I’m not, he responded. In fact, I imagine that all towns in Maine are paved with whoopie pies.
Not Henley, she’d said, and like a coal miner grasping about in the darkness, he was suddenly presented with the tiniest crack of light.
Just a few days earlier, the location scout for the film had been fired after it was discovered that the North Carolina town where they were meant to be shooting for the first month of the summer was under attack by a swarm of cicadas. The director was furious that she’d managed to overlook a bug infestation that showed up every thirteen years like clockwork, but Graham had been secretly pleased.
He’d suggested changing the location to Henley, pointing out that it had everything they were looking for: the quaint shops, the scenic harbor, the rough stretch of beach. He spoke of it as if he’d been there many times, and the truth was, he’d thought about the place so often recently that, in a way, it felt like he had.
Still, it took some convincing, and in the end, Graham had been forced to act the way everyone always seemed to expect him to act anyway: he was petulant and demanding and condescending. He made threats and waved his phone around menacingly. And to his surprise, it had worked. New scouts were sent ahead and reported back that it was indeed a perfect location. Permissions were obtained and papers were signed. The second unit went out early to start collecting B roll. And Graham and his costars were slated to spend four weeks at the Henley Inn, which was just three-tenths of a mile from the only sweet shop in town.
Even if his love life weren’t a newsworthy topic, and even if he weren’t constantly wary of the potential for gossip and rumors, Graham still wouldn’t have told anybody the real reason he was so desperate to go to Henley. At best, it made him sound a little crazy. At worst, it made him seem like a stalker.
But the truth was, he was pretty sure he was falling for a girl he’d never met before, a girl whose name he didn’t even know.
He realized that it was ridiculous. If someone had handed him a script with this exact story line, he’d have told them it was completely unrealistic.
But that didn’t change what he felt.
He supposed it might have been easier if he’d just asked to meet her. But what if she wasn’t feeling the same way about him? What if she was only looking for a pen pal? This way, at least he had an excuse for being there.
After all, they had to film the movie somewhere.
Graham wasn’t scheduled to begin shooting his scenes until the next day, and when he’d told Harry Fenton, his rapidly balding manager, that he wanted to get there early, the older man had looked confused.
“You’re never early,” he said, but Graham only shrugged.
“I’m supposed to have lived there all my life, so I think it’s important to fully immerse myself,” he told him, parroting back something he’d once heard his pompous costar on the Top Hat trilogy say. He realized he was getting as good at playing Graham Larkin as he was at playing all these other roles.
He slowed a bit as he drew near to the ice-cream shop. He could sense the photographers lurking somewhere behind him, stealthy as a school of sharks. The sun was hot on his shoulders, his shirt already sticking to his back. He passed a willowy girl with long red hair, and when he glanced up at her, there was a look of silent rebuke in her green eyes. Graham had been so fixated on getting to the town of Henley that it had never occurred to him that the town of Henley might not be as thrilled about having him. He looked over again, and this time, she smiled, but he felt it as a kind of appraisal, a summing up of something about himself he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
But it was too late to worry about that now. He paused in front of the shop and squinted at the glass storefront, but the light was thrown back at him. He was desperate to see what she looked like, though he knew it shouldn’t matter. It had been a long time since he’d felt this way about anyone. Being famous was like carrying around some kind of magic key; you could say something stupid or boring or you could say nothing at all, and the girls still liked you anyway. But rather than making him more confident, this just seemed to shake his resolve, since it meant there was never a way to gauge how anyone really felt about him.
Until now. Because whoever this girl was, Graham was pretty sure that she liked him. Not the movie-star version of him, but the real him.
And he liked her too.
When he pushed open the door, he was rattled by the sound of the tiny bell, and he ducked his head so his face was hidden by the brim of his cap. There were no other customers in the shop, and he kept his eyes trained on the black-and-white tiles of the floor until he was nearly to the counter. It had been a long time since he’d been afraid to look at a girl, but he was inexplicably nervous now, and it took him a moment to force his eyes in her direction.
When he finally did, he was relieved to see that she was quite obviously beautiful, with almond-shaped eyes and long dark hair. But he barely took the time to register that. He was too busy looking at the word sewn onto the pocket of her shirt.
Ellie, he thought, finally pairing a name with the initial. Ellie O’Neill.
She was watching him anxiously, her expression halfway between shock and delight. He nodded at her, then slid over to the display of ice-cream flavors and pretended to be deciding. But what he was really doing was thinking back to a conversation they’d had a few weeks ago, when he’d jokingly sent her one of those e-mails that asks you to answer questions about your favorite things.
There’s no way I’m filling this thing out, she’d replied. You can’t be that desperate to know my favorite ice-cream flavor.
Are you kidding? Graham had said. You’d be surprised how much it says about you.
Let me guess, she’d written. If I say rocky road, it means I’m going through a hard time. If I say vanilla, it means I’m boring…
Something like that, he’d responded. I’m a sherbet guy myself. What does that say about me?
That you’ve got great taste, she’d written back. That’s my favorite too.
He watched now as she moved down along the opposite side of the counter to lean over the glass at him. “Can I help you with anything?” she asked, and he was startled to hear a familiar note in her voice, the same sugary tone used by so many publicists and managers in L.A. He gave her a half smile, but said nothing, and she giggled. Graham’s stomach twisted.
He pointed at the glass. “I’ll have the rainbow sherbet,” he said, venturing a look in her direction, waiting to see if she’d put things together. But she simply nodded and turned to grab a cup, and he realized that it wasn’t enough; of course it wasn’t enough. He tried to think of other ways into the conversation—casually mentioning something else they’d already discussed over e-mail, some other inside joke—but over his shoulder, there was a sharp bang as a photographer got too close to the window with his camera, and Graham realized that maybe this wasn’t the right moment after all.