and you have to wear clothes to a premiere, no matter what your freewheeling California inclinations say. Hippy.”
She laughed despite herself. “Idiot.” But his joking made her relax. “I’m willing to up to four zigs. Any more than that and I’m going to take your cane and start clubbing your fans so that they stay back.”
“Five.”
They were moving again slowly, with him waving, as they headed for the first point of the zig.
“Fine, but only because an odd number would flow better toward the door with you going in this direction first.” She quieted down as he approached the edge.
Once again, pieces of paper, magazines, pictures...things were thrust at Liam, and he dutifully signed and shook hands.
Every time he was ready to walk again she joined him and they made their way back to the other side, pausing for photos along the way, and once to speak with a camera crew who called to him for an interview.
Why was he using a cane?
Who was his date?
Was she the reason he’d broken up with Simone Andre?
Though she saw a tic in his jaw with the last question, Liam answered everything politely. Sprained ankle. Grace Watson. No. He’d begged Grace to come with him last night, and she’d miraculously been available.
At the last leg of the carpet, a very little boy at the front asked about the cane. Even though Liam had given this answer at least thirty times since that first crew had asked, he stopped in front of the boy and shifted his weight to the good leg so he could pinch the pants leg and lift it, showing the expanse of white tape poking up above his sock. “I fell down when I was running.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Oh, it hurts, but I wanted to come and have fun here tonight with everyone. Plus, they gave me a cane to use and it’s got a sword in it.” He pulled the handle up to give the boy a peek of the blade. “I couldn’t pass up a chance to use a sword cane.”
And he actually had been using the cane, and not just as a cool prop. Why he’d ever been upset to begin with still didn’t compute with her.
There was some gasping over the awesome sword cane, the boy lifting his own pants leg to show Liam his bandaged knee.
As much as she wanted to usher him right off into the theater and make him sit, make him take the weight off it, there was no way she’d interrupt wound comparisons and “I fell too” stories.
By the time she thought her face would split from smiling, the little guy’s mother opened her bag and after some digging produced and unwrapped a colorful bandage.
She watched as Liam lifted his cuff and the little boy crawled beneath the velvet rope to pull Liam’s sock down and place the bandage right over the bump of his taped ankle, a cartoon character bandage in an expanse of white tape.
Her heart squeezed as she watched. He might complain about how crowds drained him, but he loved it too. He was so sweet to the boy she had to look away briefly to banish sappy tears.
He fought to be at all these events, and it wasn’t just because he wanted his career to continue being wildly successful—although, of course, that had to factor in. It was something more.
He posed for pictures with the boy this time, and their matching bandages, then made it the last few steps into the theater.
“Let’s find where we’re sitting. I need to sit.”
“Of course you do. It still took forty-five minutes to make it into the building.”
“And that was fast, Grace. I’ve spent two hours out there before.” He leaned on the cane heavily and gestured for an usher. Soon they were being led to a small balcony to sit down. “Will we have people here with us?”
He nodded and then proceeded to name names—all of which she’d heard before, and none of whom she’d met.
Before they got there, she leaned forward in her seat to look at his leg. The tape looked tight but not tight enough to cut off circulation. She pulled the sock up for him, and set it all to rights. “Will there be any empty seats?”
He did a quick seat count and then shook his head. “Probably not.”
“Can we get a footstool brought up?”
“Oh, that we might be able to do,” he said, and then looked at her long enough to demand her attention. “You’re always concerned about my leg and pain level.”
“Of course I am.”
“Because you know how it is to have an injury?”
There was an edge to his voice, prompting her to make eye contact again in the low light of the theater.
“I’d like to think that I’d still care without that painful time in my past.”
“How did you get hurt?” He didn’t sound angry, as he had in the hotel, but there was more emotion in his voice than she’d expect from someone who’d stayed away so effectively. And who hadn’t felt the same way about her as she’d felt about him.
Even if she’d avoided asking about Liam, she’d always thought he’d probably still kept up with her through Nick. Nick was a talker, and he had spent a lot of time in the hospital with her while she’d recovered. “Nick really didn’t tell you about my accident? I thought you two told one another everything.”
“No. He never did. Which is pretty weird...”
Yes. Weird. Unless Nick knew about them. “I had a motorcycle accident when I was nineteen.”
“I never heard about you having a motorcycle either.”
“I didn’t. My boyfriend at the time... It was his motorcycle. After that, I had a lot of rehab. But it pretty much scratched professional swimmer off my career list. So I’m doing the next best thing.”
He made some sound of affirmation, but it didn’t sound settled.
Liam leaving had made her reckless, always seeking out the bad boy. That particular bad boy had made her go to the other extreme. Which made this premiere business so out of character for her that it could’ve been a joke. If someone had said to her last week that she’d be glittering from head to toe at a New York City premiere she’d have definitely thought it was some kind of joke where her dullness was the punch line. Because her life had been dull, probably. Other people would find the clientele exciting, and sometimes she did, but it was hard to be impressed by celebrities when she’d known Liam as long as she had. He was a real person, and that made them all too real and flawed as well.
Maybe they were all wounded too. Maybe it took that kind of hurt to get someone from talented to artist.
“I’m going to go find the usher,” she said, mostly because she didn’t know what else to say. “See if we can get that footstool.”
Before her musings moved onto lamentations of what she couldn’t have.
*
