Jenna & Jonah's Fauxmance (9 page)

“But did you check out the pictures?” he jokes, and I smirk back.

We go outside and find a place to sit in the dark orchard, talking as the moon rises until I don’t know how much time has passed.

“How long do you think we have until we’re discovered?” I ask.

Aaron props himself up on his arm, his legs stretched out in front of him. “A day? Twelve? Who knows?”

I stand up. “So it’s just you and me for who knows how long?”

“Think you can handle the lack of makeup, the deafening sound of no audience?” he asks, only partially joking.

“I can handle more than you think,” I tell him and glance over. His eyes are glued to mine and I have to look away, my breathing faster. “I’ve been dealing with auditions and rejections for longer than you’ve been out of diapers.”

Aaron rises and moves to be close to me. We’re closer than we have been since our last fake kiss, which I realize now is still a kiss, even if the motives weren’t true. We lock eyes. In his eyes I see all the seasons of songs, of insults flung back and forth, and all the lies that led us to tonight. Without anyone to end the scene, to break for lunch, to say, “It’s a wrap,” we just keep going. Close enough that I can feel his warm breath in the cooling air. I wrap my arms around myself and say, just to be safer, just in case I think one thing and he thinks something else and I wind up humiliated, “I think I’m going to go get clean.”

I grab the brown bag and jog away. Away from him and away from any temptation and confusion. The main house is too big, too boxed up, so I go to the cabin and fill the tub with hot water. Sinking into it, I let my hair out of its knot. With no brush and no flatiron, it will revert to its wavy nature. Realizing I can, I remove my contacts and scrub my skin clean of ForeverTan, which takes more effort than you might think. And when I stand up, I feel clean. Cleaner than ever, really. Then I remember I’m naked with nothing but dirty clothes or a carpet cleaner outfit to wear unless I look in the bag Aaron gave me.

I take the plunge. Innocuous blue sweatpants. Long-sleeved gray T-shirt. White tank top. Orange low-tops. A short-sleeved shirt with I HEART CARPINTERIA written on it. A pair of shorts. He did well. Then I reach in and find the last two items: a simple sundress that I would have picked out myself. Muted plum, just the right size. When I imagine him looking through the racks, choosing this one instead of, say, yellow, it occurs to me that he has been looking at me. Or paying some attention. To get my style at least partially right. Then I find the last thing in the bag. A six-pack of leopard-print underwear.

I emerge from the bathroom—hair long and wavy, my eyes free from their brown murk, my skin glowing—to find Aaron asleep on the bed. He must’ve been waiting for me out here. It’s the only bed, I kick myself for realizing now. I sit next to him and watch him for a minute, wondering what he’s dreaming about. Lame groupies who send him their thongs in the mail? College girls who follow his Tweets as though they actually think they know the real him? Then I pinch myself. I sound like the jealous girlfriend. But that’s an act I don’t have to keep up.

“Hey.” I nudge Aaron awake, grabbing the top of his sturdy arm. He doesn’t move. I poke him. Nothing. Then, playing against type, I let my hair fall over my face and lean into him, placing my palm on his chest. I whisper into his ear, “Hey, lover. Watching you sleep makes me want to—”

Aaron bolts upright. “What? Huh? What?”

I laugh. “Well, I’m just living up to my underwear. I thought you’d be impressed. Playing against type and all …”

Aaron leaps off the bed like I’m a ghost. “Hey—that was all they had. I swear. That, or zebra.” He chills out for a second. “Leopard’s better than zebra, right?”

I nod. “Yeah.” I pluck at the gray T-shirt. “They fit really well. Thanks.”

“No problem,” he says and begins to busy himself with lighting the oil lamps. “You look, um, good. Nice, I mean. Different.”

My eyes widen. “No contacts.” Then I realize he looks different, too. And it’s not just his hair or his clothing or that we’re in a cabin with just each other. He looks nervous. And for the first time ever—including our auditions, when I was a sure bet and he was the unknown—I feel nervous, too. If we were Jenna and Jonah, we’d burst into a ballad. So I try it.

“What song would work right now?”

He knows exactly what I mean. “ ‘Finally See the Light’?” he asks when a wick takes and an oil lamp warms the room with its glow.

“ ‘A Country Cottage with the Sea Below’?”

Aaron hands me a toothbrush from the desk and sings into his. “A country cottage ain’t so bad, leaving the city behind, seeing the sea below …”

I pick up where his lame crooning leaves off. “I see the lights, but I can’t see the stars …”

“But no matter where you go, I won’t be far …”

I break the song and go out the door to the cabin’s steps, where we both sit down. “I used to think of the most inappropriate plots for Jenna and Jonah,” I admit. “Just to make it fun on set. In my mind? Like to keep my positive attitude.”

Aaron rests his arms on his knees. “Like what?”

“Like … Jenna gets preggers and has the baby, but it can’t sing so they can’t keep it.” Aaron cracks up. I haven’t heard him laugh so hard in ages, and I join in. “Or Mom and Dad go to a neighborhood party and swap partners, and we walk in on them and sing ‘How Come Our Parents Are Big Sluts.’ Things like that.”

“You are so much more than I gave you credit for,” Aaron says and then bites his lip like he can’t believe he said it.

I turn to look at him, our eyes meeting, our arms almost touching. I really, really wish we’d never shared all those fake kisses, so we could start over. What if we were just a girl and a guy on a camping trip? I swallow hard and look up. “Hey—there’s Cassiopeia.”

“She said, breaking the tension that coursed between them,” Aaron says, narrating.

“End scene,” I say in a dead-on impersonation of our first director, who, like so many before him, succumbed to the idea that everything he touched would turn to gold. He’s now behind the scenes of a pet-training show that films in western Connecticut.

“Why is it so hard for you to stop being ‘on’?” Aaron asks, a mix of true curiosity and disappointment—he can’t believe I went for the joke instead of being in the moment. Sometimes, neither can I.

I go from being lured in by him to being confused and unsteady all over again. It’s nearly impossible to sort out the real between us and the scripted, allowing myself to feel something for him and fighting the suspicion that it might be a mistake. “It’s called humor, Aaron. You should try it sometime—it’s even better than sex. Oh, wait, you wouldn’t know,” I say and grin at him, but this time he’s the one who can’t let his guard down enough to laugh at himself.

Aaron bristles, his mouth screwed up tight, his arms tense. “According to the tabloids, you’re the one who would know.”

It’s a cheap shot, but not unexpected. We’re so familiar we know how to press each other’s buttons when we want to. “Oh, is that right? Doing some heavy reading are we? And this from the guy who claims to have read
War and Peace
twice.”

“Can you even spell
War and Peace
? You know it’s not p-i-e-c-e, don’t you?”

I reach out and thwack his shoulder. “Ha ha. Is that the same spelling as in ‘You can’t get a piece—’ ”

And again, just for a second I wonder if we’ll drop the drama and he’ll grab me and kiss me and I’ll wrap my arms around him and feel his soft hair on my cheek. But Aaron looks up at the sky and then back at me as though he wished on a star that I’d disappear and he’s surprised to find his wish didn’t come true.

“This is ridiculous.” He sighs and shakes his head. “We might just be everything that’s wrong with Hollywood.”

His words sting more than usual just because I don’t know if he means the laugh track–infused
J&J
show, our acting ability, or just plain us—Charlie and Aaron, the noncouple. Maybe he can’t share my image of us together. On set or when we’re being followed, I deflect his insults. Here, away from all that, my armor has been cast off and the venom gets to me faster.

“And here I thought we had a chance of being … ,” I stumble, “
real
…” I look at him for some reassurance that he might feel the connection I do, but when he looks away, I just return to my backup plan—pushing him away. “I mean, that you had a chance of being a real human being. A man, even.” This shuts him up, if only temporarily.

What would
Entertainment Tonight
say about us right now? What would
Stars!
or
People
deem noteworthy of this candid shot? Nothing. I look at Aaron, he looks at me, and we sit there in the quiet, with a nonexistent caption underneath:

Two kids attempting to be normal.

And failing.

10
THE STORY OF YOU

Aaron

When I wake up the next morning, Charlie’s gone, and so is the Rug Suckers van. I don’t know what to make of this. I stumble down to the beach barefoot, and enjoy the feel of the wet sand between my toes.

Suddenly Charlie’s at my side with two lattes in take-out paper cups. She holds the colossal one in her left hand and passes me the small with her right. “I guess you can have the small one this time, since nobody’s watching. Mine’s full fat with whipped cream and a caramel drizzle.”

We drink our lattes and watch the waves. In the distance, I see a dolphin.

“So,” she says. “Are you going to go back to Columbus?”

“Do you do that just to bug me, or do you really think there’s only one city in Ohio?”

“You’ll never know. So, okay, Cincinnati. Are you going to go back and sit in a rocking chair on the front porch of Old Man Johnson’s General Store with your hound dog at your side, or what?”

“First of all, he’s not old, and it’s Mr. Ochocinco now.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Johnson. He plays for the Bengals. Number eighty-five. He legally changed his last name to Ochocinco.”

“I can’t care enough about that to respond. So? Back to Ohio?”

“I … probably not. There’s not … I mean … I guess I’ll go to college or something. I don’t really know what I’d do back at home. My little sister’s a competitive gymnast and Mom’s pretty wrapped up in that. And Dad … we love each other, but we kind of don’t get each other, you know?”

“No. Not really. I mean, my dad lives across town, and I can’t remember the last time I saw him. At least you get to talk to yours, and you know he loves you.”

Charlie takes a long sip of her latte. The sea breeze has picked up and it’s blowing in our faces. Which might be why Charlie’s eyes are watering.

“Your dad loves you, Charlie. He talks about you in every interview.”

“And you and I are a couple in every interview. You know? Just because somebody says something to a reporter doesn’t make it true.”

“But it doesn’t necessarily make it a lie.” And now it’s my turn to take an extra long time sipping my latte and looking at the waves.

“I guess,” Charlie says. “I just … I don’t usually have this much time to think. I don’t really like it.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m thinking about big things,” she says. “What I want in life, who I want to be, without the input of agents or publicists who just want me to make them money. And I’m realizing that I don’t know. I don’t want to be a punch line in five years, you know? But most of the time, if you’re a child star, you pretty much wind up forgotten by age twenty-five.”

“I guess I never thought about that. I was pretty much always planning to retire as soon as I had enough money. Whenever that is. And then I guess have a childhood or something. Like, I worked so hard for such a long time, and I thought I was pleasing Mom, and I was, but now it’s like— She’s on to Michelle’s meets, and I just feel like I was a project that she’s done with. Like some moms do scrapbooking, my mother’s hobby is pushing her children to elite status.”

“My mom’s projects usually involve plastic surgery.”

“Well, she is hot as hell,” I say. I know it’s coming and step sideways to avoid it, but Charlie manages to land a punch on my shoulder.

“You are so gross. I can’t believe you would say that about my mom!” She’s smiling, but she hasn’t stopped hitting me.

“Hey, so I rented
Beach Party Killer 2
.”

“Oh my God, is that the one where her boobs are hanging out the whole time?” Charlie hides behind her hair, then hits me again.

I put up my hands to block the punch to my shoulder. She’s hit the same spot about five times. “That pretty much describes all five of your mom’s movies.” Her face is red and I think it’s time for me to run away, so I flee up the beach toward the house.

“You’ve watched them all!” She’s fast for someone with such short legs.

“Well, I fast-forwarded to the good parts, if that— Agh!” She has managed to clip my leg, sending me sprawling into the sand. I manage to turn faceup just as she plants herself on top of me.

I outweigh her and my longer legs give me enough leverage to throw her off of me, but where’s the fun in that?

“No paparazzi means I can finally punch you in your smug face,” she says, raising a fist but still smiling.

“Hold that pose,” I say, digging in my pockets for my phone. “I wanna get that up on the Facebook fan page as soon as—” The smile drains from her face.

“You have a phone,” she says.

“Well, I’m really trying to use the camera funct—”

“You!” And her face is really red now, spittle flying from her mouth as she screams at me. “Have! A! Phone!”

Oops.