“Yep. You’ve got one too many chords. It’s like Willie Nelson said: All you need is three chords and the truth.”
“Oh, shut up,” Kate said, tossing a pillow at him, which he deflected, laughing.
“Ask your friend Carmen,” he said. “Her dad’s Mr. Pop Music. He knows I’m right and so does she.”
“Whatever,” she said. “I’m going to stick with my four chords until I wrestle them into submission.”
“Uh, you can wrestle me into submission,” Luke noted.
Kate threw another pillow, and it hit him in the chest.
“You know what they say about aggression,” he said, smirking. “It’s a sublimation of intense sexual desire.” His green eyes glittered playfully at her.
She laughed and scooted across the cushions to him. How could he be so sexy and so goofy at the same time? She kissed his neck and then his lips. “Mmmm,” she said. “But you’re the one who said you were mad at me, remember?”
“Well, last I checked, sexual desire is often a two-way street.”
She crawled onto his lap and threaded her fingers through his, sighing. “But I have to go soon,” she said. “It’s almost time for my ‘spontaneous’ dinner party.” She sat up suddenly, a thought striking her. “Hey, you don’t want to come, do you? Like, to take down the estrogen concentration a notch?”
Luke shook his head. “The Fame Game is going to be great for you,” he said. “But it wouldn’t be so good for me. Not at this point in my career.”
She sighed. “I know, you’re right. I just thought—”
“It was a sweet thought,” he interrupted, kissing her again. “But let’s keep us . . . between us.”
“Well, Carmen already knows,” Kate reminded him.
“No, I mean, let’s keep us away from the cameras and all that. Cool?” He continued kissing her.
She closed her eyes. She was glad he didn’t want to be on PopTV. A moment like this was perfect and private.
And if they were to keep their relationship a secret? Well, there’d only be more perfect, private moments like this one. Which was fine by her.
“This is delicious, Gaby,” Carmen said, carefully dotting the corner of her lips with a napkin. “Too bad I don’t cook, or else I’d ask you for the recipe.”
“Thanks,” Gaby said brightly. “I just sort of whipped it up. You know, a little sea salt, a little olive oil . . .”
Of course Gaby couldn’t sear tuna any more than she could tell you what the capital of California was. But Trevor wanted to make it look like Gaby was capable of making something besides sludge-colored smoothies, so they’d ordered the dinner from M Café and hidden the takeaway containers.
The room was hot from all the extra lighting that shooting required, and Carmen wished she’d thought about that before selecting her A.P.C. henley sweater ensemble. She looked around the table, noting somewhat resentfully that the burden of making conversation seemed to have fallen on her thus far. Kate was picking at the salad (those cupcakes had ruined her appetite, just like Carmen said they would), Gaby was now gazing vacantly into her water glass, and Madison was emailing her publicist on her bedazzled iPhone. (Rhinestones were so four years ago.)
“So,” Carmen said, turning to Madison, “how did your audition for The End of Love go?” Laurel had instructed her to ask this; personally, Carmen didn’t really care. She knew Madison wasn’t any competition for her.
Madison tossed her hair back and smiled faintly. “It was fine,” she said. “I thought Colum McEntire seemed sort of arrogant, though.”
Arrogant? Now that’s the pot calling the kettle black, Carmen thought. But of course she kept that observation to herself. “I know what you mean,” she said. “He’s tough.”
“I’m not sure I’d even want to work with him,” Madison said. “If he offered me a good role, I don’t know . . .”
Way to lay the groundwork for not getting the part, Carmen thought. Way to pretend like you don’t want what you can’t have.
“I’m sure you’ll get a great role,” Gaby said loyally. She smiled, but the expression seemed slightly painful for her. She’d gotten more fillers since Carmen saw her last, and her skin looked shiny and puffy. “Pillow face”: that was the tabloid term for it. And it was really unfortunate, because probably all Gaby needed to do to fill out her face naturally was eat something besides the odd lettuce leaf now and then. She hadn’t touched her tuna; she’d just cut it up and moved it around to different places on her plate.
“Totally,” Kate said. “You’ll totally get something.”
But Madison just shrugged and took a drink of Prosecco.
“What about you, Carmen?” Kate asked. “How did your audition go?”
Carmen had already told Kate all about it, of course, but the cameras hadn’t been rolling. “It went really well, I think,” she said. “I was pretty nervous, but it was great that I know Romeo. I mean Roman. Being able to read with someone you know and like makes it a lot easier.”
“That makes sense,” Kate said, blushing a little, probably because she knew “Roman” too. Carmen had considered mentioning to Kate that she and Luke had hooked up all those months ago, in the interest of full disclosure and being a good friend, but then decided it wasn’t even worth mentioning. It would only make Kate feel weird—and obviously Luke hadn’t said anything about it to her.
“Whenever I performed with my ex, Ethan, I hardly had stage fright at all,” Kate added.
“Maybe you should be part of a duo,” Madison said, obviously eager to change the subject. “Like Zooey Deschanel and whatever his name is.”
“She & Him,” Kate said. “They’re good.”
A new text from Laurel reminded Carmen that Kate was supposed to play her guitar in this scene. Kate’s next open mic was still a ways off, and Trevor thought the audience would need to be reminded just what she did with her time. So Carmen, ever helpful, said, “Do you know how to play that song of theirs—‘Change Is Hard’?”
Kate looked startled. “What? Oh, yeah.” She got up from the table—she wasn’t eating anyway—and sat on the loveseat in the corner with her guitar. Slowly she began to strum the chords to the song Carmen had requested.
Carmen smiled as she watched Kate play. She was really good. Dana’d had a lucky strike the day she ducked into that Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. Carmen felt like it had been lucky for her, too. It’d been a while since she’d made a new friend. After all, when you were the semi-famous daughter of two very famous parents, figuring out who was interested in you and who was interested
