Chapter Seven
Later that night, Sutton had just finished researching all the vital details on a rising filmmaker who’d requested a meeting with her next week. The filmmaker had nabbed top honors at Sundance and wanted to bring both marquee and unknowns into his next project, a dramedy about a group of guy friends a few years after college. She placed her file and notes on her coffee table, and poured a glass of chardonnay, allowing herself a few minutes away from work to kick back.
With a wine glass in one hand, Sutton wandered over to her bookshelves, scanning for a paperback she’d held onto since university. She took a sip of the chardonnay, then pulled the dog-eared book from the shelf and sank down into her soft couch, pulling a red chenille throw over her legs. The Artful Doger hopped onto the sofa and curled up next to her. She opened the book and turned to her favorite page. “Tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…And one fine morning—So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
Was it kismet that he adored this line too?
A sign, maybe?
She ran her index finger over the line, letting the memories of this afternoon flash past. Reeve and his kiss. Reeve and the way he caught her on the steps. Reeve and his words “I’m always happy to catch you.” Then, there was the picture he sent her after they’d said goodbye. She placed the book on the couch and reached for her phone on the coffee table, scrolling back to his text. He’d taken a picture of the steps leading into the library, the exact spot where he’d kissed her in such a way it seemed as if time had stopped and that the world had begun spinning around them. The moment she came undone for him.
There was only one word with the photo. One word and one punctuation mark: Encore?
She ran her fingertip lazily across that message, as if the word itself made her feel all these tingles, even though it was the memory of Reeve’s lips.
Encore. He was asking for an encore. Not of what she’d done to him in the stacks, though she was sure he wouldn’t mind another one of those, thank you very much.
But an encore of a show-stopping kiss.
She didn’t answer his question. She wouldn’t admit how very much she wanted another one. But she did allow herself a reply: “I am reading your favorite book right now.” She let her finger hover over the send button. If she sent this, she was choosing to engage. She was pressing beyond the physical and acting on the emotional. She would be getting to know him in a deeper way. She hit send.
Moments later a reply arrived. “Tell me one of your favorite lines…”
She flipped through the book, easily finding another one. “You won’t like it, because it’s about her.”
“Try me,” he wrote back.
Sutton tapped out another quote, one that tugged at her heart. “There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams--not through her own fault but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion.”
She took a sip of her wine, and soon Reeve’s name reappeared, but it wasn’t a text. He was calling. Sutton froze. Should she answer it? He knew she was around. Would he think she was ignoring him if she didn’t pick up? But she couldn’t fake her way out of this one.
“Hello there,” she said in her best sparkly voice. She was never aware of her own British accent, but she’d been told occasionally that it made her sound both smart and aloof. Those were traits that might serve her well right now.
“I love that line too.”
“Oh you do?”
“Yes. I think it’s about the ways we have these ideals of different things and people. Don’t you? I mean, why do you love the line?”
She loved it because it was passionate, because it was big, because it was epic. But she wasn’t prepared to say that, so she turned the question around. “Do you, Reeve? Have ideals about things and people?”
He paused before answering, and she wondered where he was. She heard music in the background, but the kind from a stereo or iPod, not a club. He must be at home. “Yeah. Of course. I mean, I’m sure I have this ideal about acting and theater and the craft, right? I kind of have to.”
“Why? Why do you have to?”
“I just think you can’t do this as a career if there’s anything else you remotely can see yourself doing.”
She nodded. “I believe that. I believe that about any type of art. Writer, painter, actor. It has to be the only thing for you.”
“Right. And it’s like that quote. It goes beyond her, beyond everything. It becomes everything.”
Everything. She let that word resonate in the air around her. Actors loved acting first, best and only. If she let her heart too far out of her chest then she’d have no one but herself to blame. Reeve might sound alluringly interested in this lovely getting-to-know-you phase right now, but that’s because he was throwing himself into this role—the role of the boyfriend—in the only way he knew how. Wholeheartedly, and with a creative passion.
They were just that. A creation.
It wasn’t kismet. It wasn’t a sign.
This was yet another scene in the script of their relationship. And that was totally fine, right? She didn’t really feel anything for him. It’s not as if she was longing for this thing to extend beyond a week anyway. At least, that’s what she told herself.
She yawned, big and long and exaggerated. He might have been able to tell it was a fake yawn. But she needed an out, and it was the best she could do. “I’m sleepy. I better go. I’ll see you tomorrow for a dress rehearsal, so to speak.”
“See you tomorrow, Sutton,” he said, then paused. “I can’t wait.”
She hung up, took a long swallow of wine, placed the drained glass on her coffee table, then made room for her main man, who curled up by her knees. She closed the novel and reached for her files, reminding herself that actors were part of her job, not part of her heart.
Even though she couldn’t wait to see him either.