I knew what it felt like to be invisible—but I’d never felt that way at home. Not with my parents and not with Gran. I couldn’t imagine not having at least one person on your side. “But he did notice when you left, didn’t he?”
“He looked for me. Says he did, anyway. When I got my first big role, he got hold of my agent on the phone.”
“Wow.” I imagined running away, making myself famous with no support at all. I guess in a way, that was what Juliet had done. I wondered if she felt invisible at home as Ryan had. I’d always figured she was just too big to live in a small town.
“And so… what happened then?”
“We had a few lunches. Eventually I took him to a movie premiere. When he couldn’t drive or live alone, he moved in with me. But I think he’s going to need more care soon.”
“Like a home?” I thought about Gran, about her fear of having to leave her house. Luckily, her health was good, but I knew it could change. Poor Ryan.
“Yeah. There’s a place that’s really nice. But it’s expensive.”
I might’ve gaped a bit. “But you’re a movie star.”
He laughed. “I guess so. But the place I’d like to be able to set up for dad is movie-star expensive.”
“That’s part of why you agreed to this thing with Juliet? The money?”
“Definitely. That’s most of it.”
“What’s the rest?”
Ryan dropped my eyes then, stared into his drink. “I guess part of me still wants to do well enough to feel seen. Does that make any sense? To feel good enough at something. Successful.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just nodded, sipping my drink. How could a movie star feel invisible? I understood why I felt that way—I lived in Juliet’s shadow. But Ryan McDonnell was a legitimate movie star—people definitely saw him.
“I think maybe sometimes we don’t see ourselves very clearly,” I said, and it occurred to me I could have been talking about each of us.
He tilted his head, one side of his mouth lifting as he considered my words. And then he lifted his drink.
“To being in a completely new world,” he said. “With an amazing woman, who I see very clearly.” He raised his glass. I tapped my own to it and smiled. And as Ryan and I sat in the sun out over the water, drinking and laughing together like old friends—or new lovers—I realized that he wasn’t a movie star.
He wasn’t the guy who had inhabited my fantasies (and those of lots of other women in America). He was just a guy. A guy who loved his dad, who wasn’t sure where he was going. A guy who for now, anyway—was sitting here, having a drink with me and laughing in the sun.
I let myself relax and enjoy the attention, and that was probably when I accidentally fell a little bit in love with Ryan McDonnell.
Chapter Thirteen
Ryan
Water lapped around the pilings of the pier and the sun beat down on the wooden planks at our feet as I sat with Tess in a corner of a patio that felt more and more like a different world. Or maybe it was just that this was Tess’s world—and it was so far from what I’d grown accustomed to that it felt like I was on a different planet.
Though I was not Juliet famous anywhere, in Hollywood I was interesting enough to have to pay attention. Here, I was just a guy. And I was starting to really like it.
There were no photographers lurking around, no one waiting outside the front doors of the restaurant when we finally walked out and strolled down the boardwalk late that afternoon. There was no one staking out the car where I leaned Tess back and devoured her mouth and neck again before we actually got in. There were no flashes, no shouts, no jarring realization that I was visible to everyone in the world and somehow still even more invisible now that I was famous. They saw me—kind of, but it was like the real me faded away a little bit more with every single camera click, every flash. I had none of that to worry about here. There was just this beautiful day. This beautiful girl. And me. And for the first time in such a long time—I felt like someone really saw me.
“You’re quiet,” Tess said, as she navigated the car back toward Gran’s old plantation house.
I was stunned by the beauty of a place I’d never even thought about, a place I hadn’t known existed. And by the peace I felt here with Tess. “I’m just enjoying everything,” I told her, letting my hand rest on her knee as she guided us confidently home.
“Must be nice to get a break from the pressure of Hollywood,” she said. Her voice told me she knew what those pressures were—and why wouldn’t she? Her sister was one of the most celebrated actresses of our generation. “Or are you eager to get back? Now that your career is poised to take off?”
“It’s tempting to think about running away again,” I said honestly. “I had kind of forgotten places like this exist.” I didn’t want to go back to Hollywood—knowing this weekend would come to a close and my life would return to normal, or my version of normal at least, wasn’t a welcome thought.
“Backwoods towns where nothing ever happens, you mean?”
“Gorgeous untouched places full of amazing people,” I corrected, looking at her.
A smile flitted over her lips, but then they pressed into a straight firm line before she spoke again. “But your life is on the other coast, and you’ll go back in a day or so.”
Hearing her voice the reality made me wish desperately
