Laguna Nights Read Free Page B

in the swimming pool; the one he’d only been able to enjoy when he was on camera in high school. At the height of his fame and fortune, truth be told, he’d never returned to this place, his hometown. They didn’t “get” him here, and it wasn’t just his parents. But now, he needed his hometown more than they needed him. Ironically, Laguna Beach needed to be his reinvention.
    As he pulled his board shorts out from underneath a bunch of other clothes in his suitcase, he realized two things: He needed to unpack or all of his dress shirts would be a mess and that he didn’t have time to unpack because he couldn’t keep Holly waiting, not again. He couldn’t believe she’d actually agreed to meet him for coffee, and he couldn’t believe how beautiful she was. When they’d dated in high school she’d been cute, smart, and unbelievably sweet. Season two their senior year, was all about him and his awful ways. He’d loved every minute of it even as his star grew brighter and she collapsed inward. Because of him. Because he had followed a loosely scripted plot-line, made it his own, and made America believe it. He was a good actor, he knew he was. He’d proven it back then.
    Josh looked at himself in the mirror, his five o’clock shadow asserting itself, his dark hair messy and his black T-shirt a wrinkled mess. He met his own eyes in the mirror and from the bottom of his heart a realization hit him: Nobody had loved him the way Holly had; purely, just for himself before all of this. She had believed in his goodness. Just thinking about her soft, small hand in his made him want to kiss her again. Just thinking about what he’d done to her was another reason he never wanted to come home. But he was here, and unbelievably, so was Holly. Last he had heard through their once mutual friends and cast mates, she was living somewhere in Europe, enjoying a successful new life far away from this one. But just like him, she’d been drawn back to this place and, he supposed, it was fate for them to be together again.
    Josh pulled on his board shorts, checked his image in the mirror once more, tugged on his baseball hat and sunglasses and hurried out of his room, hoping he could find the restaurant because he was late already.
    He jogged down the long winding hall, found an elevator bank, and when the doors opened, pressed B hoping that button meant beach. As the doors opened, a sand-covered and sunburned couple, both about his age, he guessed, greeted him as the doors opened.
    “Oh my God. It’s you! It’s Josh Welsh, right?” the woman said, hitting her companion in the stomach as she blocked Josh’s exit from the elevator.
    “Hi, yes, do I know you?” Josh said, his standard line for a groupie of one.
    “No, well, of course not. But I grew up watching you on Laguna Nights. I’m a huge fan. OH MY GOD. I never imagined in a hundred years coming here on my honeymoon and actually meeting my biggest high school crush!” she screamed.
    “Come on out mate,” the husband said, pulling his enthusiastic spouse out of the way.
    “Well, congratulations and best of luck,” Josh said brightly, patting the man on the shoulder as he hurried past them, just then realizing the couple probably were in their mid-twenties and that he was most certainly older than they were. That was happening all the time now as a new generation of high school kids binge-watched the series. A series he didn’t make a dime from, he thought again, before pushing the negative money thoughts away. It did mean something to be recognized, and because he knew someday he would be the famous actor he was destined to be, he needed to treat all the fans graciously whenever possible: even if the only version of Josh they knew so far was him as a perfect, cocky eighteen-year-old stud.
    “Thank you, Josh! You’re still so handsome,” the wife yelled at his back as he jogged down the hall toward the doors to the resort’s pool and outdoor restaurant. Pushing