But at each meeting lately, though Bailey pressed for more information, none was given to her. Not only that, but at the last four meetings, Mel Kamp had said things that concerned Bailey. Even now he was talking about pushing the envelope.
“Finding art sometimes means trying new things, venturing into places other people wouldn’t go.” He drummed his fingers on the stack of scripts.
Bailey squinted at the man through her sunglasses. What was he trying to say? Why this sense of impending doom? Like God was trying to warn her about something. Whatever was coming, the new script made her uncomfortable.
Finally Mel slowly, almost reverently, began passing out the scripts. “Anyway … here you go.” His phone sat on the other side of the stack, and as he gave out the last one he checked the time. “I’ve kept you long enough.” He smiled and slapped his palms on the table for emphasis. “Take the scripts home. Give them a read and drop me an email.” His look said he was absolutely confident they would like the revisions. “Feedback is important. Garners teamwork.”
He stood and checked something else on his phone. “We’ll shoot this in New Mexico, the way it looks now. Great tax incentives. You’ll have a production schedule well before that.”
Her costars stood and thanked the producer, and Bailey did the same. But the two of them looked beyond bored as the trio headed through the back of the building to the parking lot. One of the guys smiled as he rolled his eyes. “There’s two hours we can’t get back, huh?”
“Exactly.” She tried to return his smile, but it fell flat. “I hope the script’s more interesting.”
“For sure.” The other guy looked confident. “They used a team of writers. Some of the best.”
“The writers specialize in award-winning films.” The first one tucked his copy under his arm and opened the door for the group. “It’ll be amazing. I guarantee it.”
“I hope so.” When they reached the parking lot, Bailey waved. “See you soon.”
The taller of the guys returned the wave. “Tell Brandon we said hey.”
“I will.” Bailey liked the guys. They both dated NTM actresses and had known Brandon for several years. She hoped maybe she and Brandon could hang out with them and their girlfriends during the shoot, if Brandon’s schedule allowed for it. Maybe even before the movie while they were all still here in Los Angeles. Other than Katy and Dayne Matthews, there were no other couples Brandon and Bailey hung out with. She didn’t know much about the guys, but they seemed nice. Maybe they’d become lifelong friends.
That would help LA feel more like home.
Bailey walked to the car — she was using Katy’s Navigator today. As she pulled out of the parking lot, she headed south to Will Rogers Beach, closer to Santa Monica. At this early hour on a Thursday, the beach would be deserted.
Along the drive she turned on her radio as an old Newsong hit came on, “When God Made You.” Bailey felt yesterday rush in like air through the open window of the SUV. She’d been, what, maybe eighteen or nineteen when she first heard the song? And all she could think about then was Cody, how they’d play this song at their wedding someday.
Bailey smiled at the memory. She’d been so young, just a kid, a high school girl who saw Cody Coleman as bigger than life.
She fixed her eyes on the winding turns that made up Pacific Coast Highway, turned up the volume, and sang along. Her voice stayed soft, the memory of the song as much a part of the past as any photo or letter. She loved the lyrics — how they spoke of God’s hand in finding true love and the promise of forever. Bailey had never shared the song with Cody. She’d found it when he was little more than a secret crush, and by the time they finally admitted their feelings for each other, they ran out of time before it came up.
Where Cody was concerned there was never enough time.
Tears filled Bailey’s eyes and she blinked so she could focus on the road. She could still see herself cleaning her room while the song played from her iPod speakers, still feel what it felt to believe he was the one, to believe God had created Cody for her.
She dabbed at her cheek and let the ocean air dry her face. The tears surprised her, because she didn’t love Cody that way anymore, the way she thought she did back then. She knew that now. He was more of a big brother to her, someone she looked up to. The same way she’d been only that for him. But still, she missed those days. Missed the way he’d always been around back then. He made her feel safe and protected and the fact that he adored her family was part of it too. How could it not be?
The two of them hadn’t talked since Bloomington, when they took a walk around Lake Monroe a few days after Cody’s girlfriend, Cheyenne, died from her brief battle with cancer. He was finishing up the semester teaching at Lyle High School an hour outside of Indianapolis, but then what? Bailey had Brandon now. But since God hadn’t made her and Cody for each other, who would Cody find? And without meaning to, Bailey slipped into a silent prayer for her old dear friend.
That God would comfort him in his season of loss, and that in time He would give to Cody what He had so clearly given to Bailey.
A love that had been created for him since the beginning of time.
ALL NIGHT THE CLOCK ON ANDI ELLISON’S COMPUTER seemed to be racing in double-time until finally a few minutes ago she submitted the online test for her business marketing class. She leaned back in her chair and for the first time in two hours she felt herself relax. More than that, she felt great about herself. She was doing something she had doubted she’d ever do: Finishing school.
Despite her rebellious choices back at Indiana University and her wrong relationship with a guy she barely knew. Even after getting pregnant and giving her baby up for adoption to Luke and Reagan Baxter, when the enemy of her soul wanted her to believe her life was tarnished forever, God had done the unthinkable.
He had breathed fresh hope into her soul.
She was taking small parts in Christian films and working as an assistant to her producer father. But now she was also tackling online courses, working to finish her marketing degree. Something she wasn’t sure she’d ever do again.
The reality made her feel wonderful, even if it didn’t quite take the edge off her loneliness.
She moved her mouse to the Safari browser and opened Facebook. Her life involved very little social interaction, and for a long time Andi could feel God working in the silence: the nine months when she carried her firstborn son, the year of moving to Los Angeles with her family and finding her way back to the heart of God; and now the busyness with acting and working. All of it had left Andi with few chances to meet people.
Her Facebook newsfeed popped up, and she scanned a few status updates from acquaintances she’d met on a handful of sets. But her time with the cast and crew was always too brief to establish real friendships. Whether with guys or girls. Her only real and true friend was Bailey Flanigan. The two of them talked a few times a week, and they planned to see each other more often now that Bailey lived in Los Angeles. But with LA traffic there was still more than an hour’s drive between them.
Andi scrolled down the list and stopped cold the way she always did when his face appeared. And like every time, Andi could feel her eyes meet his through the window of the computer screen. She could remember his voice and feel his arms around her the few times they shared a hug. She could see into his soul the way she always could.
The soul of Cody Coleman.
For the longest time Andi hated herself for having any sort of feelings for Cody because he belonged to Bailey. Always and only Bailey. But all that had changed in the last year or so, as Bailey clearly had moved on. Still, her admiration of Cody Coleman wasn’t something she shared with anyone — not even Bailey. It was a dream, a figment of her imagination. Something she refused to even entertain except for moments like this. When his face was there before her. Cody in his Lyle High coaching shirt and his hat — the one with the ‘W’ on it. Bailey had told her Cody wore it in honor of his friend Art. Th
e hat was from the University of Washington, a school that had recruited Art for its football program. Art chose the Army instead, and when he lost his life on the battlefield, Cody took possession of the hat.
Because that’s the sort of guy Cody had always been. Loyal and caring to the depths of his being.
A sigh eased itself up from the unsure places of Andi’s heart. Cody had suffered a lot lately. His Facebook posts had been erratic, but Bailey had mentioned that Cody’s girlfriend had died of cancer. Maybe that’s why Andi found herself thinking about him these days. Because she hated the thought of Cody hurting.
Andi read his status a couple times, mainly because soaking in the words he’d written allowed her for those few seconds to hear his voice again. The post read, “Headed to Liberty University with DeMetri, getting him ready for college. Crazy how fast life goes.”
Yes. Andi agreed with that. Even when she thought she’d live forever in the dark shadows she’d created over her life, time moved on. No season — good or bad — lasted forever. All of which made her wish for the sort of loving Bailey had found with Brandon. For a guy who might think the world of her and understand about her past and feel dizzy at the thought of walking alongside through her tomorrows.
Andi drew a slow breath and closed out of Facebook. For a long time she closed her eyes and remembered back. When she first returned to her family and her faith — after she avoided aborting her unborn baby — she had been reading the Bible when a single story changed everything about the way she thought, everything about the way she would love God from that point forward.
It was the story of the rich young ruler.
In the story, a guy who had lived a fairly good life came to Jesus and asked what more he needed to do to have eternal life. Jesus, knowing the guy, looked straight into his soul and told him to sell everything he owned and give the proceeds to the poor. The man went away sad because he had great wealth. Andi had known the story since she was a little girl, but she always had breezed past it.
Her parents were missionaries, after all. They understood the principle of giving. But that day, with her life in disarray, Andi read the story in a new light. The story didn’t mean all people should sell their belongings. It meant Jesus had a way of looking deep into the soul and asking people to give up the one thing they wanted more than Him. For Andi, once she returned to the faith she’d been raised with, she absolutely knew the desire God wanted her to give up. The one thing she had sought after more than she’d ever sought after Him.
The desire to be loved.
Her hope for a boyfriend had led her down crazy paths when she was at Indiana University, and after she returned home she determined that she would not pursue guys again. The next time — if God allowed a next time in her life — the guy would pursue her. Like Bailey’s mom had said: “Like a dying man goes after water in a desert.” Until then, she was content to be lonely.
At least she had been content.
Seeing Cody on Facebook reminded her that she needed to keep praying. Not only that God would give her contentment in her loneliness, but that He might work a miracle in her life.
So that someday, somehow, someone might love her.
Three
BAILEY’S DOUBTS BURNED THEMSELVES INTO HER HEART AND stayed there while the song on her car radio finished. By then she was at the beach, and like she had hoped, the parking lot was empty. She found a spot, grabbed the new script and a towel from the backseat, and walked toward the nearest pale-blue lifeguard station. Staff wasn’t on duty at this hour. She walked up the stairs and spread her towel across the platform. Hidden from the world, with her back against the tower wall and the ocean spread out before her, Bailey breathed in deep and stared at the water.
Here it was easy to reflect on the events of the past month. Her uneasy meetings with NTM studios, and a few troubling conversations with Brandon. Assuming West Mark fixed the contract, there was still the issue of Brandon being committed to Los Angeles for the next five years.
Which brought up another frustration that had surfaced lately. Now that she and Brandon were both living in LA, the paparazzi constantly looked for scandalous stories about them. Headlines at supermarket checkout stands regularly questioned whether Bailey was pregnant or Brandon was cheating on her or she was having a secret long-distance affair with someone back in New York. Brandon was used to it, and to some degree Bailey was too. Most people didn’t believe the garbage they printed, but still it was wearying.
More days than not she longed for the simplicity of Bloomington, when no one wondered why she was headed into a drugstore or having a phone conversation while she walked down the street. The insanely busy streets and teeming sidewalks of New York City were relaxing compared to paparazzi-crazy Los Angeles. A friend from the Hairspray cast had called last week to inform her that a couple shows were auditioning for dancers in the fall. Six months away, but still … Could Bailey really commit to LA when her heart was so uneasy? All of it left Bailey confused about her feelings for Brandon, and whether everything between them had maybe happened too fast.
What am I feeling, God? … Help me find the peace I felt a month ago.
She exhaled and leaned her head back against the weathered wood. Maybe her whole relationship with Brandon was all a little too easy. The way he’d swept in from the beginning and made her feel loved and cherished and special. Now it was like he took for granted the fact that she’d move to LA permanently or that she could handle the constant throng of photographers capturing their every move. She’d hinted a few times that maybe they should talk, that maybe she’d made the move to LA too quickly. But each time something distracted them. She was beginning to think Brandon simply didn’t want to talk about the possibility that her living in LA might not work out.
Because they both loved each other so much. That was the one thing she didn’t question.
The ocean was rougher than usual, white caps bouncing in from the distant horizon. Bailey stared at the water but all she could see was Brandon. The time he surprised her and flew to Indiana to help her pack for New York … the Empire State Building … the carriage rides through the City and seeing him in the front row every night she performed for her last two months on Broadway. The prom on the top of the Kellers’ apartment building. Their Skype dates. She smiled, enjoying the bouquet of memories. The ride might’ve been fast, but it had been beautiful.
So why did she feel so unsettled? Here, on a beautiful windy spring day alone on the beach? It wasn’t thoughts of Cody, because he was her past. Really and truly. Whether she missed his camaraderie was irrelevant. Seasons change — if anyone knew that, she did.
The feeling could be the idea of living in LA and committing to the movie and Mel Kamp and … and whatever they’d done with the script. Or the uneasiness could be the idea that maybe she’d given up her dream of dancing on Broadway a little too fast.
The sun was overhead but still just behind the lifeguard tower, leaving her place on the platform completely shaded. Like a secret hideaway from the towering glass office buildings of Century City and the relentless traffic of LA and the insidious paparazzi.
A place where she could breathe.
She opened the cover of the script and thumbed through it. The whole thing was a hundred and five pages. She could easily get through it in the next couple hours. She stretched her legs out in front of her, crossed them at the ankles, and began to read.
With the sea breeze swirling around her and the bright blue sky hanging over the ocean, Bailey expected the next hour to be one of the day’s best. The first few pages into the script, she felt that way for sure. But there at the top of page six came the first sign that Bailey’s uneasiness from earlier was warranted.
At the beginning of that page, her two costars’ characters were at a party full of gang members when three girls approached them and offered to sleep with them. The descriptive and graphic scene that followed was both gratuitous and offensive. Bailey stopped halfway down the
next page, sick to her stomach. What was this garbage? No one had told her there’d be scenes like this in the movie. Clearly Mel Kamp had been alluding to this in the recent studio meetings. Bailey was angry with herself. She should’ve asked more questions, pushed more for an explanation about the rewrite. But how could she have guessed this? Not with NTM, the studio known for its clean films.
Panic and disgust filled her mind with every page of the script. For the next five minutes Bailey flipped through the revised story and found half a dozen scenes she couldn’t live with. Even the scene she’d originally read for had a number of cuss words thrown in. And in the director’s note on the scene it said: The teacher is young, but she must dress in a way that turns the heads of the guys in the class. This is how she first gains their attention.
Bailey closed the script and pulled her knees up to her chest. What was happening? How in the world had the producer thought she’d be okay with this? Surely Brandon’s agent had told Kamp how Bailey felt, her absolute determination to only do family-friendly projects, movies with a message or some redeeming value. She brought her hand to her face. What about her costars? How would they feel about the changes?
The sick feeling in her stomach grew. She dropped the script on the wooden floor of the lifeguard tower, stood, and walked to the nearby railing. Leaning on her elbows, she hung her head and closed her eyes. With everything inside her she wanted to be in Bloomington. Spring would be knocking on the door back home, the snow pretty much behind them. On a day like this, Ricky would have a baseball game, or Shawn and Justin would be tearing up the soccer field. She and her mom could’ve gone for coffee and talked about life. Not a single person would be lurking in the bushes ready to snap her picture, and she wouldn’t be holding a script that made her sick.