly from hanging in my closet to lumped in my suitcase. Lizzie finishes packing in fifteen minutes, but when I inspect her job, I find a suitcase filled with her unicorn onesie, a matching unicorn plush animal, and random clothes stuffed around toys she has decided she can’t live without. Which, of course, means when I finish figuring out what I can’t live without, I’ll have to repack Lizzie’s bags.

My stress level is off the charts, which is probably the reason Cory mostly just stays out of my way as I gather everything I’ll need for the foreseeable future. This means collecting my latest bills so I have the information needed to pay the ones that aren’t directly drawn from m back account. Then there’s calling my boss. Officially, he puts me on an unpaid sabbatical until I figure out when and where I’m landing after this wild swerve in my life. He’s understanding and just the best boss one could have, but he does warn me that if I can’t get back in the studio within three months that they will have to hire someone to replace me.

During a quick bathroom break, I scroll through social media. According to half the status updates from my old classmates, my name is no longer a forgotten entity. It’s being bandied about with Cory’s as the instigators who trashed all of Georgia’s carefully laid plans for the reunion. Tina’s horde is out in force, acting as the wind under her predatory wings as she spews vile hatred, all aimed at Cory and me.

Only twenty-four hours ago, I might have cared what these people thought. I would have let name-calling like ‘self-righteous bitch’ and ‘wannabe porn star’ weigh on me for weeks if not months. But now I find the humor in it. Last night, the only thing most of them could talk about was their high school exploits. Events that happened over a decade ago. Discussions about dreary careers and families were steered back to their glory days, recounting the peaks they would never reach again. Even now, they’re drawing lines on the Internet, convincing themselves that they haven’t fallen off their thrones. That I’m still the same girl to be ground under their feet without pity.

But all their online moaning about last night does nothing but bolster me as I finish packing, gathering more documents—like my passport and Lizzie’s birth certificate, because you just never know—and finalizing every detail that needs to be sorted before we leave our house for the summer.

Cory hasn't just been lazing about either. When he wasn’t making sandwiches for me and Lizzie, he’s been booking tickets for all three of us to L.A. tonight. At one point I hear him contacting a yard care company that will take care of mowing my yard for the duration of the summer.

When I’m not yelling at Lizzie to stop watching TV and to gather the books she needs for her summer reading assignments, I’m trying not to think about how crazy this all is. About how fast my life has changed in less than twenty-four hours. There are so many doubts floating around in my head. So many reasons not to give up the life I’ve pieced together.

First of all, I haven’t spoken to Cory in years. And while we were buddy-buddy back in school, that may as well have been a different lifetime. There’s no telling all the ways his involvement with the FBI, the mafia, and his time in Hollywood have affected him on deep levels. Although the Cory from last night certainly reminded me of the Cory from my past—with his quirky jokes and pet names—he very well could have been concealing his true self. What I saw might have just been his public face that he puts on for those he wants something from. I may be letting our one night together that produced the best thing in my life cloud my judgment of this man I’ve really only known for about 18 hours at this point.

So not only do I not completely trust this new Cory who suddenly burst into our lives, but I don’t trust myself. Either with Cory or with the task he’s set out before me. Sure, my current job sees me standing in front of a camera, lecturing about history and pointing to colorful charts on a touchscreen, but that’s a far cry from acting.

So what am I doing? These are my thoughts as I roll suitcases out my front door and lock our first real home behind me. I think that the only reason I’m able to keep moving forward—loading my Jeep and setting my GPS for the airport—is that none of this feels real. There’s been no time to process any of this, so it’s more like it’s happening to someone else.

The only thing that makes me feel like I’m not completely screwing everything up is Lizzie.

“We’re going to Hollywood? Like the place where they make movies?” she asks as she buckles her seatbelt beside me. Her excitement falls away as a concerned look clouds her face. “Mom, are you sure you can trust this guy?”

Ten-year-olds are such weird creatures. One second they can be complaining about how their green beans touched their mashed potatoes and now they can’t eat anything on their plate because it’s all polluted, and the next minute they can be giving sage advice I might expect to hear from a psychiatrist.

“He’s an old friend. He used to be my best friend, actually.”