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She could hear him crossing the room and he paused by the open door to the en suite. “Are you on a flaw-finding mission?” he asked.
“I’m–yes. Yeah,” she had to laugh. He’d seen it all before, so she just reached for the robe she’d slung over the back of the vanity chair rather than scrambling for it.
“There’s only one.”
“Which is?”
“You covered it up,” he said with a grin. “Aspirin and water. Bedside table. See you in the morning.”
“Goodnight, Kline. And thank you.”
“Thankyou,” he said, and walked out of the room.
When he’d left, she stretched out on the guest bed after popping the aspirin. She let her mind wander to what life might be like with Kline, but it was a dead-end road that just ended up with her being a lifelong crutch for an ego that needed to be in traction. Hoping to drift off to happier thoughts, she called up the memory of the last date she’d had with Thad.
It had been another wrangling of schedules to get the times to line up and she was buzzing with nerves by the time he got to her door.
He had driven her out to another beach spot he loved, a quiet cove that appeared out of low tide, and he’d put down a tarp and then a massive beach towel he’d pulled from an equally massive tote bag. “That’ll keep our bums dry,” he had said. “It’s pungent tonight.”
“It’s no worse than the Hudson.”
That had made him laugh. “You know, I’ve only been to New York a couple of times, and always just in and out for press. Is there a big difference?”
“Huge,” Jill had told him, and given him her impressions while he poured Solo cups of wine he produced from a chilly-bag inside the tote. “I never thought I’d leave. I was very snobby about it! I’m a native New Yorker and proud of it, but here I am, and I’m kind of falling in love with this weird place.”
They’d already had the conversations about acting and she’d given him the mini-version of her rise to stardom, then asked the same of him. They discovered they'd both suffered from overbearing stage-mothers, though his dropped out of sight as he got older. They both had similar mindsets about their work, as well.
Thad loved his job, but it was a job. He shrugged off the idea that he could do any other kind of work that would pay him so much to do something that came so easily to him. He seemed to like her five-year plan; he asked her a lot of questions about where she saw herself in six or seven years, delighted by her semi-urban goat villa idea, and told her where he wanted to be. Married for the last time! Jill found herself just smiling at him while he talked about his past relationships. She couldn’t imagine ever not smiling at him.
"I married my first wife because I was madly in love. I was nineteen when we got married, but we were both in school when we met. We had our first daughter when we were twenty. She was with me through all the struggling child-to-adult actor days, and I’d just started work on Knock when we found out she was pregnant again. The twins came just after the first season wrapped.
“My schedule and the sudden US fame were really hard on her. The transition to LA was hard on her. I wasn’t ever home, she was away from family with tiny babies, and she didn’t have any friends here. I’ll admit, I could have–should have done more to help, but I was in my head a bit. She was exhausted and I was just another mess for her to clean up, so she left, and left me with the girls. I was bloody lucky my parents could help. My stepmum and dad moved over here to help with them until I remarried.
“The second time I married I was madly in love again and I'd known her all of two weeks. I was much more successful at that point, though, so I figured I wouldn't have the same problems as before. But, looking back I see that I was as in love with the idea of having a mum for the girls as I was with Jessica herself.
“We had twins first, then we had a single--all within three years. I didn't have the same problems as before, but my work schedule hadn’t changed, and it left her alone with six kids all the time. She ran off with her personal trainer. So, then my first wife realized she'd missed out on a helluva lot with the girls, and she asked to have them live with her. So, she’s got them seventy-five percent of the time.
"We're friends now. She's remarried and very happy. The girls have a more stable existence with her, and I get them all the time. That's Emily, by the way. Jessica, wife two, has primary custody but we have a fifty-fifty living arrangement. She married the personal trainer, and they are living happily ever after. Monique," He shrugged. "I married Monique because she was gorgeous, and I was lonely. I think she thought life with me would be much more exciting than it was. That was really over before it began. She hates children.
"But that's enough about me, huh? You're never supposed to talk exes on a date."
"I don't see why not," Jill smiled. "I mean, now I know you aren't some lothario who just enjoys walking the aisle and then casts aside his latest for the newer model."
He shook his head, "Nah. I do like being married, though. I'll get it right eventually. Wife and kids in the same house at the same time. One big happy family. I don't think that's too much to hope for."
"I've always wanted a houseful of kids.I'm an only.My mother was an only. My father disappeared before I was old enough to know anything about him. I grew up among adults and the only kids I knew were the ones in my dance classes or who were in shows with me."
"What about school chums?"
"I had a private tutor. I didn't go to school."
Thad gaped at the revelation, "You're kidding me."
"Nope. I had to be free for auditions and available to work.My mother hired a woman with a degree in elementary education, and off we would go to the kitchen of our apartment and study. But I learned Latin, French, and Italian, studied all the classics, and she beat me to death with mathematics.Admittedly, my knowledge of science is a bit lacking, but I know more history than most historians and--and I'm just babbling now. But I don’t actually have a high school degree. Diploma? I never graduated from anything or took the equivalency test. Babbling.Stop me before I end up telling you about how I ran away to a school once."
"Ran away to a school?"
"Yes. I nearly managed to fake it until lunch time but one of the teachers decided to take roll and figured me out. My mother was livid," Jill sighed. "I just wanted to see what it was like to be normal for a change."
