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Gemma found herself alone and felt an urgent need to explore. This man who knew all sorts of things about her had just left her to her own devices inside his home. Obviously, he trusted her. Or perhaps he was too distracted to worry that she might give in to her temptation to snoop in the revealing crevices of his house like the pantry or amedicine cabinet. She did neither and instead looked for pieces of him subtly scattered around the orderly space.
A pair of worn running shoes spilling untied laces sat by the front door. A coatrack held a raincoat and gray hoodie that she imagined him pulling on to take out the trash or walk downstairs to get the mail on a cool morning. She smelled his breezy scent on the soft sleeve when she pressed it to her nose.
When she stepped down into his sunken living room, the first thing she noticed was the upright piano in the corner. She imagined it sounded lovely echoing into the enclave of his vaulted ceiling and wondered how movers had managed to get it up the stairs into the house. Perhaps a crew of burly men had shoutedPivot!at one another until they made it, sweat-drenched and straining, to his living room. Or maybe they used a crane and lifted it through the balcony doors.
The second thing she noted was a thick paperback crime thriller on his coffee table with a spine that had clearly been bent back. She smiled to herself at the thought of him lounged on his plush couch, maybe in his gray hoodie, with it folded over in one hand and a concentrated look on his face as he read it for research for his show, or perhaps for pleasure. Jack, the spine breaker.
Next to the book sat a stack of tattered scripts much like the one she’d seen in Duncan’s trailer, except these were marked up in a violent shade of red ink. Slashes crossed out sections and slanted, thin lettering crawled up the margins. Gemma lifted the top stack from the pile, avoiding reading the actual script, and ran her fingers over the indents made by Jack’s pen. His notes to himself were halfcryptic and wholly harsh. He was ruthless about finding the right word, the right tone, and Gemma found seeing his handwritten thoughts as intimate as if she’d opened his underwear drawer. She smiled at an aggressive circle around a line of dialogue with an all-caps note toMAKE THIS BETTERin deep red strokes. Jack, the perfectionist.
She replaced the script and wandered to the mantel above a gas fireplace. It held a single photo of Jack and who had to be his parents. He was clearly a teenager in the picture, which made sense, given he’d told her his father had died when he was eighteen and there he was, standing beside Jack in the picture. Jack looked like his dad, with the same dark hair and blue eyes. He had his mom’s smile and seeing it on both their faces put a soft, warm feeling in Gemma’s chest that made her smile as well. Jack, the beloved son. She was about to pick up the photo and touch her fingers to his young face, compelled to feel the image of his smooth skin, when the doorbell rang.
The ringing chimed into the house only to be followed by insistent knocking.
“Um, Jack?” Gemma called out, not sure where he had disappeared to or if she should answer the door. She stepped forward to look around the corner but didn’t see him approaching. “Jack? There’s someone at the door!” she called.
Before her words even made it down the hall, the front door burst open.
“Oh!” Gemma gasped, reassuring herself they’d left it unlocked. Whoever was entering must have been friendly enough with Jack to invite themself inside.
To her complete and utter shock, she saw a startlingly familiar and completely out-of-context face. A dark-hairedwoman wearing wedges to rival Lila’s most daring heels hurtled in through the door. An oversized tee hung off one of her bronzed shoulders and she wore cutoff denim shorts. With her hair twirled up in a bun and enormous hoop earrings, she managed to look glamorous and like she had just rolled from bed all at once.
“Jack!” she blurted, and yanked off her sunglasses. Her thick lashes fanned like a Cover Girl ad.
Gemma simply gaped at her, confounded as to why Angelica Reyes, movie star and red-carpet darling, had just burst through Jack’s front door.
Angelica paused her dramatic entrance and noticed Gemma. “Who are you?” she asked with a tilt of her head. Her dark, perfect brow furrowed like she didn’t know what she was looking at and wasn’t sure if she liked it.
Gemma was partially starstruck but mostly just confused. “I’m, um...”
Jack chose that moment to reappear from down the hall.
Angelica burst back to life at the sight of him. “Jack! Oh, thank god you’re home!” She threw herself at him. “I couldn’t leave without seeing you.”
The emotion on Jack’s face ran the gamut from shocked to confused to downright scared. Gemma still didn’t know why this woman had appeared in the first place, nor why she was flailing in Jack’s reluctant embrace like they were in a soap opera.
“Uh, Angelica,” Jack eventually said. “What are you doing here?”
Still baffled by the whole scene, Gemma wondered the same thing. When Angelica squeezed Jack’s shoulders and buried her face in his chest, Gemma got the sense it was notjust another dramatic Hollywood meltdown. The way she touched him said it wasn’t only an actress wailing at a writer. It was more intimate than that.
Gemma took a step back, suddenly uncomfortable and feeling like she was intruding.
“I’m here to see you!” Angelica gushed. She pressed her hands to his face and stood on her toes to lean into him. She draped her arms around his neck and dangled from him like a little A-list accessory. “I hate the way we left things, and I couldn’t leave without seeing you.”
Jack stood rigid with his arms out and elbows bent like a scarecrow doing jazz hands. He was clearly trying not to touch her while she was grabbing at him like he was the antidote to a poison she’d swallowed. “Leave where?”
Angelica giggled and nuzzled his chest again. “For Milan, silly. My new movie starts shooting next week! But I had to see you first. I was on my way to the airport and thought I’d stop by. It was only a little hiccup what happened the other day, right? We can still fix everything. I’m so glad I caught you because I can’t stand the thought of leaving without saying goodbye!” Her voice rose an octave into a squeak. She cupped his face and pressed a loud kiss to his mouth.
Gemma loudly cleared her throat.
Angelica turned and shot her a cold, dismissive look. “Sorry, but who are you?” She eyed Gemma up and down. “Are you Jack’s new assistant or something?”
An odd feeling settled itself in Gemma’s chest. It felt at once like she was being smashed and like she might explode.
“Um,no?” She directed the upward inflection at Jack,the man who had spent all morning trying to convince her not only that they were inexplicably bound together in a time loop but also that he was in love with her, and that her falling for him was the way out—and damn it, if she hadn’t started to fall—all the while failing to mention he had a famous actress in his life who made house calls and kissed him on her tippy-toes.
“Gemma,” he said.
The pained look on his face could not rival the pain suddenly filling Gemma’s chest. It was more than a flashback of what Nick had done to her. It was betrayal fresh and new, and so what if she’d only known him for half a day. It hurt like hell.
