Adulation (26 page)

“Please, half of my classmates’ parents have been in rehab or got divorced over cheating on their spouses with hookers or their exes or their exes’ brothers and sisters, or they’ve come out as gay on reality shows or something. Forgive me for saying this, Dad, but you’re not nearly as fucked up as some of the parents of kids I go to school with.”

He couldn’t help but laugh. “Thanks, El.”

“Have you ever thought about moving back here?”

“
Here
?” he asked, horrified.

“No, I mean Long Island in general.”

“Oh. Not really,” he lied. The idea of doing so had flashed across his mind’s eye like a comet when he’d met Sunny that day outside the theater. “Why?”

“Because you seem more comfortable here. I mean, not right here in front of your old house, but in general. You seem more like yourself, although I’ve mostly seen you in LA. Weird, huh.”

“That is weird,” he replied, somehow knowing what she meant but not understanding how it showed or if anyone else had ever noticed it or why he’d never done anything about it.

“I think you should consider it,” she offered.

“It’s not really feasible for me to move back here,” he said after a moment of consideration. “I’m not talking financially, just in terms of my work and where you and your mother are concerned. I could

never be so far away from you.”

“You travel all the time,” Ella pointed out.

“That’s different. I know I’ll be back. And it doesn’t mean I like to be away from you. If there was a way your mother and I could’ve stayed together, we would’ve.”

“Not likely,” she muttered in that teenage
 
whatever
 
tone, and it irked Danny, although he didn’t press her to explain it. “Anyway, I really like it here.”

“The city or Long Island?”

“Both.”

“Wait till we get to the Hamptons. It’s not as nice as it is in the summer, but the beaches are to die for. Definitely rivals the Pacific.”

“You should at least get a house there,” said Ella. “That would be so cool.”

“I’ll think about it,” he said. “I’m really glad you asked me for this trip. It was just as much a gift for me as it was for you.” He leaned over and pulled her to him.

“I’m glad too. Thank you for taking me here even though you didn’t want to. And definitely think about it.”

“I definitely will,” he promised.

He’d done nothing but think about it since.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Sunny Smith

H
E KNEW. MY
 
beau knew all along about me and Danny Masters, so to speak. Apparently the red Sharpiepen wasn’t opaque enough. I silently cursed Georgie for putting SLEEP WITH DANNY MASTERS onthe list. I cursed myself for forgetting it was there when I had shown Josh the list in my drunkenness. Icursed Josh for not mentioning it until this point, and I cursed myself once more for having shown Josh thelist at all. Hell, why not curse the damn list while I was at it. Why he’d waited all this time to confront meabout it, I had no idea. But it vexed me. More than that, it creeped me out a little.

“You can start with why you’ve got such a crush on him,” said Josh.

I propped up my pillows and sat up in bed, trying to get comfortable. I couldn’t remember the lasttime anyone, if ever, had asked me to explain it.

I took in a breath, exhaled, and opened my mouth to begin, but nothing came out. How stupidwould it be if I told him that I believed Danny and I had chemistry? How stupid would it be to call him
 
Danny
, as if he were just another buddy? What were the odds that I could  successfully change the subject? Spontaneously combust? Be kidnapped by aliens?

“Believe it or not, my ex-husband turned me on to him,” I began. “Writing-wise, I mean.”

Teddy had always loved cop shows, couldn’t get enough of them, and was rather disappointed tofind out that the network had replaced his beloved
 
Law & Order
 
with a midseason replacement, a newshow, something about the Kennedys in Hyannis before the JFK and RFK assassinations. Or rather, afictional family not unlike the Kennedys. The real family gave its approval because the writing was sogood, and the network gave its approval because of the Kennedys’ approval. (I had found all this outsometime after the second season.) I couldn’t stand
 
Law & Order
, so I always read a book during thattime or worked on whatever novel was in progress. We’d been married about six months, but we alreadyhad a routine.

Begrudgingly (and perhaps out of habit in that “same Bat Time, same Bat Channel” manner), Teddy sat through the pilot episode of
 
Winters in Hyannis
. And the following week he sat through thenext episode. And the next. And the next. After six episodes, Teddy was hooked. “Hey, Sunny, you shouldwatch this new show,” he said. “I think you’d like it.”

“What is it,
 
Law & Order: Who Gives a Shit
?”

He couldn’t help but laugh. “No. It’s this show about the Kennedys, only fictional—they’re calledthe Winters. But you know it’s the Kennedys. It’s basically about these two brothers, Tom and Ben—JFKand RFK, respectively—and what they’re like before they decide to run for president. Like, in their reallyyoung years, like college age.”

These were the days before Hulu or YouTube, so I had to wait another week before I watched theshow with Teddy, and I was confused as hell, having come in at the middle of the storyline. Poor Teddyhad to explain something to me every five minutes, missing half the episode himself as a result. But Iloved it. When I looked up the show online, I was surprised to find out that the guy who wrote
 
Madness
created it, and so far had written all the episodes too. Like most of the population, I loved
 
Madness
,

thought it had been robbed at the Oscars, and had seen it enough times to recite the dialogue thanks to repetitive late-night and weekend showings on TNT and AMC.

Josh interjected. “So it’s just his writing you’re in love with.”

“Well, I suppose that’s how it started,” I said, wondering how far I was going to let him in. “I hadn’t seen any pictures or interviews of Danny Masters back then, and despite my watching the awards shows, I guess I never really paid attention to him.”

Meanwhile,
 
Winters in Hyannis
 
had become a hit, and the critics loved it just as much as I did. And just like you start seeing the car you want to buy everywhere you go, suddenly Danny Masters was popping up—on talk shows, in
 
Entertainment Weekly
,
 
People
 
magazine, IMDb, you name it. (Who knew he had written so much, and how had I missed it all?) However, it was his appearance on
 
Inside the Actors Studio
 
(the first episode to showcase a screenwriter only) that clinched it for me. The way his eyes became glassy when James Lipton asked him about the creative writing teacher who recommended he write plays. The way he showed such loyalty to and compassion  for his protagonists. His deadpan sense of humor, timing, and delivery in response to the really personal questions, knowing just when to take a sip of water. (He even did a spit-take). The way he opened his mouth as if to say one thing, and then surprised James Lipton with something else in an East Coast accent peppered with little bits of LA inflection. The way he seemed to be flirting with the audience.

And of course, the way he looked.

He reminded me somewhat of an absent-minded professor, dressed in faded blue jeans and a plain black, button-down cotton shirt and nubuck Oxfords. His hair was brown and thick, his skin slightly tanned, his eyes inviting. He wasn’t movie-star gorgeous, but he was definitely attractive, charismatic, laid back, thoughtful, sensitive. Charming, even.

My type.

Of course, I loved that he was a native Long Islander, wondering how many degrees of separation there were between us—we were only five years apart—surely I must’ve known
 
someone
 
who went to school with him or worked at Baskin-Robbins with him after school or was friends with an ex-girlfriend or
 
something
. And yet I had never found the link. I also loved that he was a Beatles fan, an only child, that he called Joey Buttafuoco “the prototype of the asshole,” and that the sound or noise he loved was his daughter’s laughter.

Had I not been with Teddy, had Danny been just another regular Long Islander, had we met at a bar or through friends or had he come into Whitford’s, I would’ve liked him, would’ve wanted to keep talking to him for as  long as I could. I would’ve given him my phone number if the opportunity presented itself. And so many times I wished that had been the case, especially after Teddy and I split up. At times I found his inaccessibility to be almost painful, like being lactose intolerant yet loving cheesecake and living next door to Junior’s in Brooklyn.

If only I’d known him before everyone else did. If only he’d known me.

Some days it was hard to tell whether his writing was the icing on the cake or the cake itself. I had become a Danny Masters connoisseur, getting my hands on anything and everything he’d ever written and watching it, reading it, studying it, stopping just short of rubbing it into my skin. The dialogue in my novels had improved tenfold following a stylistic observation and application of his use of cadence and rhythm. So did my storytelling. If he mentioned a certain book that he liked during an interview, I read it. I watched all his favorite movies. Pretty soon I noticed that when I wrote, I wrote not just with Georgie and Theo in mind, or Teddy; I wrote with
 
him
 
in mind as well. The greatest achievement wouldn’t be hitting the
 
New York Times
 
best-seller list or having my books turned into movies starring George Clooney or Meryl Streep. No, it would be finding out that Danny Masters liked what I wrote. That it made him laugh, or kept him in suspense, or inspired his own writing in some way.

I suddenly became conscious that I was telling all of this to Josh—my brain ran an instant replay

of my ramblings, and regret hit me like a wave.

I felt my face get hot. “I’m sorry,” I said, wanting to disappear. “I shouldn’t have gone on like that.” I hoped  he had tuned out at some point and turned his thoughts to sports or sales figures or something else. But his eyes were so intently focused on me, as if he’d hung on every word. Damn.

“What would you say to him if you ever met him?” he asked.

I took in a breath. “I’ve already met him.”

“No kidding!” he said, a lilt in his voice. “When? Where? Don’t tell me he came to the store one day.”

“Georgie, Theo, and I went to the
 
Exposed
 
premiere in the city, and he was doing a Q and A with Paul Wolf, Shane Sands, and Sharon Blake.”

“Holy shit! How’d you score tickets to that?”

“Georgie,” I said sadly. “For my birthday.”

Josh raised his eyebrows. “He really gets around, doesn’t he?”

I pulled away and shot him an angry look. “What does that mean?”

He put up his arms in defense. “Whoa. Back off. I just meant he’s very resourceful.”

“You know, I don’t get why you don’t like him,” I said. I had tried to broach the subject once before, but to no avail.

“I’ve got no problem with Georgie as a person. As an employee, he’s not a team player.”

“How can you say that? You don’t work with him day in and day out. He works his ass off.”

“And hates every minute of it.”

“Says who?”

“Can we get off it, Sunny? You were telling me about meeting Danny Masters—which, by the way, I can’t believe you didn’t mention the night we went to see
 
Exposed
.”

We saw it on our fifth date. I had to keep myself from crying through most of it.

I turned away from him in bed, regretting having brought it up. “It was no big deal,” I said.

“Did you shake his hand?”

I shrugged.

“Did you talk to him?”

Shrug.

“Was Charlene Dumont there?”