Kendall

 

 

The din of a few hundred people conversing about their favorite celebrities and their hopes for who they’d get to sit next to wasn’t enough to drown out, “You. Come with me.”

Kendall’s gaze shot from Laney’s sequined dress to find a woman in a black suit, clipboard in hand, headset in ear, pointing and beckoning her to follow.

“See you inside,” her best friend, Laney, offered.

“I hope.” Kendall traipsed behind the lady with the clipboard. Because of her four-inch stiletto boots, running was out of the question. She willed herself to levitate or fly—why had she worn these boots again? Oh yeah, because they were sexy as hell, even if impossible to maneuver in—but that didn’t work. Between dodging the crew putting finishing touches on the tape holding down the carpet and weaving around escorts and ushers, Kendall was amazed Ms. Clipboard remained in sight.

When the woman stopped in the wide row near the front of the stage, apprehension made Kendall’s palms itchy. As a seatfiller, she’d been herded through scary, darkened bowels of theaters, had to run to avoid being seen on camera after being booted from a seat at the last possible second, and the most embarrassing time, she’d been caught on camera picking her nose (well, her makeup was itchy) in the background when Madonna stood up to receive an award. Kendall’s parents had, of course, saved that moment on their TiVo for posterity and played it for the family every holiday.

But none of those compared to the nervous horror she was feeling as she looked over the arriving crowd.

Julia was leaning into a conversation with Harrison. Leonardo shook hands with Martin. Justin waved at JC and Joey. And a whole bunch of other important-looking people rubbed elbows with each other, but Kendall had no idea who they all were. Laney was always tour guide in situations like this. She knew who everyone was, while Kendall’s celebrity knowledge was permanently stuck in the eighties and nineties. Which was why this particular moment was so harrowing. What if she was pulled aside as one of the pretty people who get seated in the front row and she ended up next to Hollywood’s newest hottie and she couldn’t tell him apart from another seatfiller?

What if she was given specific instructions that involved talking to one of these celebrities and she screwed it all up? What if one of her heels gets caught in the carpet and she went skidding down the main aisle while the cameras were rolling? Oh yeah, her parents would love to add that to their holiday-viewing collection. What if she’d been singled out to be upgraded to an escort to assist the VIPs backstage in getting them to and from their presentations or winnings?

Or what if clipboard lady completely forgot about Kendall and left her hanging out in the front of the stage looking like a wide-eyed, clueless loon?

Everyone was settling in and the announcer even told the crowd to sit down and shut up. Well, in nicer words, but the tone was the same. It felt like the announcer was speaking directly to her. Feeling rather persona non grata, Kendall raised her eyebrows at Ms. Clipboard, who was in the middle of a heated discussion with somebody about Mr. Bloom, but she turned away. What was going on? Should she just go find an empty seat—if there was one? It sure didn’t look like it from here.

Making the universal, “what should I do?” shrugging gesture, Kendall looked again to clipboard lady for advice.

After receiving a dismissing wave, Kendall sauntered into the foray. Head high, she surveyed the first twenty-five rows. She smiled when she saw that Jaden Kingsley was clearly flirting with some lucky girl, although Kendall couldn’t tell who. Too many people blocked her view.

Then she saw it. An empty seat in the middle of the third row. Dramatic teal velvet swishing in her wake, Kendall shuffled into the row. Most of the people there were seatfillers she recognized from the hallway.

A lady in garish gold knit wrinkled her nose. “I’m saving that spot for my daughter. She was further back in the line.”

“I’m sorry, but you can’t save seats,” Kendall offered. The woman must be new to seatfilling if she thought holding a seat was allowed. “I’ll move during the first commercial.”

The lady pursed her lips and looked like she was going to argue, but at the end of the row, a guy with a clipboard started shouting, “Seatfillers, I need you to clear this row. Clear this row now. Let’s go. Let’s go. Move it, people.”

Kendall stood, ready to follow, but the guy put up his hand and said, “No, you stay right there.”

Kendall sat down. What else was there to do?

Pretty people began filing into the row. They looked like someone’s entourage, but she had no idea who. None of them were familiar.

On the opposite end of the row, Ms. Clipboard had returned and was yelling, “You, in the teal or blue or whatever, come here.”

Oh yes, the musical chairs had begun in earnest. Trying not to show her irritation, Kendall smiled, stood and began making her way out of the row. Wasn’t the show going to start, like, any second now?

“Excuse me. Pardon me,” she apologized to an older gentleman, his wife, their daughter, probably their son, his friend, his other friend, his girlfriend, her friend, some guy, his slutty date, another guy…

And then Kendall felt a strange pulling sensation on one of her kickass boots, and the room tilted sideways. There was no sound in the pavilion. The temperature shot up a million degrees. Kendall’s dinky little velvet purse weighed a ton.

And a pair of male legs encased in beige pants rapidly approached Kendall’s nose.

Or wait, that was the other way around.

Arms flailing, she tried to catch herself. Her fingers curled around muscular male thigh and Kendall crash-landed, her vision tunneling to only a brown tortoiseshell button, double-seamed fly and one pleat before her nose smashed into the folds of fabric at his hip. Whoever this guy was, at least he smelled nice—like fabric softener, Irish Spring and expensive cologne.

This had to be the single most humiliating moment of Kendall’s life. Right up there with the nose-picking Madonna incident.

“Hey, wow, are you okay?” The chuckling voice sounded so familiar. “I’m Cooper. And you are?”

“Absolutely mortified.” Kendall shoved off Cooper’s lap and onto the floor. “I’m so sorry.”

Her leg was still stuck at an awkward angle behind her. Thank God for yoga. Twisting herself like a pretzel, she spied the cause of her downfall. Slutty date’s purse strap had become a tangled tripwire around her stiletto.

“Good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Sixtieth Annual Dexy Awards. I’m Adam Sandler, but you already knew that…”

Oh dear God, people were laughing, the cameras were rolling and she was trapped. On the floor, legs akimbo, face easily as red as the carpet the stars had walked in on, and probably blacklisted from seatfilling all in the space of about two seconds. That had to be some kind of record. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Wait. Cooper? Did he say his name was Cooper? As in Cooper Tynesdale? Oh dear goodness, golly gracious, she’d just face planted into the lap of a guy she’d idolized since junior high. She still had some of the pictures she’d cut out of teen magazines all those years ago. Pictures she’d kissed and doodled hearts on with his and her name in them.

Kendall had always sworn she’d die if she ever met him. She’d never dreamt she’d die of embarrassment.

After untangling the purse strap from her heel, she threw a surreptitious glance back at the man whose crotch she’d become personally acquainted with. Please don’t let it be Cooper Tynesdale.

As if she hadn’t already figured it out, her luck had deserted her a few seats back. Cooper—an older, sexier version of the man whose photos had lined the door of her locker in junior high—evacuated his seat and knelt in the main aisle next to where she lay. He offered a hand. Ten years ago she would’ve taken his hand and never let him go. Now she stared at it like it might bite her. But what could she do?

“Thank you,” she mumbled as he helped her to her feet. Her eyes sought out the nearest exit so she could run away and never come back. Maybe she’d move out of California all together.

But Cooper didn’t let go of her hand. He leaned over and whispered, “You didn’t tell me your name.”

She blinked up at him. He was so, so beautiful. And she was so, so humiliated. “I’m Kendall,” she forced out.

“Hi, Kendall. I usually like to get to know a lady before she gets so intimate. But now we’re not strangers anymore.” His wide smile reached his beautiful ocean blue eyes. There was nothing demeaning in his tone or his expression, and Kendall realized he was trying to make her feel better.

She couldn’t help but smile in return. The absurdity of the situation made her want to giggle. “And I rarely even kiss on the first date. I’m so sorry.”

“Cooper Tynesdale!” Adam Sandler called from the stage. “You’re not already trying to sneak out of here, are you? I saw the whole thing and I don’t blame you. Just make sure you’re back in time to present.”

Deer. In. Headlights. Kendall felt the heat of a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand (including her mom and dad back in Worchester, Massachusetts, and the rest of the television audience) eyes on her.

Waving at Adam, Cooper laughed and shook his head.

“Seatfiller. We need a seatfiller in row three.” Without missing a beat, Adam went on eliciting the audience’s laughter with his monologue.

Cooper turned to Kendall. “My turn to be sorry. Let’s get out of here.”

“Yes, please.” She followed him through a backstage entrance, not realizing until they made it through the doors that he was still holding her hand.

Maybe luck had found her again…

~*~

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