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“What is it?”
But Graham was already out the door.
In the street, the set had come to life again. After a disappointing day out on the water, there was now an undercurrent of energy to the place, everyone moving with purpose, animated by the idea of a clean slate and a fresh scene.
It was almost fully dark, with only a pale smudge of pink along the edge of the water. A block away, enormous lights flooded the sidewalk in front of the bar, the site of Jasper’s unraveling, and Graham knew he should be turning his mind to the scene ahead. But he paused to slip his phone out of his pocket one more time, anxious to see whether there was any word from Ellie. Instead, he was surprised to find a message from his mom.
Up ahead, a wardrobe assistant was waving him over. But Graham made no motion to follow her, pausing to cup a hand around the glowing screen of his phone as he read. His eyes skipped over the words: a string of excuses, a list of previous plans for the holiday weekend, worries about air travel and the cost of the trip, suggestions that they might be out of place with his “movie friends” anyway, apologies and promises to make it up to him when he returned to California.
In spite of all this, it still took a moment for the full weight of the message to become clear to him.
They weren’t coming.
He should have expected it. There’d been no reason for him to think their answer would be anything but no. Still, it wasn’t until he lowered the phone that Graham realized—against all logic—he’d actually been counting on seeing them.
The wardrobe assistant was now standing before him, and she cleared her throat loudly. He glanced up, feeling a bit dazed. She was short and round-shouldered and at least ten years older than Graham, but she was still looking at him with a kind of awe, as if he were doing her a great favor by finally acknowledging her.
“They’re ready for you,” she said, and he nodded, tucking the phone back in his pocket, his face carefully neutral.
Even later, once his costume was on and his hair was gelled and he’d been deemed camera-ready, he wore a similar expression, a well-maintained blankness, a way of making room for someone else entirely: Jasper and his problems, Jasper and his thoughts, Jasper and his complicated feelings for Zoe.
But the rest of it was still there too, just below the surface: Graham and his problems, Graham and his thoughts, Graham and his complicated feelings for Ellie. And so much more: his reluctance to see Olivia, his a
They finished shooting early. But this time, it wasn’t because of the weather, or the lighting, and it definitely wasn’t because Graham couldn’t conjure up the right combination of emotions. In fact, as soon as they’d wrapped for the day, as an army of workers emerged as if from nowhere to begin breaking down the set, Mick walked over and clapped him on the shoulder.
“That was some pretty intense stuff,” he said. “Think we could see that kind of thing again tomorrow?”
Graham’s laugh was rough. “I’ll see what I can do.”
But what he was really thinking was this: He wanted just the opposite. He wanted calm. He wanted Ellie.
On the way to her house, he tipped his head back to gaze at the wash of stars above, which had been wiped out by the klieg lights on the set. Now they were thick as static across the navy sky, and Graham was reminded of the box in their basement at home where his father kept an antique telescope. The wood was intricately carved with little suns and moons, and as a kid, Graham had wanted nothing more than to haul it upstairs and point it out the window, to capture the stars in those curved panes of glass. But he saw it only once a year, when Dad laid a cloth across the dining room table and lifted the telescope as carefully as he might a dying person.
“Can’t we try it?” Graham always asked, leaning in close to watch as his father polished the wood and cleaned the lenses with the same velvety cloth.
“It’s too valuable,” Dad would say. “You don’t want anything to happen to it.”
But that’s exactly what happened to it: nothing. As far as Graham knew, it was still sitting down there in the cobwebby basement, and what he had always accepted as practical now struck him as a colossal waste.
By the time he reached the hill that sloped down to meet Ellie’s driveway, he was half jogging. The lights were on in the kitchen, and he forced himself to slow down as he reached the steps, taking a deep breath. At the door, he raised a hand, but found he couldn’t knock.
He paced from one end of the porch to the other, then back again, not quite sure what was wrong with him. Suddenly, he felt paralyzed. He paused in front of the doorbell, then turned away, slumping onto the wooden swing, where he sat with his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands. What was wrong with him? He’d never been this unsure of himself when it came to a girl, not even in his old life.
He was still sitting there like that—hunched and miserable, unable to bring himself to knock—when he heard footsteps from inside, and his stomach churned. But when the door cracked open, it was Ellie’s mom who stepped outside. She raised her eyebrows, but said nothing, and Graham rose from the swing.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” he said. “I was just about to knock.”
One side of her mouth inched up into the begi
He cleared his throat. “Is Ellie home?”
“Yes,” she said. “But it’s late.”
Graham knew this was his cue to leave, and he felt a flash of a
“I don’t think so,” she said, and he was surprised to see a look of genuine pity cross her face. It took him a moment to understand what it meant, that look, to feel the full impact of it square across his chest.
It wasn’t Mrs. O’Neill that was blocking his way. And it wasn’t her who was saying no.
It was Ellie.
The realization threw him into a stupefied silence, and he found himself completely unable to ask the next logical question: Why not? or What happened? or, worst of all, What did I do wrong? Instead, he simply directed his gaze to the uneven boards of the porch.
“It’s just not a great night,” Mrs. O’Neill said, putting a hand on his shoulder.
The next question came easily, though he suspected that the answer to this, too, would probably be unwelcome. “How about tomorrow?”
She hesitated, opening and then closing her mouth. After a moment, she gave her head a little shake. “Good night, Graham,” she said, and then she stepped back into the house, leaving him alone on the porch.
From somewhere inside, Bagel let out a bark at the sound of the door. As he backed off the steps, Graham looked up. There was only one lit window on the second floor, and in the wedge of visible space, he could see a bookshelf. For a moment, he let himself imagine it—Ellie curled up on her bed, the dog at her side—and the thought seemed to crack at something inside him.
He’d read the scripts. He knew how the story was supposed to go. Boy meets girl. Girl likes boy. Boy kisses girl.
And then? The possibilities were endless. But the one thing Graham knew was that it wasn’t supposed to involve this: standing alone on the wrong side of a door with absolutely no idea what had happened.
He’d thought this was the start of something. But clearly she’d changed her mind, and he felt stu