Straying From the Path
“If he could emote like that on camera . . . ” Nathan muttered. “I’m sorry, Cass. I’m sure he’ll cool down in a little while.”
Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday . . .
She wasn’t going to wait that long.
Nick owned a bungalow in one of the nicer parts of the Los Feliz area. It was a cozy bachelor pad, not at all gigantic and pretentious like he might have had. Except for the security gate.
That afternoon, Cass stood at the gate’s A.I. box and begged. Nick had changed the codes. She couldn’t get in.
“The resident is currently unavailable. Please depart the premises or the authorities will be contacted.”
“I know he’s in there,” she said to the A.I. guard program’s speaker. “If he won’t talk to me, at least let me leave a message. Come on, it’s me! You have my voice print on file!”
“Voice print unrecognized. Please depart the premises—”
“Goddamnit, Nick! Talk to me!”
“If you do not depart in ten seconds—”
Wrong tack. She leaned on the brick wall by the steel gate and took a deep breath.
She tried again. “Hi. I’m an accountant from RealCity Productions, and I have a file upload for Nick May. It’s his severance check.” Money: the only thing in Hollywood that talked.
The guard program clicked ominously for a moment. Then, “File upload approved. Proceed.”
She uploaded the file, along with a voice message. “Nick, I wasn’t kidding about what I said. You said it yourself, I’m not an actor.” She couldn’t think of anything else that didn’t sound trite, so she ended the message.
Back to the wall, she sat on the sidewalk and hoped.
She didn’t know how long she planned on waiting. She’d told herself fifteen minutes. Any longer, the A.I. program would notice and call the cops. Then she realized that someone calling the cops was about what it would take to get her to leave. The paparazzi were going to have a field day with this.
Two minutes had passed when the gate opened.
Nick leaned out, standing half on his property and half on the sidewalk, hanging onto the bars of the gate. He went barefoot, wore sweatpants and a t-shirt, and his brown hair was ruffled, like he’d been crashed out on the sofa. He looked like a million bucks.
“Hi,” she said, staring up at him.
“Hi.” He scraped a toe on the concrete, and she just kept staring.
“You could have just emailed it.”
“I wanted to talk to you. I’m sorry the movie didn’t work out. I wish it had.”
He made a boyish shrug. “It’s okay. I’ve got a contract on the table for a sequel to Lunar Wake. That’s the story we’re going to put out, that the production schedules conflict so I had to quit Nathan’s film. That happens a
ll the time. Career saved.”
“Good,” Cass said. It wasn’t what she wanted to say, but everything else that occurred to her started with please don’t leave me, please please please! There had to be a more dignified way to beg.
He looked up into the heat haze of the afternoon sky. “It’s not your fault that it didn’t work out. Working in Hollywood, living like I do, I forget sometimes that life isn’t a fairy tale where all the endings are happy. The real world isn’t like that.”
In the real world, movie stars didn’t date accountants. Cass swallowed a lump in her throat. “We’re not going to have a happy ending?”
“I wasn’t talking about us.” He slid down to the sidewalk next to her and leaned against the wall. “I lost my temper. I’m an ass. I’m sorry.”
She wasn’t going to argue.
“You meant it, what you said back there.”