To Love Jason Thorn

by Ella Maise

I wanted—no scratch that, I needed his last name to be my last name.

Not the day after, not ten years or twenty years later. I needed it to happen that day—right at that moment to be exact.

My smile got bigger, and I believe it was the first moment I fell in love with the mysterious boy who had an adorable dimple and was going to spend the night right across from my room.

I think I can wait for you to get older, though.” I nodded to myself. “Make sure you wait for me

My little heart had fallen in love for the first time and I was hoping Jason would fall for me, too, after he tasted the pie.

Inside, I was dancing on the clouds. He had touched my hair. He had touched my chin and looked into my eyes. Jason. Our one-dimpled new neighbor. Had. Touched. Me. Ah… I was pretty sure he’d fallen in love with me, too. I mean why else would he smile, look into my eyes, and touch me, if he hadn’t? Right? Right?!

“Thank you, beautiful. I’m good.”

Putting his water bottle down, Jason reached out to help me up. “You are not sitting on the floor.” He pulled me up to the couch. “I’ll handle the pizza.”

“Are you kidding? I was looking forward to a quiet night in. Pizza and a movie with a beautiful green-eyed girl by my side?” He gave me a light shove with his shoulder. “Your brother is the stupid one, not me.”

couch. I stayed that way until the end of the movie because Jason’s shoulder stayed plastered to mine the entire time.

“Leave her alone, man.” I heard Jason’s voice coming from behind Dylan.

The worst was when I looked at him and found him smiling at me but knew it meant nothing at all. Maybe it never had.

Her alcohol meant more to her than her own son.

She had the same shade of green eyes as her daughter, just as striking as Olive’s. It was soothing to look at.

She was so full of life and had the most beautiful, captivating green eyes. So rich and alive. The kind that you looked at and let yourself happily drown in. I knew some idiot was bound to break her heart very soon, but I wouldn’t be there to protect her heart right alongside her brother. I wouldn’t be with the people I considered my family.

Even so, I reached out and gently touched her soft hair, tugging it gently before letting it go for the last time. “I hope so too. And thank you, beautiful, I will never forget you.” A tear slid down from her eye, and before I knew what I was doing, I reached out to capture it with my fingertip.

I looked at the teardrop that rested on my fingertip for a long time and felt a tug on my heartstrings.

Then like every other fleeting moment in life, my first love slowly faded into time.

“I was her favorite person in the whole wide world. She said so herself when she was eight years old.” He tilted his head, his eyes narrowing. “Or was it maybe seven?” “Probably seven,” I muttered and closed my eyes. Yup, I had done that, because he had been exactly that for me.

“Olive, you are beautiful,” he said after we took in each other in the thick silence. “You’ve grown up so much.”

He was still my first crush and my first heartbreak, but he was also Jason Thorn. The Jason Thorn who was only twenty-six and had two Oscar nominations under his belt, but I wasn’t going to think about what was under his belt because that would be bad.

I had been in love with him. You could call it a crush, but for me, it was pure love. He’d been my one and only wish on every single one of my birthdays.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he said softly, looking over his shoulder, the annoying dimple winking at me. “You were always the little one, not me.”

After she gave me the address, we were quiet for the rest of the ride. Fuck, but I couldn’t stop glancing at her. She had the same little nose, that same spark in her eyes, yet she was so different than when I had last seen her.

She shut the door on my smiling face. Ah. She was acting as if she could get away that easily now that I’d found her.

Those old, childish butterflies I’d thought were long gone? They all came back with a vengeance, which scared me more than anything that had happened that day.

“I put my own number in there and I want you to call me whenever you need anything, ok?” As if I would ever repeat that mistake again.

“Along with millions of other women. Who doesn’t love Jason Thorn?”

Jason: The Marcus guy, your boyfriend? Me: No, just the ex. I’m one hundred percent single.

Jason: Good. I don’t like him.

Jason: I didn’t like the way he treated you. Me: You only saw him for a few seconds, how would you know how he treats me? Jason: I have eyes. Me: How surprising. I hadn’t noticed.

“Soon enough, I’ll win you over. You already loved me once; I’ll make it happen again.”

“What?” I wheezed out when what I wanted to say was, Oh, Jason, I’m still head over heels for you, maybe even more so.

“This trying to get rid of me thing is a huge blow to my ego, Olive. I hope you’ll stop before you do some permanent damage.”

“Olive,” he said, softening his tone. “You couldn’t be a burden to me even if you tried.”

After all those years, I’d become the master of loving him from far away. It would be stupid of me not to take advantage of our situation.

“You’re a full-blown Hollywood star, Jason,” I said, unable to take my eyes off of every little detail around the house. “It would be disappointing if you had a run-down house. Your girlfriends must go even more crazy over you after seeing this place.” As if a sincere smile from him wasn’t enough to make you hand over your soul to the devil.

“You’re the first girl I’ve brought here.”

“I guess you could say I’m a little weird about that. This is my home, my escape from a demanding industry, in a way. I’m constantly surrounded by thousands of people when I’m off somewhere filming. Forget about filming, everyone knows every detail of my life whether I want them to or not. When I come home, I want this place to be untainted by all that. I don’t even have a staff that’s around 24/7. I like my privacy a little too much,” he said as he opened the door and invited me in.

“You have never in your life annoyed me, Olive. If I didn’t have you looking after me, who would’ve always given me the first and biggest slices of those pies you made with your mom?”

His dimple beckoning me to take a very, very small taste, Jason’s eyes looked down at me with such a warmness to them that I didn’t know what to do or what to say for several seconds.

“Come on, I’ll give you a big hug. If you are going to cry, well, you deserve to have a hug while you cry.”

Swallowing, I leaned back and looked straight into those warm brown eyes. The same eyes I’d stolen glances at across the dinner table when I was old enough to know I was irrevocably in love with my brother’s friend. Those same eyes I’d shyly met when he was only a kid. Those eyes I’d watched on the big screen for years, longing after something I’d never had, missing something only he could make me feel.

There was a slight hesitation on his part, but when he pressed another precious kiss on my forehead, I closed my eyes and held on to him tighter, certain I would have trouble letting him go this time around.

“Yeah, well, I believe her inspiration for Isaac was you.” “No.”

He rolled his eyes. “So what? She is a writer. She uses her imagination. That version of you does drugs. This version of you fucks everything that moves. In public. That version of you is her friend. This version of you was her brother’s friend. It’s the same fucking thing! The movie isn’t about drugs. It’s about Isaac and Genevieve. Maybe she wanted to write a happy ending for the boy she was in

love with when she was a kid. What the hell do I know?”

Jason Thorn, my childhood crush and now movie star, had touched my stomach, gently, and I wasn’t hyperventilating. Huh… Maybe I was getting the hang of this obsession/love thing.

Her eyes…they were one of a kind, alluring and intriguing in a way that made you want to get closer to her just so you could study and memorize the depth of the colors, find those hazel specks hiding in the bright green and watch how they sparkled when she smiled at you.

When Olive smiled and bit her bottom lip as her friend took over the song, I was completely mesmerized by her.