Lauren Takes Leave by Gerstenblatt, Julie (ebooks children's books free txt) 📕

a renowned celebrity. It’s almost an out-of-body experience, like he’spulled me into one of his movies and I’m no longer living in my mundane world.

I feel like I’m in that scene from The Wizard of Ozwhen Dorothy opens the door to her house and emerges from theblack-and-whiteness of Kansas into the Technicolor of Munchkinland. “It’sjust…I can’t stop screaming!” I scream.

“Well, try, please or else I’m gonna have to vacate,” TimCubix says, looking over his shoulder and up the beach. The crowd has thinnedout considerably now that it’s getting late in the day, but there are a fewstragglers like us in a cluster of chairs a ways down the beach. “I’m in noposition to draw a crowd.”

“So, then why are you even talking to us?” Jodi asks.Plastered to her face is a dreamy smile that she can’t seem to make disappear.She’s trying, though. It just won’t budge. “Not that I’m complaining.”

Jodi’s boobs peek out from the triangles of her browncrocheted bikini top as if to say that they aren’t complaining either. “Maybeif we call you Lex Sheridan, no one will notice you!” she says.

Tim actually laughs good-naturedly at Jodi’s bizarresuggestion.

“Who is Lex Sheridan?” I ask.

Jodi checks with Tim via eyebrow communication. He nodshis head like, go ahead, tell them, and she continues. “Everyone thinksTim got his start in Fly By Night, in which he plays the superherovampire, Black Dawn.”

“Yeah, yeah, we know,” Kat says. “And that was such asurprise blockbuster that Hollywood just kept making more of them, with Dawnbreakerand then Night Stalker and Black Dawn Redux.”

“See, but here’s what you ladies don’t know,” Jodi says.“Tim’s big break was playing a male-nurse-slash-bodybuilder in AfternoonDelight! That was my favorite soap opera in middle school, and those sixweeks with that character were the best ever. The writers hit him with anambulance so he died in front of his own hospital.”

“Hence Lex Sheridan.” Tim smiles.

“Hence!” Jodi says.

“Holy Dawnbreaker,” Kat says, plopping herself downon the sand. “I’m sitting in Tim Cubix’s shade.”

I wonder if I can think of him as merely “Tim” or if mymind will only allow him to be a first and last combo, like Michelle Obama orJacques Cousteau. I try it out. Tim, Tim, Tim. Just Tim. Bring him down toearth, Lauren, or you’ll never be coherent again.

“Who me? The homeless beach bum?” Tim’s smile is allcreases and dimples and loveliness.

“Yeah, well…from a distance…” Jodi starts.

“And even from close up, actually…” Kat says.

“What? I look awful?” He’s coy, he’s playful, he’sflirtatious. I’m officially besotted. He takes a seat on the edge of his beachchair and we all swoon as Jodi sits down next to him.

“Well, the beard… You do, yes,” Kat braves. “But thatdoesn’t mean we don’t love you.”

“It’s true. We love you, Lex Sheridan,” I say. I am amoron, officially. My skin instantly flushes pink and I feel a little bitdizzy. I join Kat on the sand.

You know how girls used to cry when they saw Elvis? Orscream in sheer terror over their love for the Beatles? I’m like that on theinside. Little teenaged versions of me are in my head screaming and jumping upand down and having a festival of sheer euphoric insanity. On the outside, I’mtrying to keep it together for the sake of my own thin reputation.

I pinch myself on my forearm to keep the tears at bay.

Yes, I am that stupid.

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I love my fans,too.”

Which is nice of him to say. Even if it sounds totallycanned.

He pauses for a second, as if debating what to do with allof us. He puts a hand on his leg as if about to stand, and I think he’splanning to bolt.

Because if I were this movie star right now, surrounded bythe somewhat unstable trinity of ladies made up of Kat, Jodi and myself, I’d belike, what the hell did I get myself into here and how can I quickly extractmyself from it?

But then Jodi invites Tim to join us for a cocktail,ordering a round of strawberry mango smoothies for us from the hotel’s beachwaitress. He sort of shrugs to himself and settles back in his chair, pushingdown the brim of his Kangol.

Kat and I drag over a few stray chairs and circle aroundhim.

“See, I knew not to get you an alcoholic beverage.”Jodi says to Tim, clearly loving this moment. Then turning to us, she adds,“Lex is not drinking much these days.”

“Spoken like someone on a complete People magazinediet,” a bemused Kat murmurs.

“The Afternoon Delight fan is right. I’ve gotanother shoot coming up in a few weeks, and I’ve got to drop, like, twenty,”Tim explains.

“Speaking of which,” Kat adds, “aren’t you supposed to beon set right now, in the Everglades or something? Right around here, I think.”Jodi gives her a look. “What? Maybe I can be an expert, too. It just sohappens I read one of your tabloids on the plane. And Tim? Can I call you Tim?”

“I would prefer if we call him Lex,” Jodi says.

“Call me Tim.” He nods, smiles, and dimples us, all in oneswift move. A hot chill passes through me, the kind that in grade school meantthat someone had just stepped on the site of your grave. It’s exciting anddangerous all at once.

“Okay, Tim,” Jodi says, sounding disappointed. “If you sayso. But if you ask me, it lacks something.”

“Cheese,” Tim says. “It lacks cheese.”

Kat continues. “You never did answer our question of whyin the world you would get in the middle of our bitchfest.”

Tim glances over his shoulder, first left, then right, andthen stares off down the beach for a while. I start biting my cuticles in thestillness.

Then he sighs. “I know I just met you ladies, but I feellike maybe I can trust you.” He stops there and seems to make some sort ofdecision. “What the hell. I listened to you for long enough to know yourstories, right?”

“Tim Cubix is stalking us,” Kat says, shaking her head indisbelief.

“So I know how you are, shall we say, on the lam—” Timcontinues.

“On the down low,” Kat adds.

“MIA,” Jodi says.

“Pulling a Thelma