Little Known Facts A Novel - By Christine Sneed Page 0,91
sleepwalking and finally find his place and purpose in life.
“I think about you too,” she said. “I don’t mean to, but I do.”
“I want to see you, as soon as we can arrange it.”
“I’ve never done this before. I’m not lying.”
“I know you’re not.”
Four days later, seeing her in Santa Barbara, an hour and a half up the coast from L.A., where they met because they weren’t as likely to run into his father or any of his and Elise’s friends, Will felt that he couldn’t take a normal breath for several minutes. She wore a straw hat and sunglasses and did not want to be recognized because now she was being recognized all the time. If someone snapped their picture and posted it on the Web, or worse, published it in some sleazy gossip rag, “Star Steps Out with Boyfriend’s Son,” it would be catastrophic for them both. It was he who took their picture—with his phone, several photos of them together on the beach that she felt wary about letting him take because, he assumed, she worried about his father somehow getting hold of his phone and finding the photos. Or worse, Will sending them to him, trying to force her hand.
He had rented a room at an inn in Ojai, but he didn’t tell her about it in advance. When he mentioned it to her after they had been walking on the beach for a while, his desire to be alone with her close to intolerable, she had stopped suddenly and withdrawn her hand from his. “I can’t,” she said.
“Yes, you can,” he said, heart sinking.
She shook her head. “If I do, I’m going to screw everything up.”
“No, you’re not,” he said desperately. “Everything will be fine.”
“I need to go home. I’m sorry, Will, but I do.”
“If you felt like you didn’t need my dad to help you with your career, would you go with me to Ojai?”
She looked at him. “Please don’t say things like that.”
“You don’t need him. You’re famous now. You’re going to Cannes in a week, and things will just keep getting better for you.” She was going to Cannes with his father, and it made him almost sick to bring it up, but he did not know how to change her mind about Ojai. The room was actually a small villa with its own kitchen and housekeeping staff. It cost more than a thousand dollars a night, and he could not bear the thought of her not seeing it. The thought of staying there by himself was even worse.
“He’s my boyfriend, Will,” she said. “Not someone I’m using to get ahead with my career.”
“Then why did you come up here?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Because I wanted to.”
He had not been able to change her mind, even after she kissed him good-bye a final time next to her car, even after she saw that he was about to cry and had looked away. If he had been the type of person who liked romantic movies that did not end happily, he might have felt that his disappointment was almost something to cherish. But he had not particularly enjoyed The English Patient or Casablanca or Dr. Zhivago. He wanted the hero to get the girl and keep her. He wanted Cinderella and The Princess Bride and Sleeping Beauty. He wanted, he realized, a fairy tale.
Three days after the first e-mail from Elise in Paris and two days after his reply that he would not bother her anymore, she sent another message:
Dear Will,
I turned down your father’s proposal. I know that I’m not ready to get married. I’m only twenty-five, and I told your father that I think we should just keep dating for a while and see how it goes. He was disappointed, but he said that he would live with it if he had to. I didn’t tell him this, but I also think he’s been seeing someone else. Maybe it’s only my faulty sixth sense making trouble for me, but I can’t shake the feeling that he’s preoccupied by something (or someone) that has nothing at all to do with his work or Life After the Storm.
Please keep all of this between you and me. I’m sure you will, but I thought I should say it anyway. Take good care over there in France, Elise
He read the message over and over, wondering what Elise was trying to tell him, if there was a subtext at all. His parents and sister knew