Lucky Star: A Hollywood Love Story Read Free Page A

terror. Cameron though? He’s as beautiful as ever, his hands thrown up in the air and a giant smile spread across his face like he was having the best time in the world.
    I think that was the day I started to see him in a different light.
    But what you really want to know is when I realized I was in love with him, isn’t it? That’s an easy one to answer.
    About a month later he’d texted to ask if I had any plans that coming Saturday. Since I didn’t, I asked what he had in mind, not thinking too much about the question. We were buds, we hung out a lot and there was nothing odd about the request. He wrote back quickly, telling me it was a surprise but I should dress comfortably. Even though I badgered him, he wouldn’t give me any other hints and all sorts of different scenarios ran through my head. In the end, none of them were correct.
    He picked me up at 7 a.m., a cup of my favorite coffee in hand, and asked me if it was okay if we brought Duke. Before I could respond, he’d grabbed my dog’s leash off the back of the kitchen door and Duke came bounding into the room, barking and jumping like a maniac. You know how they say animals can tell good people from bad? Well Duke loved Cameron from the very first moment he’d rubbed his head and called him a good boy. Sometimes I’d watch the two of them together and think maybe that damn dog loved him even more than me.
    Even once we’d gotten on the freeway, Cameron still wouldn’t tell me where we were going. Twenty minutes later we pulled up to a nursing home which not what I expected. He turned to me, a sheepish grin on his face. “I hope you don’t mind. I volunteer here once or twice a month and it occurred to me last time that Duke would be spoiled rotten.”
    I couldn’t guess how Cameron knew I’d have a good time that day, but it was amazing. My dad’s parents, who I’d spent so much time with as a child, had been gone for fifteen years. I hadn’t realized how much I missed them until I’d been surrounded by people from their generation.
    Throughout the day, I watched him interact with nurses, orderlies, and patients and saw how everyone responded to him. You could tell the patients especially really cared for him. And I became convinced that Mrs. Jones, who was at least 95 years old, fancied herself madly in love with him. As we went to leave, he shook hands with everyone, and some of the women even gave him hugs and kisses, asking him to come back soon. Mrs. Jones stole herself a number of those kisses as well as smacked him on the ass the last time he’d walked past her.
    You expect someone who looks the way he does to behave a certain way. Guys like that have expectations about the way people will treat them, but that wasn’t Cameron. He was unfailingly kind to everyone all the damn time. And when someone was the opposite of type of person who surrounded you Monday through Friday – people you would never interact with if your career didn’t depend on it – that could be a really magnificent feeling. When someone emailed you to ask how your day was – nothing else, just to see how you were doing – that was pretty damn wonderful. And when they’d show up at your house on Saturday morning with coffee and orange juice because you were both hung over as fuck? That deserved a medal of honor. But that’s who Cameron was to me. And clearly he was special to other people as well.
    When we were back in his truck, Duke worn out from all of the attention he’d received, it hit me hard. I didn’t just like Cameron. I loved him. Truly, madly, deeply. Just like the randy Mrs. Jones.
    And that picture of us at Disneyland? I kept it hidden in the bottom drawer of my nightstand in a locked box that held my diary from high school, my map of the Louvre in Paris, the airplane stub from my first trip to London, and my very first teddy bear. That box held a lot of firsts, but that was only fitting. After all, Cameron was my first love.
    Yeah, I had it