Selfie Read Online Free PDF Page B

our Starbucks run, and I took it out of my bag and offered her half. She took it and ate irritably, but she settled down when she was done. I offered her the other half, and she shoved it gently back to me.
    “You eat it, pardnuh. You’ll be fine.”
    I shrugged and put it back in the bag. I was hungry, yeah, but I needed protein.
    I looked up to see what Noah thought of all of this, but the road took a few quick turns, and those sucked up his attention.
    I turned my attention to the scenery—which was really quite spectacular. On the driver’s side we had Mount Olympus in the background, and her northern slope seemed filled with wild flowers. To the passenger’s side there were flatlands, heading out toward the sound. I remembered those days in Vancouver, when waking up and looking out over the sound seemed to be some sort of reward for living without Vinnie so long. Those days when I’d had Vinnie too, wrapping his arms around my waist and sharing the view—those had been the best.
    I quick checked in my head, and I realized that it was early May—I’d start shooting in a week so the cast would have the rushes to tour with during convention season. I understood there was a small con here in March, but Comic-Con and Dragon Con happened later on in the summer. I used to love doing cons—being on panels, taking in the excitement from the fans.
    I wasn’t sure I was up to them right now—I’d have to ask Jillian if they were in my contract or not. The thought of all those people, some of them lying in wait to ask me what the press had been trying to ask me for a year, nauseated me.
    How are you taking the death of your friend, Vinnie Walker?
    How did they think I was taking it? It was like my world had ended. Because it had.
    Maybe going out and doing something new would make that better, right? I mean, Hollywood had the attention span of a coked-up ferret. I was a special guest star—maybe everyone would pay attention to the show and forget about me. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! He died a year ago anyway!
    Lost in my own thoughts, I didn’t realize the road had leveled out again until Noah started talking.
    “So, what do you like most about the Pacific Northwest?” he asked, and it was such a con question I found myself slipping into con mode to answer.
    “The natural beauty,” I replied promptly. “The genuine people. Being so near the ocean and the mountains.”
    He laughed, but the eyes in the rearview were skeptical. “Sounds like you’ve been asked that before,” Noah said, putting his eyes firmly back on the road where they belonged.
    I was going to laugh too, keep the moment light, but just that suddenly, I couldn’t.
    “I like the fog,” I said after a thoughtful pause.
    “The fog ?” The distance was gone, replaced by surprise.
    “Yeah—you know, the mist. I like that . . . that sometimes, when you’re walking on the beach, it feels like you’re the only person alive on an alien planet.” That sounded pathetic enough, but I just couldn’t seem to stop. “When I was a kid, I used to ditch out on my chores so I could walk on the beach. We lived by Monterey, so you know, six out of ten days, there’d be fog. I loved that. Those were the best days.”
    We hadn’t lived so much by Monterey, but below Monterey, in one of the tiny seaside towns that were populated by the immigrant work force and the farmers who hired them. I was the son of one of each—the oldest son, and my father’s blond, blue-eyed genetics had apparently latched on to some old Spanish ancestor of my mother’s, because I had come out looking like a pretty white boy who tanned really well.
    That hadn’t stopped me from chasing brown-boy tail, though—apparently the hair and the eyes weren’t the only thing I’d gotten from dear old Dad. Vinnie had been the poster boy for my favorite brand of pretty, which might explain the insta-lust on that first surprising day.
    Which was, I told myself, why