Page 46 of Lucky Star

Chapter Seventeen

Sarah

The next few weeks went by in a blur, with Cameron and me spending very little time together. When he took his laundry to Mike’s place instead of doing it at home, I wondered if he was avoiding me. At work, I saw him often enough, but it was all very formal. He was the talent, I was the help, and he was off limits unless I needed to ask him a question pertaining to my job. Meanwhile, I got to watch him and Jillian act like lovesick teenagers and try not to vomit.

I’d hoped we could go back to some semblance of a normal relationship. Perhaps I’d been naïve to think so, but I’d managed to convince myself that our private time would make up for all these lost hours. Unfortunately, the reality was private time together was non-existent. We worked long hours—me taking on the expanded responsibilities of my new job, while Cameron learned his lines and went through costume prep and gun training—so we were like two ships passing in the night.

I’d usually get home around nine, and then wait up for Cameron, only to fall asleep before he’d roll in sometime after midnight. I eventually learned these late nights weren’t taken up with rehearsals or other prep, but rather, were spent squiring Jillian around town to parties, movie premiers, new restaurants, or concerts. What was worse, he wasn’t even telling me about these “dates.” I had to learn about them the way the rest of the world did: in the tabloids.

From a professional standpoint, I begrudgingly admitted the PR team knew what they were doing. When a selfie Jillian had posted of them at a basketball game went viral, I knew she and Cameron had officially made it. It didn’t stop me from smirking, however, when several commenters remarked that Jillian was too thin, or that Cameron had a bald spot. He didn’t, of course, but a smudge on her lens had made it appear that way.

And yet through all of this, I hadn’t found the fortitude to tell my parents what was happening. I just couldn’t bring myself to deal with my mom’s feedback about what I needed to improve about myself. I would have to fill her in eventually, but I was avoiding it like I avoided a root canal.

In the end, she called me.

I was eating dinner alone, the voices on the TV keeping me company from across the room, when my phone rang. We had a regularly scheduled twice-monthly Sunday call coming up, and it wasn’t like her to deviate from the schedule. Jane Travers was a very busy woman, something she never tired of telling me.Immediately, I feared that something bad had happened to my dad.

“What’s wrong?” I answered, panic in my voice.

“Hello darling,” she replied smoothly. “Do you want to tell me why your fiancé is in Us Weekly holding hands with a woman who is not you?” Her tone indicated she was upset that she’d been made to look like a fool, not that I’d been made to look like one.

Any other mother might have recognized those photos would have been painful for me, but not my mom. She was only interested in how she’d explain to her friends that the man her daughter was engaged to was stepping out on her. I braced for the coming lecture about what I could do to make myself more desirable.

“Which picture did you see?”

I heard her flipping through the pages of the magazine, and it surprised me she didn’t have it bookmarked. “That would be in the ‘Stars; They’re Just Like Us’ section. Cameron is seen leading his, and I quote, ‘beautiful new co-star Jillian Templeton’ down Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade.”

At least she hadn’t seen the one where they held hands across the table in a quiet, out-of-the-way Mexican restaurant in Topanga Canyon, a place you wouldn’t take a fake girlfriend for publicity. That Cameron and I had discovered it a couple of years ago made the photo that much more painful.

With a groan, I decided to fill her in on my increasingly terrible secret. “I’m going to tell you something, but you absolutely cannot breathe a word of it to anyone but Dad. That means Aunt Sue, any of the ladies you play tennis with, your hair stylist, your manicurist. No one.”

She huffed out an offended snort, as if that wasn’t exactly what she did with any secret if you didn’t first make her swear on penalty of death if she blabbed.

“I mean it. Promise me you’ll take this to your grave.”

“Fine, fine. Of course. I don’t know why you have to be so dramatic. You know I don’t gossip.”

I stifled a laugh. My mother lived for three things: shopping, gossip, and lunchtime martinis. That she tried to pretend otherwise was hilarious. There was a reason she’d seen the picture in Us Weekly: she was a long-time subscriber. Star and Life & Style as well. It was a huge point of contention between us that I wouldn’t fill her in on what she referred to as my “juicy Hollywood gossip.” She just couldn’t accept that (up until now) my job was far removed from anything scandal-worthy.

“It’s for the movie.”

“What is, dear?”

“Cameron and Jillian. The pictures.”

“These aren’t pictures from the movie darling. This looks like a date.”

“I know that, Mom. It’s a PR date, to help sell the movie.”

“But the movie doesn’t come out for months. They haven’t even started filming yet.”

Yes, she followed the production schedule of Broderick’s movies. She assumed it was easier for her to track gossip I might have extra insight into if she knew specific filming dates and locations. Never mind that her theory had never panned out, she continued monitoring The Hollywood Reporter and Variety on a semi-regular basis.

I sighed and tried to keep the frustration from my voice. “You know how you always want insider information? Well, here it is. Cameron and Jillian are both unknowns. The studio believes it’ll help promote the movie when it comes out if fans think they the stars fell in love in real life.”

“That’s absurd, Sarah. Cameron’s not going to fall in love with someone else while you’re together.”

I gritted my teeth. “It’s not real, Mom. It’s fake. These are staged photos.”

---