“Is this your first time?” I ask in the silence the hostess leaves behind.
This is as awkward as a Real Housewives reunion special.
“I just meant . . .” My laugh tinkles nervously like a fifteen-year-old on her first date. “Have you been to this restaurant before?”
This is not a date. Canon Holt is not your Thanksgiving date. You will not lust after him . . . anymore.
“No.” He studies his menu, his brows furrowed in some serious concentration. “Jill suggested this place and reserved my table.”
“She reserved mine, too. So sweet of her.”
The look he flicks at me over the edge of his menu says he doesn’t agree. “She needs to mind her damn business. Meddling.”
“Meddling? I don’t understand. She . . .”
She reserved us tables together at the city’s self-proclaimed most romantic restaurant.
“Oh.” Shit. “You don’t think she . . . that she thought we—”
“Uh, yeah. I do think she thought we.”
My face catches fire, mortification filling every inch of my empty stomach.
“Canon, I’m . . . I had nothing to do with this. I promise I was clueless.”
“I know that. For an actor, you’re not very good at faking.”
“Should I be insulted by that?” I ask, smiling in spite of the awkward situation.
“No. Some actors don’t know when to stop pretending. You do. You’re as clear as glass and don’t dissemble well.”
“You mean everyone can read my emotions easily?”
“I don’t know about everyone.” He holds my eyes over the menu. “I can.”
That makes me highly uncomfortable because my emotions are in constant turmoil around this man, and right now, on a scale of deep respect to raging hormones, I’m at a twelve. To think I’m transparent to him, that he might see . . .
“I should go.” I stand, tossing the linen napkin onto the table.
“Sit down.” The gravel-rough command in his voice sends a shiver clamoring up my spine.
“I don’t think so. I really should—”
“And where will you go? What will you eat for Thanksgiving dinner?”
“Um, In-N-Out Burger?”
His low-timbred chuckle, accompanied by that rarest of phenomena, a full-fledged Canon Holt smile, catches me where I stand, trapped between coming and going.
“Neevah, sit. It’s one meal. We’ll survive it.”
I check his expression to see if he means it, but unlike me, Canon is opaque glass frosted by his iron control. So I’ll take him at his word.
I sit and pick up my menu.
“So, what looks good?” I ask.
Besides you because dayummmmmm.
Neevah, this is why we can’t have nice things. If you’re gonna stay, you have to stop this inner drool dialogue.
“Do you realize you move your lips when you talk to yourself?” he asks.
I lower the menu, my eyes wide. “Can you hear me?”
“Can I hear what you’re thinking? No, even I’m not that good. I’m not Dr. Dolittle.”
“I know . . . Can you make out what I’m saying when my lips move?”
“No, you just say it literally to yourself. I first noticed it on set. You’d drop a line or get a step wrong, and then walk off with your lips moving. Talking to yourself.”
I groan and lift the menu high enough to cover my face. With one finger, he slowly pushes it down until I’m forced to face him again.
“Don’t be self-conscious,” he says, a half-smile playing around his lips. “It works for you. Whatever you got wrong, you always got right after you talked to yourself.”
“You’re like the eye in the sky back there in video village with all your screens and control center. Do you always direct from there? Or do you ever come out?”
“It depends. With a movie like this, especially ones with huge dance numbers, I need to see what we’re getting from every angle. I like the various camera shots, and I like to see how it’s coming out since that’s the way the audience will see it. I’ll be out there when we shoot outdoors. I’m too particular about light not to be.”
“A photographer’s son, huh?”
“Definitely. I never took a photography class, but my entire childhood was a clinic. All the best things I know about light and detail and composition, my mom taught me. The woman was obsessed with her camera.” He glances up with an ironic grin. “I mean, she named her son after one.”
I smile, too, recalling Remy Holt from his first and most personal documentary, railing at the sun, making art and daring her body to stop her.
“She was very wise and very pretty,” I tell him.
“She never lost either of those things.” Canon’s smile dies on his lips. “It was hard for her, losing so much control of her body. They’ve made a lot of strides with MS now. I wish she’d lived long enough to take advantage of them.”
“And your father? I mean, I assume you don’t spend every holiday eating in LA’s most romantic restaurant. You have any other family?”
“My mom and dad married because she was pregnant with me, but quickly realized that was a mistake. Instead of spending half her life with a man she didn’t love, she asked for a divorce. Actually, she demanded it. He moved to South Africa to pursue some business opportunities. Remarried and started a whole new family there. Three kids I barely know.” He shrugs. “He’s okay. We’re not super close, but I see him. We talk. Mama used to say she dodged a bullet, not because he was a bad man, but because he wasn’t a great one.”
“She was a spitfire, wasn’t she?”
“She was. I’ve never met anyone who lived as freely as she did.” He toys with the silverware wrapped in his napkin. “She had lovers and never tried to hide it from me. When we needed money, she didn’t pretend everything was okay. Even when times were hard, she didn’t take photography jobs she didn’t like or believe in at least a little. She said don’t use your gift for shit you hate to survive. Work in a grocery store, pump gas, pick up trash to get by before you corrupt your art.”
“So she would not have approved of you directing ‘Grind Up On Me, Girl?’” I tease.
“Probably not.” His laugh comes quickly and goes as fast. “Artistic integrity was everything to her.”
“Wow. So that’s what it took to make a man like you.” The words just slip out, and I immediately want to retract them. I sound like such a fangirl. I’m not starstruck. I admire him. Respect him.
Okay. Lust after him a little.
He doesn’t smile or try to play off my words in the silence that elongates between us, but holds my stare with an intensity that makes my toes tingle. And as much as I wish I could take the words back, the ones that tell him too much, I don’t look away either. If I’m glass, let him see. I’ll figure out another day how to hide.
“Do we know what we want?” the server asks.
I’m so startled by her intrusion, I bump my water, but catch it before it spills.
Canon goes for the turkey dinner, and remembering Jill’s suggestion about the fish, I order the salmon crepes.
He orders something dry and white to drink. I stick to water.
“I’ve never seen you drink,” he says, sipping his. “Alcohol, I mean.”
“I drink champagne occasionally, but I’m pretty strict with what I eat and have cut out alcohol for the most part. I have a skin and hair condition that I have to manage really carefully.”
“Oh, nothing serious, I hope,” he says with a frown.
Why did I even bring it up? It’s irrelevant, as I knew it would be. Takira’s been vigilant about using natural products and monitoring my scalp for new spots. I’ve made sure to stay covered when I’m in the sun, avoid smoke, keep my diet clean, and meditate so my stress stays low. As low as possible under the circumstances, at least. As for exercise, Lucia and her choreography are the best personal trainers I’ve ever had.
“It won’t affect the movie,” I assure him. “It’s under control.”
“Neevah, I wasn’t thinking about the movie.” He shifts his gaze to the creek just beyond our gazebo. “I was thinking about you.”
A small silence pools between us, rising like the water not far away until I think it’s over my head and I can’t breathe.
“So,” he finally speaks into the tight quiet. “You’re the last person I thought would be alone on Thanksgiving.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Come on. You telling me half the cast didn’t invite you over for dinner?”
“I guess I did have a few invitations, but . . .” I break off and laugh at his knowing look. “Okay. Yes. A lot of the cast invited me over when they heard I was staying in LA.”
“You’re one of those social people.”
“And you’re not?”
He lifts one what do you think brow before we both ease into light laughter.
“I needed some time alone,” I tell him. “It’s hard to explain, but I’ve never done a film before, and to start with something like Dessi Blue—to be the lead and have people constantly needing something, expecting something. The sheer physical demand—it’s a lot. And we’re coming up on some of the toughest scenes. I don’t know all my lines for next week yet.”
I give him a sheepish look because I probably shouldn’t confess this to my boss.
“I won’t tell,” he teases, laughing when I roll my eyes. “Hey. I get it. I’m constantly pulled on, too. Someone asked Spielberg what’s the hardest part of making a movie. He said getting out of the car. As soon as you arrive on set, everyone needs something.”
“Well I don’t have that kind of demand, but I really needed to focus and prepare. With Takira going home, it was a perfect opportunity.”
“And your family? How’d they feel about you missing Thanksgiving?”
A bitter laugh leaks out before I can stop it. “It’s not the first time, believe me.”
“You and your family—you’re not close?”
“We had a falling out years ago, my sister and I. It drove a wedge between me and, well everyone.” I trace the rim of my plate with one finger. “Sorry. You don’t want to hear this and I don’t want to tell you.”
“Tell me anyway.”
Canon isn’t an easy man to read, but he’s never fake, and the curiosity and yes, concern in his eyes right now, is sincere. It coaxes me to discuss something I’ve rarely told anyone.
“I got engaged my senior year in high school.” I shake my head, wondering what that eighteen-year-old kid thought she knew about love and forever. “I know. It was stupid.”
“Not with the right person, it wouldn’t be. Jill and her husband were high school sweethearts.”
“They were?”
“Yeah. They went off to college, never broke up, and got married their junior year. Twenty-five years and three kids later, they’re still together, so I think it depends on the person.”
“Well he was not the right person—at least not for me. My sister? Now they were apparently a perfect match.”
“Wait.” He leans forward, surprise alight in his dark eyes. “He cheated on you with your sister?”
“And my sister cheated on me with him. They might have gotten away with it had she not gotten pregnant.”
“Damn, Neev. You had some As the World Turns shit going on.”
“What you know ’bout As the World Turns?” I ask lightly, as much to shift the focus from me for a second as anything else.
“I watched my stories in the student union at college. Best way to pick up girls. They assumed I was sensitive.”
“I bet that didn’t last long.”
“No, not for long.” He laughs with a shrug of his broad shoulders. “I was very clear about what they were getting and not getting. That hasn’t changed.”
Lucia’s warnings whisper in my ear.
Quickest way to get your heart stomped is to sleep with him and expect something he never gave a girl before.
Can’t say he doesn’t warn you.
“But we were discussing your soap opera. Your fiancé got your sister pregnant?”
“Yeah. And you know the crazy thing? I understand exactly what your mother meant about dodging a bullet. I almost gave up my scholarship for Rutgers’ drama program and stayed in Clearview with him because he didn’t want to leave and didn’t want me to either. I was prepared to settle for whatever life he thought was big enough for me.”
“His loss, our gain. You were made for the stage, for the movies, to perform. Anything that would’ve taken that from you couldn’t have been right.”
The hostess brings our food and drinks and we both dive into our meals, leaving my family drama behind, talking about the movie and politics and music between mouthfuls. My body revolts whenever I’m around him, all heart-pounding and weak-kneed, but when we talk, it’s the best conversation. There’s an ease underlaid with a steady hum of desire. I tried to convince myself that it was just me, that he didn’t feel it, too, that I was delusional, but the heat in his eyes, the strike of lightning when our fingers brush accidentally at the bread basket, tells me the truth.
“So did you talk to your family today?” he asks, when we’re almost done with our meals.
“To my mother briefly. It’s awkward at home because they have a child together. They married. They have this whole life, and I don’t envy it one bit. I would have been miserable as Brandon’s wife, but the hurt doesn’t go away. He’s just as responsible for what happened, but she’s my sister. It just hits different, that betrayal. His mother’s family is in Virginia, and sometimes when they go there for the holidays, I’ll go home.”
I drag a fork through the remains of my mashed potatoes. “Otherwise it just causes tension for everyone because they’re all used to it. My mother and aunts and cousins—they’ve seen Brandon and Terry build a life there. It’s only when I come back around that everyone remembers how it all started. It makes me feel like the problem.”
“Do you miss her? Were you and your sister close?”
I think of sitting in the Palace Theatre beside Terry, tears streaking down my face with Aida’s song coursing through me. Gushing to my sister all the way home that I had discovered what I was made to do. I recall Sunday mornings in church, passing notes back and forth, giggling behind our hands when Mama pinched us. Remember us roller skating through our neighborhood, braids and beads flying in the wind. Singing Brownstone’s “If You Love Me” at the top of our lungs while washing dishes after supper, a whisk as our microphone.
Terry was my best friend.
“I miss what I thought we had,” I finally say, surprised by the tears I have to blink away. “We couldn’t have been what I thought we were for her to do that to me.”
“Do they seem happy?”
“I haven’t seen them very much, but they’re still together, so I assume.”
When the server comes to clear our plates, she hands us new menus and asks if we’d like dessert.
“Oh, no,” I tell her, smiling at Canon. “I must have been at least a little homesick. I made my mother’s apple cobbler. I’ll have that when I get home.”
“Apple cobbler is my favorite.”
Those words, on their own, are completely innocent, but paired with the sparks firing between us, it’s a dare I can’t ignore. I won’t.
“You could . . .” I falter, gulping down my nervousness and tossing caution out the window. “There’s plenty. Cobbler, I mean. You could—you could come over.”
While the invitation hangs over us, my breath seizes in my throat. My foot taps noiselessly beneath the table and I clutch my dress for dear life while I wait.
I can imagine his reasons for keeping things platonic between us. He doesn’t have to articulate them. I’m not that obtuse, but I want to tell him I don’t care. I don’t care about the power dynamic. I don’t care if people find out and think he gave me the part because we’re sleeping together. What the hell do I care if the cast talk behind our backs or speculate that he’s repeating his mistake by getting involved with another actress?
If I could say all of that, I would, but I don’t think I have to. I pour it into my eyes and let the anticipation flow from every part of me. If he can read me as well as he claims, he’ll know. If I’m glass to him, he’ll see.
“So, dessert?” the server asks again.
“No.” He hands the menu back to her, but doesn’t look away from me. “We’ll have dessert at home.”
