"Noah." He smiled as he shook my hand and I literally got chills. Chills.

Fuck how can just a handshake have this kind of effect on me? No wonder girls couldn't control themselves around him.

"But you already knew that."

Yikes.

A pale older man who I assumed was his agent, turned towards us finally. He was in his late 40s, tall - taller than Noah, who had to be at least 6'2 - and had over gelled, slicked back gray hair.

"Donovan King," He shook my hand distractedly, reaching for his phone with the other. His mother must be the Italian one.

"I'm his father and his manager. Nice to meet you, your agent spoke highly of you. And may I say the performance you delivered at the banquet in LA was brilliant last year in November."

They probably didn't know about my break. Trying not to wince at the thought, I smiled politely. LA was one of my last shows I had stopped.

"Forgive us for being late, we're always late." Donovan shot a pointed look at his son. Noah shrugged the look off and turned back to me.

"I wasn't here long." I lied realizing if I went off about them not being here on time things wouldn't go as well as I want. The rest of his team was a revolving door of handshakes and names I couldn't remember even if I tried.

"2 hours a day, I'll send the car around to come get you at 6," Donovan backed out of the room as his phone buzzed. "Damn it, I have to take this. I'm sorry, I wish I could stay."

And then Noah's team was off along with his father, leaving the room eerily quiet except for the ever present noise of New York's never ending traffic.

"Kind of a head rush, isn't it?" Noah asked not turning to look at me. He was in the front of the building by a long window, peering out into the parking lot.

"What?"

"My team. They're like a horde of angry wasps." He indicated the slick black trucks driving off towards the highway with a jab of his chin.

"Right, yeah," I shook my head as I moved to the piano and pressed down on a key, when the key played its tune an electricity seemed to run through my fingertips making me smile. I hadn't even touched a piano in a while. "Have you ever played the piano before?"

"Some," Noah turned the thin curtains closed and walked over to the piano, standing next to me. "I took lessons for about a year when I was 14 and tried playing recently. Wasn't that good so my father got me you."

"I saw. And you're how old?"

He grinned as he looked over at me. "Didn't you google me? I'm 20."

Okay, I did google him but I wasn't about to let that on and tell him I had. I definitely didn't want to tell him that I had a folder about him lying somewhere in my house.

"Anyway," I turned to the piano, running my fingers over them lightly creating a soft melody. "Will you play me something? Just so I know where to start."

He sat down and made a show of wiggling his fingers and cracking his neck. Noah then began playing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star with as much fervor you'd play a complicated sonata. I tried not to smile. His fingers were long and lean, piano hands; and he glided along the keys relatively smoothly. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all.

When Noah finished, he turned to me, eyes glowing with humor and some sort of happiness. "No applause?"

"You have good movement," I amended walking around the piano and Noah. "But you have a long ways to go. Why did you opt out of having your stand in do all of it? Wouldn't it be easier to concentrate on memorizing your lines?"

"I guess. But I like a challenge. Simon - my character in the movie - understands playing music. I want to communicate that to the people watching, obviously."

"Do you like classical music?"

"Uh, no," He chuckled as he looked down at me. His beautiful eyes captivating my own. "I think it's boring. No offense."

Well, I had no idea what to say to that.

"I'll start you on the scales. You'll have to study the notes since Simon will be playing some difficult songs." I said after a moment, turning away from his gaze.

"Oh, joy. Studying."

For the rest of the time, I quizzed him on the notes. Noah was an alright listener but I could tell he was itching to leave after the first hour of this.

Now we were standing at the entrance music hall, pulling on jackets and scarves. All and all, it wasn't as bad as I'd thought it would be. Who knew celebrities were actually like real people. Not all of course but he seemed to be a little better than the others.

"Your car is out there, right?" He said after a while. We'd been sitting in silence, on the lumpy couch beside the front desk with an empty cushion between us for the past 30 minutes.

"Oh um yeah, but I'd feel bad if you had to sit here by..." I trailed off, realizing I probably sounded like I was making excuses to spend more time with him. Which I wasn't, he was okay to talk to but I wasn't gonna make excuses to spend more time with him. Standing up, I grabbed my bag and readjusted my tight red scarf. "I'll see you tomorrow."

Noah didn't bother to look up from his phone when he answered me next. "Later."

The winter sun had long faded and the cold bite in the air tore through my thin coat. I made a mental note to call Mom in the morning, I could take only so much of what she had to give in one day.

When I started my ancient pale blue beetle, the engine made a rumbling click noise. The old car was prone to wiping out in the road and I've had to call James to pick me up half a dozen times since I moved to the city. I absolutely refused to take a taxi.

"For fuck's sake, I so don't need this right now." I groaned. I didn't have an infinite flow of cash for this thing. The car thankfully lurched out of the parking lot and into traffic after some coaxing.

I was halfway home when the car cut off, exactly like I thought I would. I could walk this distance if I wanted to without having to bother James. I sent him a quick text anyway, Car is dead again. I'm fine.

Less than a couple minutes later, his message came in. You really need to scrap that thing.

I smiled. As if.

I pocketed my phone after calling the tow truck. There was no way I could've told James about the whole Noah King business. I remembered when we'd been in his dorm watching TV one night and a trailer of one of Noah's older movies played.

Look at that guy, He'd said, shaking his head. He's everywhere; just milking all the money he can get out of the industry.

James was a perfect violin player. He had an actual talent, and that was the sad part. People didn't seem to appreciate his hard work. When he first arrived in New York with me he looked around for concerts.

But he wasn't able to find many, and after hearing about Autumn and how Noah would be playing the piano he laughed, He's going to make more money faking it in this movie then I will in a lifetime.

If James found out that I had accepted this job I was worried that he would be disappointed in me. He would hate it, hate me from keeping it a secret from him in our honest relationship.

I was leaning on the driver's side of the car, near freezing to death when a vaguely familiar black truck came to a stop beside me. Tinted windows, big cities, and teenage girls didn't mix too well - my heart had leaped almost out of my throat when the window slid down. Noah's brown eyes stared back at me glumly, as if I'd managed to disappoint him by standing out on the side of the road.

"What are you doing?" He asked.

"My car broke down."

"Did it." Noah didn't seem convinced as he glanced at my car with its awful paint job and then back up at me.

"I'm waiting for a tow," I checked my phone seeing if I had received any texts yet, which I hadn't. "It should be here soon."

"We're going to be late." I recognized the voice as his father's voice from the back seat.

"Not very imaginative," Noah continued, studiously ignoring Donovan. He wrinkled his nose as he looked at me. "This is supposed to be some kind of clever trick so I can take you to my hotel room, isn't it?"

For a moment, I thought I was going deaf. I thought that I had begun to hear things because to me there was no way that he could actually think that. Noah seriously believed I was some deranged fan waiting in the freezing cold for him. My eyes narrowed as I looked up at him in the car, angered that he believed that.

"Excuse me?" I took a step forward without even realizing it. My breath curled out in front of me in a white fog. He leaned away, towards the driver's seat.

"Oh no," Noah said and waved his hands at me, as if he were trying to ward off a bad smell. "I don't do Barbie dolls, sweetheart."

That pricked my nerves more than it should have. Barbie, really?

I am nothing like a barbie doll.

"And I don't do egotistical, moronic movie stars so I guess we're both in the clear, huh?"

He just smiled that movie star smile.

It was the one kind of smile that hid nothing, had everything, and held the perfect illusion that the world was yours, if you wanted it. And at that moment, I swore I never wanted to put my fist through Noah King's jaw more than I did right then.

So much for celebrities being human.