Mom was smart enough to recognize that both her children had plotted to get David and me together, so she didn’t object when Trip suggested the move.
When we first moved, it left me a little off-balance. You must realize we’d come from the hills overlooking LA to a small five-acre farm in the middle of nowhere. They didn’t even have a Starbucks!
My mom suggested I try out for cheerleading to help me fit in. That’s where I met several of David’s girl friends. What they told me was eye-opening. First, they said he was a loveable slut. David somehow managed to date almost every girl on the cheerleading squad, and to my amazement, they all were okay with it. I also heard that his best friend had just died in a swimming accident and the girl he thought was ‘the one’ had dumped him.
When I first saw David after we moved, his eyes showed it: the poor guy was a mess. Talk about terrible timing. Here I became the ultimate stalker and moved halfway across the country, only to find that the object of my obsession was emotionally unavailable.
To be honest, it turned out to be the best thing that could have happened. I’d had this whole fantasy that when David saw me, he’d realize that I was what was missing in his life. We’d get together and go off into the sunset, happily ever after. Seeing his eyes brought me up short; it made me slow down and look around to see where this might go. It allowed me to get to know him better, and we became friends, and eventually, lovers.
David has this little look he gives you that makes you just melt. I don’t think he realizes what a devastating effect he has on the females of our species. Combine that with his looks and his exploits on the football field, and you could understand why every girl around him would drop their panties if he asked. Thank God David wasn’t the type to take advantage. He seemed to need to like the girls he spent time with.
All I can say is that when David was with me, and those lips touched mine, I found it hard to even think. But how could I care about anything when I had David in my arms? His touch was enough to get my heart racing and my pulse pounding, threatening to cause me to faint. He is all male, and when he would push me against a wall and press up against me, it was all I could do to contain myself. He just had that effect on all of us.
I began to understand why a girl would go out with David and put up with him going out with others. He just made it seem like we were all friends, and it was okay.
I’m not just saying that, either. It was okay. I expect it was because David never led me on or tried to make what we had more than it was. I knew he cared for me; he might even love me. But I came to realize we were too young to be in the kind of relationship I wanted with him. That realization freed me to just enjoy our friendship.
Something else I learned was David is a true leader. I’d seen guys who were good at sports try to impose their will upon others. I think that’s part of what creates the stereotype of the bully jock. While David could be a jerk at times—what boy isn’t?—it never seemed mean-spirited. I’d watched him evict a group of freshmen from their lunch table—although, to be honest, he had a good reason. He did it so he could have a private conversation with someone who apparently needed it. Instead of being pissed, they’d been happy to accommodate him. It didn’t hurt that David’s friends had covered for him and let the freshmen hang out with them. You could tell it was a big deal that they got to hang out with us.
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I need to spend a moment on a personal problem he’d had. His friend Pam found herself pregnant. Tracy and Brook were nominated to push them together as a couple. Pam was scared to tell David because she knew he would ask her to marry him. The last thing Pam wanted was to be married and have a baby as a high school junior. I can’t say I blamed her.
What I did blame her for was letting her dad act like an ass. Since then, I found out she had some personal issues standing up to authority figures. But at the time, I wasn’t happy that she allowed the fiction of a rape to go on for as long as it did.
As bad as it was, that debacle forced David to realize what fame would mean. He got his first serious lesson in how to handle the press. He’d been smart and gotten a publicist to help him. Mom had always said it was unavoidable for well-known people to need someone to keep an eye on what the press was saying. David got the full dose of what they were like, which made him more cautious.
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I had to laugh at how quickly David fell into the Hollywood lifestyle. He learned all about the paparazzi, found out about the casual sexual culture, and became a surf bum. All that said, he was still David. Of course, I’d thought about taking advantage of having my guy all to myself, but it was apparent he still wasn’t ready for a girlfriend. I wanted David to get Hollywood out of his system. Deep down, I had faith he would play for a while, but only for a while—he wasn’t the George Clooney type.
I think he found out what I already knew: David could make it in the movies. People took notice of him. I just hoped his new film did well. If it did, I felt I had a shot at making my long-term dream of us being together work. David and I would make a great Hollywood couple.
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Chapter 1 – It’s Time to Get to Work Tuesday January 19
I stepped out of my apartment and all but fell on my ass. Duke looked at me like I’d tried to kill him. It had sleeted yesterday, and everything had frozen overnight. I began to wonder why I hadn’t just stayed in LA.
My part of the filming on The Secret Circle had ended yesterday. The cast and production staff held a going-away lunch for me. I’d found several new friends, especially Zak. He was older than I was, but he was a lot nicer to me than Craig Wild had been on the set of Star Academy. I really hadn’t figured out that all the hazing was just Craig being mean. I’d had dinner with Bree and Elizabeth, two of my costars on Star Academy, after we all signed our contracts, and they clued me in. It seemed Craig had also been a jerk to them. I didn’t feel quite so bad that I’d be making more money than he would on the next two movies.
Speaking of money, Caryn was worried. She didn’t think our accountant was the best person to manage the funds I now had; we needed a genuine money manager. I gave her permission to start looking for one. Caryn also wanted to hire people; she seemed to have plans for an empire. She suggested we employ some of the Mennonites to help with the farm. Caryn needed an office person to take care of the bookkeeping, and she needed someone to be her assistant.
She had agreed that my mom’s new real estate company, Dawson Realty, was a good investment. The people she hired for the office would have to work for both my mom and Caryn.
Saul had called Caryn with the numbers from Star Academy, and we had won the week again. In second place was Ride Along 2 at $35 million. We’d done $37 million. Saul said the studio was ecstatic. They projected that we might even reach $450 million worldwide.
I tentatively eased my way to the house, wary of any patches that looked particularly slick. Duke found Precious in our backyard. She’d figured out she could slip through the driveway gate, or launch herself over the fence. That was something new: we now had a fence around our property with security cameras to monitor the yard and all entrances.
It surprised me to see Fritz sitting at the kitchen table with Dad, smiling tiredly.
“I decided to make a quick visit to review your home security with your father. With his approval, I’ve arranged for a company to monitor your property. You’ve had the odd fan and a few paparazzi try to visit while you were away,” Fritz explained.
Fritz and my dad had warned me that there would be a camera in the living room of my apartment. Inside the main house, there were to be three more. One would be in the basement and activated by a motion sensor; our basement was a large open room. A second camera would monitor the back door, and another would watch the front door from the inside. There were, of course, also going to be cameras around the house. If someone wanted to enter, they’d have to get in either through the driveway or the front gate, where there already was a camera and intercom. Our cars all had a special infrared attachment that the gate would recognize to allow us to drive in.