Pearl shot to her feet. “Now, wait a damn minute. You’re all looking at this from the wrong angle. We’re not Hope Channel pawns if we finish this thing. It’s the Hope Channel that’s the pawn, because if we wrap this movie and by some divine intervention it’s released next Christmas, then we’re proving to people all over the world that sex isn’t dirty or wrong and just because you’re a woman who enjoys sex—and even gets paid for it—doesn’t mean you can’t live out your own warm and fuzzy happily ever after. The fight isn’t won by giving up—oooh! I should write that down.” She dropped back into her chair, like the electricity pumping through her body had been shut off and she needed to recharge.
And as much as it surprised me to say so, Pearl was right. Even if the film was never released, there wouldn’t even be achance for it to succeed if I didn’t buckle down and make it through the last few days of filming.
Maybe I could never have Nolan for real, but I would never regret what we shared here in Christmas Notch, and even if I’d ruined his chance at a career comeback, I could at least finish this movie for him. Hell, maybe they could CGI someone else’s face onto my head like theTwilightbaby or something.
My chest tightened.
No. Not for him.
Forme.
Nolan Shaw left me in the rain all those years ago outside of his tour bus when I was just a teenager. He left me again in a snowstorm on Christmas Eve. And for a final time in the midst of a media circus. But I was done apologizing for who I was. If I was going to finishDuke the Halls, it would be for me. It would be because I deserved to have it all. I deserved to be the purring girl on your screen whom you fantasized about at night and I deserved to be the rosy-cheeked girl in the wholesome Christmas movie whom your entire family gathered around the television to watch. I was both of those girls, and that was something the Hope Channel and the internet and even Nolan Kowalczk himself could never take away from me.
My gaze bounced from Teddy to Pearl to Gretchen. “Let’s make a movie.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Nolan
Two days, three podcast seasons, and seventeen Clif bars later, I pulled up to Isaac Kelly’s gate in Malibu, wired on energy drinks and needing to pee. There was a post next to the driveway with a speaker and a camera. I rolled down my window.
“Um, hi,” I said to the camera, feeling stupid. Isaac (predictably) hadn’t answered any of my calls on my way here, and the texts I’d sent him had gone unanswered too, so I had no idea if he was expecting me or not.
“Mr.Kelly says he hasn’t ordered any pizza,” came a no-nonsense voice. A security person’s voice.
I looked back at the van I was driving. When I told Kallum my plan, he’d taken one look at my rickety pickup with holes in the floor—and then at the reliable Honda Civic thatI needed to leave at home for Mom and Maddie—and insisted that I take one of his Slice, Slice, Baby vans instead. Which meant that I’d driven a van with a cartoon slice of pizza (with pierced pizza ears, a blond pizza pompadour, and the taglineAnything less than the best is a pizza felony!) across Kansas, over the mountains, and through some desert-y bits all the way to the coast.
Ah, that glamorous former boy band life.
“Tell him the pizza’s from Slice, Slice, Baby,” I said. After a lengthy pause, the gate slid open to reveal a steep, winding drive that was definitely made for sports cars and not for a Dodge Caravan. But somehow I managed to creep up to the house itself and park in front of the glass-and-metal box that Isaac called home.
My former bandmate was waiting for me in front of his open door when I got there. He was wearing a white sweater and drawstring linen pants. His blond hair was tousled over his lightly suntanned forehead and his feet were bare. Even in the fading evening light, I could see the cerulean blue of his eyes, the elegantly angled planes of his cheeks and jaw.
“You look like you’re shooting a photo spread forGQ,” I said as I got out of the van.
“And you look like you drove across half the country to deliver me a pizza I don’t want,” Isaac said dryly. “Why are you at my house?”
“Well,” I said, grabbing my duffel bag and slamming the door closed. “I’m planning on doing something unbearably melodramatic and stupid, and I need a place to stay while I do it. Which you would know if you answered your phone.”
Isaac blinked at me, all long eyelashes and haunted pout. “I threw my phone in the ocean,” he said finally, in a voice that implied this was a totally normal thing to do. And then he turned back toward his front door. “I guess you’d better come inside.”
“I should have brought pizza,” I grumbled as I stared at Isaac’s empty refrigerator an hour later. Despite it being one of those giant rich people fridges, there was nothing inside except for a mostly empty jar of relish and some hard-boiled eggs. And half a cantaloupe. Ihatedcantaloupe!
“You know cantaloupe is for funerals and making fruit salads look bigger, right?”
“I’ve already ordered us something,” Isaac said from the balcony, not looking back at me. His house was one of those cliff-top mansions that had an entire wall that opened onto a balcony overlooking the sea. It was a little chilly, but the suspended fireplace in the living room and the firepit on the balcony offered some warmth.
“How? You don’t have a phone.”
“I didn’t throw myiPadinto the ocean,” Isaac said. And then he added, “Are you getting us drinks or what?”
With a last unhappy look at the fridge, I went over to the butler’s pantry and made us gin and tonics—without limes, because he didn’t have those either.
“I could garnish them with hard-boiled eggs, if you like,” I offered as I joined him at the railing and handed him his drink. He took it without looking at me, not even reacting to the idea of egg gin.
In front of us, the Pacific was a dark, noisy thing, crashing endlessly on the beach. Around us were mountains and cliffs studded with scores of other too-expensive houses, all of them facing the ocean. It was somehow lonely here, even with other houses nearby and one of the world’s busiest cities just a stone’s throw away. And I had the depressing vision of Isaac spending night after night like this, staring at the dark ocean alone while he drank gin and thought moody Isaac thoughts.
“So why did you throw your phone into the ocean?” I asked, leaning against the railing. Although it was brisker out here than inside, it was still thirty degrees warmer than Kansas City, so I didn’t mind so much.
