Lisa's Story
Lisa Ryan has been in love with her best friend since they met in the first year of high school. However, at sixteen, just before they sat their GCSEs, he left suddenly with his twin brother for California, having been offered life-changing acting roles or both of them, as well as training and schooling. Lisa wad left bereft of her best friend and had only Sally, her other best friend, to count on after that.
Sebastian and Caspian De Carr went on to dominate Hollywood and the Box Office over the next eleven years. Sebastian was the ultimate "leading man heartthrob", whilst Caspian was an incredible character actor, enjoying working with Indie filmmakers as well as the big studios. Both were super-rich superstars – and all Lisa could so was watch them in movies, on the TV, or online, looking at pictures of her friends growing up and getting brain-meltingly famous, whilst she struggled through her own life. She headed for London, and built a successful career in IT, and enjoyed herself making money from one of her favourite hobbies – working with computers.
After six years of working and living in London, as a Computer Analyst, Lisa decides to head home to live with her parents, to attend their local university and fulfil her dream of having an English degree. Months before graduating, though, she gets a strange phone call on the landline – and on answering, she gets a huge shock... Sebastian is home – with his brother – and he actually asked to see her...
Overwhelmed and nervous, she agrees, and heads out to met him... and what she ends up finding is that her old friend hasn't even changed – apart from the fact he definitely looks like a Hollywood movie god and grown to be 6ft 3 of hard muscle.
They hang out, she meets his new close friend – Hollywood megastar Kate Whittaker – and they hit it off, too. But... Hanging out with her old best friend, with whom she is still in love with, is not only complicated – but daunting, especially when he's one of Hollywood's most famous and bankable movie stars. She's hardly in any league, let alone his. But – bottom line – he's still her best friend.
... She just wished he wouldn't make it quite so difficult to keep her feelings to herself.
Lisa Ryan is twenty-seven and is about to finish her second degree, in English Literature - a lifelong dream of hers. She gave up her well-paid career in London to return to live with her parents and teenage sister and complete her dream.
Lisa also has a lifelong secret - she's completely and pathetically still in love with her old best friend... Who absconded when he were 16, with his twin brother, to go and be mind-blowingly famous film stars in California, ever hearing from either of them again.
She always intended it for it to be something in the back of her mind - and every time she dutifully went to see their movies. But apparently, that wasn't OK with the Universe, because one unsuspecting day, she answers a random phone call... on her parents' ancient landline phone.
That's when she finds out that Movie Megastar Celebrity Icon Sebastian De Carr is finally back home after thirteen years and wants to see her again. Right Now... If she wouldn't mind doing an old friend a favour - please?
What's a girl to do when the love of your life asks you for a favour after nearly a decade and a half of sodding ghosting?
Well. Go and see him. Obviously.
Broken heart be damned.
Especially when he's too attentive, too close, and too nice.
... And maybe, a little too interested.
As I lay on my bed the next morning, my thoughts then inevitably led to Sebastian's request for my company twice in the same day. I was flummoxed by it, to say the least, especially because of how out of his league I was. Even as a friend. He was a sodding world-famous major movie star and Hollywood icon,...
The first thing I did once I was back in the house was to try and get the man back out of my mind, so I went to turn on the TV and watch something to take my mind away from him. As Sod and his stupid Law would have it, the first thing I saw when the...
The bright winter sun was dazzling. The intensity of the cold afternoon and the everyday bustling noise of this mediocre little town immediately became a welcome relief of normality to my senses, after being submerged in a dark room, watching both intense tragedy and human resilience unfold before me over the past two and a half hours. Napkins from...
