Gravity Happens (Forcing Gravity) (4 page)

Jase laughed out loud sounding more like himself than he had since he’d arrived, and I hoped I’d broken through the tension. I wanted the evening to be fun, not stressful.

“So what are we making?” he asked again since I’d never answered him.

I smiled. “Spaghetti. I’m making your grandmother’s recipe.”

Jase’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Seriously?”

I shrugged. “It’s your favorite, and I wanted to make something special.”

A few weeks before we’d met,
Celebrity Weekly
had published an article about Jason Brady’s twenty-five favorite things, and I might have cut it out and kept it after I met him. And I might have memorized the list. But one of the things on it was his grandmother’s spaghetti sauce. I’d learned that she was from Italy, and it was an old family recipe that had been handed down through generations. And since I’d wanted to do something nice for him, because he’d flown across the country to surprise me, I figured it was the perfect gesture.

He leaned over and kissed me. “I love you,” he said when he pulled back. “Seriously, no one has ever done anything like this for me before.”

“Really? Chloe never cooked for you?”

He sho
t me a look of disbelief, and I think he was surprised I was bringing his ex-girlfriend up. I wasn’t a big fan of her since she’d cheated on him and had broken his heart, so we didn’t talk about her much.

I’d
finally met her a month earlier when we’d been out at a club, and she’d sidled up to Jase trying to make nice and flirt with him. That was when he introduced me as his girlfriend. She’d shot me a smirk smile and then proceeded to glare at me most of the night whenever we made eye contact. She was a total bitch.

“No, Chloe liked to eat out, but once she did hire a chef to cook for us, which was good, but it was nothing like this. She never made me a family recipe.
She wasn’t as incredible as you,” he said, smiling down at me. “How did you get the recipe anyway?”

I smiled back at him.
“I asked Nora for it. I told her I wanted to do something nice for you, so she helped me out.”

The corner of his mouth rose as I mentioned his sister’s involvement in my plan.
He loved that we were friends, since Nora had never really warmed to Chloe, and she and I had become good friends over the past few months. We were the same age and actually had a lot in common. Jase was close with her, so they hung out a lot, and she and I had bonded pretty much instantly.

My da
d came out of the pantry then with two bottles of wine, set them on the island and opened one to let it breathe. Then he reached into the refrigerator, grabbed two beers, wordlessly set one in front of Jase and then settled down on one of the bar stools around the island.

“Thank you,” Jase said, as he opened his beer and took a big swig.

He started to pass it to me to share, and then froze in mid-air, most likely remembering that I wasn’t twenty-one before pulling his arm back and setting the beer on the other side of him.

I shook my head and focused on what I was stirring. Neither Jase nor I chanced a look at my dad.

“So Jase, tell me about this new movie you’re making,” my dad said, speaking up then. “Logan said it’s filming in New Orleans.”

Ah, shit.

I hadn’t exactly told my dad about the details of Jase’s new film. He’d actually signed on to shoot four movies when he’d inked the deal for this film since they were converting a series of books into movies. They were about a rock band, and each movie would feature a different member of the band and his story. Jase was playing the lead guitarist, so his character’s story was the first movie, but he’d have significant roles in all the others.

The issue
I had in telling my dad was that the books were all really racy, and the fact that they were converting them to film would be interesting. And let’s just say the audience would see a lot of my boyfriend’s naked body on the big screen. It wasn’t porn, not even close, but there were a decent amount of sex scenes. Jase assured me his front would be covered, but everything else would be on display.

I didn’t love that he was doing it, but I’d
sort of encouraged him to sign on to do the movie in the first place, so complaining just seemed wrong. We’d just been friends when the producers had been wooing him to play Griffin Meyers, the lead guitarist, and I knew he’d gone back and forth about whether he wanted to take the risk or not. In the end, after talking through it with me, his agent, his publicist, and his family, he’d made the decision to do it, and because I’d been so supportive at the time, I really couldn’t bitch about it now.

It wasn’t like I was worried about people seeing him mostly naked. He’d stripped down for a scene in
The Mulvaneys,
and the world already saw him as a sex object, so it wasn’t like that would change. But I was nervous about seeing him with another girl so often, and since I’d read the books, I knew how often he’d be ‘with her’. Unfortunately, I also didn’t know who that girl would be since the producers were having a hard time filling the role of Serena, the sexy music producer who Griffin falls for.

Jase turned to look at my dad and cleared his throat. “It’s
called
Sons of Sovereignty
. It’s, uh, a movie about a band. I play the lead guitarist, and there’s a love story,” he shared, carefully leaving out pretty much all of the juicy details.

I saw my dad nod out of the corner of my
eye. “Sounds like something I might like to see.”

Oh, hell no.

Panic suddenly gripped me at the thought of my dad sitting through Jase’s new film.

Jase smiled, but I noticed a dark cloud briefly pass over his face, and I didn’t know what it was all about. I hoped everything was okay with the movie.

“Logan’s made me watch most of your other films,” my dad continued, “and you’re a talented actor.”

My eyes went wide. T
hat was the first time I’d heard him say that since we’d started our Jase Brady movie marathon. I’d made him sit through
Radio Riot
on DVD, since I thought it was Jase’s best movie to date, and we’d gone to see
The Mulvaneys,
which was still in the theaters. Then we’d watched seven more of Jase’s more recent movies. I’d brought home my collection, so my dad, who didn’t go to the theater much, would understand the kind of actor Jase was.

I
looked up to see Jase’s eyes light up at the compliment. “Thank you very much. That means a lot to me.”

“When’s this new movie coming out?” my dad asked, keeping the conversation going.

“It’ll be out late next year,” Jase told him

I saw the look of intrigue on my dad’s face, and I really hoped he didn’t ask many more questions. I
did not want to explain the finer details of the script to him.

“What kind of music does the band play,” he asked, taking the conversation in another direction, I hoped. My dad
was really into music.

“Rock,” Jase answered, but I knew it wouldn’t be enough to peak my dad’s interest.

“Think Rise Against or Linkin Park,” I explained before he could ask.

He
nodded in appreciation. “My kind of music.”

“My dad
has seen Linkin Park five times,” I explained to Jase, and I saw a new appreciation for my father flash across his face. “In fact, he saw them on one of their first tours back in 2001. You saw them at Ozzfest, right, Dad?”

I watched Jase’s eyebrow raise in question, since 2001 hadn’t been that long ago, and I think he was trying to picture my clean cut, preppy dad at an outdoor rock festival. But my dad was young, and he still went to concerts. Even though he looked polished, he could rock out. He and I had attended many shows together over the years. In fac
t, we’d met Sasha at The Killers concert we’d gone to over a year ago. She was as big of a fan of alternative rock as my dad was, which was one of the reasons they got along so well.

My dad shrugged
. “I did. I had Logan during the school year, but during the summer she went to her mom’s house every year, and I needed things to occupy my time, so I went to a lot of concerts.”

I smiled, and
Jase nodded and looked over at me, smirking slightly. “So that’s where Logan gets her taste in music. It all makes sense now.”

I bumped him playfully with my hip and turned to my dad. “Jase likes to make fun of my music
, because I like angry rock. He’s more mellow.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” my dad said, taking a sip of his beer. “
I’m into it all, but Logan has always gravitated toward angry music. She was a big fan of P!nk, My Chemical Romance, and Fall Out Boy growing up. She was a very angst-ridden child.”

Jase laughed.
“Yeah, that’s pretty much what she makes me listen now,” he commented, so I elbowed him playfully.

I was glad to see they were getting along so well. Now that the ice had been broken, I felt relieved.

“Hey, just because I’m don’t listen to The Black Keys and The Horrible Crowes constantly doesn’t mean I don’t have good taste,” I defended.

Jase leaned close to me. “I never said you didn’t,” he said softly, giving me his barely there smile that looked like he had a secret just for me. “And you like both of those bands.”

I smiled. “Yeah, I know I do. They’re pretty awesome.”

“Hell yeah, they are,” he
murmured under his breath.

“So are they teaching you how to play guitar for the movie?” my dad asked, clearly intrigued by Jase’s next role.

I had no doubt once he learned that Jase had been taking guitar lessons for the past two months, they’d be jamming out, and
that would solidify Jase’s worthiness in his eyes.

My dad’s
cell phone chose that moment to ring, and he looked down at it, shaking his head. “Work,” he muttered. “I’ll just be a minute.”

“That’s fine, Dad,” I said as he left the room.

Jase grabbed my arm that was stirring the tomatoes I’d chopped, mixing them with the onions and garlic. I looked up at him in surprise and didn’t enjoy the look on his face. He’d gone from playful to serious in about a second.

“What’s wrong?”

“I have to tell you something,” he said suddenly and panic gripped me. Something was wrong. What the hell kind of bomb was he going to drop on me? Did he not like my dad? Had he said something to offend Jase? I wracked my brain trying to remember any part of the conversation that hadn’t been aboveboard. I couldn’t think of anything.

“Okay
,” I said cautiously. “What’s going on?”

He took a deep breath. “Do you want to sit?”

I felt my face getting flushed and not in a good way. “No, Jase. I’m good, but you’re freaking me out. What happened?”

He took another deep breath, leaned back against the island and threaded his arms around my waist. It was almost as if he felt like I might run, and he wanted to keep me in the room. All I could think was, what the hell is going on?!

“They cast the female lead in
Sons of Sovereignty.
”

I was sure I looked confused for a second, because I wasn’t sure what the big deal was. “Okay. Who is it?”

Jase looked like he didn’t want to tell me, and I started to get nervous.

“Chloe,” he finally said, and my eyes went wide.

“What?!”

He nodded. “I know. It sucks, and Erica tri
ed to push back on the decision because of my history with Chloe, but the director is convinced she’s perfect for the role of Serena.”

I closed my eyes for a few seconds as
I realized my worst nightmare had come true. Of all the actresses in Hollywood, they had to cast his ex. Seriously! What the hell were the odds? But Jase was already freaked out, so I didn’t need to add fuel to the fire.

“Well, you two do look good together, and she’s really beautiful. I guess she sort of does look like how the author described Serena,” I said as positively as I could.

Jase looked taken aback, so I was pretty proud of my acting job. I was sure he expected me to pitch a fit and get upset, but honestly that wasn’t really me, and what could I do. If Erica, his agent, couldn’t get the producers to change their minds, then what the hell could I do?

But this sucked. That mean
t Jase was not only going to be almost naked around his ex-girlfriend, but he’d be committed to filming
four
movies with her. That blew.

“Logan, really?” Jase asked, possibly not buying my acting as much as I thought. I noticed his grip around my waist got just a bit tighter.

“Hey,” I said, aiming for polished honesty. “I’m not thrilled with the idea, but if it’ll make the movie great, then it’s what’s best.”

He sighed. “Yeah, but I can’t stand her. I’m going to have to be near her and kiss her and–” he paused and made a gagging face that made me smile.

“You’re not really kissing her,” I reasoned, even if the thought of a fake kiss made me sick to my stomach.