“Um. Thanks.”
A realization dawned on her: he was nervous, too. Grey felt like laughing. Her annoyance at his lateness started to ebb.
Ethan ran his hands through his hair. “I’m Ethan.”
“Yeah, I know,” she said, not knowing how else to respond. She crossed her arms and looked down at her boots, suddenly unable to bear looking at him. Just then, Audrey and an assistant burst through the door, carrying a tray with their plates and assorted mealtime accoutrements. They busied themselves setting up the food, which surprisingly still looked appetizing despite sitting around for the better part of an hour, and had hustled back out the door before Grey knew it.
The two of them eased into chairs opposite each other. Neither met the other one’s eyes. Grey picked up her fork, feeling like it was the first time she had ever operated one, and appraised her salad. Across from her, Ethan lifted the top bun off his veggie burger, doing his own inspection.
The silence stretched between them. Grey poured her cup of green goddess dressing over her salad and focused all her attention on coating each individual topping equally. He may have been rich and famous and, okay, still super fucking handsome, but he had kept her waiting for forty-five minutes. She wasn’t going to do what she always did, chatter to fill the silence, to ease the awkwardness.
After what felt like an eternity, he cleared his throat. She looked up at him, waiting.
“What did you get?”
Grey looked down at her salad. “?‘I’m Trying My Best.’?”
Ethan’s brow furrowed. “What?”
“?‘I’m Trying My Best,’?” she repeated. He looked at her like she was speaking in code. “You know. Thankfulness Cafe? It’s their whole thing. All their dishes have names like that. Like ‘I’m a Gift to the World,’ or ‘I’m Perfect the Way I Am,” or ‘I’m Praying the Earth Opens Up and Swallows Me Because Placing This Order Is So Humiliating.’?”
Ethan laughed, a real laugh, and Grey’s nerves eased a little. “I see. I usually just tell Lucas to get me the veggie burger; I didn’t realize I was making him debase himself like that.”
“Isn’t that what assistants are for? To shield you from the petty embarrassments of everyday life?”
Her tone was light, but something dark flickered across Ethan’s face.
“I guess so.”
He picked up a sweet potato fry, examined it, then put it back down. Grey fidgeted. She took a bite of her salad. In the silence, it felt like the crunch was loud enough to make the room shake. The butter lettuce alone registered 6.1 on the Richter scale.
Ethan sighed. “This is ridiculous,” he muttered.
“Excuse me?”
“Sorry. No offense. It’s not…it’s not you. This whole idea. It’s weird, right?”
Grey chased a pickled carrot across her plate. “Kinda. I mean, I guess it happens all the time. I just…I’ve never…” She trailed off awkwardly. Ethan pursed his lips.
“I don’t get it, honestly. How will parading around with some young blonde make people root for me? Isn’t that the kind of thing everyone hates? Shouldn’t I be ‘dating’ someone my own age?” He made lazy finger quotation marks around the word “dating.”
Grey smirked to herself and said nothing.
“What? What’s funny?”
“Nothing. It’s just…I can’t remember the last time someone called me young. Last week I auditioned to play the wife of a guy my dad’s age. I’ll probably be playing your mother next year.”
Ethan laughed again, surprised this time. “How old are you?” Grey opened her mouth to protest. He held his hands up defensively. “I know that’s a touchy question in this business. But if you’re going to be my girlfriend, I should probably know something besides your name.”
Grey’s blood rushed in her ears. She was going to be his girlfriend. Fake girlfriend. Fake girlfriend.
“Twenty-seven. Twenty-eight in a couple of months.”
“At least we can use your senior discount.”
Grey laughed, despite herself. “Your next wife probably hasn’t even been born yet. Ten years is nothing.”
Ethan held his hands up. “Excuse me. Eleven. Don’t undermine my seniority.”
She laughed again, feeling herself loosen up. “I don’t get why you even need me,” she admitted. “Can’t you just make a comeback on your own if you want to? I thought once you get to a certain tier of rich white guy you’re basically uncancelable. I mean, even Mel Gibson still gets hired.”
Ethan’s face fell. He didn’t look at her. Grey’s stomach clenched. Had she gone too far?
Ethan picked up his veggie burger and took a giant bite. He chewed thoughtfully, then swallowed.
“If I want to play nice with the studio and star in a big dumb Christmas blockbuster that’s fun for the whole family, sure. Or pour my own money into some vanity project that no one will ever see. But according to our good friend Audrey, if I want to do anything real again, I need to prove I’m…what’s the word?” He sipped his sparkling water. “Stable? Dependable? Sane?”
Grey was silent. The unspoken subtext hung heavy between them.
It was unthinkable that the Ethan of a decade ago would’ve ended up in this position. By the time he’d turned thirty, he was untouchable, both personally and professionally. She shouldn’t have worried about skeletons in the closet: for most of his career, his reputation had been pristine. He’d liked to party in his early days, sure, but he’d exchanged that image for Devoted Husband and Father by the time he became a household name.
He’d risen to fame alongside Sam Tanner—childhood best friends made good. The two of them cowrote and starred in four movies together, each better received than the last. Ethan’s solo career had blossomed, too, seamlessly transitioning back and forth from being in front of the camera to behind it. He’d had his share of flops and missteps, like anyone, but nothing that couldn’t be written off in the face of the next smashing success.
But then, five years ago, Sam was killed in a car accident and Ethan fell apart.
He’d been in the middle of shooting a gritty, big-budget reboot of the Lone Sentinel superhero franchise when it happened. Rumors swirled that he’d tried to drop out, but the studio had him locked in an ironclad contract. He began showing up to the set late, wasted, and then not at all, until they had no choice but to fire him. The tabloids ate it up, publishing picture after picture of him stumbling out of clubs at 4 a.m., bleary-eyed and greasy.
Then he’d wound up in court: first when the photographer he’d knocked out at Sam’s funeral had decided to press charges, then again for the prolonged custody battle with his (now ex-) wife during their very ugly and very public divorce. Once both cases were settled and out of the news, Ethan had barely been seen since.
Until now.
The man who had, for the last few years, only been glimpsed in blurry long-lens paparazzi shots like the goddamn Loch Ness Monster was sitting right in front of her, clear as day, eating a veggie burger.
She looked him dead in the eye. “Are you?”
He stared right back.
“I’m not sure. I think I’m ready to find out, though.”
Grey didn’t know how to respond to that. She gave a noncommittal shrug and returned to her salad. They ate in silence for a few moments. She was surprised when he spoke again, unprompted.
“This is a pretty sweet deal for you, though, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, all you have to do is be photographed with me a few times and your star is on the rise. You get to just skip the line, you don’t have to do any work at all. That’s pretty exciting, right?” His tone dripped with condescension.
Grey dropped her fork to her plate with a clatter and her face flushed.