While We Were Dating Read online

  She’d been a quick study. The first time she’d left the bar with a guy, Penny had cheered. The rest was history.

  “Sure, Wonder Girl,” Anna said. “Wasn’t that what that one guy called you?”

  “It was Super Girl, I’ll have you know, and also fuck you.”

  They both laughed.

  “I’m just saying,” Penny continued. “I know it’s been awhile. And I understand why—last year was awful, you didn’t want more complications, I get it. But you’re back on your feet now. Right? So maybe you should do a little panty throwing. You know. To celebrate.”

  Anna laughed again, but she knew Penny was saying this as much for reassurance as she was for encouragement.

  “I am back on my feet, Penny. And yes, I plan to do some panty throwing as soon as I can, don’t worry. But I don’t want to fuck up my career just when I’m feeling together. I promise, though: as soon as I throw my panties at someone, I’ll let you know.”

  Anna went across the room to grab another bottle of sparkling water. She opened her underwear drawer as she walked by. Just a big pile of practical black panties. Some of them were thongs, but still. She might need to do something about that.

  “You’d better,” Penny said.

  Five

  A few days later, Anna sighed with relief when someone handed her a can of sparkling water during a break. It had been a long day of filming all over San Francisco. This crew had made it a lot of fun—she’d laughed a lot all day, especially at Ben’s ridiculous jokes—but she was worn-out.

  “Thanks,” she said, without looking at who had given it to her.

  “No problem,” Ben said. Her head snapped toward him. She saw him grinning at her, and she grinned back.

  “Tired?” he asked her.

  She nodded.

  “A little,” she said. “Today has been an adventure. It’s been fun, though.”

  They’d spent the day racing around; she’d run up and down a series of stairs all over the city, talking on the phone and getting it knocked out of her hand repeatedly. She was hot and tired, but in a good mood, despite all of that.

  There had been a time when she’d have been self-conscious for this whole crew to see her in the yoga pants that she’d had to wear all day. She used to be ashamed of her body—of her butt that made finding jeans that fit almost impossible, of her not-at-all-sample-size figure that made awards season a struggle, of her curves that had made her anxious in a bathing suit for most of her life.

  At first, working in L.A. had made her feel so much worse. Everyone was smaller than she was, sometimes it felt like they were literally half her size, and she’d seen the way casting directors looked her up and down.

  But at some point early on, she’d had to make a decision. She knew she was never going to be a size two, she knew she was never going to have that kind of ideal Hollywood body; no amount of starving herself or constant exercise would achieve it. So she’d had to decide whether to keep going in the business, just as she was, or give up and do something else.

  She kept going. And then, amazingly, after her first few roles, so many women wrote to her to say how happy they were to see someone who looked like them on the big screen, how her beauty made them realize their own. Sure, it helped that she also saw the way men looked at her—both in public and in private—and how easy it suddenly was for her to get dates and anything else she wanted now, but that was just a side benefit. The men probably came easy to her because of her newfound happiness with herself, not the other way around. She realized, as she used her whole body to act, to exercise, to express herself, how much she loved her body, and how glad she was for every inch of it.

  Last year, when she’d been so anxious and scared, she’d lost weight. And she’d gotten praise from all sorts of arenas for that, which felt so weird and disconcerting—did all of the people praising her really find her that unattractive before? But the worst part was she hadn’t felt like herself. She’d gained some of the weight back now and felt like herself again. And she liked herself, in and out of the yoga pants.

  “It’s been a great day,” she said to Ben, “even though I’m worn-out.”

  He smiled at her, and she suddenly wished they were alone.

  “It really has been, hasn’t it?” he said. She liked the way he smiled at her. Like they were sharing a joke, one only the two of them were in on.

  “Maybe . . .” she said, and then stopped herself. What had she been about to say? Maybe he could come back to her room tonight? She couldn’t say that. To cover for herself, she reached into her bag for her phone.

  “I should check to see . . .” If what? If her agent called? Sure, yeah, that made sense. She was always checking for that anyway.

  No emails or calls from her agent or from Simon, but she had two missed calls from her brother, and a text, too.

  That was weird. Her brother was much more of a texter than a caller.

  Call me when you get a chance

  Oh no. That was an ominous text.

  She held up a finger to Ben, still standing at her side.

  “Hold on, I need to make a call.”

  She scrolled to her brother’s name as Ben backed away.

  “Hi, what’s up?” she said when Chris answered the phone.

  “Okay, so Mom told me not to tell you this, but I know you’d kill me if I didn’t. But don’t freak out.”

  She was already freaking out.

  “What is it?”

  He sighed.

  “You know how they’re in Joshua Tree this week, right? They drove down yesterday, and today they were in the park. Well, Dad tried to help someone whose car had broken down.”

  “Oh no,” Anna said.

  “Oh yes,” Chris said. “Anyway, he landed in the hospital. They don’t think it’s his heart but they’re not sure; the only reason I know all of this, FYI, is that Dad was apparently bragging about me to the guy whose car he was helping with, and handed him one of my business cards. Thank God the guy called me and then I called Mom.”

  Her dad was in the hospital. Oh no oh no oh no.

  “Where are they?” Anna asked.

  “A little hospital in Palm Springs, I’ll text you the name, I know you’re going to want to look it up. Mom sounded fine and forbade me to call you because she says you’re working, but you’re always working so I don’t know why she thinks that’s a reason not to tell you. She said Dad was asleep, but I don’t know if that was true or just some bullshit she told me. You know her.”

  Anna sighed. Yes, unfortunately in this instance, she did.

  “Okay. Thanks for calling. Where are you?” she asked her brother.

  “I’m in Seattle at a conference. I’m supposed to be here through Monday, but depending on what I hear from Mom, I can fly down there tomorrow if I need to. I’ll call you if I hear more. Don’t freak out, okay?”

  Don’t freak out, indeed. Her brother had always been the levelheaded one—calm, orderly, detailed, on the right path since birth. She was sure he wouldn’t freak out about this.

  “I’ll try,” she said. “Thanks for telling me. Keep me posted, okay?”

  “Okay.” He paused. “You’re not going to do anything wild like shipping in an L.A. doctor to the hospital or airlifting Dad out of Palm Springs, are you?”

  “No.” She hadn’t even thought about any of that. “I promise, I won’t do any of those things.” Though . . . that whole airlifting-him-out thing sounded like a great idea. She should make a few calls on that one. Just to see how possible it was.

  “Annie. This is me you’re talking to. I know that tone in your voice. Dad is going to be okay.”

  She turned around so no one in the room could see her.

  “You don’t know that,” she said in a low voice.

  Chris sighed.

  “No. You’re right. I d
on’t know that for sure. But I talked to Mom, and I know she would have been more worried if there had been something to worry about. You know how she does that fake chipper sound to her voice thing when she’s really scared? She didn’t do it this time, I promise. And I swear, if I hear from her again, I’ll let you know.”

  His voice had that soothing Mr. Rogers tone he probably used to reassure his students. It usually worked on her, too.

  “Okay. Talk to you tomorrow,” she said.

  She hung up the phone and stood there facing the wall for a few minutes before she turned around. When she finally did, Ben was a few feet away.

  “Feel free to tell me to go away,” he said quietly. “But . . . is everything okay?” He looked so concerned, and had such a warm expression on his face, it made her want to burst into tears. She couldn’t do that, though. Her mom was right, this was work, she had to keep going.

  She nodded.

  “It’s fine, I’m fine.” She tried to smile but failed.

  Ben went back to the craft services table and brought her another can of sparkling water.

  “You need to get out of here, don’t you?” he asked.

  She stared back at him. She wrestled with how to answer. She should stay; she should get her work done. But no, wait, she needed to take care of herself, remember? She was supposed to stop forcing herself to stay and get work done when she knew she needed breaks.

  Ben looked at her as she silently battled with herself, then turned away.

  “Gene?” he called out.

  About a minute later, Gene clapped his hands.

  “Folks, we’re done for the day. See you tomorrow at . . .” He glanced at Ben. “Let’s say nine a.m., for a treat. Good work, everyone.”

  Ben walked back over to Anna.

  “Okay, let’s get you out of here,” he said.

  She picked up her huge tote bag and looked around for her phone before she realized she was still clutching it in her hand.

  “My car . . . I have to call for the driver. I don’t think he’s here yet.”

  Ben shook his head.

  “Don’t worry about your driver. I’ll get you back to your hotel.”

  She followed him, with no energy to argue or tell him it wasn’t his job to shuttle her around, that they already paid a service very good money to do that. As they walked to his car, she barely noticed the beautiful view of the San Francisco skyline from here or felt the chill in the air. All she could think about was her dad, in a hospital bed somewhere five hundred miles south of her.

  She suddenly came to herself as they dodged traffic on the city streets on the way back to the hotel.

  “Actually, Ben,” she said, “can you take me to SFO instead of my hotel?”

  He glanced over at her and barely blinked.

  “Sure.” He looked around at where they were and took a right at the next corner. “Hold on.”

  Anna looked down at her phone and scrolled to her assistant’s name.

  “Florence, hey,” she said when her assistant picked up. “Can you get me on the next flight from SFO to Palm Springs? Text me when you have a boarding pass.” She usually wasn’t this short with her assistant, but she couldn’t handle going into details right now.

  She looked outside at the fog in the sky as they crept along 101 South to the airport. Why were airports always in such high-traffic areas, anyway? Wouldn’t it make more sense to put an airport in an easy place to get to, so people didn’t have to sit in traffic to and from it every time?

  She looked over at Ben, who was staring at the road. He hadn’t asked her a single question about what was wrong, what that phone call about plane tickets had been about, or why she suddenly needed to go to SFO. God, that made her like him so much.

  “It’s my dad,” she said into the silence. “He and my mom are in Palm Springs—well, actually they were in Joshua Tree, and now he’s at the hospital. My brother says he’s fine, that it’ll be fine, but . . . he had a heart attack a few years ago, and I’m always afraid . . .”

  Ben turned to smile at her, and the look on his face felt like he’d given her a hug, even though he hadn’t touched her.

  “We’ll get you there,” he said.

  He hadn’t said it would be okay, or that her brother was right, or that her dad would be fine, or anything like that. She was so glad.

  “I just . . .” Her phone rang before she could finish that thought.

  “Okay, so how close to the airport are you?” Florence asked.

  Anna looked around for landmarks.

  “With the way traffic is . . . I’d guess around thirty minutes away, minimum.”

  Florence let out a sigh that Anna rarely heard. It was her bad-news sigh, and Florence almost never had to give her bad news; she was just that efficient.

  “The last flight for the day is supposed to be at 8, but that flight has already been canceled. I have you ticketed on the flight at 6:10, but I don’t know if you’re going to make it.”

  Anna looked at the clock in the car. It was 5:30. Florence had worded her bad news very delicately.

  “Shit. Okay. Okay, maybe you should . . .” Her mind went blank. What should she do?

  “What about—” Florence started.

  “Let me call you back.” Anna ignored Florence’s attempt to cut in. She needed to think.

  “No flights?” Ben asked.

  Anna bit her lip.

  “The last one of the day is in forty minutes, and while it’s much faster to get through airports when you’re me, I still don’t think I can make it.” This was probably a sign that she should just go back to her hotel and wait for her brother to call her. “Thank you so much for trying, but I’ll just go back to my hotel. My brother can get there tomorrow; he can call and let me know if . . . if everything is okay.”

  Ben turned to her, and that grin of his spread across his face.

  “I have a better idea. I’m already heading south. What’s a few more hours of driving?”

  * * *

  —

  Anna stared back at him like she hadn’t heard or didn’t understand what he’d said.

  “What?” she finally said.

  He gestured at the road in front of him.

  “What will it take, like, six or so hours to get there? Okay, maybe seven, because of traffic now, but I bet we can make up some time later. That puts you at the hospital at around one a.m. It’s not like you won’t be awake then anyway; you’ll be stressing about your dad all night; might as well do something productive.”

  He was looking at the road now, but he could tell Anna was still staring at him.

  “You don’t have to do this for me,” she said.

  He shrugged.

  “What else am I going to do, go drop you off at your hotel and wave good-bye with you feeling like this? Please. I have a full tank of gas, I won’t have a shoot tomorrow anyway because the talent has a family emergency—remind me to text Gene that, by the way, so the crew all knows they have a day off—and I’ve always liked Palm Springs. Hadn’t planned to go there today, but”—he shrugged again—“why not?”

  She leaned back in her seat, still looking at him.

  “Why not indeed,” she said.

  She was silent for a while, and Ben couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Did she want him to do this? Or was this another one of his wildly stupid ideas? Had he just kidnapped an A-list star? Shit, his boss was going to kill him.

  He threw on his blinker to get off the freeway.

  “Sorry—I’ll turn around now and take you back to your hotel. You probably don’t want—”

  She cut in.

  “No. I mean, yes, I do want.” She gestured toward the road. “Drive on.”

  He grinned at her.

  “Really?”

  She grinned back. It
was good to see her smile, for the first time since she’d gotten that call from her brother.

  “Really.”

  He pointed at the phone that she still gripped in her hand.

  “Great. Then use that, please, to navigate us over to 5.”

  She swiped open her phone and jumped to the directions. He felt a surge of adrenaline. They were really going to do this.

  “Okay, we’re going to stay on the 101 South for about an hour, then jump over to the 5.”

  He pressed his lips together and shook his head.

  “Um, Ms. Gardiner? Did I read correctly that you grew up in the Bay Area?”

  She looked sideways at him.

  “Yes, why?”

  “Okay—I was wondering if my memory was mistaken, since no native Northern Californian says ‘the 101’ or ‘the 5,’ for the love of God.”

  She laughed out loud, which had been his goal.

  “Oh God, you’re right. What a nightmare—L.A. has gotten to me! I’m so sorry, I can’t believe I did that. Usually, I switch back when I’m up here without even thinking about it, but somehow I didn’t this time. How can I repay you for this grievous error?”

  “Hmmm.” He pretended to think about this. “I guess that means our In-N-Out dinner will be on you.”

  “In-N-Out, what a great idea.” She put her hand on his arm, and he was suddenly thrilled he’d tossed his hoodie in the back seat when they’d gotten into the car. Her warm hand rested on his biceps just for a second. Not long enough for him to flex, but long enough for him to feel the imprint of it after she moved her hand away. “I always used to stop there on the way when I drove home from L.A. I haven’t been there in a long time, actually. Anytime I want fast food I get someone else to get it for me. In a few desperate cases, I’ve ordered delivery and tipped, like, four times as much as the food cost.”

  Ben shook his head.

  “Stars, they’re just like us,” he said. “Wildly expensive delivery for In-N-Out. Not going to say I haven’t wanted to do that, too, however.”

  She sighed.