When February rolls around and filming wraps, I don’t bother going to my house in Calabasas; I head to Florida to be with Briggs. He takes some time off from work and we head to Sunset Harbor, lying on the beach and soaking up the sun, and of course snuggling up on the porch at my new home.
“Do you know what I think?” I ask him as we sit tangled together on a two-person swing that I purchased for this exact purpose, listening to the waves as they crash against the shore and gazing at the moon lighting up the night.
“What’s that?” Briggs asks, his hand making lazy patterns on my arm as he holds me close.
“I think we should quit our jobs and just do this for the rest of our lives.”
He sighs. “That’s a great idea. Maybe the best one you’ve ever had.”
“I agree, I’m a genius,” I say.
“You are. But . . . you’ve got contracts and I’ve—”
“Contracts, shmontracts,” I cut him off. “Stop ruining my dreams, Briggs Gatsby Dalton.”
I don’t want to think about the next movie, which starts shooting in three months. This one, a spy thriller set in the 1940s called Operation Dark Horizon, won’t be as long of a shoot as Cosmic Fury—or as intense, thank goodness.
But filming another movie means being away from Briggs, and I hate the thought of it. I have to deal with it though, because my time off, which I spend soaking up every moment with the love of my life while bouncing back and forth between Fort Lauderdale and Sunset Harbor, flies by. Before I know it, it’s time to go back to work.
Briggs
“You look miserable,” Jack declares as we finish a planning meeting on a hot summer day the following August. We’re sitting in his office, the only one with floor-to-ceiling windows, which I lost in a game of rock, paper, scissors.
“What makes you say that?” I ask him, a light, modern-style desk between us.
“It’s pretty obvious, Dalton,” he says. “It’s the puffy eyes that really give it away.”
With the time difference between here and Burbank and Presley’s schedule for the movie she’s working on, I’ve been staying up late to FaceTime her. Often, it will be three in the morning for me when we finally say goodbye. It’s not ideal, but it’s what we’re doing to make this work.
I let out a breath, swiping a hand down my face. “Long-distance relationships suck,” I tell him.
Jack looks at me, his elbows on the desk, fingers steepled. “So don’t do the long-distance thing,” he says.
“Yeah,” I say, sarcastically. “Wouldn’t that be great.”
Great, but not really possible. We’re definitely on an upward trend with AssistGen, bringing on more and more clients and making a steady income, but we have a long way to go before I can just pick up and go where I want.
Jack has taken on the role of CEO and I’m the COO, and it works, especially with the team of ten we have working for us now. Except for the few hiccups you’d expect from a startup, things have been running smoothly for the most part. The luxury of not being here for the day-to-day seems like a far-off dream.
Jack lifts a shoulder and lets it drop. “I’ve been thinking about it, and with the time difference between Fort Lauderdale and the companies we’ve been working with in Tokyo and Shanghai, having you in California would be beneficial.”
I furrow my brow at him. “Okay, but what about the other work I do?”
“You can do it from there,” Jack says. “We’d miss your pretty face, of course. But I think we could make it work. And if we don’t, you can always come back.”
“Have I been that miserable?” I ask.
“The worst,” he says, giving me a solemn-looking nod before his lips break into a smile.
I don’t jump on the idea right away, but after plenty of discussions working out the logistics, I go to California, back to working in Presley’s trailer while she’s on set, running lines with her and ruining her makeup when she has a break.
I’ve never been happier.
Presley
“What are you thinking about?” Briggs asks me as we snuggle up on the couch at my house in Calabasas—the one that will no longer be my permanent residence come November when shooting for Operation Dark Horizon is done. Just one month from now.
The house on Sunset Harbor is where I’ll call home for the foreseeable future, especially when I take a much-needed break. Thanks to my own planning and some contract cancellations resulting from the viral video that has finally died down quite a bit, I have no upcoming projects and I’m going to keep it that way for a while. I just want to be where Briggs is; that’s my plan. I’ll have to do some press tours when these last two movies I’ve worked on are released, but I’m hoping to drag him with me for all of that.
I can’t wait to make the island my home. The residents of Sunset Harbor have been so great to me. Protective, even. Somehow—I’m guessing probably because of the workings of Marianne and Scout—no one leaks anything to the gossip sites or the paparazzi when I’m there. Some of them have also taken to keeping an eye out for any suspicious-looking visitors and reporting them to me. Most of them have been false alarms, but I do appreciate it. I’m amazed at how I can walk around almost freely. It might be the most normal my life has ever been.
“I’m thinking about how happy I am to be here with you,” I tell Briggs. He’s been gone for the past two weeks, back to Fort Lauderdale for meetings, and I’ve hated every minute of it. I turn my head just slightly to give him a light kiss, which quickly morphs into something not so light.
“I guess there is something else I’ve been thinking about,” I say, once we come up for air from all the kissing. I’m now wrapped in his arms, his nose nuzzling into my neck.
“What’s that?” he asks.
“Marrying you,” I say bluntly. I hadn’t been thinking of that exactly, but it has been on my mind. A lot. I’d like to keep Briggs in a permanent way.
He pulls away from my neck so he can see my face. “Marrying me?”
I smile and give him one quick nod. “Have you never thought of it?”
The hypothetical subject has come up, of course, but more like possibilities and not something that’s a foregone conclusion. He doesn’t know it’s been that way for me ever since he showed up on the set of Cosmic Fury—I was done for from that moment on.
He leans in and kisses me on the lips. “Every day,” he says.
“You have not,” I say with a giggle.
