Falling into You Read online

  I had never seen her before, so she obviously hadn’t gone to Sampson. Probably someone’s college friend, then. I make a quick assessment from the distance.

  Hot or not?

  She’s tall and slim, with long hair that defied a description of color—brown and red and amber all rolled up into one. The smattering of freckles on her nose makes her approachable-looking, although she’s still standing by herself.

  She’s wearing a really ugly pair of jeans and a blue shirt. The clothes aren’t doing anything for her, that’s for sure. “Shoes can tell you everything about a girl.” That was a little piece of wisdom that Diana, my older sister, had imparted to me several years ago. How high were the heels?

  Actually, no heels at all. Flip-flops. In 30 degree weather. Interesting.

  Girl-next-door-pretty, I decide. Except for the eyes. She had hardly even looked my way, but I did catch a glimpse of a pair of the bluest eyes I had ever seen. I couldn’t see them anymore. Still, she’s not my usual type. That honor goes to leggy, black-haired, black-eyed vixens who go by the name of Sophia.

  “Chris, tell us all about it. Is LA fabulous?” Christine flickers her hand over my arm as she giggles. I had completely blocked out the inane conversation and the trolling laughter and I realize I’ve been staring blatantly at the girl in flip flops.

  I turn back to Christine, putting my face back into a composed mask. It should be pretty easy to jump back into the conversation. The last time I checked, they were obsessing over their latest Fashion Week conquests—both the clothes and the men. All they’ll want from me is a quick smile of admiration.

  “It’s not New York, for sure.”

  Ain’t that the truth? I hated LA. Plastic trees and plastic sunshine every day. Just not my thing. I had gone to set every day, wearing sunglasses and a hat to hide from any paparazzi interested in me. Not that there were many of them. A stray one, here or there, would watch from the distance at a club or a restaurant, but they mostly left me alone.

  “Isn’t that Chris Jensen?” one would ask, pointing my way and snapping a shot. It wasn’t the barrage of flashbulbs and lights that some part of me might have secretly wanted.

  “Not yet,” my agent had said. “It’s in all good time, though. I’m putting my bets on you this time. You’re the next megastar, Jensen.”

  The most recent movie I had shot in LA was a high-school romance. It wasn’t going to win any awards, but the director and my co-star said that I would soon be the next big thing, echoing the words of my agent. I mostly hoped that would be the case. I would have to be a total fool not to fall for the vision of girls falling at my feet and screaming fans. My time in LA had taught me that celebrity was everything. Every door opened, every private jet chartered, every courtside seat obtained.

  Of course I wanted that. It was just a tiny part of me that said maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to stop all of this business and go back to school.

  There was a shitty side to Hollywood. While there’s a shitty side to any place, it happens to be slightly more pronounced in the land of Maseratis and plastic surgery and broken dreams. I had seen it with my parents, both of whom were in the business.

  My father had been a well-known director until he took a shitload of money to direct the fifth installment in a lesser comic book movie series. The main character’s best power was shooting lasers out of his eyes. Everything about the movie, from the cookie cutter heroine to the glasses the hero wore during the daytime to hide his identity, had been stolen from another film.

  I could have told my dad that it wasn’t going to work out.

  It worked out well enough for him to purchase an apartment on the Upper West Side with six bedrooms, twice the size of any New York apartment I had ever seen and approximately 1/25th of what he would have gotten for the money in any town but New York. It also paid for my “unparalleled academic experience” at Sampson Prep and gave me enough money to play with until the acting jobs started rolling in.

  It had also ruined my dad’s career and any hope he had of ever directing a major movie again. It had ruined his life.

  My mom’s an actress. She’s not famous or anything like that, but she’s good enough to get steady work. She’s currently the third lead in a play on Broadway. The lead was a former action star who had gotten drunk, screamed a bunch of slurs about black people in an interview, and promptly crashed his car.

  The play was supposed to rehabilitate his image, to show what an important actor he was. According to the Broadway magazines, he’s fucking my mom and going out with a bunch of dancers from the theater across the street every night, so I’m not sure how successful the attempt really was.

  My responses to the group of gigglers had been monosyllabic. I would need to make something of an effort to get something set up with Christine, just in case Sophia knocked me off my feet and I needed something (read: someone) to pick me up.

  “Call you later,” I whisper into Christine’s curtain of blond hair, letting my lips graze her cheek. She leans in, wanting more.

  Not yet. I turn away from her promptly, knowing that it would just drive her crazy. I laugh to myself. It really was too easy. With most girls, at least, except for the one that I wanted. Ain’t that the shit, though?

  As I turn to leave the balcony, a noise startles me, causing me to look again at flip-flop girl. She’s prettier than I thought at first. My gaze lingers over her, sizing her up.

  Maybe she wasn’t astoundingly beautiful like some of the girls in LA with legs for miles and chests that grabbed attention. She didn’t reek of sex like Sophia did. Her face was rounded slightly, and her hair fell, long and brown and wavy, to her shoulders. It still wasn’t quite fair to classify her as the girl next door type, which had never held much interest for me. There was danger there, in the way her body moved and her eyes twinkled.

  Her enormous blue eyes meet mine and they grab me and throw my stomach around for a loop. This was getting more interesting by the minute.

  I smile at her. She’s obviously startled for a second, but she manages to recover and she smiles back. It spreads across her face and up to those eyes, sea-blue and green and endless.

  I’ve heard people talk about smiles that reach to every corner of the face, but hers stretched beyond, lighting up every square inch of the space around her. This was getting curiouser by the second. I wanted to know how she came to be here, who she was. She didn’t seem to know anyone. A hanger-on? I dismiss the thought as quickly as it came to me. Not the right descriptor.

  She was still standing there. I could go and talk to her, I think. She didn’t seem unfriendly. Just…detached. Maybe even a little sad.

  No. No. You are here for one reason and one only. Unless you counted Christine, which I didn’t.

  Sophia.

  I had to see if it was still there, the electrical chemistry that we always had. To be more accurate, the chemistry that I thought we had and that she had dismissed with little more than a wave of her hand. She had crushed me into a million pieces when we were thirteen and I had kissed her. She shoved me away, laughing and telling everyone that I had stinky breath.

  When I had grown five inches the summer before our sophomore year and girls started running their fingers through my hair at parties, interest had started to appear in her face. I took it and grabbed it, knowing that I had wanted her for six years and there was NO FUCKING WAY I was missing my chance. Christ. I wished I had left it alone. And I was glad I hadn’t. Even if…

  She had broken me two years before. I wonder if she had seen the movie posters. Maybe the fact that I had recently given interviews to a dozen teen magazines and could possibly be on the verge of being famous could change her mind.

  Would I want her if the only thing she wanted was a little taste of Hollywood? I would like to tell myself no. I would like to say, to hell with her if the only thing she wants is to tell people that she is dating a fledgling movie star. I could find someone else, if that’s all she
wants. Christine, maybe. I could even go talk to flip-flop girl.

  That wasn’t really going to work. Christine was nothing. Flip-flop girl was interesting. But I had unfinished business. Sophia Pearce.

  I shake my head, trying to get flip-flops out of it, but the memory of enormous, guarded, and haunted blue eyes follow me into the party. I didn’t even want to think about what those eyes would look like if they were truly laughing. I peer into the kitchen. With one glance at a black-haired girl swinging her legs on the countertop, I move all thoughts of flip-flops to the very back of my head.

  Sophia’s laughing as our friend Sam pours a large shot of whiskey into a rocks glass, adding more, looking at her, laughing, and then adding more again.

  It was a motion he had down to an art by the end of freshman year at Sampson.

  He hands it to her and she throws it back greedily. The apartment is filled to the brim with faces I did and didn’t recognize but my brain is glued to a pair of dangling, perfect legs.

  “Sophia!” A girl, teetering precariously on sky-high heels, screams at her. She pushes past me to throw her arms around Sophia, who handles her like she’s a very poisonous snake.

  “Claire. It’s good to see you,” she replies tensely. She’s looking for an escape.

  “We all thought you had disappeared for good into the land of Scarlett O’Hara,” Claire says, grabbing Sophia’s arm even as she’s trying to extract herself.

  “Atlanta isn’t exactly the Deep South, you know.” Sam had moved to a new group, shaking the bottle of whiskey suggestively at Sophia, who’s staring at Claire with a look of disdain. He raises his eyebrows and me and throws a nod towards Sophia.

  I hadn’t managed to hide my sick fascination with her as well as I had hoped if Sam, the world’s biggest gossip, knew about my not-so-minor obsession.

  “Why on earth, darling, would you have wanted to leave all of this?” Claire’s falling into the counter, but Sophia grabs her arm to straighten her.

  “Because…” Sophia licks her lips and stares directly at me. “I needed a few tastes of those Atlanta boys.”

  The thought of her with blond boys with thick accents and names like Whitford and Ashby leaves a bad taste in my mouth. That line was clearly meant for me. Of course.

  Sophia may still have the record for skipped classes at Sampson—she managed to miss every single Western Philosophy class, telling the teacher that she had contracted some rare autoimmune disease—but I had never forgotten how smart she was, the way she could people like musical instruments.

  It didn’t stop me from smiling at the memory of a little girl with a long black braid, playing the piano. She played more dangerous games now. The warm memory fades into something considerably more pulse-pounding as I look again at her.

  “Sophia Pearce.” I extend my hand to her, carefully sidestepping Claire. “It’s been a long time.”

  She takes it and slides her body close to mine as we squeeze through the kitchen to the living room. If anything, the two years since I had seen her last had made her even more beautiful.

  Black hair fell smoothly down her back, thick and straight and dark. Her eyes were the color of onyx and flashed whenever she was mad or angry or laughing. They were unreadable. You never knew what she was thinking unless she expressly wanted to tell you. Or show you. But hair and eyes and skin didn’t mean shit when it came to Sophia. It was something about the way she moved, the confidence and “of course you fucking want me” attitude and clothing that left little to the imagination.

  “Christopher.” She crosses the room in a few carefully designed steps that make her hips sway. “You…” She runs her tongue over her lips. “Look. Incredible.”

  “You’ve used that line before.”

  She had. We’d been at a party in Brooklyn in the summer before junior year, when I had discovered how much more fun parties could be when girls found you attractive. She was coy at first, teasing me with a kiss here, a slow dance there. She left the party with someone else, of course. So, I did the next best thing. I grabbed the nearest girl who had shown me the least bit of interest and I pretended that she was Sophia.

  It was immature and stupid. I had hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but I finally realized that it was time to play her game, knowing that we weren’t fighting on the same field. It worked eventually, because more than anything else, Sophia hates to lose. That October, Sam had one of his infamous parties, which always ended up with at least five or six people locked on the roof in some kind of orgy.

  I’d known that I was her next conquest from the moment she’d stepped in the door and I didn’t even care. Two weeks later, after little more than heavy petting, she dropped me flat. She had been my obsession ever since.

  “I heard that you were shooting a movie.” She’s running her eyes over every part of me.

  Damn. I had been right about the movie thing. I knew I would be. I was hoping to find something in her that wasn’t there before, something that said, I remember how much I must have hurt you and I’m sorry and I was foolish. Even, I want you, Chris. Screw the rest of it.

  But none of that was there, just an unadulterated look of pure desire for my new “movie star” status. And not me.

  “I finished a couple of weeks ago. I have some press for the last movie I shot to do in town, and then it’s back to reading scripts and stuff.”

  “So you’ll be in town for a while?” Despite her question, she starts looking around the room, clearly telegraphing her boredom.

  It was a calculated move. This was her game. She would entice, seduce, make you fall in love with her a little, maybe, and then find something else to do. A girl playing a man’s game. It had always worked on me, and on every red-blooded male in the room. She was just so…casual about it, as if it meant nothing. As if I meant nothing to her. And I did. Mean nothing to her, that is.

  So, why was I still standing there? I could have almost anyone I wanted in the room. Almost anyone. And that’s why I was still there. Because I couldn’t have her. Or what I wanted from her.

  “A few weeks,” I say back, a second too late. She’s caught me thinking and her black eyes flash with amusement.

  She laughs. “Ohhhh. The famous movie star deigns to visit his peons.”

  “I’m not famous.”

  “But you will be.”

  Ok. That was it. I was officially done with this conversation. Perhaps not officially done with her. But done for now.

  I start flipping through my phone, pretending that someone had texted me. Sophia’s eyes say that she knows that there are no incoming texts.

  “Listen.” She inches closer to me. “I have this friend in town, and I told her I would show her the sights. You know, Chinatown and Times Square and all of that.”

  I look up. Sophia hated all of the tourist bullshit. Every time I figured I was going to get over her, that I would never have to think about her again because she was such a selfish, man-eating bitch, a flash of the Sophia that had given away all of her lunch in elementary school appears.

  “Oh.”

  “Do you maybe want to come and hang out with us?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’ll call you.”

  I had heard that one before. Jesus, I sounded like a girl.

  “Sure. Do that.” My voice is as cold as I can manage.

  I would call Christine. My planned hook-up would happen and I would forget all about this conversation, in which Sophia had made it perfectly clear that she wanted me and didn’t want me all at the same time. I would get out of there as soon as I could.

  “See you.” I smile at her, moving towards the door that led to the elevator. One point for Chris.

  As I glance over my shoulder, I catch a glimpse of Sophia walking back towards the kitchen. She turns to kiss the cheek of the guy who had handed her a drink. Then, she laughs, carelessly sets the drink on the table, and grabs his arm.

  “Hello,” she yells, to the party. “This music sucks. I wan
t to dance. Now.”

  Transfixed, I continue to stare as she kicks off her shoes and starts an impromptu dance floor in front of the grand piano in the living room. Flashing her best come-hither smile, she crooks her index finger in the guy’s direction and he moves like a bullet to her side.

  Smiling triumphantly, she glances in my direction and winks, mouthing, “Call me.”

  I take that back. Point to Sophia.

  Chapter 3

  HALLIE

  I glance at my phone as it beeps.

  Ben. Of course.

  We need to talk. Call me the moment you get this. I need to hear your voice to make sure that you haven’t run away to Australia. You won’t be able to find the coconuts.

  The dropping of any pretense of text language was not a good sign. Both Ben’s mom and mine were English teachers at our former high school in Ohio. They “decried the mockery that newfangled technologies were making of the English language.”

  Direct quote. We were practically conditioned to use semi-colons from birth.

  I think my mom actually went through my messages to make sure that every piece of punctuation was in place. While some moms were more concerned with the fact that their children were sending naked pictures of themselves to their boyfriends, I actually think mine would be happier with that then with the use of any number in place of a word.

  So, I was the only nineteen-year-old on the planet who spelled out whole words. Ben was more rebellious; his concession to regular texting language was the word “u.” It actually took him more time to type that way. He would go back and replace the “you” with “u.” “You are so insane,” I told him once. “The Grammar Nazi will never win,” he had proclaimed.

  The fact that he had left the “yous” in the message told me that he was angry. But it was the reference to Australia that nearly made me weep. It’s a good thing that my tear ducts had been basically glued shut since I cried the time that Jimmy Fleet told me Santa wasn’t real in first grade.