He makes a face somewhere between a frown and an amused smirk. “You wouldn’t be bullshitting me, now, would you?”
“Nope!”
“Jo.” He takes my hand. “What is it? Second thoughts?” He has my other hand, now. He’s so earnest, so genuine. “No big deal, we can give it another day. Or two. Or whatever.”
“No, for real, it’s not that. I promise. No second thoughts.” I laugh. “If you ask my parents, I’ve barely given this a first thought.”
“Then what? I can tell there’s something.”
“It’s stupid.”
“I won’t think so.”
I sigh. “It’s just that you’re…” I gesture at him. “So freaking incredible-looking. Like, that outfit is perfect. Spotless white shirt. The jeans, the boots, the hat. The whole thing is just…perfect.” I pluck at the skirt of my flowy, white with blue flowers sundress, which I’ve paired with strappy white sandals. “I guess I just feel a little…plain. Next to you.”
He frowns. “Jolene, you are anything but plain.” He takes off the hat and messes up his hair. “There, I’m scrubby.”
This just earns him a cackle from me. “Nope, sorry,” I say, still laughing, “but a little bit of rumpled hair just makes you look even sexier.”
He replaces his hat and slides the sunglasses up onto the brim. His deep brown eyes meet mine. “Jo, listen. I’ve chosen to be here. I’ve chosen to be with you. You should never feel plain. You should never doubt yourself. If those thoughts hit, just remember that I am choosing you.” He cups my cheek, brushes a thumb over my lips. “I’m choosing to be with you because I like you. I am attracted to you. I want to know more about you. Spend time with you.”
I sigh, hearing that from anyone, let alone him? It’s hard to hold on to the fact that it’s real. It’s happening—to me. “I know they say there’s nothing sexier than confidence, but that’s just something I struggle with, in certain areas. Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of who I am. I’ve been through a lot and I like to think I’ve handled it with a certain amount of dignity and grace. But being confident in what I look like and feeling confident in my body has not always been easy. I try, but—it’s just hard. I just haven’t exactly had a lot of opportunity to feel…beautiful, I guess.” I laugh, but it comes across a little bitter. “Probably something to do with feeling sick and having my hair either falling out or growing back in for most of my life.”
He smiles. “Well, then. I’ll just have to make it my top priority to make sure you feel beautiful and desired.” He licks his lips, eyes going to my mouth, then cutting to my front door. Back to my eyes. “I’d kiss you to prove the point, but your parents are watching and I don’t want to seem like I’m rubbing anything in.”
I pull back and touch his chin with a finger. “Could I get a rain check on that?”
“Definitely.” He walks me around to the passenger side and opens the door for me, waits until I’m fully in, and then closes it.
As he rounds the hood, he waves at my parents, who wave back but remain in the doorway, watching.
His car smells good. Like leather and vanilla air freshener, and him. There’s an expensive-looking leather duffel bag on the rear passenger seat, a case of sparkling water on the floor, and an open box of meat sticks. A leather jacket is draped on the seat behind the driver.
He’s behind the wheel, then, shifting around and buckling, then punching a button to start the car.
“This is a really nice car, Wes,” I say.
He grins. “Isn’t it? I love it. It’s a Range Rover Autobiography.” He twists to look behind us as he backs out of the driveway. “It’s actually the only major purchase I’ve ever made.”
I glance at him in surprise. “Really? This may be rude and none of my business, but I sort of have the impression that you, you know, have a lot of money.”
“Not rude, and it is your business. If we really do end up getting married, it’ll absolutely be your business. And besides, I don’t have anything to hide.” He heads out of my neighborhood, plugging his phone into the car’s infotainment center and pulling up a navigation route back to an address in LA, I assume where he lives. Once this is done, he resumes his answer. “So, when I turned sixteen, my parents gave me their car and they bought a new one. It wasn’t anything fancy, a seven-year-old Volvo. Seven years old then, I mean, and that was five years ago. Nice, reliable, safe, whatever. When the whole Swan Song thing happened, I moved out to LA to pursue a music career, and I continued to drive that car.”
He pauses again as we reach the edge of my neighborhood, makes the turn that will take us to the interstate, and then he resumes speaking.
“I met with Jimmy Swan a few months after that concert, when I’d been signed and a tour was being put together and I had a single out and money was starting to come in in a big way. He was in town and we met for breakfast, and he gave me a lot of advice that I’ve followed ever since. Things like, don’t let the fame go to your head, just try to keep being the same, real you. None of it matters. Be the guy that the folks back home know. That’s one I hold on to. Another one is, make music or art or whatever for you as an artist. But also? You’ll have to do stuff for the money. It’s just reality. Don’t be afraid of that. It’s not selling out, it’s just business. But still try to make art that you’re proud of, even if it is for the money.” He sighs, thinking. “But the one that really hit me and stuck with me was about money. He told me that if he had it all to do over again, he wouldn’t spend a dime for the first few years. Not major, anyway. Buy some nice clothes or go on a nice vacation, that kind of thing. But don’t go buying Lambos and mansions and superyachts or anything like that. Just hold off. Save the money. Find a good money guy and invest it. And once you’re sort of established and the rush of new fame and fortune has sort of…not worn off, but gotten familiar, then you can buy yourself a nice car. And once you find yourself sick of being famous, then you can buy a house. But always buy well within your actual cash means.”
“Hmmm. Interesting advice. And so this car was your first major purchase?”
He nods. “Yup. Bought it about six months ago. I felt like I was comfortable with things—it wasn’t as crazy and confusing as it was at first. And up until I bought this, I was driving the same old-ass Volvo. By the time I retired it, it had over two hundred and fifty thousand miles on it.”
“That’s…a lot.” I try to picture Westley Britton, rock star, movie star, heartthrob, driving a beat-up, twelve-year-old Volvo with a quarter-million miles on it. “That’s pretty impressive, honestly.”
He shrugs. “It got easier when I went into acting. Like anything in life, you tend to find circles of people that you identify with, right? So I had—I have—this group of friends, all actors around my age. We’ve all auditioned for the same films, read for the same roles, we see each other at press junkets and industry parties and stuff. And we’re all young guys and girls on the rise, right? Money’s coming at you, everyone is starting to know your name, you’re being offered roles in big money productions and working with people you’ve grown up watching and idolizing, all that. So it helps to have people who know what you’re going through. Well, there was one guy in this group. Mike. He was a child star, did a few movies, did some stage work. His parents handled things for him for a while, but when he was legally an adult, he took over. Started handling his own money. And he…he either didn’t get the good advice I got, or he didn’t listen, because he’d show up to events in a different car every time. He was filling a giant garage with them. Bought this huge house with enough rooms for fifty people. The yacht, the condos in Miami and New York and Paris, the whole jet-setter bigwig sort of thing, right?” A sad sigh. “He went broke. Had to take crappy parts for the money, which pushed his desirability down. This made him depressed. He started selling off his cars and condos. But it wasn’t enough because by then he was in debt, and that put him onto drugs and drinking to cope, and last I heard, he’s living in a trailer on a ranch in Montana, trying his best to drink himself to death. I watched it all go down, and I was like, damn—that’s why Jimmy said what he said. And it just reinforced the whole thing for me. So I don’t drink, or if I do it’s only one in a situation where it might be somehow rude not to. I don’t spend money on things I don’t need. I bought this because my Volvo was falling apart and it was starting to cost more to repair than it was worth. And it was honestly getting a little embarrassing to show up to read for a role in a multimillion-dollar movie in a car that could just die any second. So it was time.”