Page 38 of Reel Love

“Yeah. Paparazzi. It’s always draining when they show up.”

“What’s it like?”

I look over at him. He’s seriously curious. “Blinding lights in rapid succession. So many voices shouting over one another you can barely make out what they’re saying. It’s overwhelming, even after all these years.”

“How could it not be?”

“I don’t mean to sound like a whiner. I’m grateful for my life and career.”

“I haven’t heard you whine yet.”

“Well, it feels like I should just suck it up.”

“Being harrassed? Having so little privacy? Everyone wanting a piece of you?” He pauses and looks over at me and then back at the water. “I don’t see where anyone should suck that up.”

“Yeah. I guess you’re right.”

We ride along for a little while longer in this silence that’s weirdly easy between us. I get the feeling this guy makes everyone feel comfortable. It’s in the way he doesn’t seem to care what anyone thinks about him.

“You could have made driving me around awkward,” I tell him. Then I laugh lightly. “Well, you did.”

“I definitely did.” He laughs along with me and shakes his head.

“But you moved on pretty quickly. I’m grateful. I usually spend these boat rides across the channel either gearing up for what awaits me or decompressing from whatever just happened. I need my time on the water to be distracting or comfortable. And you’ve made it both.”

“I’m sure Joel is good at helping you get what you need. He’s a jokester, but he’s got a big heart. And he’s a people person.”

There’s this unspoken sentence hanging in the air:not like me.

“Joel is great.” I look over at Stevens, his brown hair, strong face, kind eyes. “There are lots of ways to be a people person. Not all of them include being the class clown or having been voted most likely to have fifty best friends.”

Stevens studies me and then nods as if he’s still digesting my words.

I look out across the water. The sun is setting behind Marbella in the distance, smearing a pastel watercolor across the sky. I glance behind me at the shoreline of California.

Everything’s smaller from here.

My dinner is in the refrigerator, prepped and left for me as if by a magic fairy. In reality, I have a service drop off healthy meals that fit the parameters of my dietary regimen and I eat off those a few nights a week. I pull the foil tray out, pop it in the convection oven and pick up my phone.

Wordivore left a game open for me to play with him earlier today. His first word sits abandoned on the center of the board. MAXIM, with the X on a double point square. Seriously? Twenty-four points out the gate?

I type:Are you trying to kill me before I even have a chance to look at my tiles?

I don’t expect an answer, but his cursor roars to life and the three taunting dots appear.

Kill is such a vicious word. I prefer maim … or even, subdue.

I laugh. I carry my dinner into the living room and curl my legs under me on the couch. The world is a deep blue-gray outside, the sun long since set. Trees form black silhouettes in the night, making me feel like the only things that exist in the world are within this house. My dress went home with my mother. The paparazzi are having their dinners, submitting their photos of me and Rex to their publications or websites and not giving anotherthought as to how the ripples of their seemingly innocuous stones will impact our lives and the hearts of our fans. And Rex is somewhere in Beverly Hills, running on his treadmill or watching TV with his two yorkies.

Rex.

I push our situation out of my mind, stare out into the treetops and remind myself what my yoga instructor is always reminding me:be here now.

Rex isn’t here. My mother isn’t here. Wordivore is here.

I look over my tiles. Then I smile.

Using Wordivore’s X, I add Y-L-E-M. Xylem. It’s a plant term. I forget what it means. Playing word games means gathering the oddest collection of vocabulary and stashing it for future use like a cache of weaponry.

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