Page 90 of Doc Hollywood

“Yeah. I’ve got tomorrow off and am planning on going shopping. Until then, it’s toast. Why, what are you having?” She threw a couple of slices of bread into the toaster and grabbed the butter.

Taylor tilted his phone down so she could see a plate in front of him.

“Is that fillet steak? And veggies?” Her mouth instantly watered when she saw his dinner.

“Yeah. No carbs though. I’m kind of jealous of the toast. I’ve not had any carbs since we had that pizza.”

“None at all? That was weeks ago.” Horror filled her voice. She lived on carbs.

“Yeah, my trainer told me I was getting chubby and had to reign it in,” he replied seriously.

Clara sputtered with laughter. “Chubby? You?”

“The camera adds ten pounds, and if I don’t have a six-pack for the shirtless scenes, I’ll be called fat all over the internet.”

“You lead a very strange life.” Clara shook her head.

“I do.”

“Now we’ve established that you have the best dinner, even though it’s lacking carbs. What’s your news?” Clara sat at the table and propped her phone against her water bottle.

“I went over to collect Devon from her hotel room so we could go out to one of the restaurants that Brian insisted we needed to be seen at.”

“Lovely.” Clara tried to stop the sarcasm that seeped into her voice, but she couldn’t help it.

“And I arrived at Devon’s a bit early. And then she opened the door—“ Taylor continued.

“Oh my god, get to the punchline!” Clara exclaimed.

“Okay, okay. She has a girlfriend.” Taylor’s words dropped like a bomb.

“What?!” Clara couldn’t say anything else.

“Yeah.” Taylor nodded eagerly. “We had a long chat. It turns out she was so willing to go along with Brian’s plan so she wouldn’t be pigeonholed for being gay.”

“Oh shit!” Clara swore, leaning back in her seat in astonishment.

“Oh shit, indeed.” He agreed.

“That’s awful.” Clara suddenly felt guilty for all the horrible and jealous things she had thought about Devon. When in reality, the actress was just trying to protect herself. “What are you guys going to do?”

“We spoke. I can’t jeopardise her career. We’ve agreed that we’ll keep dating until just before the premiere, and then we’ll break up amicably.”

“Why not wait until after the premiere?” Clara asked curiously.

“This is going to sound bad,” Taylor said, cringing.

Clara guessed. “More publicity for the movie?”

“Yeah.” Taylor looked down, his face betraying his shame at manipulating people like that.

“My life is so much more straightforward than yours,” Clara said dryly. It was crazy the lengths people seemed to go to for publicity. “Anyway, what else did you do today?”

They chatted for the next hour as they both wandered around, eating their dinner and winding down from their workdays.

It became their routine. Every night they weren’t working, they FaceTimed and spent their evenings together. Taylor occasionally called when she was still at work, and a few people had spotted his bright blue eye on her phone screen and been very interested to see who was calling. But she would just decline the call and phone him later. They spent many nights falling asleep on the phone to each other.

Clara’s phone rang, and she glanced at the screen, expecting to see Taylor calling. She cringed, it was her mum. Her mum only called when she saw an article about Jack.

---