BRIAN (The Callahans Book 1) (38 page)

“Milo is coming.”

“Aha.” Milo was a home healthcare professional in his mid-30s. Nana had apparently taken a shine to him.

“Why are you home so early?” Nana asked, looking up from the book spread across her sequined lap.

“Are you upset that I’m going to be here for your hot date with Milo?” I countered, grinning. “I can go run errands, if you’d prefer. What’s Devon Ray going to think of you messing around on him?”

“Oh, stop,” she scoffed. “Devon Ray will never find out. Now, tell me, seriously. Why aren’t you still at work? Did something happen?”

“Something did happen,” I said, arching a brow.

“Tell me.”

“I met Devon Ray.”

Nana shrieked shrilly before covering up her mouth with both of her hands. It sounded like a bird call and made me laugh. She did that anytime she got unbearably excited.

“You’re lying to me, I just know it,” she fussed. “I thought I raised you better than that, June Clark.”

“I’m not lying, Nana!” I exclaimed. “He was my last delivery today, and then I wanted to run home and tell you all about it.” The last part was a lie, but she wouldn’t call me out on this one.

“What in the world is he doing in Dallas?” she asked. “I thought he was supposed to be out in LA, filming one of his new movies.”

I shrugged. “You know more about it than I do.”

“No, you’re the one who should know,” she insisted. “Unless you’re fibbing about seeing him today.”

“How dare you continue to accuse me,” I said, giving her a sad sigh. “You won’t just believe me?”

“I just can’t believe that you would see him, no,” she said.

“Well, I have proof,” I told her. “Look.”

I held out my phone, exposing the photo I’d snapped in his face, and Nana snatched it away.

“Where did you get this?” she asked, her eyes drinking in the photo. She adjusted her glasses as if pushing them farther down her nose would help her make sense of what she was holding.

“I took it,” I said. “Of him. After I delivered his pizza to his hotel room this afternoon.”

“It’s a terrible picture,” Nana remarked, and I had to laugh. “Why didn’t you get a better picture of him?”

“It was spur of the moment,” I said. That was a true statement. “He agreed to let me take a photo of him to show you, and I almost forgot when I was leaving.” Again, it was a false statement, but I couldn’t smear Nana’s love for the man. It would make me feel bad.

“How was he?” Nana asked me, apparently satisfied that I was telling her the truth. “Tell me everything. Every last detail.”

I spun a narrative that invented a positive interaction with a star who was just trying to be normal. Devon Ray was here in Dallas on business (true), trying to bypass drawing attention to himself so he could get more done (semi-true), and he ordered a pizza instead of having an assistant do it so he could get a little taste of being normal (false). He’d been gracious and courteous (at first) and had very magnanimously volunteered to have his photo taken by me as a token for Nana (not really). But in the tumult of exchanging money for pizza (false) and me trying to get out of there (because he was trying to drunkenly hook up with me), I took a quick photo of him as I was leaving (true).

“Is he just as handsome in real life as he is in his movies?” Nana asked. “Barring this photo, of course.”

I snickered. “Yeah, barring the photo, he’s not bad.” But the way he acted made those dazzling brown eyes, the thick, expressive eyebrows, and the cleft in his chin—hell, even his bulging muscles—sour for me. It was a pity. He was a good-looking guy. He just wasn’t a very good person.

“Oh, I wish I could’ve seen him. Gotten his autograph. Something!”

I regretted not securing that autograph for her. It was one of the main reasons I’d gone in the hotel room in the first place, when he invited me in to “collect myself.” No, I might have to lie to Nana to protect her from the truth about her idol, but I couldn’t lie to myself about it. I’d gone into that hotel room because I’d been starstruck. Then again, if he’d paid for his pizza like a normal, decent human being, maybe I would’ve had a chance to get him to sign the receipt. It was Devon Ray’s fault Nana didn’t have an autograph. Not mine.

“Sorry, Nana,” I said. “Want me to go back? I know which hotel he’s staying at.”

“Only if you take me with you,” she said with what clearly was a leer.

“Nana!” I shrieked—a habit I’d picked up from her. “I thought you were going to see Milo tonight!”

“Milo, who?” she said dismissively, waving her hands. “Milo nobody. Not when Devon Ray’s around. I don’t want to stalk the poor boy at his hotel room. Not when he’s trying to keep a low profile. I’m just happy you got to see him. If not me, then you.”

“I can get this picture printed out at the drugstore, if you want,” I offered, trying not to laugh. “Think of it, Nana. I could blow it up to an 8-by-10, and we could set it right there on the table in a nice frame, next to my graduation portrait.”

“Maybe if you’d gotten a better picture of him,” she said. “Is that a box of pizza you’re holding?”

“I know this isn’t the last thing you noticed,” I said, waving it around tantalizingly. “But you’d better hurry if you want to sneak a slice before Milo gets here. I’ll warm it up.”

It was easy for people on the outside looking in to make assumptions about my living situation with Nana, but I wouldn’t have traded it for anything—not a high-paying job in my field of study, not a boyfriend, not a huge house in a city far away from Dallas. I adored Nana. We had such a great relationship that it never even felt like work. I wanted her to be happy and secure and healthy. That’s what made everything worth it. It’s why I stayed here with her, in a place where she felt comfortable, instead of shoving her off to some home. That wasn’t how you treated people you loved. You took care of people you loved.

Nana had wolfed down nearly three pieces of pizza by the time the doorbell rang. I snagged the last piece from her and shoved it in my mouth, handing her a peppermint and a napkin, and trotted into the front hall to answer the door.

“Come right on in, Milo,” I said, swallowing the last bit of pizza as I swung the door open. “I know Nana has been looking forward to your visit all day.”

“She’s a sweet lady,” he said, smiling, but then he stopped and sniffed. “Do I smell pizza?”

“Pizza?” I resisted the urge to dab at the corners of my mouth. Were they dirty with pizza evidence?

“June, you know your grandmother has to stick to her diet.”

“Milo, of course you smell pizza,” I said, laughing at him. “I work at a pizza place. I’m there all day. The smell gets into my clothes and hair. I think it even seeps into my pores. Don’t blame Nana for my career. Go ahead and get started with her while I go take a shower and burn these clothes.”

I could tell he wasn’t buying it, but the ball was in Nana’s court, now. I was sure she could charm the pants off the man. Besides, everyone needed a little pizza every now and then. Pizza helped the world keep turning.

Milo and the other healthcare professionals tasked with visiting Nana here at home were only doing their jobs, but I felt like the egg whites, plain oatmeal, bland salads, and white chicken tended to crush Nana’s soul. Raising me, she’d taught me to cook with plenty of salt, sugar, and butter. To me, it was the way love tasted—the two of us working side by side in the kitchen, dusted with flour, laughing about something as we licked batter off of spoons.

Her diet was too clinical, and I treated her occasional pizza cheats as medicine for her soul—even if it wasn’t very good, physically speaking, for her heart.

I started running the shower, slipping out of my clothes in the bathroom, setting the phone down on the countertop for a brief moment before snatching it back up.

I had to figure out what all of this meant. I couldn’t ignore the fact that I’d just rebuffed an advance from one of the sexiest men alive. Nana would probably strangle me with frustration if she knew. The picture of Devon Ray I still had in my head, in spite of running into the real thing this afternoon, was one of his many movie-poster images, with his skin perfectly tanned, his teeth white and even, grinning at passersby, his arm securely around whatever young actress was in his latest film. Yes, turning down that Devon Ray would’ve been an inexcusable mistake. I would’ve strangled myself.

But the photo on my phone—I studied it now—was the picture of Devon Ray I actually needed to memorize to replace all the other ones, the false ones. In this photo of mine, Devon was just as ugly on the outside as he was on the inside, bewildered and angry and taken aback that he wasn’t going to get what he wanted. Spoiled. Entitled.

A jumble of clothes was faintly visible in the background of the photo, covering nearly the entire surface of one of the beds. The flash on my phone illuminated the sparkling bottle of vodka on the table behind Devon, resting right next to the pizza. The expression on his face was one of anger and fear, in equal measures. It really was a terrible photo, but representative of what was going on in that hotel room. Despite all this, I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of pity for him.

According to him, he’d just broken up with his girlfriend. He was feeling alone. I’d never really had time for a real boyfriend before, but if I tried hard enough, I could at least sympathize. As much as I loved Nana and wanted to care for her, I occasionally wished I had a chance to socialize with people my own age…and maybe even fall in love.

“Ugh,” I muttered, locking my phone and putting it down. The mirror was already steamy from the hot water I was running in the shower. That’s how long I had stood there, pathetically contemplating Devon Ray’s situation and imagining I could understand it. I couldn’t understand it. He had everything. What I’d witnessed in that hotel room was a classic case of “poor little rich boy.” He was consumed with the problems created by his fame and fortune, even as thousands would’ve killed to be in his place. It was hard to be sympathetic to that.

The water was scalding. I forced myself into it, if only to try and purge everything that had happened from my mind. I let the spray wet my hair and push it down into my face, blinding me. It was just me and the water…and Devon Ray’s searing gaze.

I groaned a curse and whipped my hair out of my face, lathering and rinsing as quickly as possible. This wasn’t working. I couldn’t just wash away what had happened. It would take time to gradually forget that I’d ever run into Devon Ray in that hotel room. Months and years would have to pass, and then the vivid memories would become a quirk of conversation, something I would bring out at parties when there was a lull in other people’s talking.

“Did you know,” I’d state out of the blue, or perhaps tied in to the end of someone else’s story, “that one time, I delivered pizza to Devon Ray?”

“Devon Ray?” someone else would say. “That poor, washed-up actor? Isn’t he on some celebrity dating reality show now?”

“That’s the very one,” I’d confirm.

“Well?” someone else would prompt. “How was he? What was he like in the height of his fame?”

I could say anything at that point. All eyes at the party would be on me now, aware that they were just two degrees away from someone who’d previously been famous and had now become infamous through some disaster of mismanagement. I could tell them about the vodka and the pizza and the mess in the room. If I were feeling particularly daring, I could even tell them about him trying to kiss me, the draw I felt toward him, his effortless sexuality.

Instead, I’d smile enigmatically. “Even in the height of his fame, there were already shadows of his downfall, even then.”

I liked this scenario very much, I decided, as I stepped out of the shower and toweled off. I looked forward to the moment when the intensity of what had transpired with Devon Ray faded into a story I only brought out at parties—if I ever found the time or social circles to attend parties. I pulled on a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt before wrapping my hair in the towel and rejoining Nana and Milo in the living room for the last part of the session.

“Almost there,” Milo coached her as she stretched out an oversized rubber band. She grit her teeth in concentration and effort. “Three…two…one. Done.”

Nana let the tension out of the rubber band with a long exhalation.

“Excellent work,” Milo said, taking the rubber band from her. “You’re improving your strength and stamina. I can tell you’ve been working with this regularly.”

Nana shot me a guilty look and I shook my head, pressing my lips together. She hated that damn rubber band. She was supposed to work out with it three times a day, but she only did it when there was a home healthcare provider present. Once per day or so seemed to be working out just fine for her.

Milo turned around and I smiled, leaning against the doorframe. “All done here?” I asked innocently.

“That’s it for today,” he said. “But seriously, June. No more pizza. It’s not good for her, and frankly, it’s not good for anyone.”

“I told you that it was me who smelled like pizza, not Nana,” I said. “Please don’t blame a little old lady for my stench.”

“I’m not old,” she protested.

“No more pizza,” Milo repeated, and left.

“He was so suspicious,” I said, shaking my head. “Would you like another piece?”