Happy Trails & Honey Pots (Firefly Island: Southern Nights #2)

24. Miles

24

MILES

My footsteps echoed off the narrow walls of my trailer as I walked from one end to the other. I was pacing. Again. The second time in my life.

After leaving the voicemail for Zoe yesterday, she’d called me back, but I’d been on set until after two a.m. So, I waited to return her missed call until seven her time this morning. She didn’t pick up, but she texted me and said she was at work but had lunch at one o’clock and asked if that was a good time to call. I immediately replied yes. It was five past one. I felt like a teenage girl waiting for her crush to call.

Or at least how they portrayed teenage girls in movies. I’d never actually been one, so I wasn’t sure how they felt, but if this was it, it was awful. My stomach was in knots. I was anxious, and my chest was tight.

It had been a little over two weeks since we’d spoken. I’d been working eighteen-hour days, and most of them had been night shoots. My schedule had been all over the place. Logically, I should have been distracted by that, but I wasn’t. All I could think about was getting back to Firefly Island. Back to Zoe. Even though she clearly did not feel the same.

My phone vibrated in my hand, and I was so overly eager to answer it that when I tried to press the green icon, it slid from my hand and started to tumble to the ground. I was able to recover the fumble and save the call.

I already had my AirPods in anticipating the call. As soon as I answered, I said, “Hello.”

“Miles?”

Just hearing her voice again instantly put me at ease. This woman had an effect on me that no one ever had. “Yeah, hi.”

“Oh, I thought…I just figured it would be an assistant or something.”

“No, it’s me.” I sat down on the bench, trying to center myself. “How have you been?”

“Um, good. Yeah, how have you been?”

“Good.”

“How has filming been going?”

“Long days.”

“Oh, really?”

I felt like an asshole complaining about long days when she worked double shifts and saved lives, and I played make believe. “I mean, it’s nothing compared to what you do.”

“Oh, no! I could never do what you do. All those people watching me. No. I would die.”

For so long, I’d been surrounded by people who wanted to be in the spotlight. Part of what drew me to Zoe was her aversion to it. She didn’t want attention. She was the first person in a long time I’d met who I knew didn’t want me or like me because of who I was. If anything, I had a feeling that who I was worked against me.

“How are AJ and Walter?” I asked. I’d actually missed them, too. AJ was a really good kid. I saw a lot of myself in him. He was smart, creative, and had a tough time concentrating in school. He was also a lot more sensitive than I think he let on.

Walter reminded me a lot of Jerry Lennox, the man who had played my grandfather on Happy Trails, whose birthday I’d gotten tattooed on my chest in Roman numerals. They were both old-school, no-nonsense men who didn’t have a mean bone in their bodies. They were protectors, stubborn, and proud. I missed Jerry since he passed away, and I’d found myself missing Walter these past couple weeks.

“Walter’s good. He started going to bingo at the VFW, so that’s been getting him out of the house.”

“Oh, that sounds fun.”

“And um AJ, actually, um speaking of AJ, he’s good, and he was wondering, well, when were you going to be back in town?”

We wrapped here in twelve days and started filming in Firefly in fourteen. I had meetings, podcasts, and a commercial shoot in Los Angeles and New York booked for the two days in between. “I was going to fly in the morning of the twelfth from New York.”

“Oh.” There was a beat of silence. “Okay.”

“Why do you ask?”

“Nothing. Never mind.”

“You wouldn’t have asked if it was nothing.”

She took a breath and then exhaled. “AJ just wanted to invite you to his birthday party, but I’ll tell him that you’re not going to be in town?—”

“When is it?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Just tell me. When is it?”

“No, really. It doesn’t matter. You said there was something you wanted to talk to me about?”

Zoe’s tone changed from friendly to professional. It was clear she didn’t want me to push the subject, and I had a gut feeling that if I did, she would get off the phone, which was the last thing I wanted.

“Right, so we cast your character,” I explained.

“Oh, good. Who did you end up going with?”

“Rachel Cobb.”

“That was the redhead with the blue shirt, right?”

“Yeah, the one you liked.”

“Oh, good. I’m glad. And is she okay being a blonde?”

“Yeah, she’s not a natural redhead. She told me she has mousy brown hair, so she’s fine with going blonde.”

“Great. Was that it?”

I hated that she couldn’t wait to get off the phone with me. I wished that I could go back to that night when we were together, not that I wanted to do anything differently except maybe talk more. Ask her why we would be such a bad idea. Why was she so sure that nothing could happen between us?

“No, actually, Rachel was wondering if she could talk to you. She has some questions and wants to see you before we shoot once she gets to Firefly. I told her I needed to get your permission before I could give her your contact information.”

The line was silent. I wondered if this was going too far. Since Zoe had been against the project and then on the fence, this ask could push her right over to the side of against it again. I hated that so much of this was out of Zoe’s comfort zone.

“If you don’t feel comfortable, that’s fine,” I quickly said. “I can tell her that I don’t think it’s a good idea because I don’t want her to do an impression of you. I can say I want her to make the character her own. The no doesn’t have to come from you.”

“No, that’s okay. You can give her my information.”

“Are you sure?” The last time I asked her if she was sure about something was when I was about to be inside of her.

Sometimes, that night felt like a dream—like it hadn’t actually happened. Like I’d made it up in my imagination. I wondered if she thought about it as much as I did. Or if it hadn’t meant that much to her. Or if she’d blocked it from her memory.

“Yeah, it’s fine.”

“Okay.” I wished that there was more for me to say to keep her on the phone, but there wasn’t. “Thanks for calling me back. It was really good hearing your voice.”

“You, too. Bye.”

The call disconnected, and I sat there feeling strange. I was happy that I’d finally spoken to Zoe, but there was another part of me that was even more sure she really meant it when she said that what we’d shared couldn’t happen again. Whatever feelings she’d acted on when she’d kissed me at that door, she’d clearly gotten over. Now, I just had to do the same.

That might be a lot easier said than done, considering I was going to be Austin eighteen hours a day for the next six weeks, and he lived and breathed being madly hopelessly in love with Zoe. With his Zoe.