"So a few girls want to go to the venue where the formal is being held in a limo instead of a bus provided by the university." Megan said to me over lunch. "I don't know if the university will approve that, hell I don't think the exec board will approve that, it is too much of a liability on the school and on the sorority if we don't take the bus."
"Yeah, I don't think that will work, we are supposed to meet in the gardens and waterfall area for pictures before we get on the bus." I shrugged my shoulders.
"I'm excited to see you in your dress, you'll be looking hot!" Megan let out some high pitch noise of excitement. "Okay, but the real excitement is those designer dresses…have you decided you're going to go to at least the LA movie premiere?"
"I think I'm going to go, I mean Dad will be there somewhere and obviously Mom will be his date for the night. And I mean Zach was such a dick but he doesn't dictate what I do and where I go."
"Good for you!" Megan paused and took a sip of her lemonade, "Okay, but the big news, uhhhh Momma Morgan is pregnant!"
"I know! I was so surprised when mom showed me the Georgetown onesie and then the big sister shirt was behind it like, damn I guessed my parents were getting busy." I laughed. "Huh, I wonder if that's another reason she was stressing for me to be aware of condoms."
Megan laughed, "Maybe she only wants one Morgan baby in the house at a time."
"I cannot believe at eighteen or I guess nineteen I'm going to be a big sister. Like shit, when the time comes for me to have a baby and be married, my little sibling will probably still be under the age of ten, isn't that crazy?"
For the rest of lunch Megan and I laughed about Mom and Dada having a baby, whether I hoped it was going to be a boy or a girl and, getting excited for the winter formal. I still couldn't wrap my head around my personal timeline of getting married and having a baby of my own before I'm thirty but yet my little sibling will still be frequently young. That's all so wild to me.
Zach kept his jacket on as he entered the cold studio to rerecord dialogue over special effects. This should be the last of his technical tasks on this film, he was defiantly ready to finish and be over it. The sound and special effects and art directors sat at the control booth, intent on the images flashing on the small iPad screen in front of them. However, beside them was a pile of scripts and notes. Zach recognized a small, dark blue book with a gold C on the spine of the book. My notebook.
Zach certainly thought I had sold the notes in side, but clearly I didn't give the notebook itself to the tabloids…nor even went to the tabloids.
"Hey." Zach said as a greeting to the directors.
"Zachary! Great, let's get you started." The sound director handed him a pair of headphones and pointed towards a glass enclosed sound recording area.
Zach paused by the art director, "Isn't that Cammie's notebook?"
The art director looked reluctantly away from the iPad, "Huh? Oh, I'm sorry, hi Zach."
Zach had reached for the notebook, the art director followed the motion directly. "I found it on set after she left, I though maybe the personal assistant it belonged to could be here and come get it."
"I'll return it." Zach tucked my book under his arm and headed towards the door.
"Hey!" The art director called, "Tell her from me, there is some pretty amazing stuff in there." The art director then turned his attention back to the iPad, "Tell her I slipped my card in the front cover, have her call me when she gets her degree from college."
Zach was so eager to get this recording over with so he could be alone and open the notebook up and discover what was inside. I had never let him see what was in the notebook when I drew in it when I was around him. I really started to pick up my drawings in it while around him when he started taking me house hunting with him, or would drive into nice neighborhoods and point out houses he would like to buy.
After martial arts training for a movie followed by real martial arts training for spy life, Zach went home to the Air B&B he was renting from a friend of his dad's, a spy friend of course, so the house was properly safe for him to be in alone.
Zach sat at the chairs that were lined up at the island counter in the kitchen, he pulled the blue notebook with a gold C out and set it on the granite counter. Zach flipped open the cover and braced himself to see proof of my dishonesty. Zach had seen me a million times with this notebook on set, but he was still wishing I had been honest with him just once and shared why I had betrayed him. He understood that some people just liked their name in print, some needed money. He always thought of me as one who never sought attention and he knew my parents; I didn't need the money.
Zach opened the hard cover of the book and saw the blank white cover page on the inside had the art directors business card paperclipped to the top, with a note that said he would love to work with her once she got her degree would have internship opportunities for her.
Zach flipped to the first page and stilled; he was so surprised. The first picture was a sketch of my parent's house but slightly more styled, I had sketched the windows to have an arch in some and smoothen out some of the lines of the roofline. Zach ran his finger against the thick paper and flipped through the pages. They were all sketches of houses or buildings, some he recognized, some he didn't. He also saw sketches of inside a house I imagined, some I even shaded and decorated and had a drawing of a fully furnished room, some were just empty room layouts, I even had some floor plans in there. The buildings he didn't recognize he felt the urge to ask what originals inspired them or what she hoped in some of the half-finished sketches.
His hands tightened around the book. There were no quotes, no costume pictures, no lies or gossip, just buildings, floor plans and rooms. The only thing remotely about him was a list of things he liked in houses and a few outlines of the houses we looked, which was never seen or mentioned in any press or tabloid anyway.
Zach's hands continued to tighten around the book, but his heart tightened too. He couldn't believe himself. He thought my book would have been filled with drama and lies and stories about him and the crew. Hell, even a note about how even I gave him the condoms and he thought I was making a move on him, when really I was just hoping if he ever was to stoop low enough to sleep with Tina they never made a baby. But….he found none of that in my book.
Zach was fighting the urge to keep his promise to return the book back to me, but removed a packing envelope from the garage and slid my notebook inside.
He never told his dad what he thought I did to him, so his dad assumed Zach and I were still on good terms with one another. And honestly, I'm sure my parents never mentioned it to his dad either, about what Zach did.
Zach sent his dad a quick text, asking if he new the address to my dorm house.
Zach didn't go to Georgetown, he decided to take the semester off of school and just keep up with the training of spy life but not dive into the academics until the spring semester. Plus it gave him some time away from me and didn't have to see me on campus…yet.