After meeting in South America, Nina Taylor follows up-and-coming Hollywood actor James Saylor back to LA. As their relationship intensifies, they hot foot it to Las Vegas, where they spontaneously marry. The next morning, however, reality sets in.
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"I think I like you with a bit of stubble," I comment as we sit at the breakfast bar in the kitchen one night, a few days after we arrive in Malibu. In the time we'd been here, we hadn't left the house, instead, staying in and watching movies while getting to know each other more. "You have a bit of a Paul Newman quality about you when you have the makings of a beard."
James smiled. "I do?"
"Apart from the baby blue eyes," I comment, winking at him. "But then again, have you ever seen Paul Newman's eyes? Gorgeous. Your eyes are gorgeous, too."
"Thanks, baby," he replied, leaning over to kiss me. While we hadn't been intimate in the bedroom quite yet- I was still waiting for the right moment- James and I were becoming more and more comfortable kissing each other, touching each other. He dropped his hand to my knee and squeezed. "Later on, do you want to help me go through some scripts I've been sent? I'll need a woman's opinion since they're chick-flick, rom-com kind of stuff."
Having watched James film an action movie, I really couldn't imagine him in a fluffy, Roman Holiday type of flick but hey, he does have the makings to be a heartthrob and he certainly knows how to use really bad pick up lines. Nodding in agreement, I find myself rather excited about reading a script, liking how I could let my imagination run wild about how the film should be. Back in Argentina, I'd run lines with James and picture the scene in my head, then on the day James filmed, it was wholly different. Apparently, I wasn't enough of an adrenaline junkie to imagine how a high-speed car chase should go but a mushy romance? That I could picture.
After dinner, James poured us two glasses of wine and we retired into the living room to read through the script. The storyline was cliché. You know the kind: Girl likes Boy; Boy likes Another Girl; Boy needs to make Another Girl jealous; Boy starts fake dating Girl; Boy catches feelings for Girl; Boy realises that Girl is the one for him, not Another Girl; Boy and Girl live happily ever after. It was the basic plotline for every teen rom-com ever made and while it was written rather well, the cliché bored me to death. So much so, I gave up reading the thing after page fifty-eight and told James that he should never, ever, ever contemplate doing a film like this.
"My agent is really keen on me doing it, though," he mutters, closing the script and setting it on the table. "They think it'll make me more accessible to the mass market. It'll get my name out there, young girls will want to watch anything I'm in, I become the next Ryan Gosling and then I can pick and choose what I want to star in. Until then, if this is the type of garbage I need to star in, then... I guess that's what I have to do."
I shake my head. "No, James. If you don't want to do it, say 'no.' Plus, I saw you film Spymaster, remember? Trust me, that alone will blast you into the stratosphere. This," I pick up my copy of the script and frown. "This can go fuck itself."
"Did you just curse?"
"Yeah, and?" I ask, smirking at him. "I can swear you know. I'm not the little priss you think I am. But this rant isn't about me, it's about you. My brother once told me that no one can make me do anything that I didn't want to do. The same goes for you. Be an actor with integrity, James. Do the projects you're passionate about, not the ones that'll be Box Office hits. Screw the status quo. Screw your agent."
James watches me as I keep telling him to screw the world. Leaning back against the sofa, a smile begins to form on his lips and a glint sparks in his eyes. "Nina Taylor, where on Earth did you come from?"
"London?"
James laughs heartily, the sound making my insides melt. While I wasn't sure what our relationship was, I knew that it was special. My hopes are that we become more than simply friends but I was also respectful of James' wishes not to push this beyond what was organic. Just because I wanted to sleep with him eventually didn't mean that it had to happen now. Not even tomorrow. Plus, there was something far more intimate about getting to know someone without sex complicating things, that much he was right about.
I knew more about James than I knew about some of my closest friends back home. I knew his likes and dislikes, his hopes and fears, his good and his bad... likewise, he knew mine. I felt far more vulnerable and safe with James than I did members of my family and that, to me, was a sign that whatever we were becoming, I never wanted it to end.
I wasn't scared, either, which was surprising. My siblings all have an irrational fear of love based on how our father's relationships with all his wives (our mothers) have ended and while my mother's divorce from our father was undoubtedly the worst- the most acrimonious- I never feared falling in love. I knew that, if it was with the right person, it could be magical. And right now, being with James came close to that.
"Can we go to bed now?" I ask quietly. I watched as James' Adam's apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed, his body becoming rigid, his stare fixed. "I'm not going to seduce you, James."
