Doves (Love in Los Angeles, #2)

5

5

AS SOON AS THEY GET back from South Carolina, almost before they’re done unpacking, Paul starts office hunting.

The offices they used while shooting the pilot had been painfully temporary and aren’t extensive enough for everyone. Not now that they’re actually a real show with a real crew and cast and a full writing and production team. The list of individuals Paul is responsible for grows daily, and he starts to understand better some of Victor’s neuroses when it comes to taking care of all of his people. They’re here because of him, and Paul really does not want to f**k any of this up.

He feels like he’s on his second chance already. The first pilot he had written — the one Victor helped him pitch more than a year ago after he and Alex had tumbled back together — had died before it had even been filmed. Now that he has other people’s jobs and lives depending on Winsome succeeding, it’s even scarier. That Alex has made clear that their mutual, yet separate, success and ambition is key to Paul getting the future he imagines for them, only ups the pressure.

At least things feel just a bit more certain when they find a space that works and start moving in.

The first time Paul visits his new office after he signs the lease, he spends five minutes standing in the middle of the empty space, spinning slowly on the spot and trying to take it all in. This is his. Paul’s not sharing it with anyone else, and Victor, as a minority partner in Winsome’s production company, can use the admittedly shabby conference room when he visits. It’s not a dream, or a bargain with Alex, or a favor handed down from Victor. This has four walls and a roof and it’s real.

He feels as victorious as he did the moment he’d gotten the phone call saying this was going to happen. He takes a picture and sends it to Alex and to his mom.

* * *

AS PAUL GETS HIS WORKING life in order, Alex spends his time sorting out his own next steps for the summer. He sits down with Margaret to talk about creating a brand for himself outside of The Fourth Estate. Paradise Square had been a cool thing he’d gotten to do because he was the guy from Fourth. If he wants to keep working, Alex needs to expand his opportunities.

Looking at life after Fourth means looking seriously at other projects now that have the potential to conflict with his shooting schedule, which remains in constant flux as Victor battles the season schedule out with the network.

“Victor will kill me,” Alex says darkly to Margaret. It’s not a happy prospect to consider. But he has to learn how to tell the world he’s someone to watch regardless of Fourth’s fate.

“You haven’t made any decisions yet,” she says.

Alex shrugs. He doesn’t have to explain to her how much, given circumstances, it’s intent not outcome that matters.

The conversation ends with a new media plan that includes more press than he’d normally do for the ramp up to the new cycle. The prospect is annoying, but it will at least keep him busy while they wait for filming to start.

* * *

THE INTERVIEWS, ONCE he starts them over the next few weeks, are generally business as usual, but someone always asks about the f*****g g*n. Alex enjoys staring down the interviewer who asks him how he’d learned to shoot without a father at home.

“My mother taught me,” he says. By a supreme act of will he doesn’t add, “Asshole.”

But then they ask about his sister and growing up in poverty with weapons. Alex is sharp with his refusal to discuss that. Guns are bad enough. There are way too many reasons he never wants to talk about knives in kitchens or criminal records right now. Or ever.

His mom sees the interview and calls him, which leads to a long, strange conversation that touches things they’ve never really talked about. In the end, she asks how South Carolina had been, aside from the g*n.

“Good,” he says. The parts that he can tell her about were, and he doesn’t want to talk about the rest.

“You and Paul aren’t going to visit here much, are you?”

“No,” he says, and then, “I’m sorry,” because he is. For her feelings, more than any regret he himself has about Indiana. Laura tried to give Alex the best chance to get out of the hell that is their hometown, but that doesn’t mean she’s happy he’s fled so very permanently.

* * *

ALEX GOES OUT TO LUNCH with Liam a couple of weeks after he gets back from South Carolina. They go to a little restaurant that has too much quinoa on the menu for Alex’s taste, but it’s small and they’re not any more likely to be photographed together here than anywhere else.

After they order, Liam dances around the g*n thing again. He’s as twitchy and uncomfortable as Alex has ever seen him about anything, but he still can’t seem to articulate why he’s so upset.

Alex eventually gets the conversation away from guns. When Liam mentions that Carly’s been house hunting, Alex asks if that means they’re finally moving in together. They’ve been engaged for a year, but without a date set Alex has been starting to wonder if they would even cohabitate after the wedding.

After a rambling and surprisingly knowledgeable digression into some of the more arcane aspects of real estate — Alex has no idea why he knows or cares so much about floodplains and chalks it up to yet another random Liam thing — Liam asks how Paul and Alex’s trip down South went.

“There was the creepy, haunted pond,” Alex says. “That sort of set the tone.”

He has no interest in discussing any of the things Paul had finally confessed to him there, even with Liam. After their brief and ill-fated thing together — Alex still doesn’t know what to call it — he trusts Liam more than anyone except Paul. Annoying as he can be, there’s a bond between them now that goes beyond friendship.

But Alex suspects there’s something in the dark history of the Marion farm, of which he has to acknowledge he’s probably only gotten the first hints, that will appeal to Liam. After all, Liam once managed to sort of seduce Alex with trivia about The Exorcist.

Liam frowns. “Haunted pond?”

“Yeah. Paul said something grabbed him in it when he was a kid. I couldn’t get him to go swimming,” Alex opines.

“Why is it haunted? Did someone die in it?” Liam’s bright blue eyes are wide, and he tugs at his too-shaggy dark curls.

Alex shrugs. “Maybe?” He’d meant this as a funny story to entertain and interest Liam, but he looks unnerved beyond what seems to Alex to be any reasonable proportion. “Why? It was just one of those things that happens to kids.”

Liam shakes his head. “My grandparents passed away when I was like, thirteen. Back to back to back. It was kind of a mess and they didn’t have living wills and we had to, like, decide stuff for them. Just because somebody can’t talk doesn’t mean they don’t want things or can’t feel things.” Liam takes a deep breath and is briefly fascinated by his hands. “It was not a good time. I got really hung up on the details. So I don’t do well with death,” he says, sounding a bit exasperated with himself. “Or swimming,” he adds with a rueful laugh.