“That sounds fabulous,” she tells the waiter. “I’ll have the same.”
Once he’s gone, she beams at me and says, “Tell me about yourself, Vaughn.”
I take a hasty sip of my Coke. “Oh. Well, I just graduated from high school last spring—” Crap! I’m already breaking one of the rules. I quickly try to think of a way to change the subject, but Katrina speaks before I can.
“Good for you!” She doesn’t seem upset at all. “You must be really smart.”
I blush.
“I’m glad for that,” she says frankly. “My son needs an intelligent girl. Someone with a good head on her shoulders.” Her tone becomes rueful. “Oak is way too impulsive, doesn’t always make the best decisions. He gets that from me.”
“Does he?”
She nods then swallows the rest of her mimosa in one long gulp. “I’m nothing if not spontaneous. It’s the only way to live life, in my opinion. Did Oak tell you I married Dusty when I was seventeen?”
Great, another no-no topic has been breached. I don’t know what to do. Claudia and Amy made it clear I wasn’t supposed to talk about Oakley’s dad, but she brought him up. It would be rude for me not to respond, right?
“No, he didn’t tell me that.” I pause. “That’s superyoung.” My age, in fact. I can’t envision being married right now. Of course, I can’t envision anything about my future, so that’s not saying much.
Katrina laughs. “I’m sure it seems young to you, but you have to remember—by that point, I’d already been working full-time for ten years. I started acting when I was seven.”
Right, I think I knew that.
“You grow up fast in this business,” she goes on. “I was practically middle-aged by the time I met Dusty. It was on the set of the only movie we did together.”
Middle-aged at seventeen? Damn, Hollywood is brutal.
She waves the waiter over and orders a second mimosa.
It kind of bothers me that she doesn’t thank him, but I’m hoping she makes up for it by leaving him a huge tip.
“Oak was born when I was twenty.”
My eyebrows shoot up. Wow. She’s only thirty-nine? Except, wow again, because she looks way younger than that. Do not bring up plastic surgery, I order myself.
“I’m thirty-two.” She winks at me.
I press my lips together to contain a laugh. “And nobody has ever done the math and realized that would mean you gave birth at thirteen?”
“Oh, Vaughn.” She’s grinning now. “School math and Hollywood math are two very different things.”
My laughter spills out, and she joins in. I didn’t expect to like her this much, but I do. She’s so quick to smile and laugh, and her enthusiasm is contagious. I’m totally aware of the photographers snapping pictures of us from the curb, but Kat pays them no attention. I suppose if you’ve been acting for three quarters of your life, the sounds of camera lenses whirring is like white noise.
I focus on Katrina and find that it’s easy to ignore the outside when I’m this entertained. It’s also easy to ignore that I’m having lunch with a woman I’d only ever seen in magazines and movie theaters.
When our food arrives, we munch on our sandwiches while Katrina tells me stories about Oakley when he was young. She explains that when Oak was a baby, she and his dad agreed to alternate their shooting schedules so that one of them was always at home with their son.
“Dusty didn’t stick to that, though,” she admits, a flash of anger in her eyes. “He’s a workaholic, that man. Back-to-back-to back shoots in his quest for an Oscar. Eventually I had to hire a nanny, because that was the only way I was able to work.” She chews slowly, looking sad. “Maybe that’s why Oak went through with the emancipation? Maybe he was punishing me for not being at home full-time for him? I struggled with the work balance issue in the Working Mom movie I did. Did you see it?”
Before I can respond, she brushes off her sadness again by giving a bubbly laugh.
“But look at me being all serious. Let me tell you about the time I caught Oakley singing Backstreet Boys in front of the mirror when he was seven!”
The rest of lunch flies by. I love Oakley’s mom. She isn’t the most maternal woman, but it’s obvious she’s proud of her son, and she doesn’t stop talking about his records and awards. She even shows me pictures of him on her phone. Her home screen is a candid shot of Oakley lying on a beach chair. He’s not smiling, but he looks happy. He also looks young—sixteen, maybe.
“That was taken at my place in Malibu,” she says when she sees me staring at the screen. “A few years ago.” She pauses. “He hasn’t been there in a while. Not since Roadside Manners came out.”
Another Katrina Ford movie I haven’t seen. I want so badly to give her a big hug, but even if I thought I could do it without embarrassing us both, I don’t get the chance. My phone starts vibrating in my purse, buzzing again and again with every incoming text message.
“Oh, sorry. Do you mind?” I awkwardly gesture to my purse.
Katrina waves a careless hand. “Go ahead, sweetie.”
I pull out my phone and check the screen, frowning when I find a dozen messages from W. I glance hastily at Katrina, but she’s on her own phone, typing away with lacquered nails, so I surreptitiously start reading W’s texts.
We need to talk.
Srsly don’t ignore this.
Call me.
This is not ok w me. If u care, ur going to call me and explain WTF is going on. Sick of hearing abt u from peeps here. Sick of being the one getting crapped on.
My stomach drops. I meant to call him earlier and explain everything, but I got distracted by Claudia and then Oakley and now Katrina. And while I understand what’s driving him—he saw the pictures of me kissing Oakley and he’s pissed—W knows he’s not allowed to be texting me like this.
I say as much, typing a furious response.
We shouldn’t be texting.
Hopefully if anyone ever steals my phone and sees what I wrote, they’ll think I mean we shouldn’t be texting because we broke up, and not because a nondisclosure agreement is forcing us not to.
My message doesn’t get the desired response. Instead of backing off, W just calls me.
I press Ignore so forcefully that Katrina looks up in concern. “Everything okay?” she asks.
I take a deep breath. “Yes. No. It’s just…my ex—” I trip over the word “—boyfriend keeps texting me. I guess he’s still not over the breakup,” I say lamely.
She gives a knowing smile. “And I’d bet who you’re dating now isn’t helping him get any closure.”
“No, it’s not helping at all.” My phone rings six more times before I finally power it off, but the sinking feeling in my heart doesn’t go away.
I need to diffuse this W bomb before it explodes in all of our faces.
20
HER
Katrina insists on driving me home. I take her up on it because, yeah, private transportation beats public any day for a hundred different reasons, even though I complained about it to Oakley once. Private cars means no one sitting next to you smelling like day-old gym socks, or having to stop every other second to let off a hundred people before your destination.
“You’ll have to help me plan Oakley’s birthday this spring,” Kat says.
I’m a bit startled that she thinks Oakley and I will be together in the spring. I mean, per my contract, we will, but I wonder what he said to convince his mother that our relationship was going to last that long. “Ah, sure.”
“What do you think he’d like to do?”
Record with King. “We should do a retro birthday and do a bunch of little kid games like pin the tail on the donkey and a piñata with lots of candy,” I joke. Oakley would probably hate that.
Her eyes widen. “Oh, that’s perfect. Let’s do that.”
“No! I was just kidding,” I protest, but Katrina’s already on the phone to someone telling them that they need to look into booking the party room at the Montage. “Really, Katrina. I was totally kidding. I think Oakley would like—” I cast around for something suitably nineteen years old but then realize that Oakley is no ordinary nineteen-year-old, soon to be twenty. He probably wants strippers and girls jumping out of cakes. That thought makes me frown angrily. I hope he’s not entertaining other girls when he’s supposed to be my boyfriend.