Away From the Spotlight (14 page)

W
hen Da
niel
returned, he passed out the
Dodger Dog
s
and beers.  It was then that I realized
that
John was still holding my hand.  I let go to grab my beer and likely blushed a little. 
John didn’t look at me.

After
Da
niel
sat down, I thought I heard
him
say to
Max
, “What does John think he’s
doing
?”

Unlike most times
that
I had gone
to games
where
we left early to beat the traffic, we stayed for the entire game
to watch t
he Dodgers w
i
n.  I therefore didn
’t get home until late, around 11:30.  My sister was, surprisingly, not asleep and caught me as I walked in the
door.  I quickly learned why.

“Will called while you were out
at about eight
o’clock and
,
again,
fifteen
minutes ago.  You probably want to call him.  He s
ounded a little worried.”

“Okay,” I said,
appearing as if
nothing was wrong.  I went into my room and shut the door.  I looked at my cell phone.  I had one new voicemail, five missed calls and two text
messages. 
Great
.

I listened to the voicemail first.  Unfortunately,
I could never seem to
delete a message without listening to it.  I held the phone away from my ear so that I didn’t have to really listen
.  It
was
from Will and was
mercifully short, something along the lines of his being back at the hotel and wanting me to call.  I t
hen looked at my text messages.

The first one was around
eight
o’clock my time and said, “Missin
g u.  Call me when u get home.”

The second one, from about 11 o’clock my time, said, “G
etting worried.  R U OK?”

Concerned
that I would get a call in the middle of the night on the home phone that would wake up
Kelly
, I decid
ed to respond via text message.

“Saw ur pix
2
day in mag w/girlfriend
.  Don’t call.  Going 2 sleep.”

A few minutes later, my cell p
hone rang.  I didn’t answer it.

I received a
nother text almost immediately.

“PLEASE pick up the phone.”

I responded, “No.”

The nex
t one said, “PLEASE talk 2 me.”

I responded again, “No.  Going 2 sleep.  Turning off phone.  Don’t call house phone or u’ll wake
Kelly
.”

I turned off my phone and
l
ay
down on my bed.  I think I finally cr
ied
myself to sleep at about 2 a.m.

The next day was very painful as I was tired and upset, and was not looking forward to a long difficult evening at home alone. 
I
returned
home late that afternoon after
my classes and
practic
e
for my upcom
ing mock trial final with Nell.

Kelly
got home around
six-thirty
and, while I was microwaving my dinner, asked me what was going on.
I told her
.
H
er reaction was more impressed that I had dated a movie star than sympath
y for
my situation.  She had actually seen both
Midnight
movies released so far a
nd owned the DVD of the first.

“The movie
s
w
ere
good, but the books were much better.”  In light of the vast amount of reading I did for school and work, I didn
’
t generally read for fun
anymore
like
Kelly
did
.
Kelly
convinced me to watch the DVD with her while I choked down my diet chicken
fettuccini
.  I should have been studying, but I couldn’t help myself.

“When you said you were dating Will MacKenzie, I had no idea you meant
this
Will MacKenzie,” she mentioned
as we
start
ed
the movie.

In this romantic movie, Will was supposed to be one of the most beautiful men on the planet
with a dangerous secret
, datin
g an ordinary Midwestern girl.
 
It was a huge stretch to call Katherine Sullivan, who could have been a supermodel but for the fact that she was so petite, an ordinary girl
, b
ut that’s the movies for you. 
I
t was an uncanny parallel as to what was happening
in real life.  I truly
was
the ordinary girl.
For me, t
here would be no happy ending though.

Early on in the movie
,
Kelly
mentioned,
“I think
I read
somewhere
that
he and Katherine met on this movie and have dated
ever since
.”

Leave it to
Kelly
to be so dense as to not know that her words were killing me.
I
then
thought about how upset I was considering I had only known
Will
for a few weeks.  How did I get so invested so fast?  It was
completely
unlike me.  The anger at myself for being so foolish was starting to match my anger at Will
for lying to me and using me.

When I finished all that I was going to eat of my dinner, I grabbed a sofa
pillow
and leaned back on the couch to watch.  I shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was that he was such a skilled actor.  Had he not been lying to me for the past few weeks
,
ma
king
me think that he was actually
interested in someone like me? 
T
hen again, if he and Katherine were
really
in love,
the role
probably didn
’t take much
acting on his part
.

We stopped the movie
intermittently
to clean up dishes, take restroom breaks
,
and get
more sodas
.  Our mom called at one point to see how my spaghetti
dinner
had gone over
. 
I didn’t want to get into what was going on, so I just re
sponded, “Great, Mom.  Thanks.”

By the time the movie was over
it was well after nine o’clock.

I studied for a little while and then c
ouldn’t help myself.  I
decided
finally
to
turn on my
cell
phone.  I had three missed calls and a text message from Will from this morning.  “B home 2nite.  Can I come over?”  I turned my phone off
again
.

I grabbed my Con
stitutional
Law II textbook
again
and star
ted reading.  About a half-
hou
r later, I heard the doorbell ri
ng.  I froze. 
I was pretty sure who it was at this late hour. 
I could hear my sister’s footsteps headed toward the front
door since her room was on the opposite side of the apartment from mine and close to the
front
door.  I didn’t have time to stop her.  I wanted to hide.  I could hear
Kelly
let him in and say, “Nice to meet you” fairly enthusiastically
.

Will
knocked on my door
.  A
s I was saying, “Go away,” he walked into my roo
m and shut the door behind him.

I stood up defiantly on the opposite side of my bed from the door.  He walked toward me, but stopped when he noticed that I was backing
away from him and couldn’t go any f
u
rther
.  I then got a
good
look at him.  He looked like a male fashion model, although a little haggard from what
was
probably
a
long day and a long
flight
.  H
e was wearing black pants,
a white shirt and a red crushed-
velvet jacket
.  He
appeared to have had his hair professionally
coiffed
and to be wearing some makeup.

“Listen to me
,” he pleaded
. 
“
I don’t know what you read, but I only have one girlfriend
:
you
.
”

The fact that he looked particularly perfect didn’t sway my anger. 
“Why should I believe you when you
’
ve done nothing but lie to me?”  With that, I sat down on the bed
facing away from him
and started tearing up.

“Because I’m telling you the
truth
.  The tabloids have been inventin
g a relationship between
Katherine
and me
for
years
.  We go out in public together from time-to-time to various events to promote our movies
.  W
e have our third film
together
opening soon and the final one
in the series
starts shooting
this autumn
.  But we
never
dated.  When I met her, she was still a teenager
,
and I wasn
’
t.  We are like brother and sister. 
Besides
, she
’
s had a serious boyfriend
forever
.”

I was unmoved.

“Do you want to talk to
Katherine
?  She
’
ll tell you.” 
Will
took out his
cell p
hone and made a call.

As I said, “No,” he spoke into the phone, “Katherine, I
’
m so glad you
picked up
.  I need you to talk to Shannon for me . . . yes, she’s the one I told you about . . . she read one of th
ose
stupid tabloids and believes it . . . I know
. . . can you tell her that?”

He p
laced
the phone in my hand and moved my hand to my ear.
“
Shannon
, are you there?”
I heard over the phone.

“Yes,” I said, more than slightly embarrassed.  I recognized the voice from the movie I had wat
ched only about an hour before.

“W
ill’s telling you the truth.  I’
m here with my boyfriend, Mark.  Say
‘
hi,
’
Mark.”  I heard
,
“Hi
,
” in the background.
“Will and I are just friends
.  He’
s like my big brother.  We see each other because we’re friends and we work together
.  T
hat’s it
,
I swear.  From what
I’ve
heard, he really cares about
you
.”

I merely said, “Thank you,” not knowing what else to say and
handed the phone back to Will.

“Thanks, love. 
Speak
to you
later.”  He hung up the phone.

Will’s eyes bored into mine. 
“Do you believe me
now
?”

“Then why all the lies?”
Katherine had only dealt with one
of my reasons for being upset.

Will
sat down on the bed next to me.  “They were more omissions than lies.  I’m so sorry that you had to find out this way.  I was going to tell you
,
eventually
,
but it was just so nice to be in a
normal
relationship
for a while
.  I didn’t want that part to end.  My life hasn’t remotely resembled normal for so long no matter how hard I try.  You have no idea how happy I was t
hat you didn’t know who I was.”