Chapter 2
2422 Words
After living the majority of my life in Los Angeles, the small Alaskan town I’ve found myself in love with is the polar opposite of what I’m used to. My first trip here was supposed to be a getaway. Somewhere to escape the rumors, the gossip, the stigma of being a child star turned adult. But after returning to Los Angeles, I still found myself dreading every audition call. Hearing the same old s**t—how much they loved me in High Society and The Carters, but they just couldn’t see me in another role—was getting old.
I’m sure my parents never guessed that after a brief modeling career when I was six, they would end up packing up all our s**t and driving across the country with all their hopes and dreams pinned on me. It only took two years before I landed The Carters. I was one of the lucky ones. But with my success came a lot of pressure. Pressure I didn’t mind until the past couple of years.
After I leave the salon, I drive over to the neighboring town of Lake Starlight to see my good friends from Los Angeles, Griffin Thorne, and Phoenix Bailey. They’ve been living in both Alaska and Los Angeles for years now, but I’ve only ever seen them down in LA.
I’m not out of my brand-new truck for a second when Griffin steps out of the house carrying his youngest son, Jack.
“I guess when you decide to go in, you go all in. A truck?” He eyeballs my newest purchase.
He’s right to question me. Back in LA, all I drove were sports cars. Anything that went fast and let me drive away from it all at top speed. Sometimes I think back to those times and think I might not have realized it, but maybe I was tempting fate, trying to harm myself. I shake the thought from my head. I’ve come a long way from that man-child in the past two years and I’m sure Alaska has had something to do with that.
I tap the hood of my metallic-gray Bronco. I didn’t go full pickup truck, it’s more SUV than anything. “I have to fit in at some point.” I walk up the path toward the front door.
“Jack, you remember Gavin?” Griffin asks, trying to get the boy’s attention, but he shakes his head and tightens his grip on his dad, pushing his face into his neck. “His brother won’t let him play his video game.”
“He took the controller out of my hands,” Jack whines.
“Gavin!” Phoenix comes out of the front door. She’s wearing an apron and her hair is pulled back into a ponytail. She looks like a modern-day June Cleaver.
“Is this what small-town life does to you?” I ask the woman who is known for rocking the red carpet in gorgeous gowns and heels.
“Other way around. LA life changes me. Here, I’m myself.” She kisses my cheek and hugs me hello.
“It looks good on you,” I murmur in her ear.
“Thanks. It looks good on you too.” She steps back and appraises me. Her gaze moves up and down my jeans and cable-knit sweater. Although it’s spring, it’s still chilly here. At least for an LA transplant like me. “You look like you could model for Alaska Wildlife.”
She and Griffin laugh together, and Phoenix holds her arms out for Jack. He eagerly moves into her arms, and she carries him as if he weighs five pounds.
“Come on in, I made my specialty.”
“It’s pot roast,” Griffin murmurs. “The only thing she can cook.”
“I can hear you,” Phoenix calls from the family room. “And you never complain.” She joins us in the kitchen sans Jack.
“Because it’s my favorite.” He kisses her cheek. “Anything that involves you is my favorite.”
“Gross!” Maverick, Griffin’s oldest son that he had with the famous actress Margaret Cooperton, comes down the stairs. I barely recognize him since I saw him last. He’s so much more mature. “Pot roast? Again?”
“Until you want to make dinner for us, I don’t want to hear any complaints.” Phoenix holds up her spoon at him. “God, I sound just like my oldest brother, Austin. You know what? Anything you want, let me know and I’ll make it.” She sets down the spoon and moves to their pantry.
“No.” Griffin places his hands on her shoulders and turns her around. “He’ll eat what you prepare.”
“Seriously, Dad?” Maverick asks, sulking when he sits at the center island.
“Call it punishment for being mean to your brother.” Griffin opens the fridge, then looks over his shoulder at me. “What can I get you to drink?”
“Just a water.”
Both Griffin and Phoenix smile at me. It nauseates me how much people know about my life.
“Where is the little tattletale anyway?” Maverick asks, looking around.
“I laid him on the couch, he’s probably already asleep.” Phoenix takes her own water from Griffin.
I’m not going to address the elephant in the room, so I pretend not to wonder if the reason neither she or Griffin are drinking is because of me.
“Good. He’s a nightmare.” Griffin rolls his eyes.
“He’s your only brother,” she says. “Have some patience.”
“I took him to Sweet Suga Things yesterday for donuts.” Maverick argues like the teenage boy he is.
“Was that for you or him?” Phoenix eyes him, and Maverick huffs, sliding off the stool.
“No, stay put. Say hello to Gavin Price,” Griffin says. “He’s moved to Sunrise Bay.”
Maverick’s head whips in my direction. “Why? Lake Starlight is way better.”
I laugh but the kid’s dead serious, so I shrug. “I like the bay.”
“Well, we have a lake, and our football team kicked your team’s ass this year.”
“Language,” Phoenix says with zero authority to her voice. Must be hard being a stepmom to a boy who towers over you.
“I don’t follow much high school football, so I’m not worried about it.”
“Still. Lake Starlight is way better than Sunrise Bay. Call me when dinner’s ready.” He disappears upstairs.
Griffin and Phoenix groan in unison.
“One day he’ll remember the manners we taught him, right?” Griffin says to Phoenix. “But he is right, Lake Starlight rules and Sunrise Bay sucks.”
Phoenix hits him in the stomach. “You’re hanging around Jack too much.”
Griffin accepts that with a nod. “Probably.”
“So, did you find a place to buy?” Phoenix asks.
“Yeah, a small three-bedroom right off the bay. There’s a bit of land and I can still walk into town. Once I have it rehabbed, I’ll invite you guys over.”
Griffin smiles. “Sounds great. Can’t wait.”
We discuss the new album Phoenix is putting out next fall, and she tells me a bit about her eight siblings who live in Lake Starlight. Griffin goes on and on about some new artist he’s working with, emphasizing that it’s confidential—as though I’d blab the information.
Out of nowhere, Phoenix changes the subject and fixes her dark eyes on me. “So what really made you move to Sunrise Bay and not Lake Starlight?”
I shrug. “I told you. Logan Stone moved there, we’re buddies, so it made the most sense.”
They nod, and the air in the room turns thick from their interrogation.
“I heard Logan married a Greene. My grandma hangs out with the Greenes’ grandma. They’re a pretty big family too.” She doesn’t phrase it like a question, but rather like she knows.
“Yeah, I think all in all, there are nine of them, but they’re blended.”
The Greene family was nice enough to invite me to their summer barbecue. Plus, I’ve had enough dinners with Logan and Nikki to know a bit about the family dynamic. I pay the most attention when Nikki talks about her sister Posey, who I completely blew it with earlier today.
“I think Nikki Greene has two sisters, right?” Phoenix pries.
“Yeah.” I do my best to keep my voice level.
“And I think there’s a younger one on Ethel’s side, Chevelle, right?”
“Cool it with the inquisition, you’re sounding like Dori,” Griffin says.
“I’m just curious,” she says and sips her water. “Could a lady be the reason you’re there?”
Never in a million years would I lay my cards out for Phoenix. She’s too close and would probably try to fix me up. Logan already warned me about Ethel and her friend Dori, how manipulating they can be. Said to watch myself if I don’t want to be fixed up with a Greene because they’ll sway me that way. He also doesn’t want me to f**k anything up with him and Nikki. He has good reason to be worried. I’ve never had a real relationship. I tend to keep people at arm’s length.
I need to change this conversation. “You want to know a secret?”
They both lean forward. Is this what small-town life does? You become eager for gossip?
“I’m going to run for mayor,” I say. “Rumor is that the current mayor ran off with his mistress, so the position is up for grabs. I put in my name this morning.”
Their eyebrows shoot up to their hairlines.
“What?” My forehead wrinkles.
“Okay, Arnold Schwarzenegger.” Griffin laughs. “What the hell?”
I shrug because I don’t really have a specific reason why I decided to try to enter politics. It felt right and I want to do anything besides acting in this moment.
Phoenix touches my hand. “Gav, I hate to break it to you, but if you want to keep skeletons in your closet, running to be the mayor of a small town isn’t gonna keep them there. You think LA is ruthless? Just wait. It’ll all come out.”
“You know as well as I do that nothing about my life has ever stayed hidden. Maybe the news hasn’t traveled up here yet, but it’s in print and online. I know that.”
She bites her lower lip, looking as concerned as if I were her naive baby boy who just enlisted in the military—which gives me pause for a second. Maybe I shouldn’t have put my name in for mayor.
“But on another subject,” I say because I don’t want them to talk me out of it. “There is a girl I was too chickenshit to ask out an hour ago.”
Phoenix slaps the counter. “I knew it. Is the mayor thing a joke?”
“No, I’m honestly going out for Sunrise Bay mayor.”
“Who’s the girl?” Griffin asks.
“She’s a Greene. Posey.”
Phoenix grins. “Owns Fringe?”
I nod.
“It looked like you just got a haircut,” Griffin says. “How were you chickenshit?”
I go to run my fingers through my hair before remembering there’s gel in it. For a moment, I remember the feel of her hands through my hair while she leaned over me, her breast brushing against my arm. “I went there to ask her to dinner, but all the other women there were listening to us.”
“That happens,” Phoenix says. “You need to realize two things. In Lake Starlight, we have Buzz Wheel that spreads the gossip around every day, but Sunrise Bay has Scandals of Sunrise Bay, a radio show that airs anything Nikki Greene sniffs out. So, watch yourself.”
The buzzer for the oven goes off and she turns around to attend to it.
“Doesn’t matter. I totally messed it up.”
“Why not go back there when the salon is closing?” Griffin asks.
I look at the clock. Fringe doesn’t close for another two hours. “That’s not a bad idea. I’m not sure she likes me, so I want to do it when no one’s around.”
We chat a while longer, and when I sit at the table to eat with their family, I hear about schools, colleges, and all of Phoenix’s nieces and nephews. I help clean the dishes while Griffin reprimands Maverick for his choice of language at the table.
“Let’s go outside,” Griffin says to me after he’s done his parenting duty. “Phoenix, you got this?”
“Uh-huh,” she says and shakes her head. “Mav will help me.”
He groans but stays at his stepmother’s side, helping her with the dishes.
We go back outside, and Griffin slaps me on the back. “Let me give you one piece of advice when it comes to the women around here.”
“You’re talking as if they’re another species.”
He doesn’t laugh. “There’s a lot of competition in Alaska, numbers being what they are. And your name means jack s**t around here.”
I want to call bullshit, because I see the way Posey looks at me. It’s one reason I was going to stay away from her. I don’t want someone who’s into me because of my celebrity status.
At least she used to look at me like I hung the moon. As though she’d been praying for me to come alive off whatever picture she had of me hanging on her wall. But ever since the unfortunate incident of me almost running her over, there’s been an undercurrent of distrust and hatred, and God help me, I like that.
“Meaning?”
“Get your ass in your truck and go ask her out. And do it properly this time.”
I chuckle, but he’s dead serious, so I do exactly that.
- Writer
