THE EDGE ➶ JAMES FRANCO✔️

2. HIS NUMBER AND HIS WORD

Somebody by Natalie La Rose feat. Jeremih

"I wanna rock with somebody. I wanna take shots with somebody. I wanna leave with somebody; and we ain't gotta tell nobody, we ain't gotta tell nobody."

~~~

"Thanks for doing that, Mr. Franco," she says as she steps out of Tom's building.

"Did you seriously just call me Mr. Franco?" His eyebrows curl up sardonically but his grin says it all.

Red heat creeps up Allison's cheekbones.

"Call me James. Everybody does." He laughs.

"Okay, James," she says, trying it out loud for the first time.

It rolls off her tongue perfectly, almost like she's meant to say it every day of her life. She wishes she could.

They find themselves right by the stairs to a subway and James stops.

"This is where I stop. But since you're gonna stick around LA, we should get together sometime. Maybe this week?" A sly grin slides onto his face. "Here's my number." He hands her a folded slip of paper and she takes it. "Please don't give it to anyone. I love my fans, but I don't need phone calls from every one of them," he says, offering a suppressed laugh.

"Of course not." She's breathless. James-fucking-Franco just gave her his personal number.

"Cool. Hey, I'm going to a friend's party tonight, and I'd like you to come." He gives her a smile and leans on the green railing that leads to the subway.

"Tonight?"

"Short-notice, I know, and I'm sorry, but I think you're one of those special people."

"One of them? I thought special meant something like one in a million." In return, she gives him a playful smirk.

His eyebrows furrow and he looks down in deep thought. "Does it not? There're more than one million people in the world, Allison," he says seriously.

Her heart breaks. He sounds like he's lost someone special.

"So," he says, breaking her silence, "are you coming?"

"Yeah, I'll be there." Mentally, she clears everything off her to-do list.

Guess I won't unpack until tomorrow.

"Awesome. See you there." He winks one last time before he begins to jog off down the green stairs.

"Wait, James! Aren't you forgetting something?"

He furrows his eyebrows again as he looks up, hurried pedestrians flowing around him looking annoyed. Allison rolls her eyes jokingly.

"I need to know where it's at, dummy."

"Right."

~~~

Checking her makeup for what must be the tenth time, Allison decides she'd stalled enough. She heads out to her car, getting in and buckling up. It takes her an hour to arrive at the party; she's afraid James had already forgotten about her.

It's definitely a celebrity party; there's a bouncer she had to sign in with at the front door. Sure enough, James had put her name on the list, although it was misspelled.

Meandering through the overcrowded house which is booming with loud rap music and neon lights flowing out of the windows, she tries to avoid getting hit on by drunken houseguests. She finds the host, Lana del Rey, chatting it up at the minibar.