Take a Bow, page 15
“Oh, it’s a text from Mr. Actor Guy. Who’s that?” Trevor walked in, holding out her phone, which she grabbed from his hands. “Mr. Actor Guy” was how she’d entered Nash’s number all those years ago, as a joke, and a way to remind herself that what they had was part of a fantasy. It wasn’t real.
Only somehow, in the last couple weeks it had become the most real thing in her life.
“There’s someone else joining us for dinner. And I need you to be cool about it.”
“I’m always cool,” Trevor said, pushing his straight shoulder-length hair behind his ears.
She raised her eyebrows at him.
“Okay, well. Sometimes.” He pursed his glossy pink lips. “Who is it? Someone from the show?”
“Nash Speedwell.” She glanced at her phone and read Nash’s texts.
Bringing Crosby for pizza.
Hope that’s ok.
If it’s not ok I’ll make it up to you later.
;)
“And Spencer Crosby, apparently.” She’d only met the guy once, that she could remember. Oh well, the more, the merrier. She pushed away the uncomfortable thought that maybe Nash wanted his own buffer.
She sent back a quick thumbs up and looked in her fridge to see if she had some bagged salad she could use to make more of a meal. When she turned back from the fridge triumphantly holding a package of baby spinach, she caught sight of Trevor’s face. It was completely blank. He didn’t so much as twitch a blue eye-shadowed eye.
“Hello? Are you okay?” She snapped her fingers in front of his face, and he swayed.
“Did you just say Nash Speedwell and Spencer Crosby are coming here? To this house? To eat pizza with us? Is that what you said?” Trevor’s voice was eerily monotone.
Mimi laughed. “Yes, that’s what I said. And you said you’d be cool.”
“I’m cool. I’m so cool. This is me being cool. Uh huh.”
The doorbell rang. Trevor screamed.
Mimi set down the bag of spinach and shook her friend by the shoulders. “Snap out of it.”
“Don’t Moonstruck me. This is incredible!” Trevor’s pale face was blotchy with excitement.
“Seriously, I will send you home if you can’t handle this,” Mimi warned.
“Okay, I’ll be good. I swear.”
Mimi took a second to push a hand through her own hair to make sure she didn’t have any curls sticking straight up, then answered the door.
Her breath caught at the sight of Nash in a light blue button-down shirt and navy slacks. He looked so…professional. And hot.
“Hey,” he said.
She swore her panties dampened a little.
Fuck, she’d miscalculated this. She’d thought they might want some distance, to normalize things, slow them down even. Instead, she wanted to drag him to her bedroom and do wicked things with him.
But they had guests. “Hey.” She opened the door wider, and he walked through with an easy familiarity. A slightly shorter man followed him in, instantly halving the space in her tiny living room.
Spencer Crosby was a Raphael painting brought to life, with his curly light blond hair, viridian green eyes, and almost translucently pale skin. His sculpted cheekbones and prominent chin cleft were gilding the lily. He was stockier than Nash, filling out his light green long-sleeved Henley with lean muscle. He wore a smile, but it looked forced.
Mimi gave him a genuine one. It was easy to smile at Sawyer North, one of her favorite characters from the original show. And she remembered what her brother always said about Crosby, that he acted tough but was just shy.
“Hi there,” she said, injecting friendliness into her voice.
“Hi, Mimi.” He looked around, managing to seem politely dismissive of her tiny, cluttered apartment. “It’s good to see you again. I’m sorry for the last-minute addition to dinner.”
“It’s all right. Good to see you, too,” she said, trying to sound like she meant it. “And I have a friend visiting me, so we’re a little party.”
“A friend?” Nash said.
“Trevor. He’s in the kitchen. Nash, can you listen for the pizza? I’ll get the wine. Spencer, is red okay?”
“Sure, but call me Crosby,” he said. “Need any help?”
He had good manners; she’d give him that. “Just make yourself comfortable.”
Trevor was standing next to the fridge where she’d left him. She grabbed the bottle of wine and two glasses. “Can you get the other glasses?”
“I don’t think I can do this,” Trevor whispered.
“You are going out there, and you are going to be chill. Just pretend they’re customers at the Bakeshop. Two regular people.”
He took a deep breath. “Totally. I can do that. I was super chill when I waited on Ryan Phillippe one time.”
“Exactly, you can do this. Now get the glasses.”
She returned to the living room that also functioned as her dining room. The small round table where she ate most of her meals was piled with books she hadn’t gotten around to clearing. Maybe they should eat on the couch around the coffee table. It was just pizza. With that in mind, she set up the glasses on the coffee table, and Trevor shadowed her.
“Crosby, Nash, this is a good friend of mine, Trevor Kendrick.”
Trevor’s hands shook as he set down the glasses, but he gave the guys a smile and waved. “Hi. What can I get you? I mean, can I get you some wine? Oh, I guess Mimi’s pouring the wine. I could get you something else, though.”
When she’d told him to act like he would at the Bakeshop, that wasn’t what she had in mind.
Nash stepped in. “Wine sounds great. How do you and Mimi know each other?”
“Well, everyone in town knows Mimi.” Trevor looked over at her. “But she pretty much just saved my life, that’s all.”
“He’s being dramatic,” she said quickly, handing Nash some wine. He caught her eye and gave her a look she couldn’t interpret. She bent down to get a glass for Crosby.
“Yes, I am a known drama queen,” Trevor said. “But that doesn’t make it untrue. I was a miserable teenager when my parents moved us to Misty Harbor. I had no friends. We came from the city, and there I could just blend in. Here I kind of stood out, no matter how invisible I wanted to be.”
Mimi handed Crosby the wine, who took it absently. He seemed to be riveted by Trevor’s story.
“I started going to the library after school, because I knew if I was home alone all afternoon I’d start heading into a dark direction and Mimi noticed me and gave me a volunteer job and I got to be friends with some of the other volunteers and then all of a sudden I was still a miserable teenager, but a miserable teenager with friends. And this tiny town grew on me.” He smiled at her, toothily, and Mimi smiled back, touched by his account of their meeting.
She’d been doing her job, but that’s why she loved it. She could change people’s lives, usually in small ways, but once in a while in a big one.
“Misty Harbor is very charming,” Nash said, “and Mimi is a lifesaver. That’s a great story, Trevor.”
“Remarkable,” Crosby murmured.
“How did the table read go?” Mimi asked to change the subject. She didn’t like the spotlight being on her for very long.
“Better than expected,” Nash said, while Crosby answered, “Decent.”
“That sounds good,” Mimi said. “Was Jay all right?”
“Your brother is knocking it out of the park. He’s twice as prepared as anyone else. Practically off book.” Nash sounded proud.
“Going to make us all look bad,” Crosby said mildly.
High praise, indeed. “Well, the pizza should be here any second. I thought we could just eat here.” She gestured to the couch as the doorbell rang. She thanked the delivery guy and took the box to the kitchen.
Nash said, “I’ll help,” and crowded into the room behind her.
Before she could start serving, he had his hands on her waist and was spinning her around to give her a smacking kiss on the lips. “Missed you today,” he said on a low growl.
She let herself enjoy the rush of being kissed by a handsome man in her own kitchen. “Missed you, too,” she said honestly. “Sorry about Trevor.”
“He seems like a good kid.”
“He’s twenty-two, but yes. He’s been wanting to meet you. Apparently, you’re a bisexual icon or something.”
“Oh.” Nash’s smile dimmed. “Okay. Thanks for the warning.” He stepped away from her.
“What?”
“Nothing. I’ll just tone down the PDA.”
“Why?” Mimi didn’t point out that so far there had been no PDA, as they were currently out of sight of the other two.
“Nothing, I just don’t want to—I don’t know. People have this idea about me in their heads, and I don’t—”
“Hey, there’s no pressure. Trevor knows you’re a real person. You don’t have to be this perfect avatar.”
“Yeah. No. Right.” Nash sighed. “Sorry. Do you want help with the pizza?”
“I want you to kiss me again,” she said. “And then I want help with the pizza.”
He obliged her, with a chaste kiss that was somehow still deeply arousing. They threw some pizza and the baby spinach on four plates and went out to the living room, where Crosby was sitting on the couch while Trevor sat on the floor on the other side of the coffee table.
“I like your—” Crosby motioned to his cheeks. “What’s it called?”
“Nars Orgasm,” Trevor said flirtatiously. “It’s the only blush I wear.”
Crosby’s cheeks were slightly pink as well by this point. Maybe it was the wine. Mimi internally shrugged. At least they were getting along. “Okay, dig in, everyone. Oh, I’ll grab some salad dressing.”
When she came back out, Nash was sitting next to Crosby, leaving the ell of the couch for her. “This pizza is great.”
“Told you Antonio’s is better than Harbor Pizza.”
Crosby elbowed Nash in the side. “Your girlfriend is wicked smart. You always used to rave about Harbor Pizza, but I always said Antonio’s was better. Thinner crust.”
“Girlfriend?” Trevor said, eyes popping like an anime character. “What’s he talking about?” He turned to Mimi, who froze mid-bite. She looked at Nash.
“Uh,” Nash said. “Um.”
“What?” Crosby said, sounding honestly confused. “Nash said you were his girlfriend. Did I get it wrong?”
What the hell? Nash told Crosby she was his girlfriend?
Trevor looked between the two of them, a smile growing wide on his face. “OMG, you guys are together? How did I not know this? Mimi, you’re too fucking discreet. I wouldn’t have told anyone. I mean, I won’t tell anyone, if you don’t want me to.”
“It’s not a secret,” Nash said tightly. “Is it?” This last to Mimi.
She swallowed with difficulty. Why was he being weird when he’d called her his girlfriend without checking with her first? Now she was the jerk for being caught off guard by the G-word.
“Nash and I are…dating,” she said, drawing out the last word, as if she wasn’t sure that was the term she wanted to use.
“Wow. You really are straight, aren’t you?” Trevor said, his earlier enthusiasm dulled.
Crosby coughed on his sip of wine.
Nash nodded gravely. “Yeah, afraid so.”
“It’s okay. You can’t help it,” Trevor said philosophically. “So, what’s with all the fundraising for Rainbow Canyon and signal boosting queer PSAs and stuff? Mimi said you were a good ally, but that’s a lot.”
Nash shifted in his seat. She felt a little bit bad he was on the spot, but she was still reeling from being called his girlfriend against her will.
Before she could jump in and change the subject, Nash set his plate down on the coffee table and said, “I got a lot of kudos for playing Will O’Connell, gay teen role model extraordinaire. People looked up to him.”
Trevor nodded enthusiastically. “He’s the best. The opposite of a disaster gay, but still believably queer.” He smirked. “And hot.”
Crosby rolled his eyes. He might have been shy, but he clearly still had an ego. Nash just grimaced. Mimi’s pizza was forgotten as she soaked up the fascinating exchange.
“I’ve always felt uncomfortable taking any credit for Will. Ryan Saylor invented him, wrote his lines, and I just played him the best I could.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “But then I’d get letters, and messages, and in interviews people would tell me how much Will meant to them, how it pushed them to do things in their own lives they were scared to do. And they wanted to thank me. I really didn’t know what to do with that early on. It made me uncomfortable, feeling like some kid somewhere was depending on me for something I had no personal experience with.”
He sighed. “Once the show was over, I felt like I’d gotten away with something. Some people were like ‘you were so brave to play a gay character’—it didn’t seem all that brave to me, since I didn’t have any pushback in my own life. I didn’t experience any backlash. I’ve always felt any praise sent my way was undeserved.”
“That’s why you donate so much—you’re assuaging your heterosexual guilt?” Crosby’s voice wasn’t judgmental, but there was a thread of something in it Mimi couldn’t read.
“Yeah. Doesn’t money solve everything?” He smiled wryly.
Mimi felt her heart melt like the cheese on Antonio’s pizza. The charity album, the endless fundraisers. He funneled all that money toward people who needed it a hell of a lot more than he did. Nash’s privilege enabled him to help people, yet he only saw himself as a burden to the community that had embraced him.
“It helps,” she answered, even though she knew his question was rhetorical.
Crosby just shook his head, as if Nash was a mystery he wasn’t going to attempt to solve.
Trevor had been watching Nash avidly, his bright eyes trained on the actor’s face. “I think you’ve helped a lot of people, unintentionally or not, and it doesn’t matter who you like to fuck, Nash, you still get credit for being a good person.”
Mimi had never heard Trevor sound that serious before. She’d always thought of him as young; he was a lot younger than her, after all. But she realized he’d grown up into an adult with passions and convictions, and she felt good knowing she’d been a small part of helping him on his journey, just like Mr. Russell had helped her. Just like Nash was helping kids and young adults by funding programs they needed. Trevor was right, Nash was a good person.
She smiled at her friend, then turned to Nash. He looked gobsmacked.
“Thanks, Trevor,” he said gruffly.
“You know how sometimes you meet your idols and wish you hadn’t?” Trevor said suddenly. He didn’t wait for anyone to answer before he added, “You guys are super cool. And I’m proud Misty Harbor is the home of Sawyer’s Cove.”
“Me, too,” Mimi said. It was arguably a frivolous teen show, but it meant a lot to a lot of people, and that mattered.
Crosby cleared his throat and looked at Trevor. “The fans are who really kept it going all these years. So, thanks.”
Trevor beamed.
Mimi let out a breath. “Well, that was surprisingly emotional for pizza night.”
“How about dessert?” Nash said. He lifted his eyebrows at Mimi. She immediately flashed back to last night, when she’d been dessert, and her cheeks grew warm.
Trevor glanced between them. “Okay, let’s leave the hets alone. Crosby, you want to go grab some ice cream?”
Mimi was about to protest on Crosby’s behalf, but he surprised her by getting up from the couch. “Sure. Is the ice cream place on Spring still there?”
“Nope. But Zelda makes her own, including a watermelon chocolate chip that’ll change your life, and I’ve got keys to the Bakeshop.”
“I have a lot of questions, but I’m game,” Crosby said. “Thanks for dinner, Mimi. Hope we can hang out again sometime.”
Mystified by why Crosby would volunteer to hang out with Trevor, she just nodded. “Sounds great.”
Trevor hopped up and gave her a peck on the cheek as he left. “Have fun,” he sing-songed. “Nash, I’m sure I’ll be seeing a lot more of you. By the way, if you ever hurt Mimi here, I’m officially revoking your friend-to-gays card.”
“Understood,” Nash said, cringe-smiling.
Suddenly, they were down to two, the remains of dinner scattered around. She started clearing up the plates. “I’m not sure what was going on there, but I guess they’re good?” she asked Nash.
“Don’t think about it too hard, honey,” he said.
She walked past him toward the kitchen, but he caught her arm as she passed. “Do we need to talk about this?”
“Talk about what?”
“About how hearing the word ‘girlfriend’ made you look like you wanted to throw up?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Pick up the phone, don’t wanna text.
Your voice in my ear makes me forget all the rest.
It’s no damn use. Our signals are crossed.
You hung up on me, but I’m still hung up on us.
“Hung Up,” The Nash Speedwell Experience
Mimi’s face blanched, and Nash’s heart sank. He had the feeling he’d messed up somewhere along the way, and even though Mimi had confirmed they were dating, her lack of enthusiasm for the label he’d accidentally brought to the conversation still made him uneasy. What if he’d read her wrong and this was still just a glorified fling for her? What if she wasn’t falling for him the way he’d been falling for her for the last eight years?
“Let me put the pizza away,” she said quietly. “Then we’ll talk.”
He followed her to the kitchen, helping her put the leftovers into containers and her fridge. It was small, like everything about this place. He always felt a little like an ogre stomping around in a fairy’s cottage when he came over. Mimi claimed to like the efficiency—less to clean, perfect size for one. Which was part of the issue, wasn’t it? She’d built her life single-sized, and here he was, knocking into everything, disrupting her carefully constructed world.
