Chapter 8

 

Gemma

 

Frankie’s face lights up when I enter the café, and retains an almost scarily excited expression while I grab a coffee and take a seat opposite her.

“Well?”

“He definitely fucked me,” I say, sardonically. “He fucked me pretty good.”

“I knew it!”

Frankie claps her hands and jiggles her knees until she notices the pissed expression I’m wearing and detects the sarcasm in my voice.

“Wait. What’s wrong, then?”

I sigh deeply, sipping my coffee for the energy I need to relive the awful memory.

“He decided to run away from set, so I went with him, and then the next thing I know he’s abandoned me at a biker bar in one of those canyons off PCH – God knows where – to run off with some chick. I had to get my dad to drive all the way there to pick me up. Luckily he’d called us both out sick with food poisoning, but who knows what will happen tomorrow?”

Frankie’s expression drops.

“Maybe that’s his idea of flirting?” she says, the strain in her voice revealing that even she doesn’t believe it.

“Or maybe he’s a completely arrogant, self-absorbed, egotistical asshole.”

“He’s probably nervous about the film.”

“Frankie,” I say, slowly, “would you be making excuses for him if he looked like Danny DeVito?”

Frankie opens her mouth to speak, and for the first time ever, decides to close it without making a sound.

“I thought so.”

“But he’s sexy as shit, Gemma. Arrogance and sexiness go hand in hand.”

I make a disgusted face and struggle not to spit out my coffee.

“No they don’t,” I say. “A guy can be sexy without being arrogant.”

Frankie gives me a look like I’m a kid saying the funniest things.

“Sure,” Frankie says in a voice so sarcastic she’s dripping it all over her lap.

I stare at Frankie for a few seconds before putting my coffee down slowly.

“Whatever. I’m done with Dylan. I’m just going to keep my distance, do my job, and wait for this shoot to be over. I’m done. I mean it.”

“No you’re not.”

“I am. I really am.” I cross my arms and glare at a spot on the far wall, pretending it’s Dylan’s face. My phone rings, and I grab it, grateful for the distraction until I see who it is: Dylan. I look up at Frankie, who reads my exhausted expression like a picture-book and shrugs sympathetically.

“Hello?” I say, when I answer the phone, my voice coming out so icy and cold it surprises even me.

“I’m sorry?”

I grit my teeth to keep from screaming out loud at him. “Holy shit, Dylan.”

“What?”

“Really? You’re really going for the apology now?”

“Christ your phone voice is sexy.”

“Ugh.”

Dylan laughs, and it’s like he’s casting a spell. It’s infectious, warm, and hypnotic. A balm that softens all the prickly hate I ought to feel for him, a spell that puts me in the present and makes me completely forget what he did. A man who can do that is dangerous.

I glance up at Frankie, whose eyes are wide and attentive, and snap back to reality.

“If it makes you feel any better, I covered for us. Told the bosses we have food poisoning.”

“I know. But involving me with your lies doesn’t make me feel any better. What are you calling me for, anyway? Don’t you have a random girl to be spending time with?”

“I did. We had a nice ride.”

“You’re disgusting, Dylan.”

“I meant on the bike! I just called to apologize.”

“Fine. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“No! Wait…” I hold my breath, waiting for what’s coming. Dylan takes a while to start speaking again, almost like he’s thinking about what he’s about to say, which takes me by surprise. “It was a dick move, what I did today.”

“Maybe because you’re a dick.”

He laughs self-deprecatingly, and I can almost believe he’s not.

“Probably. It’s just…I just thought of you as one of them. As one of the bosses, one of the condescending, controlling people who decided I can’t be trusted. I can’t stand that.”

“Nobody hates this situation more than me.”

“I know. It just took me a little while to figure it out.”

Frankie gestures at her wrist and starts getting up, so I smile and wave a goodbye to her as she grabs her coffee and slides between the tables towards the exit.

“Ok,” I say, my voice now drenched in cautious reserve, “well, that’s good. I’ll see you on set tomorrow then.”

“Why don’t we meet now? Back at the set, say half an hour?”

“Why? You just lied to everyone to get us the afternoon off and now you want to go back to the set?”

“We’ll make a quick recovery. Show everyone that even with food poisoning we’re troopers.”

“I don’t know, Dylan. Can’t we just show them tomorrow?”

He takes a long breath. “The thing is, I kinda want to discuss logistics with you. I think it’d help both of us if we talk this working relationship thing over and try to figure out how to make it work. I don’t want to step on your toes anymore and I’m pretty sure you don’t wanna step on mine. Right?”

I sigh deeply and pinch the bridge of my nose.

“Ok,” I say, slowly. That shower was sounding so good, and now it’s so far away. But even though I’m still angry, I need to keep Dylan in this strange new ‘productive worker’ mode, make sure he’s going to show up tomorrow with a smile on his face and a spring in his step. So logistics it is. “I’ll see you there in a bit.”

I hang up, and put my phone back into my bag. From hot hook-up, to total asshole, to considerate apologies – it seems like Dylan is exercising his full range, and I’ve got a front seat, whether I want it or not.

 

Dylan’s waiting for me near the entrance gate when I get to the set and we make our way to his trailer slowly, exchanging a few polite nods and smiles. I keep my distance, just in case Dylan gets another idea in his head. I know I said no confined spaces, but having to enter his trailer is going to be an unavoidable work risk.

He slumps himself down into the corner couch and I stand in the middle of the trailer with my arms crossed.

“So?” he says, shrugging his shoulders and opening his palms. “What happens now then? How exactly is this going to work?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. I guess…I just have to watch you all day. I’ll call you in the morning to check you’re on your way to the set, and I’ll be with you until you go home. I’ve never done this before either, honestly. But my real job is on the line here. I’m working in the finance department and I have to protect our investment—but the usual minder wasn’t available, and lucky me, I got picked.” I glare at him.

Dylan nods. “Well, you got me. You sure you can manage it?”

I roll my eyes and pace a little around the trailer.

“I don’t really have a choice,” I say. I’d like to scream and shout at him. I’d like to ask what the hell he thought he was doing abandoning me so far from the studio, how he thought I’d get back. I’d like to tell him not to interrupt my private, off-the-clock life. But I need to keep a cool head, retain a good distance, if this is going to work.

Dylan watches me and I start to feel tingles over my body, my anger dissipating. Suddenly I feel naked and vulnerable, standing in the middle of his trailer while he smiles at me. It doesn’t help that images of the night we spent fucking - of his wet, naked body, of him walking towards me with lust in his eyes and hardness in his hands – keep inserting themselves into my mind involuntarily.

Suddenly, he leans towards the counter and takes some papers from it.

“I tell you what,” he says, his voice almost sounding sincere, “I need to practice some lines; how about you and I run through a scene together?”

“Me?” I scoff. “I’ve never acted in my life.”

“You don’t have to,” Dylan shrugs, “just say the lines so I can respond. So I can get the tempo of the scene.”

I sigh a little.

“Come on, Gemma. Just five minutes and then you can go home. It’ll really help me.”

Damn him for being so irresistible. Reluctantly, I walk towards the couch and sit next to him, taking the script that he hands to me and making sure our thighs are a few inches apart.

“It’s page forty-two. You’re gonna be Renee.”

“Ok,” I say, finding the name on the sheet. “Shall I start?”

“Sure.”

I clear my throat a little.

“’When you said you would come back to fight, for him, I never thought it would be like this?’”

“’I never said what I was fighting for,’” Dylan says, and his voice is suddenly like a battering ram to my senses, strong and powerful, an earthquake of emotion. I jerk back when I hear it, shuddering as I stare at him, as if in disbelief at how he sounds.

His eyes remain on the page, and he gestures for me to continue. I shake off the shock and turn my eyes back to the page.

“Um…ah…sorry… ‘If you’re not fighting for your brother’s cause, what are you fighting for?’”

“You. Just you. Nothing else but you.”

I look up at him, the words so potent, so full of earnestness that I’m not sure if he’s talking about the script anymore. Whatever he’s saying, I believe that he means it. That it’s just me. That I’m on a far-off planet, face to face with the only man who can save it, torn by the fact he’s doing it for the wrong reasons, and that we can’t be together, but impossibly in love with him.

I look up at Dylan, whose gaze is pained and caring, like he really loves me, like he really means it. He allows himself another brief nod to the script, and I suddenly fall back into reality just enough to cast my eyes down and see the next line.

“Ahem…um…‘Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that. Promise me.’”

I look back up, but Dylan’s just staring at me now, his face inches from mine, his mouth parted in a gesture of long-held pining, his eyes sad but focused, eyes that soften only for me.

“’I don’t need to. You already knew.’”

My head spins, my mouth goes dry, my fingers clutch the script tightly and my toes curl. Dylan moves closer and I close my eyes, bracing myself for his touch, preparing myself to explode when he touches the fuse.

“Dylan!” comes a shout from somewhere just outside the trailer, followed by loud rapid thumps on the door. “Dylan! Are you in there? Heard you were back!”

Dylan’s face breaks into his normal, relaxed, semi-smiling expression, and I reel back for a few moments, still unsure of what’s real and what isn’t.

“That’s Charlie. I need to speak with him. Well,” he says, tossing the script onto the counter and standing up, “that was good. I want that scene to go a bit quicker, but thanks, anyway.”

“Um…yeah. Sure. No problem,” I say, offering a weak smile and nervously pushing my hair over my ear.

Dylan makes his way to the door. I stand up, and he gestures at me to sit back down.

“I’ll be back in few minutes.”

I hover for a second, wondering if I should let him go, the question of trust hanging in the air, unspoken, but clear nonetheless.

Dylan nods, and I laugh weakly. It sounds dry and empty. I settle back down, unable to bring an element of conflict between us after the moment we just shared. Dylan winks at me and leaves. I let my head drop back onto the seat.

I should ask for a raise.

 

Dylan returns after a few minutes carrying a foil-wrapped package in each hand.

“You hungry?” he says, closing the trailer door behind him.

“I could eat a horse.”

“I’ve only got tuna and ham,” he winks.

“Tuna,” I smile.

Dylan tosses me the sandwich and drops onto the couch opposite me, tearing off the wrapping and taking about a quarter of his own in one bite.

“Not bad for craft service leftovers, right?”

He chews happily for a few moments, his eyes settling on me as he does so. I glance back at him and start smiling – however much I don’t want to – before turning back to concentrate on my own food. He gulps loudly then reaches over to his mini-fridge and takes out two bottles of water, sliding one over to me.

“Thanks,” I say.

“Are you still mad?”

I pretend to chew as I think over the best answer.

“No,” I say.

“You must be a very strong, forgiving woman.”

I laugh and pick at my sandwich.

“It’s not that – as flattering and as cheesy as that sounds.”

“Why then?” Dylan asks, before taking another gigantic bite from his sandwich.

I take a few moments and a sip of water before answering.

“Well,” I say, slowly raising my eyes to his, “to act like you did today, you have to be either a complete asshole, or…” He tilts his ear towards me, as if eager to hear the rest. “Angry, frustrated…and maybe a little anxious.”

“Anxious?”

I nod, and he wipes a hand over his face as if what I said was incredible.

“About what? No, wait, don’t tell me. The ‘big comeback.’ The huge ‘Christopher West’ film, which is depending on my shoulders to carry it. Oh! The pressure! Am I really good enough? Do I still have it!? And so on and so forth.” He’s going for sarcasm, but I can see the very real worry beneath it.

“You joke, but I don’t think it’s too far off the mark.”

“And why then would I jeopardize everything by doing something like that?”

I finish chewing, put the sandwich down, and look at Dylan sincerely.

“I think you want to fuck things up deliberately so that you can stay in control, and not have them be fucked up for other reasons. Maybe it’s better to be the ‘wild man’ actor who blew a movie because he was crazy, than the honest actor who tried to do something great and failed at it.”

Dylan’s smile drops, and he looks up as if genuinely contemplating it.

“That’s good,” he says, waggling a finger at me. “That’s really good. Do you believe that could be it?”

“Maybe.”

Dylan breaks into a smile.

“Then that’s what I’ll use as an excuse next time.”

I snort a laugh and shake my head as I pick up my sandwich again.

“And what about you?” Dylan says, after gulping down the last of his sandwich. “Since we’re playing ‘therapist.’”

I concentrate on sipping more water.

“What about me?”

“Why do you think they chose you for this job?”

I screw my face up in a sudden expression of confusion. Why did they choose me for this role? It had been my first question when they told me about it, and since then I’ve been so busy trying to do the job properly, I hadn’t stopped to think about it again. I pass off my confusion as an incredulity that Dylan would ask the question, but I don’t know if he buys it.

“It was probably the financial department’s idea, and I work in the financial department, so…”

“Yeah,” Dylan says, waving what I said away like it’s just noise, “but why you? There are plenty of other people who work in that department. Why not a higher-up? Why not an admin? Why not someone who is actually a personal assistant? From what I was told, you never worked on a project half this big. So why you?”

I look up at Dylan, whose eyes are glinting and sparkling with the thoughts he’s not expressing.

“You obviously think you know, so just say it.”

He screws up his foil and tosses it into a wastebasket on the other side of the trailer – annoyingly getting it inside – before turning to me as he picks at his teeth daintily.

“They think you don’t know how to have fun,” he says.

I shake my head in confusion.

“Excuse me?”

“They think you’ve got a stick up your butt. That you’re a square, a stickler for the rules. They saw the way you tie your ponytail real tight, and the way you button your shirts all the way up to the top, and they thought you’d be the perfect person to keep a guy like me away from anything exciting.”

I sigh and shake my head again in a gesture of defiant disbelief, but I don’t say anything. I can’t say anything: Dylan’s probably right, and hearing him say it out loud makes me feel a little embarrassed.

“I know how to have fun,” I say, almost aggressively, as if I’m arguing with a lifetime of preconceptions rather than Dylan, “it’s just that my idea of fun isn’t wild Hollywood parties full of phonies and drugs.”

“What is your idea of fun, Ms. Clarke?” Dylan says, in a mock news anchor voice, relishing my defensiveness.

“I like…reading. Art…photography. Yoga…hiking. Actually talking to my friends.”

“Wow,” Dylan says, drawing the word out, “sounds like a real blast of a Friday night. Somebody call the cops.”

“Ok,” I say, adamantly holding my hands up, “maybe that is why they chose me – so what? So I’m not a Hollywood schmoozer who’s going to get all starry-eyed at your ‘big, bad wild man’ routine. So I’m not the kind of person who feels like they have to impress everyone by going to the ‘best’ parties. So I’m not the kind of person who’s seduced by the drugs and the booze and the fame and the glamor. So what? Is that such a bad thing?”

Dylan focuses the laser beam of his gaze on me, the shine disappearing and being replaced by something else, something that’s deeper, darker, and seems to run all the way down to his soul.

“No,” he says, holding my eyes, “it’s not bad at all. It’s the best thing about you.”

My breath starts fluttering out of me, pushed by the butterflies in my stomach. Once again I feel like I’m losing all sense of time. It’s not just the things Dylan says, it’s the way he says them, his voice so confident that I would believe anything he told me, his eyes focused on me so intently the rest of the world may as well not exist. I try to gather my senses and think of something diversionary to say but Dylan brings me back to reality.

“Come on,” he says, as he slams his bottle of water on the table like a first beer, “let’s get out of here.”

“Where to?” I say, bewildered, as he jumps up and starts making for the trailer door. “We should probably talk over the film schedule.”

Dylan spins around to face me.

“Fuck that. I’m sure you’ve memorized the entire thing, and since you’re going to be at my side from dusk til dawn I don’t have to.”

“Well where are you going?”

“We are going to have a little fun.”

“Oh no…”

“Oh yes,” Dylan says, eagerly stepping out of the trailer. I frown for a second before following him, a half-step behind as I try to keep up.

“It’s the last free time we’ll have before shooting,” Dylan explains, as he strides across the lot towards his bike, “our last hours of freedom. Tomorrow, the work starts, and it’s all going to be on your terms. So for one last time,” he says, searching for the helmet in the prop cart, then offering it to me, “we’ll do it on mine.”

My shoulders slump and I drop my head.

“Really?” I say, almost pleading. “Can we not just go somewhere for coffee? That’s fun. Or…I dunno…watch a movie?”

“Sure. Then we do a crossword puzzle together and share a cab back to the retirement home. No. Look, I need to blow off some steam – and it’ll be good for you too. I’ll show you my idea of a good time, it’ll help us get to know each other better. It’ll be…catalystic.”

“Cathartic. Though catalyst is probably more accurate.”

“See, we’re already working together. Come on.”

I reluctantly take the helmet – though not without hitting Dylan with the most disapproving glare I can muster – and get on the back of his bike. He revs it gleefully.

“Where are we going?” I shout over the roar of the motor.

“Vegas!” he screams, and before I can protest, we wheelspin away from the movie set in a dramatic cloud of burning rubber.