“Um, no. I guess not.”
I have absolutely no idea why I’m standing here talking about his flight rather than just throwing myself into his arms and hoping he’ll be okay with that. God knows, every time I’ve imagined this scenario — and I’ve had alotof time to imagine almost this exact scenario while I’ve been lying on my bed feeling sorry for myself — that’s how it’s gone down.
Mind you, every time I’ve imagined this, it’s also been snowing, for some reason — which would be unusual even for Scotland at this time of year. And then he’s kissed me in the falling snow, both of us wearing cute little bobble hats, and all the people who are randomly standing around watching us have started cheering. Which is actually the ending of one of those daytime movies Mum loves so much, now I come to think if it. And, as I know all too well, real life isnotlike the movies, is it?
No, it’s not. And I can tell you that with some authority, because, as it turns out, now that the man I’ve been dreaming about actuallyisstanding on my doorstep, all I can seem to do is gape at him, in a way I’m sure is going to look really unattractive when the inevitable paparazzi photos come out. I bet Scarlett’s wracking her brains for a suitably cutting image caption already.
“Lexie, are you going to let me in?” Jett prompts, glancing over his shoulder again. “Because I’d really rather not do this on the doorstep, if it’s all the same to you.”
Do what, though?
“Um, yes. Yes, of course. Come in.”
His words break me out of my trance, and I step back to let him inside. There’s just time for me to notice the long black car parked outside the house (I guess Jett didn’t have to rely on McTavish’s Uber service this time, then…), and a splash of color which has to be Scarlett in her red trench coat, then we’re standing awkwardly in the hallway, which seemed to be a perfectly normal size when I ran downstairs, but which has now somehow shrunk to Alice-in-Wonderland proportions, leaving Jett and I standing almost toe-to-toe.
“Lexie, is that—”
Mum bursts through the kitchen door in a waft of perfume I recognize as mine, stopping in her tracks when she sees Jett and I standing there.
“Oh!” she says, her eyes widening in surprise. Then, “Ohhhh,” she adds, smiling widely as she steps back into the kitchen, slamming the door closed behind her.
I turn to show Jett into the living room, but the large window makes it feel like a fishbowl, providing a perfect view for the assembled photographers, who’re still poised outside, presumably waiting to photograph Jett again on his way back to the car.
“Shall we just…?” I gesture towards the stairs, and Jett nodds, standing back to allow me to go first, before following me up the short flight of stairs to my room, which still mirrors my state of mind at the moment, in the sense that it’s a jumbled mess. I hastily pull the covers up on the unmade bed, in the hope that Jett will think it’s like that because I just woke up, as opposed to it being because I’ve pretty much been living in it since he left. Of course, the fact that I’ve been sleeping in my clothes, and still have flakes of yesterday’s mascara under my eyes probably tells a tale all of its own, and, as soon as I realize that, I give up my attempt to tidy the room and simply sit down on the edge of the bed to await my fate.
After a second, Jett takes a seat in the chair opposite me, dropping the bag he’s carrying onto the floor, and rubbing his eyes wearily. His face looks tired, and, now that I’m looking at him more closely, I notice he doesn’t seem to have shaved since I last saw him. It could just be the jet-lag, I suppose, but something in his eyes tells me it’s more than that, and I can’t help but hope that it’s something to do with me.
Somethinggoodto do with me, I mean.
“How did your meeting go?” I ask, after a moment’s silence. “The one with Justin Duval?”
Jett’s face lights up.
“It was great, actually,” he said. “Really great. I think he’s going to give me the role. It’s not 100% in the bag, but I have a good feeling about it.”
“So he wasn’t put off by… by the story?”
This time I don’t feel the need to clarify what I’m talking about. Fortunately for me, Jett grins in response.
“Nope,” he says. “Didn’t even mention it. I don’t think he cares as much about my private life as we were led to believe. Mind you, I guess it could also have been something to do with this…”
He pulls his phone out of his pocket and fiddles with it for a second before holding it up so I can see the screen. On it, the video I took of him at the Birnam Oak that day, doing the “Out, brief candle,” speech from Macbeth starts playing. He lets it run for a moment longer, before hitting the stop button.
“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?” he says easily, putting the phone back into his pocket. “How he got it, I mean?”
“From Grace, I would imagine,” I reply, feigning innocence. “Didn’t he tell you?”
“He did tell me he got it — or his people got it, rather — from Grace, as a matter of fact.”
I search his face, and am relieved to find only amusement in his eyes. “But how did Grace happen upon a video of me in Scotland? That’s what I’m wondering.”
“Okay, you got me.” I hold my hands up in a position of surrender. “I sent it to her as soon as I finished filming it; asked her if she could find a way to get it to Duval. I had to do it, Jett,” I tell him, leaning forward. “You were just sogood. He had to see it. I knew if he saw it, he’d want to at least see you. And hey — I was right.”
“You were right.” He nods. “Thank you.”
“You don’t have to thank me,” I tell him, shrugging. “All I did was forward someone a video. It’s not a big deal.”
“It is to me.”
