“You’re stressing me out.”
“Okay. Okay, sorry. I’m just excited.” The smile was clear in his voice.
Ten minutes in and I began to feel the stress of inactivity make me twitchy. There were files to upload, words to write. I couldn’t just be sitting here wasting any hours I wasn’t sleeping.
“Frankie?”
“Hmm?” I blinked back to the screen.
“You’re missing the best parts.”
“Sorry, I zoned out.” I dropped the hands I had tightly balled onto my lap.
“It will all be there in the morning,” he said in what I thought was meant to reassure me but really just did the opposite.
When I opened my mouth to argue, I found him looking at me with that pleading puppy dog face. This was important to him. I turned back to the TV and gave it my full attention.
I had to admit the movie was very good and even held up over time, which I knew many things couldn’t without a certain amount of cringe or offensiveness. Weirdly enough, though we hadn’t spent a lot of time together, this was the most focused I’d ever seen Harrison. Now that he’d stopped looking at me, he was fully invested in a movie he had to have seen a dozen times.
“Ohhh,” I said out loud without meaning to when we got to a part that I’d heard referenced a ton in my lifetime. Actually, there were several lines I didn’t know had come from this movie.
“You’ve really never seen this?” he asked, watching me again.
“Never,” I said.
“Inconceivable,” he said with a lisp.
I smiled and nodded. “Nice.”
“See. You get that reference now. I can’t wait until Christmas and we can debate whetherDie Hardis more than just an action movie.”
“What would I do without you?” I said it lightly but didn’t appreciate the bubbling up of emotions that caused a tightness in my chest. Did he think we would all still be here then? Christmas was so long away. I pushed the feelings down quickly. “But seriously, what are you doing here?” I said quickly to change the subject. I hadn’t meant it to come out so accusatorially.
He flicked his gaze to the movie and paused it. “We can watch something else.”
“No. I just mean.” I shifted to turn my body toward him, as I collected the right words. “Aren’t there a hundred more interesting places for someone like you?”
“Someone like me …” He trailed off, and his easy smile faltered.
“A mega celebrity? You could probably helicopter down to LA and party at a moment’s notice.”
He shrugged. “I’ve lived that life. As you so nicely noted, I’m older now. I don’t want to.”
“Yeah, but you have loads more interesting people you want to be around.”
“My best mates are a bit spread out at the moment. And also, dealing with their own stuff.” He slid the back of the remote on and off repeatedly, focused on that action. I thought of the friends I’d met at Christmas. There had to have been more than that.
“Family?” I asked.
“George is my family,” he said simply. “That’s why I’m here.”
“But what about other family? Anybody waiting for you back in England?”
“You’re awfully interested in my background all of a sudden,” he said it lightly enough but I couldn’t help notice he avoided the question.
“It’s important to know about you. For the job,” I added quickly.
“You could just look me up online like everybody else.”
