Falling Into You (36 page)

He puts his hands up in surrender. “Fair
enough.” He looks at his phone.
“What time is the party?”

“Probably like 10?”

“Well, Miss Talks-too-much, it’s already 8:30.” He takes
in
my
tear-stained
face
and the
blue dress that I had been wearing the night before. “You may want to get cleaned up.
” He wipes my cheek with his finger, smiling.
“
And as much as I hate to say it, you should probably text Mr. Wonderful.”

I throw the pillow on the couch at him. “There’s the
Ben
I know.”
I get up from the couch and wrap him in a giant hug.

“Thanks for saving my life agai
n,” I whisper. “Even if I am a jerk
who never picks up her phone.”

“
Saving lives is my job. Two summers of lifeguarding, remember?” His voice is light, bu
t he’s holding on to me tightly.
I need him to know what it means to me that he came.

“Really, Ben. Thank you.”

“
Any
thing for you, Hals
.”

Chapter 24

Chris

I haven’t spoken to her in a day. I
t feels like
an eternity.

Even though I’ve had to stop myself from rushing over to Sophia’s apartment and throwing my arms around her, I kept my distance. No matter what happened in that hotel room, she wasn’t going to take well to my coming in and sweeping her up like a helpless child.
She was too independent,
too proud. So I settled for going crazy in my head instead.

I managed to smile through the press conference, to pump Alan’s
hand. I even
appease
d
Marcus by doing what felt like endless interviews with movie magazines and radio shows. When I had left the studio’s New York office, there had been a dozen photographers or so, snapping my pi
cture and forcing me to duck
into the waiting car
that rushed me to my apartment
. Hallie would h
ave gotten a real kick out of the flashbulbs, I think
.

I’m oscillating between rage at the thought of her and someone else, someone else that maybe she loved, and determination to hold on to her.
I had run through every moment with her, anything that said that she belonged to someone else, and I couldn’t find anything. Maybe it was
a
giant
misunderstanding. Maybe there was something she wasn’t telling me.

Maybe she was actually an alien life form.
It really didn’t matter.

Nothing worked without her there.
I needed her.
Just when I had been about to break, to sprint over to
Sophia
’s to see her,
cameras and pride
and foolish independence aside, my phone buzzes. Knowing that it’s probably Marcus texting me for the thousandth time and foolishly praying that it’s not, I grab it.

All of the words are spelled out, and I smile before I even
try to decipher meaning
.

I messed up. I’m sorry. I’ll be at Sam’s later for a little bit. Can we talk there? Or somewhere?

Whatever she needs to say, I need to hear it. My response is automatic.

Ur perfect. B there waiting for u.

It takes me an agonizingly long time
to get a car
arranged
. I think about just grabbing a cab, but Marcus had warned me that the paparazzi were going to be crazy for a few days, trying to get pictures of the new James Ross. I’m pacing back and forth in my apartment
, wearing a hole in Diana’s favorite rug, when
the car service calls
.

I’m rushing out of the
building
when I get hit by a barrage of flashbulbs
. The dozens of people shouting my name
tell me that my life has
irrevocably chang
ed.

“
What are you, famous or something
?
” the driver
asks as I hop into the back of the
black sedan.
He’s looking at me in the
rearview
mirror and I shrug.

“Just a guy trying to get to a party.”

He makes a little noise. “Yes, sir.”

I’m look
ing back at all of the cameras.
I know that
I can’t do it without her, the press and movie and my dad and sister. I have to get her to come to Prague.
I have to get her to be with me.

Mercifully, the cameras don’t follow me to Sam’s building
and I’m able to sneak in
past
the doorman. The apartment is already
filled with people and
I shove past someone to get to the
kitchen
.
Where could she be? I comb the crowd for a glimpse of her hair, her face, but
even though I’m rushing
through the rooms
like a madman,
t
here’s no sign of her anywhere.

Memories
of her alone on a balcony
and of us dancing on the roof
flash through me
.
There’s only one place she could be. I break through the crowd and press the button on the elevator, willing it to go faster
and busting through the doors when I get up there.

I don’t see anything at first, because it’s dark and I’m frantically checking the corner where we had danced
but then
I hear her voice
coming
from the far side
of the roof
, near the opposite corner.

I turn
to find her, trying to keep myself from calling out her name with all of the desperation I feel.
Her back is to me and she’s looking out over the city, and I have to take a deep breath because just the sight of long curls trickling over her shoulders turn my knees into jelly.

T
here’s another voice. The world slows down.

H
e spins her around and t
heir
heads
are
so close that their foreheads
are
touching
. He’s wrapping an arm around her, and it’s a possessive gesture
. Neither of them sees me, because, I realize suddenly, they’re wrapped up in each other.

His
body is
tense
and
he’s blocking my view of her face, but I can tell that she’s nodding at him,
snuggled
comfortably in his grip
.
He touches
her face, brushing
her hair
away with h
is fingers
.
Jealousy
courses through me
when I see the look on his face, one that I know all too well
.

He’s
looking at her
as if no one else
had
existed in the history of the world.

I feel the tap
of long fingernails on my back
.
Sophia’s at my side, winding her arm through mine, but I push it away impatiently.
She opens her mouth to say something, but
I shake my head
violently at her, willing her to be quiet.
I
stare
again. He’s embracing her now
and her arms are around his back,
moving up and down
.
It’s intimate
and she’s curling herself inside of his arms
.
Like she curled into mine.

I’m blind with rage
.

It’s
my turn to
flee. Sophia follows me and we ride in silence, my body shaking with anger.
I’m full of single-minded determination to
wipe the entire thing permanently from my brain.
I head directly to
Sam’s
kitchen and reach for the first bottle I see. Tequ
ila. Perfect. I take long swigs, but
Sophia
’s hand
stops
me from taking another.

“Stop
it.” I grab the bottle from her.

I’ve taken four or five in less than a minute and my head is already spinning, either from the sight of the girl that I’m wildly, madly in love with
,
embracing
someone else
or from the alcohol. It doesn’t matter which one.
I can’t do this.
I ca
n’t watch her with someone else. I don’t want explanations.
I can’t look at her face
without it breaking me
.

“You’re not sharing,”
Sophia
protests, running her fingers over my arm. She tilts the bottle back to her lips and I stare at them, at her.

I take another and slump into a chair in the kitchen.

“Let’s go somewhere where we can talk,”
Sophia
says. “I’ll try to help you figure something out. I know
Hallie
better than practically anyone, anyways.”

I don’t trust her, but the alcohol makes everything fuzzy
so
I don’t say a word. I do, however, allow her to take my arm and lead me from the kitchen.

She drags me into an unoccupied bedro
om and we’re sitting on the bed. I pick up one of the books from the table and throw it at the wall. Sophia’s pinning my arms to my sides and I’m shaking her off, trying to free myself from her grasp
. “Jesus, Chris. Someone’s going to come in here.”

“Who is he?”
I ignore Sophia’s warning and pick up another book
.
It makes a satisfying thud as it falls to the floor opposite me.

“
Ben
.”

“I fucking could have figured that out for myself
,
Sophia
. Who is he to her?”

She hesitates and takes a step away from me, eyeing the objects in the room.
“Are you sure you want to hear this?”

I nod, but she still hesitates for a moment. “It’s an old
story
, Chris.
Girl meets boy. Under dramatic circumstances, something about being trapped in a closet, they become best friends
.
I’m surprised she hasn’t told you.”
There were a lot of things that she hadn’t told me.

Sophia sighs.
“
Everyone knows that guys and girls can never be friends
. I
t’s a proven fact. Someone always fa
lls
for the other person. She happened to fall in love with him first
.
Cue years of
unrequited love
.
”
Sophia’s
words break me, but I tell her to continu
e with my eyes. “I
t’s the same thing that always happens.
The only thing that ever changes is the ending.
”

Hallie
loved someone else. 
My thoughts are jumbled and I still don’t understand.
But it doesn’t solve the puzzle of her running from me in the hotel.

“
Why now
?
What is he doing here?
”

Sophia
shakes her head at me
. “
Guys are always blind about their friends until someone else enters the picture
.
”

I was the someone else. I’m staring at her, so she continues talking.

“Apparently, I’m going to have to spell it out. She used you. She probably didn’t even know that she was doing it, but it’s a classic move and one that always works. She stops calling, he gets impatient,
finally
realizes that his friend Hallie is hot and flies across the country to profess his love.”

“
So,
they’re together?” I need to know.

“They’re together.
” She looks at me curiously. “I didn’t know that things were so serious between the two of you
.
”

I give her a stony stare. “Things are not serious, apparently.”

“Well, that’s good, because you really don’t want to fuck with that kind of history
.
End of story
.
”

There’s something else that she’s not telling me.
“What did she say about me?”

“Honestly, Chris,
not much
. You know, the usual
things
.
‘Chris was
a good time, a nice distraction.
He’s a really good guy. He’s going to find someone perfect for him. It was never anything serious for me, you know.’” Her voice is raised slightly in a spot-on imitation of
Hallie
’s voice, and it pains me to hear it. “
It’s a good story to tell her friends when they go to see your movies. ‘I had a fling with James Ross,’ that kind of thing.”