Happy Again (This is What Happy Looks Like #1.5)(6)
Eight
The only truly crazy thing Ellie had ever done in her life was to fall for a movie star.
And now, all these months later, it didn’t seem quite real to her anymore. It felt like something an entirely different person might do, someone she didn’t even recognize.
It was like when she was little, and she refused to go anywhere without her stuffed rabbit. She slept with it every night, propped it on the chair next to hers at the dinner table, dragged it to school and in the car and to her mother’s shop. Once, she accidentally left it in a restaurant, and she didn’t realize it until they were already home and the place was closed. She spent a sleepless night sobbing into her pillow, and in the morning, her mom drove her—puffy-eyed and still hiccupping—back to the restaurant, where she was reunited with the little bunny, who had spent the night in a lost-and-found box beside a Velcro wallet and a single mitten.
Just last year, Ellie had found the bunny again in a box in the attic. She’d sat on the dusty floor and stared at the thing, trying to summon up those same feelings. It was nubby and bald and worn, the seams coming apart on one of the ears and an eyeball missing from when their dog, Bagel, had gotten hold of it. There was definitely something sweet about it, and she certainly felt nostalgic, but she couldn’t for the life of her remember why she’d ever been so obsessed with it.
And that’s kind of how she felt about Graham now.
Like the little bunny, he, too, was stored away, tucked between the shiny pages of all those magazines, his life playing out in the endless depths of the Internet, a never-ending series of photos and interviews and rumored girlfriends and fast cars, all of it so far away from her own life—so far removed from the guy on the beach that summer—that it was almost impossible to recall why she’d ever been so attached in the first place.
Nine
The figure in the distance stood alone in the middle of the red carpet.
There was a constellation of people orbiting around him—assistants and publicists and hairstylists, reporters and photographers and security guards—keeping a thin cushion of space between them, as if he were electric, as if at any moment he might start throwing off sparks.
When Graham turned to wave at the crowd, a collection of high-pitched screams split the Manhattan night, and even from this far away, she could see his smile shift from the stiff, guarded one he was always wearing at these types of things to something more real, something bordering on genuine amusement.
“He’s gorgeous,” Kara breathed, and the other two nodded in agreement, straining to get a better look.
But Ellie said nothing. It felt to her like the rest of the world should be disappearing right about now. It felt like at any moment, he should look over and spot her there, and their eyes should lock, and he should start moving in her direction, and everything else should fade away, and then…and then, what?
Even if it were to happen this way, she wasn’t sure she’d want that. Or that he would. After all, she was the one who’d stopped writing—who had ignored the last few e-mails he sent this past winter, all of them wondering where she was, asking if everything was okay—and he had every right to be angry with her.
So it almost didn’t matter what happened next. Too much time had gone by, and this particular chapter was long over now. Graham was packed away in some dusty corner of her heart, and even if she found him again, there was no way it would ever be the same.
How could it?
He was closer now, maybe twenty yards away, making his way down the line, shaking hands and signing autographs and taking photos with fans. His movie-star smile had returned, his face friendly but vacant, his eyes a little glazed, and to her surprise, Ellie felt suddenly desperate to see his real smile again. The thought made her chest so tight it was almost hard to breathe.
She reached between Kara and Sprague, gripping the cool metal barricade with one hand to steady herself as he approached, not sure whether she was waiting anxiously or bracing herself, whether she was trying to hide or be seen. Her palms were sweaty and her vision was blurry from the flashes and the noise, the press of bodies and the nervous energy. It almost felt like something was short-circuiting inside her as she stood there, completely paralyzed, watching him approach as if in slow motion.
“Get your phone out,” Sprague said under her breath, her eyes still glued to Graham, who was only ten yards away now. Obediently, Lauren dug through her bag, fumbling to capture the moment, to leave with some sort of proof that they had been here.
And then there he was: only a few feet away, half-bent as he scrawled his name across a piece of paper while a little girl—no more than eight or nine—stared, dumbstruck, from the other side of the makeshift fence.
“Hope you like the movie,” Graham said as he handed it back, and the girl burst into happy tears. Everyone around her laughed, but Ellie understood. Something about the moment made her want to cry, too, because he sounded like Graham just then—not the guy in the interviews, or the one on-screen, but the one on her porch in Maine: humble and hopeful and human.
“So cute,” Sprague said, snapping a few blurry pictures on her phone. A girl with an earpiece walked over and whispered something to Graham, and then he lifted his hand and grinned apologetically at the crowd, which broke into feverish applause, before he was steered sharply toward the entrance of the theater.
As they watched him disappear, Kara sighed.