My breath froze in my lungs, and it had nothing to do with the weather. I shook my head, trying to shake the feeling this was a dream. A beautiful one, to be sure, but one that would disappear when the sun came up.
“Tell me everything he said,” I told Luke. “Start from the beginning.”
Luke told me everything Marshall had told him. Everything. I made sure of it.
“I can’t believe it,” I said, still breathless, reeling. “It feels like everything in my life has been lining up since you came back into it.”
Luke smiled and held up his hands. “Don’t give me too much credit. I just introduced you. You’re the one who impressed them.”
I grinned at him. “Crack open that champagne. We need to celebrate.”
“Absolutely.” He popped the cork and poured us both a glass. “To your future.”
We clinked glasses and I drank, feeling giddy even before the alcohol hit my system. “Thank you, Luke.”
“You’re welcome,” he said.
We ate some more and chatted about the decorations for the party. Eventually, Luke got serious again. “I’m curious about something,” he said. “Why did you go to LA? I mean, your big dream was working on stage plays and you wanted to end up here. So why LA?”
“Oh, that’s a long story,” I said, swirling my champagne in my glass.
“I don’t have anywhere else to be right now,” he commented, smiling softly in the firelight.
“I shouldn’t have gone to LA. I know I should have come straight here after college, working my way up at a theater, but I’ve always been a romantic at heart.” I sighed, deciding there was no harm in telling him about my ex and his dreams in LA. “It’s so embarrassing to admit it, but it was all because of a boy.”
Luke’s eyebrows rose. “A boyfriend?”
“Yeah,” I replied, nodding. “I was young, dumb, and in love, a recipe for disaster. We met in the theater department at college, and he was an actor. But he wanted to be in movies, not plays. Theater was old fashioned, he said. There’s no money in it, he said. So we went to LA.”
Luke snorted. “No money in plays? Ask that Hamilton guy how he’s doing.”
I laughed. “I know, right? Like I said, I was acting on emotion, not good sense. He told me LA would be a good start for me too. That I could get some experience, start working my way up the crew. And he swore up and down he would land something immediately.”
“Hmm, I have a feeling that’s not how it turned out,” Luke said.
I took a long swallow of champagne and poured more. “No, I ended up keeping us both afloat. I found jobs and he didn’t. Finally, after two years, he finally landed a role on a crappy TV show, and how did he reward me for supporting him all those years? He immediately cheated on me with his co-star.”
“Oh, damn.” Luke reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “That’s awful.”
When he pulled his hand away, I wished he hadn’t. His touch was reassuring, steadying. I took another long drink. “It gets worse.”
“No,” he said. “How?”
“Well, obviously, I broke up with him.”
“Obviously.”
“But the people he was working with, they knew me, and from what I heard, they were blaming him for the breakup, so he lied and told everyone I had cheated onhim. That I had been sleeping around with directors to get jobs.”
“What the fuck?” Luke shook his head and his eyes blazed with fury. “What a piece of shit.”
I smiled sadly. “I know. He was a liar and a coward and I never saw it until it was too late.”
“So then?” Luke prompted.
“Then no one wanted to hire me anymore. No director wanted to look like they were sleeping with crew members.” I let out a long breath. “It completely derailed my career in Hollywood.”
“You should have sued him for slander,” Luke said. “Say the word and I’ll hire you a lawyer.”
