Page 180 of My Five Daddies

I glance at her again and she shrugs a little at me. “Like I said, I’ve done it before. So I wouldn’t mind giving it anothershot.”

I sigh and sip my drink, stalling for time. They’re all looking at me, waiting for me to say something, but I don’t know what tosay.

“I’m not interested,” I sayfinally.

Vincent and Harold exchange another look. “I think that’s a mistake,” Haroldsays.

“Why?” I ask him. “Going to replace me, reshoot everything I already did? Truth is, guys, I hate this Hollywood shit. I’m not selling myself thatmuch.”

I push back from the table and stand. Harold stands with me and walks by my side as I head back through thehouse.

“Okay, Jackson, listen, just think about it,” he says to me. “Understand? Just think aboutit.”

“Nothing to think about,” I say to him as I reach the front door. “But if you’ve got something real for me, come and findme.”

He smiles at me. “I gotta say, I respect you for standing up like this, but it’s amistake.”

“Maybe,” I say with a little shrug. “We’llsee.”

I push out the door and head back down the driveway toward the car that’s still waiting forme.

I can’t do this fake relationship shit, not when Tara is already jealous of Holly. It’ll wreck her and wreck what he have. We just kissed and she’s finally starting to open up to me a little bit. If I do this fake relationship, it’ll destroyher.

I won’t do that to her again. I can’t do it. Even though they’re making it sound like a totally normal thing, it’s fucking not. I won’t get sucked into the Hollywood way of thinking and looking at things, not if I can helpit.

I’m above that, or at least I want to be. I need to do better, for her sake as well as for myown.

12

Tara

Ifeellike I’m back in high schoolagain.

When we were younger, we mostly keep our relationship to ourselves. Everyone knew we were together, of course, but we weren’t hanging off each other in the hallways like a lot of the othercouples.

I liked that about him. He wasn’t exactly reserved, but he was serious. I felt like making out with him in the hall would somehow disrespect what we had, like our relationship was real compared to all the other fake ones around us. It made it feel specialagain.

I feel that way now. It’s so stupid and insane, since I’m an adult now and we are definitely not in a relationship, but I can’t help but look at him and feel that, even if it’s just a shade of that teenage-brain-induced lovemadness.

I can’t lie and pretend like I don’t enjoy it. I like that we kissed yesterday, and I like that nobody knows about it. He hasn’t come up to me yet today, although he did smile when he came onto set. Mostly he’s working through the action sequences set up for today, and I’m doing my job as well, but I keep stealing glances at him. I keep thinking about that kiss, the way it felt, and I keep feeling like a schoolgirlagain.

I feel silly. I feel good. It’s a particular feeling, something I can’t really explain. Maybe it’s falling in love again. Or maybe it’s waking up only to realize that you’ve always been in love, and it hasn’t goneaway.

Not that I’m actually in love with him right now. God, that would be so stupid. No, that’s just the closest I can come to explaining thisfeeling.

When you’re a kid, everything is so much more intense. The chemicals in your brain are going nuts, and you’re basically drunk with hormones all the time. Plus, everything is new, especially when you’re a teenager. I was just discovering my body back then, and Jackson was slowly helping me do it. Maybe we didn’t have sex, but we did other stuff, and we were going to do it sooner or later. But back then, even a simple kiss took me places I don’t think I’ve been eversince.

I always assumed those feelings were gone forever. I never knew I felt those things, not because of my crazy teen brain, but because ofJackson.

I felt it all over when he kissed me. It was like a whole body high. It was so intense that I could barely breathe afterward. I had to hustle him out of there, or else I was going to do something really stupid, like throw myself athim.

Maybe it’s impossible to explain. But in short, I feel like a kid again, and it feels sogood.

When we break for lunch, Jackson is nowhere to be found, but I don’t think anything of it. I figure he’s just busy running lines or something for our upcoming shots. He has some line-heavy scenes, and I know actors worry about rememberingeverything.

When we get back to shooting, something’s weird. He’s not looking at me, not even coming close to looking at me. When I have to feed him a line, he doesn’t meet my eye, just accepts it and moves on. He doesn’t smile at me, doesn’t even act like he knows me. It’s like an entirely new person is out there now, and I have no clue whatchanged.

I’m the type of person to get paralyzed in analysis, but I’m going to resist that. I won’t dig too deeply into this. He might just be concentrating on his job, or maybe he’s just in a bad mood or something. I can’t worry about Jackson like this, I just have to do my job and keep movingforward.

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