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Jillian must have heard what was in my silence because she stopped buying tickets on my laptop and turned around to grab my hand. “Yeah,” she said quietly. “I think about what if you’d gone with him too. You know what I think?”

“That I should have been there?” Who
didn’t
think it?

“I think that he would have been driving anyway, Con. He had no alcohol in his bloodstream—you would have had no reason to drive. And then you’d both be dead.”

My heart constricted, and I fought off the temptation to point out that I hadn’t done much living in the last year. “We would have been legend,” I said, trying to be blasé about it. “All our movies would have become instant classics, and you would have been rich beyond the dreams of avarice.”

She slapped me.

It was weird; her expression didn’t change. She just pulled back for some awesome momentum and
slapped
me.

“Don’t be an asshole,” she said shortly, and then she turned to the computer like it held the secrets to all of Christendom.

I rubbed my cheek and watched a hot tear plop down on the touch pad, and she swore. I’d done that before—the cursor started going batshit almost instantly.

I handed her a tissue, and she blotted the touch pad, and I handed her another one and she blotted her face.

“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling empty. “I . . . I don’t know how to be about that.” When in doubt, state the obvious. “I miss him so bad.”

“Of course you do.” She patted my hand but didn’t look away from the computer. “You guys lived here. These two houses, they were your heart. But there’s more houses out there. Once you get away, you’ll see.”

“You want me to forget him?” I asked, my voice pitching querulously.
No!

“No.” This time she
did
glance at me. “I want you to remember you can live without him. Here we go.” She returned her attention to the screen. “Two tickets, first class, no connecting flight. You get out the luggage and pack, I’ll call the house and pool service, and we can leave in three days.”

“You’re sure you want to come?” I asked, confused but grateful.

She hit the appropriate keys on the computer to make her purchase go through and then looked me dead in the eyes. “I miss the motherfucking rain. You’d better bring all the new clothes we bought—it’s going to be colder than you’re used to, and I don’t want you throwing some shitty sweatshirt you wore in high school over PacSun’s finest. My boys . . . my
boy
doesn’t go anywhere looking low-class.”

I nodded, and pretended not to hear the slipup. She’d known we were lovers from day one, and she’d been great at helping us fool the world. She once rerouted me through four different countries to trick the paparazzi into thinking I was having a meetup with a girlfriend, when Vinnie and I had been fucking each other’s brains out in a villa off the coast of Spain for two weeks.
“Anything to keep my boys sexed up and sexy,”
she’d said.

At the time, I remembered thinking that we were the best meal ticket she’d ever had. I felt ungrateful for that thought now, and unkind. Apparently she’d been doing what Vinnie and I had been doing—not the fucking part, just doing her best.

It was plenty right now. I found a smile—a real one—in the pit of my stomach and graced her with it like a gift.

“Thanks, Jillian. We can be in the rain together.”

She lifted her hand, and for a moment I wondered what I’d said, but she only patted my throbbing cheek.

“So,” she muttered, turning back to the screen, “designer umbrellas . . . who can I find that will deliver overnight . . .”

The flight was uneventful—and fun, even, in one of those new prop planes that they apparently use for north-south flights on the West Coast these days. Quiet, without that perpetual ear-roar of the jets—I was a fan.

So was the stewardess. I must have signed half the cocktail napkins in her stock by the time we landed—her sons, her daughters, her best friend, her mother. I’d say one for her husband too, but I got a napkin back with her cell phone number on it and figured
that
ship had sailed. Jillian ignored the woman and stayed pleasantly toasted during the journey. She was
not
a fan of air travel, really.

Still, she was pretty steady on her stilettos when we got off the plane. I had both our carry-ons—one wheeled behind me and one held by the handle on the side—as well as my briefcase (okay, man-purse with a computer pocket) over my shoulder. Against Jillian’s strenuous objections, I was wearing jeans and a hoodie when we got off. I consoled her with the fact that the hoodie was high-end and the jeans were designer, but honestly, I just wanted comfort clothes.

That didn’t keep me from feeling just a tad self-conscious when a driver—an honest-to-God driver wearing a suit and a hat and everything—greeted us in front of baggage claim with a tablet marquee-scrolling my name.

“Connor Montgomery,” I read out loud, feeling stupid. “Uh, yeah. That’s me. I mean us. I mean . . .”

The kid holding the tablet grinned. At least I think he was a kid—he had a long, square jaw, the thin neck of early adulthood, and a rather prominent Adam’s apple. He also had deep brown eyes and skin to match, and brown hair in soft, glossy ringlets around his head, making me flail for his ancestry. African American? Native American? He had a straight, almost Roman nose, strong chin, and full lips. I flailed some more. Greek? Scottish and African American?

Oh hell.

Not white, and not fucking bad.

The smile he leveled at Jillian and me was blinding. “Mr. Montgomery? Really? So awesome to meet you. Anna Maxwell sent me to greet you. I’m supposed to be your driver for the next few months, so I’ll set you up with my contact info and stuff when I drop you off.”

I looked at Jillian, feeling a little embarrassed. “Jilly . . .”

She shrugged. “They were sort of hot for you, Con—and you need a driver. I can only stay here a week, and . . . you know . . .”

Lost at Nordstrom’s. Awesome. I smiled at the kid, rather embarrassed and still trying to juggle our luggage. “Lead on, brave soldier. You have no idea what you’re in for.”

The kid flashed another supernova at us, and I almost covered my eyes and groaned. Jeez, kid, it was only one in the afternoon!

“Noah,” he said, extending his hand. “Noah Dakers. Nice to meet you.”

I took his hand and squeezed, liking what he gave back in return.
Nice kid
, I thought as we gathered baggage and hauled it out to the waiting town car. Maybe he’d be company in this unfamiliar place.

I could always use a friendly face, and as Vinnie used to say, a pretty face could make
everything
feel friendly. Not that I wanted to hit on him, no—but it was sure nice to remember I could look.

“So,” he asked, after we’d stashed our luggage and slid into the town car (leather seats—I loved that in a car, I really did), “we’re going to your cabin—it’s out by the new development for the TV people. Nice place, you’ll like it. But are you hungry? In need of coffee? Is there anyplace I can take you first?”

“Coffee,” I said, my voice shaking with need, but I said it right at the same time Jillian said, “
Food
!” and she was louder and meaner.

Noah laughed. “Okay, food—do you want quaint and local, or fast produced and comforting? It’s up to you.”

I said, “Local!” because Vinnie and I had always liked trying to find the perfect hole-in-the-wall that only the locals knew about.

Jillian said, “
Anything
!” so guess what? I won!

Actually I won twice. Noah told us that he had the exact spot right outside of Bluewater Bay, but it meant we had to wait a bit—and since I was obviously jonesing for coffee, he took us through a drive-thru Starbucks on the way out of town.

“When we get to Bluewater, I’ll take you to the Stomping Grounds—that’s our local coffeehouse. Best stuff on earth. But let’s get you coffee and a snack to hold you over until we get there, ’kay?”

“I like this kid,” Jillian said with meaning, and I ignored her. But I let Noah order a spinach feta wrap to go with my Caffé Americano venti, so she got to win too.

I’d assumed Jilly and I would just sort of hunker down in the back of the town car and have muted conversations. The closest thing to conversation I’d ever gotten from a driver was the time one of them had been trying to get me to JFK at record speed. As my face had been plastered against the back window by the centrifugal force of taking a curve at ninety, the guy had muttered, “Time adjustment,” in apology.

This guy was
not
the car driver in New York.

“You ever been out here before?” he asked after we’d cleared the Starbucks. He headed for 101, and the city—indistinguishable in the back of the car—faded to concrete, and rolling suburbs beyond.

“Yes,” I said, enjoying the memory. “My first big break—
Warlock Tea—
that was filmed in Vancouver.”

Noah let out an unabashedly fanboi sigh. “God, I loved that show. I’d forgotten that, you know? I was in high school, and Vancouver felt like a continent away. But
you
I remember.”

I put myself in “TV star” mode. It was hard—people would gush over the stuff I was least proud of, but you don’t want to crap on people’s dreams. I mean, someone cared enough to tell you that your work meant something to them, right? So you said thank you, and I was
always
grateful. But I was also embarrassed.

It felt like I could have done more to deserve all that gushing.

“That was an awesome shoot,” I told him—because being on the show had been great. The rest of the truth was I’d missed the shit out of Vinnie during those years. Of course I went back down to LA on breaks and holidays and over hiatus, and Vinnie visited me on
his
breaks, but still . . . we’d struggled so hard to get an agent and an audition and a break, oh holy God, just a motherfuckin’ break, but once I had one . . . God, we’d learned how much we had together when we were forced to live apart.

“Yeah—it was a fun show,” Noah said. I watched those remarkable brown eyes take me in through the rearview mirror. “Not your best work, really, but I get the feeling you haven’t done that yet.”

I gaped at him, a thousand critical reviews spooling behind my eyes.
“Montgomery did what he did best—amiable beefcake seems to be his calling.” “Connor Montgomery is infinitely watchable, but he’ll never be Oscar material.” “Pretty and charming are Montgomery’s calling cards, and he pulls them both out here with a flourish.”

Nice things—people said nice things about me. But they never, ever said I had more in me than what I’d put out there on the screen. Not even my directors—but then, Jilly told me straight out she picked the softball scripts for me. I could run from a fake explosion on a green screen like it was an Olympic sport. Just, oh God! Don’t give him dialog, we’re afraid the guy can’t read!

In the course of the last week, Jilly and I had shotgunned the first season of
Wolf’s Landing
, and sitting here, making eyes at the pretty kid driving my car, I had a flash of panic. That show was written
really well—
in fact, that was part of my planned press release to put a good spin on the fact that I wanted to ease back into the land of the living by doing TV instead of movies. “It’s an honor to be asked to do a guest spot in a show written as well as this one. I hope I do the show’s writers justice.”

Oh God. What if I
couldn’t
do the show’s writers justice? What if Jillian was right? I wasn’t good enough for more than amiable beefcake?

The flash of panic through my chest and the adrenaline dumping into my brain were pretty much the granddaddies of all surprises. If you’d asked me a week ago, I would have said it was
impossible
for me to care about my career.

I realized Noah was waiting for an answer—and whether she was looking at me or not, so was Jillian.

“Hopefully I can do my best work here.” The words were clichéd, and probably sounded rehearsed—but the delivery was thoughtful and engaged. Wouldn’t that be great, to find I wasn’t done with my life at twenty-nine.

“We surely would love to see that, Mr. Montgomery,” Noah said earnestly. “I’ve been waiting to see your best work since high school!”

My brain shot off a warning flare that a long-defunct operation was about to boot up, and I had another hit of panic.

“So, what was that? Two years ago?” I asked, hoping I didn’t sound like a heel. Jillian smacked my knee, so I must have, and Noah stopped looking in the mirror, so I probably embarrassed him too.

“Closer to six.” His voice kept that edge of good humor, and I blessed him. “I’m more a runner than a bodybuilder, you know?”

“Yeah,” I said, regretfully. “I know all about that.” My first year doing
Warlock Tea
had been spent getting phone calls from the studio execs every day, asking me to bulk up, while Jillian and Vinnie had been sending me vanilla whey protein to put into
everything
from my oatmeal to my fruit smoothies. “I miss the days when I could go running on the beach and call it good.”