Bethany will be pleased.”
Will handed off the gift and rinsed his hands in the ice. Oscar left them to deliver the fish to the immensely pregnant woman manning the grill.
“You caught those?” Leigh asked Will.
He nodded. “I go out most mornings. Motorboat, not canoe.”
“Wow.” She caught it this time, mocking herself before Will got the chance. “Wow….”
He smiled. “Get you a drink? Cocktail? Beer?”
Not sure she was ready for whatever filled people’s plastic tumblers, she opted for a beer. Following Will inside to a bustling kitchen, she smiled nervously at the other guests as he found her a bottle. She was introduced in warmly teasing tones, a flurry of names and faces. Leigh’s nerves returned, seeing how intimately they all knew one another, how laughter seemed to quiet when her guest status was announced.
She leaned close to Will. “Is it making people uncomfortable, my being here?”
“Uncomfortable is too strong. Not like the boss is in the room. But you do change the atmosphere. You’ve got the power to complain.”
“I don’t want to spoil anyone’s good time.” And she certainly didn’t want to be anyplace where’d she feel once again like an outsider.
Will nudged her with his elbow. “Give them a few more drinks, an hour or so to get used to you. Just be yourself.”
“Be myself.” Whoever that was. Leigh straightened, sipping her beer and deciding to do just what he’d said. She did know who she was. It was her family and Dan and all those strangers in Hollywood who’d tricked her into believing she was someone else, someone different, some face off a screen or magazine spread.
Outside, a drum sounded. Will nodded to the exit and she preceded him into the cooler air, the darkening evening. She met a few more people, all polite but unmistakably distant once they learned she was a paying guest. She and Will wandered to the water’s edge, until they were wading in the sea, sipping their drinks, watching the torchlight bouncing off the dark waves that lapped at their shins. They’d both gone quiet, and Leigh wondered how much of a damper she was putting on his evening.
Will cleared his throat before asking, “So, do you regret it? Leaving him?”
She met his gaze, shocked. Shocked he’d been wondering something so personal, so sentimental, and equally surprised to realize the question hadn’t yet crossed her mind. But the answer needed no speculation. It would be ages before she could feel anything good about Dan. Though she hoped she could eventually forgive him, she knew he was now a figment purely of the past. “No, I don’t regret it.”
Will nodded, expression neutral as he turned his attention back to shore.
Leigh exhaled a long and melancholy sigh, and in its wake she felt relief unknotting her muscles. “It would’ve been a huge mistake if I’d gone through with it. The way I realized I couldn’t marry him… It hurts, anyhow. It’s humiliating and complicated, but once all that fades, I’ll be happy with my decision.”
“You seem like you’ve got a good head on your shoulders.”
“For a celebrity,” Leigh said wryly.
“For anybody.” He sipped his drink, not meeting her eyes. “How could you end up at the altar with any doubt in your mind?”
“It’s hard to explain. You have to think of fame as a drug. It does stuff to your head. It gets you sort of drunk or high, and reality’s modified. Especially when everyone around you seems to see things the same way.” She watched the quavering reflection of her calves in the water. “Like you’re all seeing the world in a funhouse mirror, but everyone agrees that it looks the same, so you just… You get used to the warp, I guess.”
“Enough to marry the wrong man?”
“Nearly. I know, it sounds awful.”
“Sounds typical, though. The Hollywood crowd aren’t known for their stellar marital track record.”
Leigh nodded. “My fiancé—the guy he used to be, anyhow—I would’ve married him, no hesitation. But by the time the big day arrived, he was different. And it’s so easy in that world to tell yourself, ‘things will be normal again, after X happens.’ Your movie wraps or the ink dries on your next contract. But X happens and things don’t just go back to normal. Normal is something you opt out of when you sign up to be part of the entertainment business.”
“Lots of people dream of having what you do.”
“I know they do.”
“But not you.”
She sipped her beer, considering. “I never wanted to be famous. I was seventeen and all I wanted to do was dance, and maybe see if I could build a life out of it. The fame was a fluke, but it had its own momentum, especially when I saw how proud it made my parents. I’m sort of a people pleaser. Okay, I’m a massive people pleaser.”
Will laughed, the rich sound as relaxing as the alcohol. As warm and intimate as she imagined his breath might feel on her neck.
“It’s hard for me to admit I don’t want any of it anymore,” Leigh said, “knowing how ungrateful so many people would say I was if I quit.”
“Fans, you mean?”
“Fans, sure. But there’s way more guilt about your family, for whatever they may have sacrificed. And from all the people who believed in your talent, pushed you and promoted you. But I also know I’m expendable. I’m not the ‘it’ girl-next-door, twenty-year-old actress anymore.”
He finally met her eyes, his blue ones seeming as bright in the torchlight as they were in the sunshine. “Washed up at twenty-five? That’s harsh.”
“Twenty-seven, but yeah. I’m a certain kind of commodity, and my time’s peaked. There’s an army of perky replacements happy to take my old roles.”
“Ouch.”
She laughed. “Yeah, my expiration date’s fast approaching.”
They shared a smile, again lingering just longer than was innocent. Her gaze moved to his bare chest before she got hold of herself and turned to watch the party on the beach. People were eating and laughing, and more musicians had joined the drummer, as children danced in the sand.
“So what do you want to do?” Will asked. “If your dream of becoming a nobody comes true.”
She kept her eyes on the party. “I want to dance.”
“Like on stage or—”
“No, right now. I want to dance.” No thoughts of what to do once she got home. Just enjoy the present, the simple pleasures of this place.
She sloshed to shore and left her bottle in a milk crate full of empties. The two children who’d run past earlier were hopping and gyrating before the band, and as Leigh approached they looked up at her, curious.
“What’s
