CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
"I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul."
~Pablo Neruda
PRESENT
SCARLETT
Filming was not going how I'd expected. It was a rollercoaster. All ups and downs, nothing in between.
A part of me hated it, and a part of me found it stimulating. At least I wasn't bored.
The acting was the only thing I wasn't conflicted about. I loved it, because God I was tired of being me. It felt good to slip into some other shoes.
But the rest was a jumbled mess that consisted of changed scripts, new lines, and repetitive reshoots.
Every scene felt like it had to be redone a dozen times. At least.
I thought that all of this traced back to one thing: the director. He was hard to please and harder to impress.
Stuart Whently was known for making A-list, character driven films that made the film academy swoon, and for being an eccentric, sometimes tyrannical, perfectionist.
When I thought of it that way, things weren't actually going so badly.
Still, it felt like I was somehow failing, and I had begun to miss my friends, who were gone four days or more a week, and hell, even my crappy old airline job, where at least I hadn't felt l was incompetent.
I had quit with relish over a month ago, never dreaming that I'd long to go back to it for even a second.
I'd never admit any of it aloud though, and even if I was doing a horrible job, I'd keep trying my best until I either got it right or got canned. It wasn't even a question.
"Is he always like this?" I asked one of the production assistants after Stuart had called an abrupt break and stormed off set. Again.
"Hmm?" she asked.
"What I mean is, is this how a movie production is supposed to go, or is this one just a colossal failure?" I hoped that wasn't the case, but I needed to know if it was.
I always, always preferred the truth.
That had her finally looking at me, pushing her glasses up high on her nose to study my face. "This project is as smooth as they get, to be honest. Usually filming with him is a nightmare."
I was shocked, relieved, and somehow annoyed. But at least it wasn't me.
Stuart was back within the hour, which was usually the pattern, and we set up again.
Two takes later, and good ol' Stu was back to ranting.
"It's a journey back from feeling alienated from the world," he said passionately, speaking directly to me.
Well, that I could relate to. The second part of it, at least.
"It is about personal growth, not an explosion of it, but a gradual unfolding, petal by petal, bit by bit. This scene is supposed to make you blossom. He's doing something for you that no one ever has before, showing you kindness, changing your perspective, on people, on men. You two are supposed to like each other!"
And that was the whole problem. I couldn't stand the lead actor. He was a Hollywood asshole of the first order.
I'd been excited when I heard who was chosen for the role.
David Watts had seemed the perfect pick. He was successful, a household name, great-looking, and because he was a hunk and he liked to post shirtless pictures of himself holding kittens on Instagram on a fairly regular basis, he brought his own rabid fan-base to every movie he made.
But how he sounded on paper was far from how he was to work with.
Stuart got right up in my personal space, as he was wont to do, distracting me from my train of annoyed thought, spectacled eyes studying me closely. "But you're not the problem, are you? You are her. You are this character. She is you. You are this movie. That is clear to me. So it's you we must begin to work around. What we need for this is chemistry. I'll ask you plain, can you think of any man you have chemistry with that's fit to play this role?"
I was floored, but pretty thrilled. He'd really fire David Watts? Is that what he meant?
I opened my mouth to respond, because hell, I'd find someone, but David interrupted with a grownup hissy fit.
Apparently he wanted this job, too.
David probably wasn't a terrible person. He was just out of touch with reality. And normalcy. Something I figured a lot of famous people suffered from. I'd have bet money from what I'd seen on set that he surrounded himself with people who only told him how awesome he was, that he was the most special snowflake of all of the special snowflakes.
People that never let him know when he was acting like an entitled douchebag.
He wasn't even a bad actor. He had a limited range, as most too good-looking men do, but what he played, he played well. He'd just decided to be a dick to me since the first day we'd met, and he couldn't hide it even when the cameras were rolling.
I was still a little bummed about it. I'd been excited to meet him, more excited when he wanted me to come over to his house to rehearse together.
About two hours and a few drinks later into that first meeting he'd asked me (way too bluntly and without an ounce of charm) if I wanted to fuck, and I'd politely turned him down.
Okay, polite maybe wasn't the word. I'd tried to be polite, but I'm sure my version of a polite no had come across more than a touch sarcastic. And likely mocking.
He hadn't taken the rejection well. I honestly didn't think he knew how to deal with it. So he turned it on me. Told everyone I was difficult to work with while taking exception to every word that came out of my mouth.
I ignored it and tried my best not to let it show that I couldn't stand him when the cameras were rolling. I thought I succeeded.
David didn't even try. I don't know if he thought he could bully me into wanting to sleep with him, or if he was just that unprofessional.
One thing was for sure. Before today no one had dreamed there was a chance he could be fired.
"I don't want to fire you," Stuart told him when David had calmed enough to let someone else get a word in. "I don't want to. I just may need to. Scarlett is electric. She's magic. Incandescent. She gives me life. She's my muse, and she was made for this part, but as soon as I put you together, everything goes flat. Flat! I can't have it be flat, David. Tell me how I can keep from firing you."
That little speech, and fear of losing the role, seemed to help. David tried harder. Became more civil with the next take, like a light had been switched on. A big heaping of humble pie had been just what the doctor ordered.
What a spoiled brat.
When we finished another take it was to a spattering of applause and eccentric Stu blowing kisses into the air.
I was almost disappointed. I'd have loved to replace David with Anton or, hell, just about anyone, but if he was going to behave himself, I wouldn't be a butt about it.
We were taking a short break while we waited for setup on the next scene when my phone started ringing.
It was Bastian. I took a deep breath and answered.
"I can't find Dante," he began.
I closed my eyes, rubbing my temple with my free hand. "He's here," I told him.
"What do you mean by here?"
"Somewhere in town. Or at least he was a few days ago."
Bastian cursed. "Damnit, I should have guessed. If you see him again, tell him I need him to call me. He needs to pull it together."
"Do you really think that's a good idea?" I asked pointedly. If Dante knew I was talking to his brother, no matter the reason, I had no doubts it would send him into a jealous rage.
"I see your point," Bastian admittedly wryly. "Well, if you see him, will you figure out what he's doing there, where he's staying, and then let me know?"
"If I see him, yes, I will."
I stared at my phone long after the call had ended.
Would I see Dante again? Did I want to?
I was able to answer the first question much sooner than I'd imagined, as the next time I went to my trailer for a break, I found Dante sprawled out on my sofa. Again.
And he was stinking drunk. Again.
I didn't think it was the alcohol racing through his system, though, that made it so he couldn't meet my eyes.
He'd come here to see me, and he couldn't even look at me.
I'm not sure how that would have made me feel a few months ago, or even weeks, but with what I now knew, it made me feel wretched.
And angry. Confused and conflicted. Wounded and lost.
But also, it touched me deeply.
How long had he been living this double life, stuck in purgatory, trapped in a vicious web of lies, completely alone?
Protecting me from everything.
I, frankly, didn't even want to know. It is much easier to hate someone who you're certain has wronged you than it is to hate yourself.
And I was very afraid that if I knew just how far back his lies went, my self-hatred would know no bounds.
"Dante," I said, my voice so soft that it forced him to look at me, his entire drunken face registering a sort of endearing surprise, like he'd forgotten where he even was.
"You look like hell." That being said, he made hell look good. His hair was messy, more scruff on his jaw than usual. I was still wearing the evidence of that scruff on my thighs from his last visit, and no, that wasn't a complaint.
No suit for him today, instead he was wearing gray sweats and a zip-up hoodie that was open wide enough at the neck to expose his defined collarbone and the top of his muscular chest. And the cursed chain that he never took off. Also, there was enough bared skin that I suspected he wasn't wearing a shirt under. If he weren't drunk, I'd have assumed he just came from a workout. He was dressed for it, down to his running shoes.
"How do you keep getting past security?" I was mostly curious about it. I'd had to jump through hoops to get on set the first few times, they were so strict. How did he get so lucky?
"They think I'm your boyfriend."
"Why would they think that?" I asked him, but I knew the answer.
"Because I told them so. And I bribed them."
At least he was honest. For once.
"What are you doing here?" I asked him point blank.
His shaking hand pushed his hair impatiently back from his face. "I'm here for the same reason I always come back to you. I've come for scraps. Anything you'll give me. I've come because I can't stay away." His voice was low and hoarse from the drink, but thick and dark with emotion. "I tried to. Don't you know that I'm always trying to stay away? It doesn't matter. It never works.
There was a time in the not so distant past that his words would have set me off, thrown me into a temper that would have left us both bloody.
But something had changed. Something that terrified and excited me both.
Something that utterly destroyed me.
Something that made me whole again.
I did not know how far all of his betrayals ran, how deep or shallow his lies, but I was starting to realize that in one respect, at least, it didn't matter.
Some part of my pathetic heart was going soft for him again.