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“So you figured out how to pay for it?” he asked, and Ellie went stiff. She turned her back to him again, dumping a partially empty bag of tortilla chips into the bowl. Already, Graham was regretting the question. When they’d talked about this over e-mail, it had been so easy for her to tell him these things, but something had shifted now, and the question no longer felt quite right in person.
“Not exactly,” she said lightly. “But I’ve got another month or so to figure it out.”
“How much more do you need?” he asked, and she looked embarrassed.
“Enough,” she told him, her face coloring. There was an awkward silence, and Graham realized his mistake. Part of him had wanted to rescue her, to swoop in with the money she needed, but he could see now that this would only make it worse. And by bringing up the issue of money so casually, he’d managed to remind her again of who he was: not the boy on the other end of the e-mails, but the movie star who was sitting in her kitchen. He could feel the easy rapport between them turning brittle, and he cleared his throat as she set down the bowl of chips, desperate to change the subject.
“This looks good,” he said, and he could see her shoulders relax. “I’ve never had fortune cookies with chips and salsa before.”
“Well,” she said with a slow-blooming grin, “we’re on the cutting edge of the Chinese-Mexican fusion movement here at Chez O’Neill.”
“I like it,” he said. “Three stars.”
“What?” she said, sitting down across the table from him. “Only three?”
“That’s the most you can get, I think.”
“That doesn’t seem like a lot,” she said. “I’d prefer ten.”
“How about two thumbs up?”
“Now you’re confusing this with the movies,” she said, licking some peanut butter off her finger. “Speaking of which, how’s it going?”
“The movie?”
She nodded.
“Okay,” he said.
“You don’t sound very excited about it.”
“No, I am,” he told her, reaching for an apple slice and popping it into his mouth. “It’s nice to be doing something different. And the director’s really… interesting.”
“Think you’ll work with him again?” she asked. “I mean, you must get your pick, right?”
“I guess,” he said. “But I haven’t figured out what I’m doing next.”
“Well, what do you want to do?”
“Something that matters.”
She tilted her head to one side, considering this. “You mean something that matters to you?”
He nodded. “Hopefully.”
“You’ll know it when it comes along,” she said. “But it must be kind of fun to be playing a new character. I saw the trailer for the first movie, and there was that part where—”
Graham sat forward. “Wait,” he said, laughing. “You only saw the trailer?”
Ellie reached for her water and took a sip, hiding behind a blue plastic mug that was emblazoned with a smiling whale.
“You never saw the movies?”
“Well, the third one isn’t even out yet,” she said, setting her mug back on the table and picking up a fortune cookie.
“Yeah, but the first two?”
She shrugged. “Qui
“I thought every teen girl in America was obsessed with them,” Graham said, amazed. It had been an embarrassingly long time since he’d met someone who hadn’t seen those films, or at least pretended they had.
“You’re thinking of you,” Ellie corrected. “Every teen girl in America is obsessed with you.”
He laughed. “So I take it you’re not a big Graham Larkin fan?”
“I am now,” she said, cracking open the fortune cookie. She drew out the little strip of white paper with a frown, then laughed. “It says: You will receive a fortune cookie.”
“No way,” Graham said, and she passed it over so that he could look for himself. “That’s the best fortune ever.”
Ellie took a bite of the cookie. “Well, it’s the most obvious, anyway.”
“Most fortunes don’t ever come true,” he said, shaking his head at the tiny scroll. “But this one already did. I mean, would you rather have a fortune that promised you a delicious cookie and came true instantly, or one that promised a million dollars and never came true at all?”
“At the moment, I think I’d take a million dollars,” she said, brushing the crumbs off the table so that the dog, who was beside her in a flash, could finish it off. “The cookie wasn’t nearly as delicious as advertised.”
“Bagel seems to disagree.”
“His palate is similar to that of a vacuum cleaner,” she said, looking down at him fondly. “So are you ready for your scene tomorrow?”
He shrugged, but it wasn’t very convincing.
“I bet you were supposed to be learning your lines instead of hanging out with me all afternoon,” she said, leaning forward on her elbows. “Do you know them?”
“More or less,” he said, folding a piece of pizza in half. Bagel, who had taken up a new post beside him, thumped his tail a few times, and Graham tossed him the crust. “I’ve been carrying them around in my pocket all day, so I’m hoping there’s been some osmosis action.”
“I’m sure all the great actors rely on osmosis,” she said, then reached a hand across the table. “Can I see? We could practice.”
Graham sat back in his chair. “It’s okay,” he said, suddenly embarrassed. Acting on set was one thing; acting in front of the girl you liked was another. He wasn’t about to get into character in front of Ellie. “I’ll be fine.
“Come on,” she said, bobbing her outstretched hand. “It’ll be fun.”
“Fine,” he said, sitting up to pull the folded papers from his back pocket. “But I’m not doing it for real, okay? Just ru
“I don’t get to see the full Graham Larkin effect?” she teased, taking the section of script from him. “I guess I’ll just have to stop by the set tomorrow.”
“You’ll have to be a pretty good swimmer then,” he told her. “We’re go
“Okay, Ahab,” she said, studying the lines on the page. When she looked up again, her face seemed somehow different; her lips were pouty, and she was looking at him from underneath her eyelashes. She tossed her hair in an exaggerated way, and it took Graham a moment to realize where he’d seen the gesture before: she was mimicking Olivia.
“Not bad,” he said, but he was also relieved when she dropped the act and examined the script one more time with a more familiar expression.
“Okay, here we go,” she said, clearing her throat. “ ‘Where are you going, Jasper?’ ” She stopped and looked up with raised eyebrows. “Your name is Jasper?”
He shrugged, and she continued.
“ ‘Come back!’ ” she shouted with a melodramatic flourish, loud enough to cause Bagel to lurch up, his collar jangling, his head cocked to one side.
Graham reached down and gave him a little pat. “That was great,” he told Ellie. “Not at all over the top.”
“I never said I wasn’t doing it for real,” she pointed out. “Your line.”
“ ‘I need to be alone right now,’ ” Graham said in a flat voice to underscore the fact that he wasn’t really playing along. “ ‘I just need some time to think.’ ”
Ellie tilted her head to one side. “I know I’m not an expert, but I’m betting you could do it with a little more feeling.”
“Everyone’s a critic, Bagel,” he told the little dog, who whined at him in sympathy as Ellie turned back to the script.
“ ‘You have no idea what you need right now. You have no idea—’ ” She paused there, her eyes still on the page.
Graham honestly couldn’t remember what came next. He’d pla
“You’re supposed to kiss me,” Ellie said, looking up at him with an unreadable expression. Graham’s stomach dipped, and he stared across the table at her, unable to formulate a response. The room was quiet except for the ticking of the clock above the stove and the soft breathing of the dog, and it took a moment for Ellie to shake her head. When she spoke, her voice sounded very bright. “It’s in the script,” she said, pointing at the page without taking her eyes off Graham.