How to Sleep with a Movie Star (4 page)

“But . . .” I began. Margaret cut off my protest with a single raised finger and a shake of her head.

“Brunch at Atelier at ten a.m. tomorrow,” she said crisply. I groaned and rolled my eyes. Brunch. Fantastic. It had to be the worst meal of the day to interview people. Visions of celebs nursing hangovers while sipping Bloody Marys or gulping mimosas, barking hoarse orders at waiters about too-crisp toast or too-runny eggs danced through my head.

Besides, I’d been hoping to spend the weekend with Tom. No one—not even I—could deny anymore that our relationship needed some serious work. I did love him, after all, even if he was being a bit odd lately. And now, I would be spending Saturday with Cole Brannon and a looming deadline instead.

I was probably the only woman in America who wouldn’t appreciate the trade-off.

“Of course we’ll need the copy by Sunday afternoon so that the art department can do layout, Sidra can look it over, and it can be at the printer by Monday morning,” Margaret said.

“But Margaret, I . . .” I began. Again, she cut me off with a raised finger and a clucking sound.

“Thank you much, Claire, darling,” Margaret said with finality. I opened and closed my mouth without a word, because I knew it would be a waste of breath. “I’ll expect that copy by Sunday afternoon. Have a lovely weekend.”

“You too,” I muttered, defeated, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

*

“
COLE BRANNON
?” Wendy shrieked. I resisted the urge to cover my ears. “You’re having brunch with
Cole Brannon
? At
Atelier
? You are, like, the luckiest girl alive!”

“Hmph,” I grunted. I wasn’t really in the mood to indulge Wendy, but I was beginning to realize there was really no way to get out of it. I plunked down in my chair and swiveled toward my computer in silence. I typed in my password and logged in to the news clipping service we subscribed to. I tried to ignore Wendy, who was still standing at the entrance to my cubicle, seemingly bubbling over while she waited for me to look at her. I took my time, avoided her glance for as long as I could, and typed “Cole Brannon” into the search box. Three hundred twenty-six entries in the last six months. Yikes. This guy had gotten a lot of press, which meant I would be up late doing my research so that I was fully prepared. I finally gritted my teeth and looked up at Wendy.

“Well?”
she demanded, her eyes as big as saucers.

“Well, what?” I asked, because I really didn’t know what she was asking me.

“
Well,
aren’t you going to say something? What do you think? It’s
Cole Brannon
!”

“I know,” I said. I sighed and tried not to wince. “And it’s not that I’m not excited. I mean, I do think it’s cool to meet him. And yeah, I liked him in
Goodnight Kiss.
”

Okay, that was a lie. Actually, I’d
loved
him in
Goodnight Kiss
—it was one of my favorite movies—but that was beside the point. I tried to explain.

“It’s just that, well, you know—I’ve told you,” I said, well aware that my words weren’t penetrating. Wendy had stars in her eyes with Cole Brannon’s name on them. “They’re never what you expect them to be in person. Sometimes I think I’d rather just see them in their movies or whatever, and not really know what they’re like in real life. It kind of ruins it all for me.”

Which was especially disappointing this time because I actually
liked
Cole Brannon. No doubt brunch at one of Manhattan’s toniest restaurants would change my opinion. Besides, what if all those rumors about him being a ladies’ man and a sex addict—which I didn’t entirely believe, because the gossip often wasn’t true—turned out to be right?

“They’re not all bad,” Wendy pointed out.

“I know,” I admitted, offering a smile as a bit of a truce. “You’re right.”

“Matthew McConaughey, for instance,” Wendy said helpfully.

“He was nice,” I graciously agreed.

“And Joshua Jackson,” she added.

“But who would expect any less from Pacey?” I smiled, but Wendy simply shook her head. This was serious business to her. There was no time for idle
Dawson’s Creek
banter.

“Look, you have a date with Cole Brannon tomorrow morning. Can’t you get a
little
excited?”

Unfortunately, I was taking a sip of my coffee as she spoke. I nearly choked.

“A date?” I gurgled, my eyes wide and my cheeks suddenly burning. “It’s not a date! I’m interviewing him over brunch!”

“Hmph,” Wendy said. She crossed her arms defiantly over her chest and leaned forward conspiratorially. She winked. “If I were you, I would tell people that it’s a date.”

“Have you been taking cues from Sidra again?” I asked her in mock exasperation. Wendy finally laughed. Sidra DeSimon’s involvement with the tabloids was legendary.
Tattletale,
the gossip rag that hit newsstands each Tuesday, always seemed to feature a recollection from her about “a special moment” she had shared with George Clooney. Wendy and I still held to the belief that she’d never dated him at all.

“First stop, gossip columnists.” Wendy winked at me. “Really, though, what else did you have to do this weekend? What could
possibly
be more important than having brunch with Cole Brannon? I mean, it’s
Cole Brannon
.”

As if we hadn’t already established that. I sighed.

“I was hoping to talk to Tom, you know? Maybe spend some time together to straighten things out.”

Wendy shook her head at me in what looked a lot like disappointment. Of course, on her face, with her wide eyes and toothy grin, it was often impossible to tell which emotion she was trying to project.

“That’s it,” she said. “You’re insane, clearly. You want to spend your Saturday with an unemployed creep who won’t even sleep with you rather than with
Cole Brannon
? You should be committed!”

I refused to laugh. “Really, Wendy, I’m serious. It means a lot to me.”

Wendy looked skeptical. I changed the subject before she could launch into an anti-Tom tirade. Lately, her points were hitting too close to home.

“You’re a good friend,” I said seriously. I cleared my throat. “And I appreciate it. Now are you just going to give me a hard time or are you going to help me research Cole Brannon?”

Wendy looked at me for a moment, then grinned.

“Research him?” she said with a sly grin. “
Research
him? I’ll give him some research!” She arched an eyebrow seductively.

“Okay, mind out of the gutter,” I chided with a smile. “That’s not even funny.” Wendy laughed.

“Seriously, girl, you’re on your own,” she said. She checked her watch. “You know my rule. Never stay past five o’clock on a Friday unless I absolutely have to.”

“It’s a good rule,” I muttered. At this rate, I’d be here all night. Not that there would be anyone missing me at home, from the look of things.

“Now remember,” Wendy said with a mischievous grin, turning off her computer and slipping into her jacket. “According to
Mod
magazine, which of course should be your first stop for
all
questions of advice, it’s great for your self-esteem to have a one-night stand. I think you should try that theory out on Cole Brannon.” She was already down the hall by the time I’d balled up a piece of scrap paper to throw at her. “Have fun!” Her voice wafted down the hallway as she disappeared around the corner.

I laughed for a moment, then turned back to my computer screen, sighing. I hit Print and heard the printer down the hall whir to life as it started spitting out the 326 articles I had found about Cole Brannon. It was clear I’d be here for a while.

I sighed again, picking up the phone to call Tom.

“I just wanted to let you know that I’ll be a bit later than usual tonight,” I said after he answered on the third ring.

“Oh?” he said, sounding disappointed. “I’m sorry to hear that. I was going to take you to dinner tonight.”

I felt my heart leap in my chest. I couldn’t even remember the last time he had suggested going out to dinner with me.

“I’m really sorry,” I sighed. “I have to do an interview tomorrow morning, so I’m going to be stuck here for a few more hours doing research.”

“That’s too bad,” Tom said.

“Yeah.” I groaned. “It’s Friday! I just want to come home!”

“Don’t worry,” said Tom, sounding more cheerful than I’d heard him sound in weeks. “You’ll be home soon enough.”

“I guess,” I said reluctantly, not feeling much better. Then I thought, maybe his sudden cheerfulness was due to the fact that he had found an engagement ring and knew when he was going to propose. A sudden warmth flooded through me, and I grinned.

“If you won’t be home in time to go out, would you mind picking up some Chinese?” Tom asked.

“Sure,” I said. My head was suddenly filled with images of Tom seductively feeding me lo mein noodles from perfectly poised chopsticks.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll see you when you get home. Give me a call before you leave the office, okay, sweetie?”

“Okay,” I agreed. “See you in a few hours. I love you.”

“See you then,” he said. Then the line went dead.

“Yeah, I love you too, Claire,” I said to myself, placing the receiver in its cradle.

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I
’m sure you think I’m crazy. Half the women in America would probably kill for a chance to sit down with Cole Brannon.

Well, a few years ago I would have been excited. But that was before I started having to do celebrity interviews every month for
Mod.
They’re not as exciting as they sound. It’s usually just me sitting across the table from an actor, an actress, or a rock star while they indulge themselves in an empty-headed monologue embodying everything that’s wrong with America. I mean, why should I care what Liv Tyler thinks about politics, or how Kylie Dane still struggles with insecurities, or how Winona Ryder really didn’t mean it when she slipped some merchandise into her handbag?

The interviews aren’t always bad. And the Livs, Kylies, and Winonas of the world all actually seem to be pretty nice people. It’s just that after I’ve gone through a month of back-and-forth tug-of-war with a publicist, rescheduled our interview seven times, listened to briefings about what I can and can’t bring up, and finally make it to an interview that has been mysteriously downgraded at the last minute from a two-hour luncheon to a forty-five-minute coffee break, I’m usually on my last nerve. But I paste the smile on anyhow, ask very
Mod
questions, and give our readers a profile of their favorite star.

Then it’s back to reality. Sure, we can share a cup of coffee at a hip, overpriced café, laugh together over raspberry sorbet, commiserate over cappuccino, but then I return to my world, and they return to theirs—and our worlds never intersect again. At the end of the day, I shop at the Gap while they’re having their clothes individually designed by Giorgio Armani himself while lounging poolside at his sprawling Lake Como villa. I worry that I won’t find anyone else if I break up with Tom, while they worry about whether to date Tom Cruise, Leo DiCaprio or Ashton Kutcher after their current relationship ends. I agonize over spending $1,000 a month for a rent-controlled apartment that’s practically falling apart while they spend millions of dollars on their Beverly Hills mansions or Manhattan penthouses and don’t think twice about it.

Sure, I’m happy with my life. I don’t think I’d ever want to swim in the fishbowl of fame anyhow. But sometimes it can be a bit demoralizing when I have to have a close-up glimpse of how my life looks next to theirs.

So, hot or not—okay, grade-A gorgeous or not—Cole Brannon didn’t make the top of my People I Want to Have Brunch with Tomorrow list. Really. He may have been the sexiest guy in Hollywood—quite possibly in all of America—but he was probably just as self-absorbed as the rest of them. Maybe more so. Ego is usually directly proportional to physical attractiveness, and by those standards, Cole’s ego should be roughly the size of Texas.

Besides, I’d prefer breakfast in bed with Tom, preferably post-sex, to a boring breakfast with yet another movie star.

Unfortunately, I had to remind myself, breakfast in bed with Tom didn’t actually appear to be an option at the moment, however, as Tom had never technically prepared a meal for me in his life. Then of course there was the whole post-sex thing, which seemed equally unlikely. We would actually have to
have
sex at some point in order to be
post
-sex. Details, details.

I finally shut down my computer, grabbed my notes, and called the company car service—the one perk to working late. I could finish my Cole Brannon research at home just as well as I could here.

On the ride downtown, I resisted the workaholic urge to look over my notes and instead looked out the window at the twilit city streaming by me. Manhattan rolled by in waves of yellow taxis, strolling couples, and businesspeople trying to flag down rides home. The hectic glow of Times Square disappeared behind us as we drove, passing the Flatiron Building, then Union Square, where I often bought fresh fruits, vegetables, and bread at the farmer’s market on Saturdays. The Virgin Megastore on Fourteenth flashed its bright lights as we drove by, and three-story posters of Madonna, matchbox twenty, Courtney Jaye, and Sister Hazel—all of whom I’d interviewed—kept watch over the city from the windows. As we passed the Strand, I recalled with longing the days when I had time to browse through their endless supply of books for hours, finally settling on a quick read or two to get lost in over coffee in Little Italy. It felt like ages since I’d had that kind of spare time.

Finally, the car turned left on Eighth Street. In a moment, we slowly crossed St. Mark’s Place, where NYU students and Village funksters decked out in all the colors of the rainbow perused record stores, scanned the endless rows of silver rings, sunglasses, and scarves, or ducked into cheap sandwich shops. As we turned onto Second Avenue, I asked the driver to drop me at one of my favorite Chinese restaurants in the neighborhood, two blocks up from my apartment. It wasn’t until I stepped inside that I remembered I’d promised to call Tom before leaving the office.

“I thought you were going to be a few more hours,” Tom said when he answered the phone a couple of minutes later. I grimaced as my stomach growled, triggered by the sweet, spicy smells that now surrounded me. Mr. Wong, the store owner, stared at me patiently.

“I figured I’d just finish up reading all these clips at home,” I said, smiling at Mr. Wong. “I wanted to see you.”

“Oh,” said Tom. He was silent for a moment. “So where are you now?”

“At the Chinese place. What do you want me to get?”

“You’re already back?” He cleared his throat. “That was quick.”

“I guess so,” I said with a shrug. “Do you want the Szechuan chicken?”

“That sounds good,” Tom said.

“With lo mein, white rice, and an egg roll?” I asked. Man, I knew him well. Either that, or we ordered Chinese way too much. Looking at Mr. Wong, who was still staring at me patiently, I realized it was probably the latter. I talked to him more frequently than I talked to my own mother—and he barely spoke English.

“Yeah,” Tom said again. “Thanks for picking it up. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

The line went dead, and my stomach growled again. I ordered quickly and didn’t refuse when Mr. Wong, who must have been a mind reader, silently passed me a little bag of crispy noodles to munch on while I waited.

*

“Dinner has arrived!” I panted, pushing open the door to my apartment and catching my breath after climbing the four flights of stairs. If I hadn’t gotten this apartment at a very reduced, rent-controlled price (my dad’s cousin Josie had lived here for twenty years before I moved in, and I was lucky enough to share her last name—therefore, somewhat illegally, her rent-control reduction), I definitely would have insisted upon a building with an elevator.

“Hi, Claire.” Tom emerged from the bathroom, drying his hands on a towel. His shirt was half tucked in and looked like he’d been sleeping in it for a week. He looked every bit the part of a stereotypical struggling novelist. “You’re home.”

“Finally!” I exclaimed, setting the brown bag of Chinese food down on the kitchen table and thinking how cute he looked. The maternal instinct in me wanted to tuck his shirt in and spray it with wrinkle releaser. The sex-starved twenty-six-year-old who had been writing about one-night stands for the last forty-eight hours wanted to jump him. My stomach growled and reminded me to put off both alternatives until after I’d eaten. “What a day!”

Tom crossed the room and kissed me on the top of my head.

“Thanks for getting dinner,” he said. He sat down at the table and started unpacking the contents of the bag, which Mr. Wong, who was not only a mind reader but also apparently a mechanical engineer of Chinese food, had assembled perfectly. “Can you grab me a Coke?”

“Sure,” I said. I grabbed two Cokes—regular for Tom, diet for me—from the fridge and set them down on the table. “I’m just going to wash up, then I’ll be out in a sec.”

“Sure,” said Tom, his mouth already full of lo mein noodles. “Grab me a napkin too, would’ya?”

“Yeah,” I said, reaching under the sink. I grabbed a handful of paper napkins from the cabinet and put them on the table. “I’ll be right back.”

With Tom hungrily slurping lo mein behind me and the crispy noodles doing very little to fill the growling hole in my stomach, I hurried to the bathroom, flicked the light on, and closed the door behind me.

I washed my hands and looked at myself in the mirror carefully. I’d long stopped cursing the freckles that were splashed across my nose and both cheeks. I used to hate them—they didn’t quite seem to go with my wavy, hard-to-tame blond hair—but now I thought they were sort of cute. Even if Tom said they made me look like a teenager. At twenty-six, I was anything but.

I sighed and went into the bedroom to change into my favorite University of Georgia T-shirt and a pair of jeans. Stripping off the black A-line skirt and H&M boat neck tee I’d worn to work that day, I frowned as I caught a glimpse of my pasty white shape in our full-length mirror. In the past few months it seemed my thighs had started to thicken, and I’d added a few inches around the waist. Sure, I’d probably put on only five pounds or so, but when you’re just five feet tall, every pound seems to show in triplicate. Of course, not one ounce had distributed itself to my breasts. Story of my life. I was still holding strong at the A-cup level.

Maybe the added cellulite in my thighs and pounds around my waist, which were really only noticeable with my clothes off, were the culprits for Tom’s seemingly waning interest in me. Geez, didn’t I know better? “You’ll never find a man if you don’t keep up your appearance.” My mother’s voice echoed in my head, as it often did in times of crisis. Easy for her to say. She did an hour of aerobics and an hour of Pilates each day. Of course, she had little else to do. Mortimer, her third husband, was a retired surgeon with one hell of an investment portfolio. He’d insisted she quit her job immediately after she married him, and she had happily agreed.

My stomach growled, reminding me of my original objective. I wriggled into my T-shirt and jeans, smoothed my flyaway blond strands, and, resolving to ignore my reflection for the time being, hurried back into the kitchen to join Tom at the table.

But Tom was already sitting back at his computer, his arms crossed over his chest, staring impassively at the screen. His plate and fork, still covered in remnants of noodles and vegetables, sat in the kitchen sink. His empty can of Coke stood vigil at his spot at the table.

“Thanks for picking up the food, Claire,” he said absently. I stared at the empty box of lo mein noodles that stood in the middle of the table, as if I might have some use for the three or four strands that clung to the inside of the cardboard container. “It was great.”

I clenched my teeth and helped myself to the meager portion of chicken and white rice that he apparently hadn’t been hungry enough to eat.

I didn’t need to eat that much anyhow, I reminded myself. I definitely needed to drop a few pounds. I looked down at my stomach, which growled insistently at me again. So actually, Tom had done me a favor, right? He was inadvertently aiding my diet.

As if to second the motion, he burped complacently, uncrossed his arms, and started typing.

*

I was still poring over pages and pages of Cole Brannon clips hours later, after Tom had turned in for the night.

“I’m just really worn out,” he explained. “I’ll see you when you come to bed, babe.”

I struggled to keep my eyes open as I read by the light of the table lamp. I was starting to feel annoyed at Cole Brannon, not because he didn’t sound like a nice guy (on the contrary, he sounded surprisingly great in his interviews), but because he was now single-handedly depriving me of sleep and time with Tom.

Not that anything was guaranteed anymore in my time with Tom. But tonight might have been different. You never know. Maybe day 30 was the charm. I crossed my fingers at the thought, which temporarily made it impossible to turn the pages.

I sighed and returned to reading about Cole Brannon. I was already reading the final interviews, ones he had done just a few weeks ago, and the screen of my laptop was filled with pages of questions for him and notes to myself about topics I hoped to cover the next morning at brunch.

All the papers and magazines seemed to love him. The
Boston Globe
ran a piece by columnist Kara Brown last month that started like this:

He’s larger than life, and in person, Cole Brannon is no less impressive than he is on-screen. He holds doors like his gentlemanly character in
Friends Forever,
laughs at my admittedly poor jokes with the cheerful politeness of his character in
A Night in New York,
and makes intense eye contact with all the skills of his
Goodnight Kiss
charming rogue.

He grins and scribbles his name graciously as giggling teenage autograph seekers approach the table, and he takes more than a few seconds to chat with each approaching fan.

“I wouldn’t be where I am without them,” says the Boston-born Brannon with a self-effacing shrug. “The day I stop signing autographs will be the day I start worrying about the future of my career. I’m just so grateful that people like my work.”

He certainly sounded nice. But, I reminded myself, he was an actor. It was his job to be able to convince you that his personality was whatever he wanted you to believe.