A Billion(air) To One Chance
"Um. What?"
A sheepish shrug. Like he hadn't just completely blown my brains out of the known galaxy and everything beyond it.
"I bought you a house."
I shook my blankly numb head in complete bewilderment. "I told you I couldn't afford to buy a house. Or even rent one."
I got an almost equally blank look of bewilderment in return.
"I know. That's why I bought you one." That last sentence came carefully measured out, like he was talking to a particularly stubborn or stupid child.
So. Well.
Anybody else out there with a completely dopey former best friend who became a billionaire and returned to buy you a seven-figure house in London?
Or maybe that was just me.
I had known James Tyler Scott since we were in high school. We did our Post-16 education in the local college, in the same Performing Arts course, where we became quite close friends. Then, we ended up in the same drama school in London for a Musical Theatre Degree and stuck together tightly because we didn't know anyone else, ending up as inseparable best friends.
James Tyler Scott then went on to be one of the biggest movie stars in the world. He lost touch with me, and I proceeded to assume he'd also lost touch with reality. He had been scoring auditions and then winning them since before he graduated with his degree, so afterwards he had naturally been eaten up with a spoon by Hollywood, moving to Los Angeles, California to have an absolutely ludicrous career in films, modelling, product advertisement, and even film producing. The man went on to achieve a myriad of accolades and win just about every acting award known to the human race at least twice. Well, except for the Oscars and Oliviers, of which he only ever scored one of each, so far. On the flip side, he'd managed to win four BAFTAs and three Golden Globes, and I'd lost count of the amount of nominations he'd been given for them all.
He then went and joined the Forbes Billionaire Club early last year. As you do.
A few weeks ago, James Tyler Scott then returned to London and deliberately sought me out, which came as one hell of a shock, I can tell you. I hadn't seen him in person since we were twenty-one years old at the Graduation Ceremony, and I subsequently spent the next seven years watching him in films, interviews or in commercials. Then there were the modelling contracts, so his face was everywhere in placed adverts for the multitude of designerwear brands he ended up signing himself to, as well as the never-ending paparazzi shots, and whatever the overpaid idiot was posing online himself, on his personal social media.
What I wasn't expecting was the knock on my friend's front door, and then seeing him standing there behind it, in person, all dressed up in his black designer shirt and jeans, looking far more stunning than he did on-screen or in photos.
Did I happen to mention that James was also devastatingly gorgeous, bulked up like he lived at the gym, genuinely sweet, and fun to be around? So, when he smiled at seeing me opening the door, his big and infectious grin widening in delight, I quite nearly turned to mush right there at his feet.
"Am I hallucinating?" I muttered weakly, at seeing my best-friend-turned-mega-movie-star on my (borrowed) doorstep. I assumed, and hoped, I was, because otherwise the hottest (in every sense) movie star on the planet was seeing me at my absolute worst. With chestnut hair in disarray, ratty jeans and my favourite huge comfort-jumper, and eyes irritated by contact lenses so much they were bloodshot instead of blue – but I couldn't find my glasses anywhere, so I couldn't even take them out to give them a rest – I was a mess, but I'd figured it hardly mattered because it was a quiet Saturday, with nowhere to go to or be until work again on Monday.
Well. Until this blond-haired, blue-eyed Adonis appeared at the door.
"That's your response to me being here, Bestie?" James – Jay – retorted, using our old nickname for each other back in drama school.
"You're supposed to be in Hollywood making people feel inferior to your gorgeous face and abs," I answered vaguely, wondering when I had blacked out or zoned off. I'd been watching one of his movies, a firm favourite of mine, when the knock came, so this being a hallucination was really the only theory that made sense.
An embarrassed huff of a laugh made me blink and look at him again.
"Is that right?" he said mildly. "Well, I'm here instead, and I brought my face and abs with me."
That's when reality hit. Jay really was there in front of me, and I'd said that out loud. Mortified, I'd had no idea what to say, but I was beaten to it, anyway.
"Gona give your bestie a hug, now?" he offered, his beautiful smile back on his face.
Of course, I'd given in to giving him a hug after all these years. In the midst of wrapping my arms around him and putting my head on his shoulder right there on the stoop, my brain began registering just how much of what I'd seen on screen was absolutely not fake or embellished, whatsoever. His waist was small and rock-hard, his back was undulating solid muscle, and there was absolutely no give in the chest I was pulled hard into. I couldn't help but think, in that moment, how I would have loved to put my hands on his chest and run them all the way down his torso. But then I metaphorically slapped the back of my head and reminded myself that was not how one treated their friends.
After that, I got a grip on myself and invited him into my friend's home to sit and talk. It did not help matters when upon entering the living room, he gave a startled laugh and nodded at the stilled image on the TV.
Naturally, it was stuck on a scene where the camera was directly showing a closeup on his face. This just kept getting more and more mortifying.
"Still a fan of my work, then?" he grinned, teasing.
"Of Emily Hanover," I immediately shot back, mentioning the other big lead in the romcom I'd been watching. "Unfortunately, it's one that you just happen to be in. How are you such an egomaniacal knob? Not everything's about you, Jay!"
I grinned teasingly and tried not to melt into the floor at the same time, whilst simultaneously throwing him his long-assigned, pointed look to shut up. I'd been using it since we were seventeen and in college, so he inevitably still knew it when it was thrown at him.
"Yep. Riiiight." He nodded sagely at me, mildly elongating that last word in the way he always did, when he absolutely had no intention of believing you, whatsoever. "Methinks the lady doth protest far too much, but who am I to say anything?"
The idiot grinned widely, clearly choking back his laughter, if his slightly shaking shoulders were anything to go by. I rolled my eyes and pointed at the settee behind him so he would sit down, and maybe, hopefully, just shut up.
Inside, my brain was screaming, Oh My God, movie star James Scott is sitting on the couch in front of me!, whilst the rest of me was feeling numb that my old best friend was suddenly back in my life again. Surreal didn't even begin to cover it.
However, it wasn't long until the years vanished and we were back to being the same friends again, which should have probably felt strange, but really wasn't.
"I'd ask what you'd been up to, but I'm pretty sure every real and online magazine, the general mass media and social media, have made it abundantly clear what you've been up to and covered everything quite thoroughly," I stated dryly, eyeing him with some prickling ire about the fact I'd heard hide nor hair from him for nearly a decade.
I got a snort as my first response, paired with a still familiar scrunched-up nose. Not a thing from any movies – this was pure Jay, my best friend still somehow being just that same person.
"You'd be surprised how much of that is pure, utter bollocks," Jay retorted with a nonchalant shrug. "And you might be even more surprised to find out what they get paid or threatened with to suppress."
He raised an eyebrow very suggestively, and I could only wonder what the hell that was even supposed to mean. I wasn't given very long to consider the implications, though, because the next second I had the entire scenario spun round to focus on me, instead.
"So, now we've covered my life, what about yours?" Jay cocked his head and those insanely blue eyes locked on my face with interest I wasn't used to experiencing. Certainly not from gorgeous, rich movie stars. "What's Isla Shannon Elliott been up to?"
"Ah… There's not much to tell, really," I shrugged, trying not to wince at my full name being used on me for the first time in nearly ten years. "I'm just a bit of a writer, and I'm also an admin specialist for the company I work for."
"No more acting?" The surprise was more than evident in his expression and tone.
"Not everyone ends up an award-winning Hollywood icon," I remarked wryly. "Sometimes life happens instead."
"But you used to be one of the best. You got a First Class Honours Degree!"
I definitely winced at that one. I didn't need reminding; the stupid certificate was buried in a box somewhere upstairs, very studiously being permanently ignored.
"That hardly matters when bills need to be paid, and we're not all Hollywood elites," I snapped back. "Like I said, life… happens."
"What do you write about, then?"
Relief flooded me at the change of subject. "Just webnovels. A mix of High Fantasy and contemporary stories, novelettes and novels."
"Novelettes?" Jay gave a snort. "Cute, but that's not a real word, is it?"
"I think you'll find it is," I retorted. "It's something around seven to seventeen-thousand words, give or take. They're obviously easier to write."
"Huh. I see." Jay shrugged nonchalantly. "So, what else is going on with you?"
"Pardon?"
"You're staying in someone else's house, and it took me quite some time to track you down because you don't stay very long in one place. So, I ask, what is going on with you? I'm concerned by now."
"I haven't been any of your concern since you went sodding off to America," I retorted harshly, probably far too harshly. But who could blame me, for having to endure seven years of radio silence from my supposed best friend? "Why the hell care now?"
"I'm sorry I screwed up." Jay spoke solemnly and quietly, nigh on astounding me with his breakneck-speed change into such levels of sincerity. "I got caught up in the work, the time flying past without me even noticing. Then, it was months later, and I felt guilty and kept putting it off, because I didn't know what to say. Eventually, I panicked that I'd left it too long, and convinced myself I was better off letting the past stay where it was, and I didn't want to bother you, because you had probably moved on far away from the old drama school days and childish friendships. Maybe had even forgotten about me."
I stared at him blankly. "You're literally one of the most famous people in the whole damn world, and you think I would forget you?"
"Forget the friendship, then." Jay shrugged. "Just like, saying, 'oh, yeh, fun fact, that actor's someone I used to be in drama school with', to friends or partner, just all nonchalant and dismissive-like."
"You're a knob," I snorted. "I'm freaking livid you just left and then forgot about me."
"I never forgot about you," Jay almost whined. "And the last film I did – I mean, it's not even been advertised yet – was about old friendships and missing people. But it reminded me so much of you, I couldn't even stop myself crying in the scenes where I was sad about it, and where all that comes out between them! They all thought it was great acting, the guys on set… I sure as hell never gave even a hint it was the least amount of acting I've ever done in my life. So, after that was done, and I had time to myself, I came looking for you. I just never imagined you'd be such a hard person to find."
I rubbed my hands over the front of my face and let it all spill out, since he'd been brave enough to be so openly honest himself. "My landlord decided to take the apartment I had back for himself, for his family. I couldn't get anywhere else, even though he very generously gave me a lot of extra time over the allotted three months on the section notice he gave me. But, in the end, there was nowhere that I could go, so I found myself dragging my few things around different homes and staying a few days or weeks here and there. Right now, I'm staying here with Tasha until her flatmate comes back from wherever they've gone backbacking to – Thailand or Australia, I think it was. Back then, that was at least three or four months I didn't have to worry about things. That was three months ago now, though, and it won't be long until she's back."
I shrugged, trying not to let the horribleness of this mess I was in overwhelm me — again. Least of all, whining about it with Mr Billionaire himself. How utterly mortifying.
"Is it really that difficult to get a place in London these days?" Jay asked with a raised eyebrow.
"It's not like when we were studying here," I answered dully. A decade before, landlords were vying to get renters in, instead of the other way around. We had got ourselves a very little one-bedroomed place with relative ease, and relatively well-priced. We wouldn't have been able to get a room in a house-share if we'd have come here to study, now. "Not only am I priced out these days, there's just not that many places available to rent at all, anyway. Landlords have been selling them off because of strict rules and whatnots, and whilst that's good for the general market, it means things are a lot more complicated for renters. Even if I could afford a place, there's a lot of people vying for each one, so there's a high likelihood I wouldn't get anywhere, even with good money."
"I'm sorry, honey," Jay murmured softly. "That's really hard."
That soft heart was what I'd ended up falling in love with less than five months into our first year in drama school together. The man had been my pillar, rock, sounding board, rehearsal partner, my inexorable best friend, and – very unfortunately – the love of my damned life. Then, the bastard just left.
Fast forward a couple of weeks from that first meeting, we had been hanging out almost every single day since that first one. Every day I got that big smile whenever I opened the front door to him, or the handful of times met me outside my office – which really shocked me and melted my heart even more.
Now, he was standing in Tasha's living room, whilst she was staying over with her boyfriend, telling me he's gone and bought me a house.
The printed pamphlet from the estate agency was in my hand, the asking price eyewatering. The pictures showed the place in a set of beautiful, well-taken photographs, and it was stunning.
Specifically, it was an entire detached period house in NW3, very close to Primrose Hill, my favourite park. It had been upgraded to an inch of its life, without sacrificing its historical style or spectacular fireplaces. There was also a small garden off the lounge area, a balcony terrace on the first floor off the main bedroom, and even a roof garden.
"I— I don't…" I don't want you to buy me a house! But how could I ever say that, when he'd gone and done just that out of the goodness of his heart? "Jay… It's incredible that you want me to have a house, but the bottom line is, I can't afford one."
"You're not supposed to afford it. It's paid for. Outright. There isn't even a mortgage."
"Oh, my god," I half-whispered to myself. What was going on with this man? "But… I still can't afford to keep it running, or do what people need to do with a house, especially one this big! I can't run a house – the biggest thing I've ever ran is a one-bed slightly bigger than ours, and even then, the landlord does everything for you!"
I was, admittedly, getting slightly hysterical, because I had no idea what to do with such a selfless, single-minded gesture, from a filthy-rich friend who just wanted to help.
"Look, the deed is in your name, but everything else is in mine, and I'm paying for it," Jay replied, both nervous and solemnly sincere. "Coucil tax, utilities, water, super-fast internet, phone line – everything. I even got Sky. It's all yours and you don't have to pay for it. It was my idea, so it's only fair for me to pay for all that, too. You don't have to worry about a thing, I promise. Anything goes wrong or needs fixing, replacing or whatever, just let me know and I'll sort it out."
"Jay… What is going on?" I hoarsely whispered, quite possibly about to cry. "Why?"
"You need a place to live and you can't keep doing this." He waved his hand around Tasha's living room. "I can help, so I did. And I know you – you'd never say yes if I asked. So, it's done now, and you don't have to worry anymore. You're your own landlord now – but I object to you kicking yourself back out."
"How did you even manage to do this in two weeks?"
"Online web searches and having some of the world's best lawyers on retention." Jay shrugged like it was nothing. "Plus, not many people turn down cash payments on seven-figure asking prices for empty homes. So, pretty easily, really."
"You're insane."
"No, I'm in lo—"
My head shot up in time to see Jay's eyes go wide, his pallor turning almost ashen. His lips were pursed hard and flat, having clamped shut either too soon or too late, depending how you thought about it.
"Shit," he hissed, hands rubbing over his face and settling over his mouth. He shot to his feet, then started heading out the living room door. "Keep that, and I'll… Well, I'm leaving. I'm sorry."
"James Tyler Scott, don't you dare leave now!" I yelled after him. "Get back in here and explain yourself a lot more than what you've done just now."
The man reappeared at the doorway with his head down and arms crossed over his wide chest, overworked muscles bulging even more than normal. Global billionaire movie star, billboard and catwalk model, elite rock-solid action figure with real fighting and parkour skills, and romcom's number one Most Swoonworthy; yet here he was looking like a kicked puppy in my friend's living room door after I yelled at him in the same way I had when he'd decimated our kitchen, and tried absconding before I could slap him over the head about it. Pavlov would have been impressed.
"I'm going to ask you again: What is going on?" I repeated, voice dangerous low. "Tell me the whole truth, or I'm going to tear your deed up in front of you and never speak with you again."
"Well." He shrugged, still not looking at me, voice very quiet. "You heard me. And I'm sorry. But I meant everything else, too – I could help, so I helped. I… didn't mean to say anything else, because the house is unconditional. Nothing else matters."
"Do you mean that? Nothing else matters?" I asked numbly.
Jay snorted and gave a mirthless smile, muttering wryly, "Yeh. Unless by some miracle you wanted it to."
"Are you stupid?" The words came out of my mouth before I thought about it or filtered them. But then, I was in shock. Startled blue eyes shot up to meet mine in just about equal, dumbstruck shock. "I've been stupidly hopeless about you since I was nineteen, and you just go and say that?"
He stared at me, apparently unable to muster anything else.
"I was so badly wobbling on the fence about fancying you, then you went and got me a train ticket home for the weekend after my nineteenth birthday, so I could see my family for it," I told him, throwing all caution to the wind. We never had any money, let alone enough for expensive train tickets up north; then he told me he'd been saving up since Christmas for it, and my heart was taken. "After that, I was so gone on you, I've never been anywhere near anyone else, because none of them will ever be you, and that would never be fair on them."
"You… never said anything."
"No, of course not! I mean, I was supposed to tell my Bestie, my flatmate, my rehearsal buddy, and the most bloody mooned-over guy on the course that I liked him? Not a chance! I had no intention of either being laughed at, or patronisingly patted on the head and let down gently, only to end up being ignored and left in that flat on my own."
"I did that for your birthday, and you still couldn't figure out I was already so damned in love with you, I couldn't stand it?" Jay's arms were opened wide in question, and my mouth fell open as he barrelled on. "I've always done everything I can think of to make it better for you when you were sad, because I could never bear the way it made my heart hurt. And yeh, I pretty much felt the same way about telling you."
Looking back now, it was so obvious, I wanted to cry. We were always affectionate, always together, in sync, didn't date anyone (else), and everything he did I put under the banners of protective and brotherly. It hadn't ever occurred to me to even consider anything else.
"That's why I just left," Jay sighed, crossing his arms again. "I just ran away from it all. Hoped for a clean break. Then I felt guilty, and it spiralled, just like I said. Then you made my heart hurt all over again with your situation, and I just wanted to fix it, so I did because I could. No strings, no games, no caveats. It's nothing to me – hell, I get more than that to just get out of bed in the morning. But for you, it means everything, so that makes it an absolute no brainer in my book."
The tears inside finally spilled from my closed eyes, the dedication and care the big lug had been giving me since we were teenagers hitting me like a tank. Coupled with the half-given confession he'd made before, it was far too much to be able to deal with.
"Isla, I'm sorry." Jay's heartfelt voice reached my ears, but I wasn't quite able to respond to him. "I just, I have no idea what to do right now, but please don't cry. Whatever it is you want or need, we'll just do it, OK?"
"I just want you," I whispered, unable to process or say anything else. "Always have. Always will."
"You've already got me," Jay responded gruffly. He let out a long breath, then asked softly, "Can I hug you?"
"How are you so successful and clever, but so stupid at the same time?" I shot back, barely able to manage the words.
I heard a huff from Jay a moment before I felt hands on my shoulders and being tugged back into that solid chest again. I wrapped my arms around his waist, my head right on his chest. This time, his cheek nestled against the top of my head, then I felt a lingering soft, warm kiss on my forehead. My arms tightened around him, heart skipping and fluttering about it.
"I love you," I whispered, feeling brave. "I'm in love with you."
I heard and felt both his heart and his breath stutter. "And I love you."
"Well… In that case, I'll live in your ridiculous house only on one condition." I grinned to myself and squeezed him a little tighter for courage to say what it was. "That you live there with me."
Another huffed out breath ghosted over my hair, then I felt him pressing his nose and cheek into the top of my head. "Are you really sure about that, Bestie?"
"I am," I answered, my own certainty almost completely overridden by the fear of what his answer would be. "I mean, we survived three years of living in the same flat and going to drama school together. But would you be?"
I dared move my head to look up at him. He was staring at me like I was both absolutely insane, and offering him the best role of a lifetime.
"Hah…" The choked off, rueful huff was mildly confusing for a moment, before Jay then went on, "I've been wishing for that since the summer we left our last apartment. I'm absolutely sure."
I laughed at the painful irony – both wanting it, neither of us saying it. "You had better start communicating stuff a lot better from now on, then you ridiculous, moronic knob."
"I'm not the only one!" Jay retorted with a pointed stare. I grinned up at him, and he gave me that devastating smile of his in return, at which point I felt my stomach drop and fill with more butterflies.
Jay then really went and flatlined my brain by lowering his head and leaning it slightly to one side and raising his eyebrows, both as a question and an offer. I raised my head up and he very gently kissed me. After that, he curled himself all around me, holding on tight with his nose pressed under my jaw and ear.
"We'll have a lot of things to work out," he murmured in my ear, making my skin prickle. "But at least we know nothing will be worse or harder than trying to work our way around trying to manage being leads in a musical, learning full-on dance routines, working part time jobs at Christmastime, and trying to run a very tiny home, all at the same time, when we had no idea how to do anything."
I laughed against his chest. We had been drowning in the workload and responsibility we were under – to our drama group, to our jobs, to our home, and to ourselves. I got ill from burnout and a bad cold, because I had been trying to do too much just by myself. Jay had eventually called me out on it, then had outright banned me from doing that to myself again. In the end, we'd made a very solemn pact to stick together, stick it out, to give unconditional support, and never argue. We'd not only stuck with it over that Christmas, but we kept it up until the end.
Then he'd left.
Yet, somehow, he was back, and absolutely breaking my brain by fulfilling most of my entire life's wish list on one random Saturday afternoon.
"You definitely have a good point there," I laughed. "Since that's the case, I think we'll probably be just fine."
"What do you want to do now?" Jay lifted his head, placed another warm and lingering kiss on my forehead, before leaning his own forehead against mine. I felt helpless to do anything but smile up at him.
Then I simply said, "Let's go and see our new house, Bestie."