When I'm With You Read online

  Chapter Two

  The next afternoon, Kat sat on the passenger side of Josh Wickham’s lime-green convertible with The Joy Formidable blaring from the speakers. They sped along the winding coastal California highway at breakneck speed, skimming the cliff that dropped into a churning ocean. The sun beat on her bare arms while her hair whipped in the chilly wind.

  She felt like she was in the opening scene to a movie. Her movie, where she was the star. She tipped her sunglasses and glanced to her left—yep, she wasn’t dreaming. There was an actual movie star sitting there, right next to her, in the flesh. His full lips moved slightly, as if he were running lines. He’d re-dyed the trademark blond streak that ran like a lightning bolt through his black tresses from the bangs that hung over his nose to the back of his neck. She pinched herself.

  Then she texted her mom as she’d promised.

  Almost there.

  Her phone buzzed a second later.

  Drive safe. You forgot to send me a link to your performance.

  Kat had forgotten her mother’s one condition for letting her jet off with Josh: she had to send her mother the link to the school play she’d missed.

  Oops. Sending now.

  Got it. Have a great time. I put some extra money in your checking account.

  Text me tomorrow!

  Kat grinned as she stuck her phone back in her purse at her feet. Her mom was cool about everything. She didn’t quite get Kat’s obsession with acting, but she did get what it was like to be totally obsessed with something. For her mom, that thing was rocks.

  As a geologist, her mom spent all day staring at rocks and soil samples. She’d discovered a special way to measure soil dispersion to predict the prevalence of oil reserves. When her company had sold for millions, she’d pocketed the cash, sent Kat to the Jane Austen Academy—Kat had lost her voice from begging to go—and gone right back to her favorite hobby: staring at rocks.

  Her mother had already had her big break. Now it was Kat’s turn.

  Josh yawned widely, his nose scrunching, and then peered at her with piercing blue eyes. He ran his hand through his hair, just over the dyed blond streak. “I’m thirsty.” He turned the wheel to exit into a gas station. “And I have to piss.”

  She shuddered. “TMI.”

  “No such thing for an actor,” Josh retorted. “If you want to fully play a character, you have to accept every nuance of the human condition.”

  Kat nodded, chastising herself. He was right, of course. He was Josh Wickham! She was sure the weekend would be full of learning experiences just like this one.

  When he parked, Kat jumped out of the car, adjusted her large-frame sunglasses on her nose, and went in search of gum. They’d barely taken two steps into the convenience store when the girl behind the counter squealed. “Ohmigod! Josh Wickham!”

  The clerk grabbed her phone and snapped pictures as Josh coolly ignored her and headed for the fridge unit at the back of the store.

  One day it will be me being photographed, Kat thought. And she would always be sure to smile.

  After a speculative glance at the grungy restroom, Kat decided to hold off her urge to use it until they arrived on set. She grabbed the gum, right by the magazine rack, where a headline caught her eye: WHO IS TOM TRENTON’S MYSTERY WOMAN?

  She grabbed the magazine and clutched it as she thumbed through its flimsy pages to find the story.

  “Don’t read that trash,” Josh said from so close behind her that she started.

  She waved him off like a fly and continued her search. “Don’t you want to know who he’s seeing?” Tom Trenton was one of the biggest stars in the business, but what was more relevant, his son Henry was Josh’s costar.

  Kat had read up on Henry Trenton for years. He’d always been in society pages, on the arms of an actress or a reality star, sitting next to his dad front row at the Oscars. But he’d never showed any desire to act—until now. “Whatever is going on with Tom Trenton could directly affect Henry and the mood on set.”

  “If I want to know what’s going on with Henry’s mood, I’ll just ask.” Josh dropped twenty dollars on the counter and waved his drink at the starstruck clerk before he headed out the jingling door without waiting for change.

  “Can you add the rest of this, too?” Kat shoved her gum across the counter and flashed the magazine.

  “Are you with Josh Wickham?” The clerk craned her neck to sneak another look through the glass doors at Josh getting into his convertible.

  Kat beamed with giddiness. She was an actor, hanging with another actor. “We’re driving to Bande, where his next movie is filming.”

  “Is he a good kisser? I bet he’s a good kisser—he was, like, totally using his tongue in that show—”

  “What? No!” Kat made a face as she realized the clerk had been asking whether they were together—as in dating. “I’m not with Josh like that.”

  “Then how are you with him?” she asked as she rang up the purchases.

  “I’m an actor, too,” Kat said casually.

  The girl squinted. “Have I seen you in anything?”

  “Not yet,” Kat said. “But you will. Trust me.”

  “I believe it if you’re hanging out with Josh Wickham. You are so lucky.”

  Kat felt an unexpected sting at the remark. She didn’t want to be lucky. She wanted to be talented. She unwrapped a piece of gum and popped it in her mouth. “Thanks.” She felt hollow as she said it. She snatched her purchases off the counter, stuffed them in her oversize purse, and ambled outside.

  “Why are you frowning?” Josh asked.

  “I’m not.” Kat slid inside the car, pulled out the magazine, and tried to hide her sour mood behind its pages.

  “I’m looking at your face, and it’s scowling. I’m an actor, remember. I’m trained to read faces.”

  I get it. You’re an actor, she thought to herself.

  He navigated the car back onto the highway and turned to her again, only when he caught sight of her magazine again, he scowled, too. “Don’t bring that on set.”

  “Why not?”

  “Gossip is tacky.”

  Tacky but fun. Kat fought the urge to stick out her tongue. She flipped to the headlining article and stopped short when she saw the blown-up photo of Henry. Somewhere, somehow, he’d grown from a short kid hamming it up next to his dad into a total hottie.

  Henry Trenton gears up to follow in his father’s footsteps, read the headline above the picture.

  He was grinning at the camera, tipping his fedora so that the long feather tucked into its ribbon brushed the camera lens. He seemed to be laughing at a private joke he’d shared with the cameraman and no one else. It’d been taken after he’d buzzed off his dark-brown curls for this movie role, but his eyes popped from the page—the deepest, warmest brown.

  She traced her fingers over the curve of his chin, the line of his nose, and his lips. She cleared her throat and wiped the sudden shimmer of sweat from the back of her neck. “Have you ever met him?”

  Josh glanced over to see who she meant. “Henry was in some of my acting workshops. The Beverly Hills Playhouse and one of my improvs. The instructors were amazing. I got to work with David Morse and Stephen Root.”

  Kat felt a twinge of envy as Josh detailed his workshop experiences. She often wondered if she’d made a mistake by choosing the stage over the camera by getting her mother to send her to the Jane Austen Academy instead of Los Angeles. When Kat was younger, she couldn’t get enough of a live audience, of the immediacy of their applause, and she’d hungered for it.

  But now she found herself hungering for the big screen—and maybe, just maybe, for the respect and adoration that came with being a movie star. Especially if it meant she’d have costars like Henry.

  “What was he like? Henry, I mean,” she asked.

  “Weird.” Josh shook his head. “He was that guy in workshop who never played it straight. When a moment is supposed to be funny he tries to make it sad. He
pulled the kind of stuff you can’t get away with unless you’re Johnny Depp. Or your dad is Tom Trenton.”

  “What do you think he’ll pull with the role of a crazed serial killer?”

  “Probably play him like the romantic lead. Gunning for my action.” Josh’s fingers tapped against the steering wheel a touch faster than the beat of the music. “I hope he has his act together. This is a movie set, not a workshop. He’d better know the difference.”

  “Henry has probably learned a lot from his father. He’ll be professional.” Kat continued to read. “It says Henry waited to debut because he wanted to land a role without his father’s help, which is what led him to an indie film.” She sighed. “That is so cool.” She didn’t know if she would have turned down the advantages that came with having Tom Trenton as a father.

  “Cool…but probably not true,” Josh said. “Do you know how many crap stories I’ve read about me? I slit my wrists because I didn’t get a part. I shot drugs so I would know what it was like for my character. I’m taking steroids to bulk up for an action role.”

  “Those aren’t true?” Kat deadpanned.

  Josh narrowed his eyes at her with a grunt.

  Kat flipped the page to the cover story: WHO IS TOM TRENTON’S MYSTERY WOMAN?

  The featured shot was a blurry, wide-angle photograph of a man in a suit and a blond woman in a tight, sequined dress sprinting away from the photographer in a dark alley. Tom Trenton’s profile, and his infamous bulbous nose, was unmistakable. But the woman was impossible to identify from behind. Kat bet the blonde was a famous star. Ooh, maybe a married star! One with kids or—

  “See, look at this crap.” Josh slapped his hand down on the magazine so that it ripped from her fingers and landed in her lap. “That woman is his publicist or his sister. They probably know who she is, but they deliberately set up the shot to look suspicious. Can you put that thing away? I don’t want anyone catching you reading it on set. It’s the mark of a total unprofessional.”

  Kat reluctantly rolled up her magazine and tucked it into her purse. “Whoever she is, she and Tom felt the need to run from the camera.”

  “Don’t you know how annoying paparazzi get? They don’t just take your picture. They talk trash to you, provoke you. I’d run, too.”

  “But what if it’s true?” she asked. “What if Henry’s dad is seeing a mystery woman in secret?”

  “Then Tom Trenton gets what he deserves for cheating on his wife,” Josh said. “But only if it’s true—and from what I know, that’s a big if.”

  Kat snuck a glance at him. He was being more irritable than usual. “Are you nervous?” she asked.

  His gaze snapped to her then back to the road. “No.” He stilled his hands and feet, focusing on the road ahead. “Well. Maybe.”

  “Is there a reason to be nervous?”

  Josh’s smile hitched at the corners. “Lemme see… This is my first job in two years, and everyone in the business thinks I’m a washed-up pretty face.”

  “That’s not true,” Kat said. “That girl at the convenience store—”

  “Is nobody,” Josh finished. “My career is riding on this movie, and this movie is riding on me. Even though it’s an indie, a couple mil has been invested. From pre-production to filming to post-production, more than a hundred people are involved, but all anyone will remember is me. Just me. And whether I got it right.”

  Kat nodded slowly as he spoke. “The whole thing rests on you.”

  That was how Kat felt on stage, too.

  * * *

  The green highway exit sign for Bande, California was bent in half, as though someone had crashed a car into it but no one could be bothered to hammer it straight afterward. Dirt spun out behind Josh’s tires as he tore past the sign and drove onto a skinny cutover road. The desert stretched for miles in all directions, and the dry wind stung her cheeks. Josh closed the convertible’s top to protect them from the blowing sand.

  Kat pressed her face to the window. Between the highway behind them and the San Bernadino mountains in front lay an endless, barren desert. A flock of large, black-winged birds huddled ahead. As the car passed, she realized they were pecking at the dead, bloated flesh of a coyote whose fur was mottled with dark red. “Creepy.” She shuddered.

  “Creepy’s the idea.” Josh said it nonchalantly, but even he seemed unnerved as he sped past the spectacle. He clicked off the music, and other sounds came into focus: the low hum of his engine, the dirt churning beneath his wheels, the shrieking wind.

  Kat’s unsettled nerves spiked to attention when Bande appeared as a speck in the distance that grew as they drew closer. The dot quickly became a mobile city of white canvas tents, white trailers, and candy-colored sports cars. Josh parked by a dozen other vehicles that were haphazardly lined up. He peered in his rearview mirror at the reflection of the tent city, and Kat craned her neck to look, too. One large, central tent was surrounded by a number of smaller tents, each buzzing with activity.

  “Looks like they’re setting up a shot,” he said, licking his lips.

  Nervousness knotted Kat’s stomach as she stepped out of the car and shut the door—just one of a various sounds on the active set.

  My. First. Movie. Set.

  She’d done a commercial when she was six, but she barely remembered the experience, and that little studio didn’t count anyway. Since then, Kat had devoted her life to the stage and the spotlight. After being the lead in five critically acclaimed—by the school paper—Jane Austen Academy productions in a row, she was ready to take it to the next step. She was ready to meet the people who would get her there.

  The wind whistled past her ear, combing through her tangled hair. She brushed the strands from her face to get a better look at everything. The ghost town of Bande could more accurately be described as a ghost street. Just past the tents, two lines of abandoned storefronts faced each other. The buildings, from the run-down bank to the saloon to the blacksmith, seemed bathed in gray. The only color came from the people running down the street, rigging lights, or barking angrily and importantly as they rushed in and out of buildings with clipboards clutched to their chests.

  “There are so many people,” she said.

  Josh walked up next to her and shoved his hands in his jeans pockets. “They’re mostly interns. Unpaid—probably up from UCLA.”

  She couldn’t tell if there was derision in his tone. She only knew she was in the same boat—unpaid, on break from school, giving up Christmas plans. All to be part of this movie experience in the hopes it would lead to bigger and better things. She already had more in common with this group of strangers than she did with most of her classmates.

  A crane scooped over Main Street for dive shots as the crew rigged floodlights. A row of canvas chairs behind a playback screen was filled by an opinionated mob in khakis and polos—including a guy she recognized as the director. The largest tent was set up with a semi-circle of tables, and a group gathered in front of a catering truck at its edges where a girl handed out bagels and paper cups from a tiny window. Makeup artists huddled under the nearest small tent, dabbing blood on scarred faces in folding chairs.

  A stage was contained chaos, but this movie set was chaos exploded.

  Kat was standing paralyzed next to the car, unsure where to go or how to start, when Josh broke away. She watched as he gave a quick hug and a pat on the back to a tall, skinny guy with a sparse mustache. He was dressed in a Spider-Man shirt and jeans.

  “Ben, man, seeing they got you as PA eases my mind.”

  “Good to see you, too.” Ben tucked the clipboard in the crook of his arm. “You ready for this? Been a while for you, hasn’t it?”

  Kat winced, but Josh kept his smile plastered in place.

  “I wasn’t expecting a crane.” Josh pointed to Main Street where the crane was being maneuvered in front of the saloon.

  “Nice, right? The crane’s a loaner—the AD knows a guy who knows a guy. You know how it is. We lose it in a cou
ple days, though, so we’re changing up the schedule to take advantage.” Ben pulled a sheet of paper out of his clipboard and handed it to Josh, who folded it into his back pocket.

  “Are we filming tonight?” Josh gestured to the extras getting makeup.

  “No, AD wants trials to see how the blood reflects in the night shots. He’s getting a few craned establishing shots, too. Making the most out of the tight budget.”

  Josh leaned in and dropped his voice to a whisper. “How’s it been?”

  “Crazy, but at least it’s the usual kind.” Static crackled from the walkie-talkie at Ben’s waist. “Main problem is we lost a few of our extras for the chase scene due to the reschedule.”

  Kat sparked alive and stepped toward them. “You need actors?”

  Ben’s gaze slid over as if he was noticing her for the first time, which may very well have been true. “We need extras.” His walkie buzzed again, and he grabbed it with his left hand and brought it to his ear. “Go for Ben.”

  Kat grabbed Josh’s arm and shot him a wide-eyed plea. They needed extras, and she was here being all…extra-y. But he shook her off and crossed his arms in front of his chest. Did he really think she was going to let him ignore her? She pinched his elbow, hard. He hissed and yanked his arm away.

  “Not now,” he whispered, his eyes on Ben who continued to bark into his walkie-talkie.

  “You should have worked it out ten minutes ago,” Ben was saying. “No more excuses.”

  Kat barely made out a voice beneath the static reply, asking if Josh had arrived yet.

  “I just got eyes on Josh,” Ben said. “Yep. Ten-four. I’ll let him know. Out.” Ben stuck the walkie-talkie into the holster at his waist. “They want you for rehearsals in twenty.”

  “No problem. Am I the last?”

  “Not by too much. Henry got here an hour ago, but Izzy arrived this morning since they had to put in her hair extensions.”

  Kat glanced back at the trailers at the sound of Izzy’s name to see if she could figure out which trailer belonged to the actress. Izzy Engel’s trailer deserved a star because Izzy was one. She was only seventeen but already had one Academy Award nomination under her belt, and her last romantic comedy had been number two at the box office for seven weeks running. She was the most GIFed actress of the year. Rumor was Izzy was in the bag as the lead for the next Scorsese film shooting over the summer.