"Who even has a five-year high school reunion?" Jade sighed, glaring at Beck, who was already dressed in gray collared shirt, slacks, and a loose-fitting tie. Meanwhile, she sat on their bed in a fluffy black bathrobe, her still-wet hair sticking to her face and neck.
Beck shrugged. "Hollywood Arts. Now, c'mon. We're going to be late. It's a half-hour drive, and the reunion starts at 5."
"I don't want tooooo," Jade moaned, burying her face in a pillow. Beck, unnoticed by her, rolled his eyes and sat beside her rubbing small circles between her shoulder blades.
"And why not?" he asked, voice dripping with patience. "Don't you want to see Tori and Andre?" Jade groaned in response. "Cat and Robbie are flying in from New York," Beck cooed. Jade lifted her head just enough to make eye contact with him. He was wearing her down, and he knew it. "Don't you want to show off that shiny new ring on your finger to all the girls who flirted with me while we were in school? Make them hate you once and for all?"
Jade grinned and Beck knew that he had won. She extricated her left hand from under the pillow and waggled her fingers in front of her face, admiring the sleek, emerald cut diamond that had once belonged to a 1910s socialite. She had been murdered a century ago, and the ring had made its way through her ex-fiancé's family before ending up in a pawn shop in downtown Los Angeles. Jade had fallen in love with the ring's gruesome history faster than she had fallen in love with Beck.
"Do you think they'll cry?" Jade asked, entirely too excited by the thought.
"Guess we'll have to go and see."
Beck gave her shoulder a final pat, then playfully smacked her ass.
"You pig!" she shrieked, a smile negating any real anger, because she knew that he knew it turned her on just a little.
"Just call me Wilbur," Beck smiled.
Jade made a retching sound as she climbed out of bed and moved to the bathroom to do her makeup. "I will not marry you if I have to call you Wilbur," she called from the other room.
"I sometimes wonder if you're going to marry me now," he admitted. "You won't let me tell Andre. You haven't even told Cat. Our parents don't know—not that mine will be happy or yours will care, but still. We got engaged a month ago, and it feels like a secret that only we have security clearance for."
Jade came out of the bathroom holding a mascara wand in a threatening way that only she could manage. "Don't be so dramatic," she said. "We can make a big to-do of it tonight, like you said. I'll tell Cat in person, she can see the ring, and everyone else can boohoo that they've wasted the last five years thinking they had a shot with you. Besides, remember my one condition for saying yes?"
Beck ran a hand through his hair, vividly remembering what she had said. "You said, 'Yes, but only after I wrap on my first movie.'" He repeated the words with a tinge of exasperation. Jade always had to have control, hence her "conditions." It was endearing and maddening all at the same time.
"Exactly," Jade said, returning to her makeup in the mirror. "And I haven't even signed onto a movie yet. Not as a director, not as a writer, not even as an actress. So I don't want to get everyone all excited only to make them wait another five years or something ridiculous for a wedding."
Beck came up behind her, and they made eye contact in the mirror. "Not that I wouldn't wait a ridiculous amount of time to marry you," he whispered, snaking his hands around her waist and deftly untying the knotted belt of her bathrobe, "but why the condition?" Jade shimmied out of his grasp and moved to the closet, letting her robe fall open as she picked out a dress, nonchalantly aware of and enjoying Beck's ogling gaze. She finally decided on a backless black lace cocktail dress with long sleeves.
"Because, I want to see the name 'Jade West' on the big screen just once before I change it," she replied.
"Babe, it's the twenty-first century. You don't have to change your last name."
"And pass up the opportunity to be that avant-garde artist with two first names? No way. 'Jade West' is punchy, but 'Jade Oliver' sounds like someone who's made it."
Beck sighed and gently kissed her forehead as she slid her arms into the sleeves of her dress. Her mind was made up, and there was nothing he could do about it. It was one of the many reasons he loved her. He only hoped one of the dozen agencies she'd sent her most recent round of resumes, tapes, and screenplays to would respond soon.
"What about when Dead As A Doornail played at Cannes last year? That's an insane honor. Doesn't that count?" He gestured to the bedroom wall as he spoke, referencing the adjacent room that they had turned into their shared office and on the walls of which hung their diplomas from the University of Southern California—Jade's from the School of Cinematic Arts' John Wells Division of Writing for Screen and Television and Beck's from the School of Dramatic Arts' Acting for the Stage, Screen, and New Media program. Jade's final film project had been selected to be screened during a student segment at the Cannes Film Festival in France the year before.
Jade was classically unfazed. "If a studio had picked it up, then, yeah, it would count. But since they didn't, it doesn't." Beck opened his mouth for rebuttal, but she cut him off. "And, before you say it, no, no amount of amazing, international sex will make it count." She finished fastening the strap of her shoe around her ankle.
"You thought the sex was amazing?" he teased.
"We're late. Let's go."