Hidden Gem Short Story Collection (9781301405985) (20 page)

“
Carbine
was your first role,” Lucas said. “That was
your
first
role.
Most people have to work for a decade before they get anything even
close to that, if at all. You already got to skip all the work it
takes to get to that kind of movie.”

“
Which is why I
should
have
something right now. I just auditioned for a daytime soap
opera yesterday, do you know how many steps back that is for
me?”

“
Still sounds like a job
to me.”

“
Yeah, but I
shouldn’t
be taking a
job like that considering I’ve been in a movie like
Carbine.
”

“
Why?” Lucas asked,
raising an eyebrow. Madison stopped, swallowing her response. She
knew what she wanted to blurt out but she also knew how stupid it
would make her sound.
Because it’s
beneath
me.

“
I’ve been on dozens upon
dozens of auditions this past year,” Madison said, carefully. “This
is the first callback I’ve gotten.”

“
Well then, great.
Congratulations,” Lucas said genuinely. “You got a callback,
finally. Shouldn’t we be celebrating?”

“
It’s not enough for
me.”

“
Why?” Again, Lucas raised
his eyebrow. Madison cocked her head. She would have laughed if she
weren’t still so upset.

“
Because it took a year.
A
year
to get to
a callback for some shitty show that no one I know has ever
watched. And like you said, a year is like a decade
now.”

“
No,” Lucas shook his
head. “I said every year that passed between graduation and now has
been a decade in the sense that I’ve learned that much more with
every one that goes by. But when it comes to the passing of actual
time, a year feels like a day. It’s forever and nothing at the same
time. Like I said, it takes some people a decade to get to the
point where you are now and you’re complaining about one
kind of
bad year? You’re
complaining that you just got a callback for a major soap opera? It
doesn’t matter that
you
don’t like the show, many people do and many
people would love to be on it and have that be their job. Who says
you have to stop there? Your next step isn’t necessarily your final
step. That part is entirely up to you.”

“
But there are things that
are
not
up to me.
There are things like my stupid high school ‘history’ with Gemma
Hunter that’s following me around and messing with my reputation. I
lost out on potentially great jobs because her fans have dragged my
name through the mud. You should be asking Gemma why
she
hasn’t gotten over
it.”

“
Gemma can’t control her
fans and her fans only have so much control over your reputation.
With my limited knowledge on celebrities, I’m pretty sure there are
people out there who have done far worse than what you’ve
been
rumored
to
do and gone on to have A-list careers.”

“
Why are you still
defending her?”

“
Why are you still making
her your scapegoat?” Lucas countered with a slight shake of the
head.

“
Because
,” Madison sputtered.
“Because I worked really hard to get that part in
Carbine.
And I worked
really hard to do a good job as Dakota. And I worked really hard to
be civil with her and not blow her cover as some goody two shoes
which I easily could have.”

“
Did
you work hard to get the part in
Carbine
? Were you like one of the
other girls that was probably waiting tables at two different
restaurants while auditioning and paying off student loans or were
you some girl who got called in because her YouTube video happened
to go viral?”

“
Excuse me?” Madison
practically shrieked. She had had enough of Lucas’s
holier-than-thou attitude. She couldn’t believe the way he was
treating her. He grabbed her hand before she could back away. She
felt her heart race.

“
I don’t doubt that you
were a hard worker on set. And not saying anything about your
history with Gemma, no matter how much you may have wanted to, is
exactly the type of class and elegance I’d expect of you,” Lucas
said, calmly. “It was what made me fall for you to begin with. You
were so poised and confident, so self-assured. You were put
together in a way that no other high school girl was – I mean,
hell, you were more put together then than most adults are today.
But that’s also because you never had any reason to doubt yourself.
You were blessed with natural beauty, talent, and intelligence and
you were constantly recognized for it. You were charismatic and
charming and fun to be around. I was the luckiest guy in the world
that I even caught your eye, let alone be your
boyfriend.
In every sense of the
word, you’re
perfect.
”

“
Where are you going with
this?” Madison laughed. “If you’re just trying to keep me from
leaving, you’re going to have to do better than that.”

“
That’s because nothing I
said about you was something you didn’t know about yourself
already,” Lucas replied. Madison pulled her hand from his, crossing
her arms again. “And knowing what you know about yourself, it’s
that much more frustrating when things don’t go your
way.”

“
Are you calling me a
brat?”

“
I am, yes,” Lucas smiled.
She froze, staring at him. There was no malice in his response, but
he didn’t seem to be joking either. “But don’t worry, the term’s
relative.”

“
You better explain
yourself before I slap you.”

“
Well,” he began. “I think
it’s only natural for us to take what we have for granted and
compare ourselves to what we’re surrounded by. Back in Beauford, it
was tough to watch my family struggle and move their money around
just so we could keep our house when it seemed like everyone else
around me was more than willing to drop a grand on a designer dog
collar. We were all working for hours on end just to get through
all the bills and ultimately, the debt before we were forced out of
Beauford altogether. Compared to everyone else, it sometimes felt
like I had it pretty bad. Hearing people cry over their parents
buying them the wrong car for their birthday was absolutely unreal
to me. But then when I started teaching outside of Phuket, I stayed
in what was considered decent housing with another teacher. Water
pressure was low if it could be called pressure at all and our
plumbing was pretty questionable. It was kind of luck whether or
not the toilet would flush that day. Our walls would mold from the
humidity and sometimes even crack and as a result, we kind of a had
a lizard issue.”

“
Seriously?” Madison
laughed, genuinely surprised by Lucas’s living conditions. “And you
put up with that for two years?”

“
I felt bratty for about a
month while I missed air conditioning and proper plumbing on an
hourly basis. Then I adjusted and got used to it then wondered how
I had ever taken anything I had for granted at all. Sometimes you
don’t recognize what you have until you don’t have it
anymore.”

“
Alright, Lucas,” Madison
sighed, smiling despite herself. “Enough with the talking in
circles. Just say what you want to say to me. Let’s skip the lesson
and get to the point. I won’t explode. I won’t run away. I won’t
slap you. Just talk.”

“
In the past, your idea of
hard work was showing up at the right place at the right time. That
was about as much effort as you would put into anything, because
for awhile, that was all you needed. You could trust your beauty
and charm and talent to take care of the rest. The issue now isn’t
that you’ve run out of luck because luck doesn’t really exist. Luck
is just being prepared for opportunity and once upon a time, you
were able to rely on the things that just came natural to
you.”

“
And if that theory were
true, what’s happening to me now?”

“
Madison, you’re playing
with the big guns now. You’re not in some small town in some small
high school. You were thrown into a world where there are now
thousands of girls who are as beautiful and charming and talented
as you, most of whom probably wouldn’t throw in the towel and call
it a night after just one year. Your dozens of auditions are
nothing compared to the hundreds that they’ve been on. Your one
role in a critically acclaimed movie means more than the handful of
student films on their resumes. You’re already ten steps ahead of
everyone else and just because you’re twenty behind the people that
you want to be doesn’t mean you should stop now. All that has
‘happened to you’ is that things got a little harder. All that
means is that now you have to put just a little more effort into
everything. That doesn’t sound so bad to me. So why’s it so bad for
you?”

~

Madison woke up, once again alone in someone
else’s bed. She had gone home with Lucas, wrapped up in the
thoughts he had stirred in her, suddenly unable to leave his side.
She texted Chrissy and Claire who had unfortunately gotten home in
time to catch her Pop Dinner ambush and were concerned for her
well-being, informing them that she wouldn’t be staying with them
that night without even knowing if she was welcomed to stay at
Lucas’s.

But being the gentleman that she remembered
him to be, it wasn’t a question of whether or not it was okay for
her to stay but whether or not she preferred the foam pillow or the
feather one. Lucas gave her his bedroom and opted to sleep in the
common space, explaining that his roommate, Jack, would probably
embarrass himself if he found a beautiful woman randomly crashing
on their couch with no explanation. She knew the real reason was
because he was too polite to allow her to sleep anywhere but a
proper bed, but also probably wanted to avoid the awkward
conversation of whether or not it was okay to sleep in it together
considering their history.

The sun beamed in through a dent in his
blinds, casting just enough light for her to look around Lucas’s
bedroom. It was pretty bare and lacked the boyish, lived-in charm
of his room in Beauford. The walls were white, save for a single
panel of exposed brick behind his mattress. A pile of books were
neatly stacked atop a desk made of unfinished reclaimed wood and
piping, clearly the focal point of his space. A black, rolling
suitcase stood beside it.

She rolled out of bed, noticing that the
smell of spices in her hair had been replaced with Lucas’s familiar
scent. It was the only thing about him that was the same. Even his
warm hazel eyes, that way he gazed at her that made her feel as if
she was being embraced, even that was no longer the same. There was
a firmness to him now that made her wonder what had run through his
mind in the years since they’d seen each other. He had always been
quietly confident and mature beyond his years, but it was subtle
then and it was far from that now.

Madison pulled down the hem of her dress and
smoothed the fabric out. Instinctively, she looked for a mirror but
there was just about nothing reflective in Lucas’s room. She
slipped out of the bedroom and found that to be the case in the
living room as well. On the couch was Lucas’s pillow and a blanket
that had already been folded neatly and draped over the
armrest.

“
Wow,” a voice said.
Madison spun around to see a scrawny guy in a t-shirt and boxers
with a toothbrush hanging out of his mouth. “You’re
Dakota.”

“
Yes, I am,” she laughed,
watching as the guy stood there, too stunned to care about the
toothpaste foam that clung to the corners of his mouth. “Well, no,
I mean, I played her but I’m actually Madison Lennox.”

“
I’m Jack and I
love
Carbine,
” he
said with the same weight of a first-timer at alcoholics anonymous.
Madison smiled at his choice to use the present tense, as if he was
actively loving the movie as they spoke. “Are you lost? Do you know
where you are right now? This isn’t your home as far as I
know…”

“
Yes, I know where I am,”
Madison replied. “I’m Lucas’s friend.”

“
How has he never
mentioned that you two are friends?” Jack exclaimed, retreating
into the bathroom to quickly rinse out his mouth. He came back out
with a towel and a pair of glasses. “He knows I love the movie. It
seems like it would be, I don’t know, natural conversation to bring
it up.”

“
I don’t know,” she
scrunched up her nose as she thought about it. “He’s weird like
that.”

“
He is, isn’t he?” Jack
nodded, pushing his glasses up his nose. “But I like him. He’s the
best roommate I’ve ever had. Super chill and clean. A little bit on
the quiet side, but when he talks, everything that comes out is a
gem.”

Madison reflected on her own conversation
with Lucas the night before. He was definitely more talkative than
usual and more forthright than she ever thought he could be. Nearly
all of his words had stung her in one way or another, but a night
of restful sleep had soothed the wounds they caused and were
already healing.

“
Did Lucas go to work…
or…? Do you know where he is?” Madison asked, awkwardly gesturing
at the front door.