I wake up slowly, drifting in and out of sleep, unsure of which is the dream or not. So many times I’ve dreamt of him, woken up and rolled over to a cold, empty part of the bed. I’d get a pang of loneliness that made me close my eyes and want to go back to sleep quickly, to catch that dream version of the world again before it disappeared forever. This time, I roll over onto the sculpted hardness of his body, giving off a soothing, gentle warmth. I open my eyes and see those tattoos dancing across the lines and twists of his body.

We’re uncovered—enough heat generated last night to hold off an Alaskan winter. Teo’s on his back, hand behind his head as he sleeps peacefully. I lean up on an elbow and watch his chest rise and fall for a while. I soak in the lickable, skin-tingling sight of his smooth skin. The perfect shape of his abs enough to jolt me to full alertness like a shot of caffeine. I think about waking him up with a blowjob, but he put his tight boxer briefs on before sleeping. Eventually I can’t help myself, though, and I lean over to put my mouth on those abs. I kiss softly, running the tip of my tongue across the definition.

“Hey,” he says, smiling groggily. His muscles flinch, tickled by my tongue, and he grabs me as if catching me in the act, pulling me onto him so I lie between his legs, chin on his chest. He sticks another pillow behind him to sit up, his hands lazily running down my back so he can play with my ass.

“Morning,” I purr at him.

“Morning,” he smiles down at me.

We don’t say anything else for a few minutes, his hands running slowly up and down my ass, my fingers tracing the lines of his tattoos conversation enough.

“You’ve got so many more tattoos since the last time I saw you.”

“Lot of stuff’s happened since then.”

I look up at him with curious eyes.

“You saying all these tattoos have stories behind them?”

Teo nods.

“Most of them.”

I look down, scanning the array of images and symbols across his body, before settling on a roughly-drawn skull with a crow on top of it.

“This one? It looks pretty dark.”

Teo sighs when he sees which one I pointed at.

“I keep meaning to get that one done over,” he says, a note of dismay in his voice. “I was rolling with a bike gang in Tennessee for a while. Not exactly nice guys, but as long as I was with them I had a place to stay, could make some decent money, and keep drunk enough not to care about what we did for it. The tatt was just part of the induction.”

“What was the other part?”

Teo looks at me with a half-grin, though I know it’s only there to hide some pain.

“Unless you want to spoil this perfect morning, I’m gonna hold on to that story for now.”

I turn my eyes again to his body, then turn over his other arm to better see a young deer on the inside of his bicep.

“Kinda cute for you, isn’t it?”

“I drove trucks for a winter. Hit a deer one night in Montana. Didn’t stop—those rigs take a long time to get going again in the cold. Next day after breakfast I just walked into a tattoo shop—didn’t really think about it. Only knew that I wanted a tattoo and I had the money for it. When the guy asked me what I wanted, all I could think of was that deer.”

I frown at him a little.

“Are all the stories of your tattoos sad?”

Teo laughs a little, the shudder of it passing through his body to mine. He quiets quickly though, thinking about it.

“I guess the good things I have are all there. I don’t need to get a tattoo to remind me of my friends, my shop. I don’t think of these as sad… Looking back at all these…it only makes me appreciate what I have more.”

I purse my lips, acknowledging it, but still a little unconvinced.

“Look,” he says, shifting me a little to show me a simplistic-looking plant shape on the side of his ribcage. “This is the lotus flower. It’s an old symbol—means different things in different cultures. In Buddhism, Egyptian hieroglyphics, Greek mythology, Tibetan mysticism.”

I look down at it, trace it slowly with an appreciative finger.

“I like it.”

“Generally, though, it means new beginnings. A new day. The purity of a fresh start.”

I raise my eyes from the tattoo to him and smile.

“That’s something I can get behind,” I say, lowering my lips to kiss it softly.

Teo laughs as if tickled again and grabs me, pulling me up for a slow, soft kiss. His hands trace once again down the curve of my back, ride the hump of my ass where they settle. I feel the bulge in his briefs harden and grow.

We pull our lips apart and he looks at me with narrowed eyes, searching mine as if he’s looking for something.

“How about you?” he asks. “You still thinking about getting your tattoo?”

I don’t hesitate. “Yes. When I’m ready.”

He nods. “I’ll be here, then. When you’re ready.”

Teo traces the line of my jaw with gentle fingers and then pulls me into another dreamy kiss. When we finally pull away, his eyes have a mischievous sparkle to them.

“We keep talking about me,” he says. “What I’ve been doing, where I’ve been. But you’ve told me hardly anything about what you’ve been doing these past seven years. I think it’s your turn to spill.”

“Ugh,” I say, hanging my head so my hair drops to his chest, then raising it again. “Nothing as exciting as biker gangs and jaunts to Europe—trust me.”

“Still. I wanna know.”

I take a deep breath, and look away.

“Not much to tell, really. I finished college… Got a job assisting and then producing at Hollywood Night… And since then it’s been a steady grind, a lot of hard work to get barely anywhere from there.”

Teo looks at me keenly, pulling his head back a little, as if hesitant to say what’s on his mind.

“That stuff you talked about with Isabel…something about your dad hooking you up?”

I sigh and move away to sit up beside him, cross-legged on the bed—not really in the mood to get intimate now that we’re talking about my dad, and my work history. I shake my head and look up.

“I was supposed to go work at some big studio after college. My dad had this whole path laid out—pulled in his connections and influence to ‘pave the way’ for me. Associate producer on some big projects for a couple of years, which is actually just a title and means you hardly worked on the show at all, then move on to producing a few of my own projects, with the help of some ‘real’ professionals, a.k.a. hardly working on them yet again, and plenty of networking and schmoozing all the while, and then—if I followed the plan—I’d be earning seven figures and calling shots in Hollywood as a real producer by the time I was thirty. All without hardly lifting a finger. He was going to pay my rent and everything.”

“Shit,” Teo gasps in genuine awe. “What happened?”

I look at him, wondering if he really doesn’t understand me after all this time.

“Nothing ‘happened.’ I turned it down. Looked for a job on my own. I didn’t just want the title and the glory, I wanted to learn on the job, get my hands dirty doing the work.”

Teo’s staring at me now as if I told him I killed someone.

“Seriously?”

“What? Would you have taken that deal?”

“Hell yeah! Seven figures and being able to call your own shots in Hollywood? Isn’t that what you wanted?”

I shake my head at him, wondering if he’s joking.

“Yeah, it’s what I wanted. But getting what you want means nothing if you don’t earn it. And it isn’t a money thing, either. Forget the big paychecks. I want to work on projects that move people. That make a difference. The kinds of projects that really matter.”

Teo pushes a hand into his hair and scratches it roughly.

“You’re a stronger person than me, Ash.”

“Come on. You wouldn’t have taken that deal either,” I say. “Imagine never knowing whether your success was yours or if it was just handed to you. My whole career I’d have been ‘my father’s daughter.’ It would have hung over me until I retired—fuck that.”

Teo laughs and looks at me with admiring eyes.

“What about now? How is ‘going it alone’ working out? Any closer to those big dreams?”

I roll my eyes and look away, realizing that I might defeat my own argument by answering that.

“Well…it’s going ok. Not ‘ok’ enough that I don’t wonder about whether I made the right choice sometimes, though.”

“What’s up? You having problems moving up?”

I throw my head back onto the pillow beside Teo and look up at the ceiling.

“Not ‘problems,’ per se. I mean, I just got a promotion, hence the new apartment. I’m getting tons of experience and making contacts and all that. But it’s…just…it’s… I’m working on this crap show that could be so much better than it is, and all I want is the chance to show that—to show what I could do with just a little more faith—but I keep getting stonewalled every time I try to spread my wings a little. They’re convinced our audience can’t handle the kind of stuff I want to do.”

“What do you wanna do that’s so controversial?”

I lean forward, full hand gestures now as I get enthusiastic.

“Ok, so it’s just a gossip show—real formulaic. Who’s fucking who, somebody’s got a new movie out, that kind of thing. And sure, I get that, it’s the format. But what I wanna do, really, is produce some segments with a little twist, you know? Some depth. Something a little out of the ordinary, that doesn’t assume the audience is half-asleep and only kinda listening. I’ve got ideas—man I’ve got so many ideas. And I know they would work. But the higher-ups won’t let me do any of them.”

Teo looks at me with a mixture of admiration and confusion.

“So why not just film them anyway?”

“What?”

“Just tape the segments you want to film. On your own.”

I laugh and wave the idea away.

“It doesn’t work like that, Teo.”

He opens his palm wide in a gesture of bemusement.

“You’re a producer, right? You’re not some intern coffee-maker. This is your job. Making shows happen. You have the know-how and the contacts, you can rent equipment—”

“True…” I admit belatedly. “But I can’t just decide to put something on the air myself. Hollywood Night doesn’t work like that. There’s this tight-ass, corporate hierarchy structure that dictates exactly what we—”

“Bullshit,” Teo interrupts. “You didn’t turn down seven figures just to take orders from someone else, right?”

I bite my cheek.

“No.”

“So…could you do it? Rent some cameras, get a crew together and film your pieces? Is that feasible?”

“I mean…sure, I could… But—”

“So just do it.”

“And then what? Say ‘Hey, I filmed this segment that you told me you didn’t want a dozen times already. What do you say?’”

Now Teo waves my idea away.

“Sometimes people don’t know what works until you show it to them,” he says, with a belief that’s bordering on wisdom. “You know how many times people have come into my shop with some picture that would never work as a tattoo? You can explain and argue with them for a whole day and they still don’t get why it’ll look like shit. But if you draw them something similar that would actually work,” Teo stops to click his fingers loudly, “they get it. People don’t know what they want until they see it. So show them.”

I let the words linger in my mind, turning them over like a puzzle.

“Maybe,” I say softly, lost in my own thoughts now.

In the silence I hear my phone buzz in the hallway, and get up to go check it. It’s a message from Jenny:

STEPHEN PEACE JUST DIED. WE THINK. GET HERE NOW!

I rush back into the bedroom, waving my phone at Teo.

“Hollywood emergency,” I say, grabbing clothes from my closet. “I gotta run.”

“No time for breakfast?” Teo says, surprising me as he comes up behind me, roving hands around my front, his beard grazing my neck.

I groan slightly, then give in to responsibility.

“I’m still full from last night,” I say, turning to kiss him quickly before pulling away to get dressed.

After a few minutes in which he gets on his jeans and boots, he comes back into the bedroom carrying a coffee for me in one hand and his shirt in the other.

“You got a safety pin?” he says as I gulp down the liquid caffeine, showing me the torn fabric.

“Sorry,” I shrug, grabbing my bag and stuffing my keys and phone into it. “I could lend you a shirt, but I doubt anything would fit.” I move toward him, put a hand on his cheek and kiss him softly. “I’ll try to be more gentle next time.”

Teo pulls on his torn shirt and follows me to the door.

“Don’t. I’ve got plenty of shirts.”

People are bustling and moving when I arrive at work. They buzz around with a sense of urgency, holding phones to their ears even as they shout at each other across the workspace. An Oscar-winning icon of modern cinema dying is the celebrity show equivalent of a major tragedy, especially when that actor is relatively young, and currently experiencing a career resurgence. This is news that the major news networks are going to dedicate hours to—so for a show like Hollywood Night, dedicated to exactly this kind of news, it’s critical to get it right.

I decide to find Jenny first, and head upstairs to the offices, but she calls to me as I approach the writer’s room.

“Ash! Christ, thank God you’re finally here.”

“Jenny,” I say, as she walks hurriedly toward me, balancing a phone on her clipboard as she writes something on it, “is Stephen Peace really dead? I checked online in the cab over here but nobody seems sure.”

Jenny buzzes past me so quickly I can almost feel the slipstream. She waves a hand for me to follow and I try to keep up.

“We’re not sure either,” she says, voice jumping along with her bouncing steps. “Rumors are flying around online, but there’s nothing I would risk a limb on. The thing is, we need a segment up on this fast—it’s what we’re here for, and if we get this story first we might just hit our numbers this month. The problem is that we can’t call it without knowing. If the show gets it wrong it would be suicide.”

“Of course.”

“And you’re going to have to make the call on this. I just got off the phone with Sean, and all I got from him was what I dreaded—the most polite, humble, and nicely-worded ‘I don’t give a shit’ in the business.”

“What about Candace?”

Jenny glances back at me just long enough for me to see her eye roll.

“She’s getting her nails done today.”

Jenny slams through the exit to the stairs and I jump through before the door slams back.

“Well why don’t we actually try to find out if he’s dead or not?” I say, over the sound of our shoes quickly tapping down the stairs. “It shouldn’t be hard.”

“Everybody’s been trying. Half the writer’s room is on detective duty right now. His agent says he’s alive and kicking, but a publicist for the movie he may or may not be filming in Croatia right now gave us some vague answer that sounded like something was up. Then we’ve got one source saying he was transported to a hospital in L.A. an hour ago, is hanging by a thread, and the reason there’s no statement is that the death is pretty incriminating regarding his drug habits. One of our writers is convinced this is all just a case of mistaken identity started by some blurry photo of a guy on a stretcher, and we’ve also got a source telling us this is all some elaborate publicity stunt to promote the release of his new movie.”

“So in a word, it’s a mess.”

“Precisely.”

“What about producing a segment that just talks about all those rumors then? Go through all the rumors and make a funny little bit on it. ‘Schrodinger’s Steve’ or something.”

Jenny stops on the landing and turns backward, pointing her pen at me.

“That’s good,” she says, smiling. “But a little too high brow. And a little too tasteless. What if he is dead, and our primary segment on it is a jokey one?”

“Yeah, you’re right,” I admit.

She spins through the doors and into the hallway.

“What about this,” I say, my mind still going a mile a minute. “We film all the segments. All possibilities. He’s dead, he’s not, it’s a publicity stunt, he’s hanging by a thread—all of it. Then, the second we do find out what’s going on, we push the button and we’re live. We might not be the very first, but we’ll be one of. And we’ll be accurate.”

Jenny turns to me as we reach the studio doors. She nods, but she’s not smiling.

“That’s a good idea. We’d have to cut them together really fast and loose, but it could work. Except we also have another problem.”

“What?” I frown.

Jenny answers by pushing open the door and gesturing for me to enter.

Inside, the studio is all set up. The cameras pointed and manned, the lighting on the set, and Carlos in his spot, ready for show time. Sandra, the director, is standing by one of the cameras, but she’s got a hand over her face like she’s experiencing a pounding headache. It looks like they’re ready to film. Except Carlos isn’t wearing the ‘happy to see you’ smile he usually wears when he’s working—instead, he’s flailing his arms and ranting at anybody who might be listening.

“…bonafide asshole! One of the biggest you’ll ever meet! The world’s a better place without him—”

“What’s the problem here?” I shout at Carlos, marching into the light between the cameras.

Carlos shifts his attention from a cowering runner toward me instead.

“Problem? If Stephen Peace is dead that’s a blessing, not a problem. The only ‘problem’ here is that you expect me to do a whole segment on some nobody asshole like him. We’re scrapping this.”

I sturdy myself for a drama queen tantrum and focus on keeping my tone all business.

“We are scrapping nothing. Stephen Peace has won two Oscars and a Golden Globe and been nominated for a ton of other awards, and on top of that he was in one of the highest-grossing movies worldwide last year,” I say, as calmly as possible. “He’s also a UN ambassador and a spokesperson for Autism Speaks. So no, this isn’t ‘some nobody.’ He’s our top story, and all the other networks’ as well.”

“Pfft!” Carlos flinches backward and makes a face as if someone just tried to force-feed him rotten meat. “Let me tell you about Stephen ‘Peace of Shit’ as I like to call him. He’s a hack who doesn’t deserve a single dollar he’s made in Hollywood. I know the guy better than anyone—we went through the same acting program, and I spent three years carrying him on a sitcom called Scoop. The guy needed more takes to get his lines right than any actor I’ve ever seen. Always trying to steal scenes from me, always getting in my light—that wannabe knew I was ten times more talented. You know the role that made him big, playing the rookie detective in that serial killer movie?” Carlos jabs a finger at the fine silk of his purple shirt. “That was mine—it was written for me. I knew the writer and everything. Then, at the last minute, they toss me out for Stephen Peace of Shit. Said I didn’t come across ‘hungry’ enough, that I was too ‘polished’ for the part—can you believe it?”

“No, actually.”

“Yeah!” Carlos says, feeling vindicated and angry at the same time. “See, I know what really happened. Shit! The things I could tell you about that prick! If you wanna roll that camera I could tell you stories about him that would—”

“Let’s just try to keep it calm and detached, shall we?” I interrupt, firmly. “Professional. Right, Carlos? You don’t wanna look bitter or anything, do you?”

Carlos straightens his shoulders a bit and adjusts his shirt.

“I’m not bitter.”

“Of course you’re not. But people talk. So let’s just get this short little bit done and we can all take a break until tonight.”

Carlos nods. “That’s what I’m talkin’ about.”

“Great. You good to go, Sandra?” I ask the director.

She sighs and nods. “We just need a take,” she says.

Jenny comes up beside me, carrying large prompt cards.

“I’ve done some basic lines,” she says. “One for if he’s dead, one for if he’s not, one for if he’s hanging by a thread in the hospital.”

“Ok, great,” I say, turning back to give Sandra a thumbs-up.

“Let’s shoot the dead one first. Ready, everyone? Roll sound!” Sandra says.

Carlos takes his spot as the cameras make a final adjustment. He turns on his primetime smile as easily as a flashlight, and beams into the lens. Sandra checks the studio, the PA holding Jenny’s prompts, then calls action.

Carlos’ voice sounds like a completely different person as he begins.

“Stephen Peace, the thirty-five year old actor best known for his role in—” Carlos stops himself and laughs. “Thirty-five? Come on, if the guy’s dead we can at least be honest. Guy’s knocking on mid-forties at best! You ever met him in person? You can smell the Botox from ten feet away. His face looks like it’s been pounded by meteors—”

“Carlos!” I say, trying not to show too much exasperation. Beside me, the director puts her face in her hands again with a deep sigh.

“I can’t,” she says.

“Can we please stick to the script?” I call out to Carlos.

The host holds his palms up innocently.

“My bad, my bad… Let’s go again.”

Sandra takes a deep breath, looks at the camera monitor, and gives the signal. Carlos starts again and Jenny comes close to whisper in my ear.

“Maybe we should get somebody else to do this segment. You want me to call Kelly Greene?”

I lean over to whisper back.

“Kelly Greene’s not doing stuff for us anymore. She got that role in a TV show, remember?”

Jenny frowns, seeming a little more interested than I would have expected.

“So who’s our back-up now?”

I shoot her a stoic expression.

“We don’t have one.”

“Seriously?”

“Nope. We should have found one last month—except Carlos doesn’t want the competition, and Candace has to sign off on it anyway. You do the math… I must have suggested about a dozen names so far, but it goes nowhere.”

Jenny gets a look like she’s holding something back, like she’s prepping herself to suggest something, but before she can speak I’m distracted by the raised tones of Carlos going on another rant.

“Unknown?! Give me a break—it’s drugs! Ask anyone in town they’ll tell you what a cokehead that s.o.b. was! Guy couldn’t hardly remember his name at an after party! Either that killed him, or the money he owed all over town. I ever tell you about the last time I was shooting hoops with that asshole, back in nineteen ninety-six—”

“Ok, Carlos,” I sigh, dismissing Sandra for good and finding it hard to be firm anymore. “Let’s go again.”

About an hour after we call it quits in the studio, I’m still in the editing room with the operator trying to stitch together the usable pieces of Carlos’ bit. I play the trickier edits over stock footage of the actor, and try out various soundbeds so that nobody can see where I’ve edited out the ‘Peace of Shit’s and ‘asshole’s Carlos kept interspersing.

It’s hard work—made harder by the fact that the only news we get just seems to confuse the situation more than clarify it.

I’ve barely had a chance to consider what happened last night between me and Teo, but it lingers in my mind like a treat I’m saving myself for later. Occasionally, zoning out as I watch Carlos flail his arms on the tape, I’ll remember tracing Teo’s tattoos in bed, but I snap myself out of it quickly to return to this impossible task before me.

The whole thing starts to feel like a gigantic waste of time, an absurd comedy where I’m the punchline. I struggle to stop myself from wondering ‘what’s the point?’ and ‘is this really my job?’ pushing those thoughts to the back of my mind as I try to focus, absently shoveling a carton of Chinese takeout into my mouth. Listening to Carlos’ voice so much now that I can feel myself going mad, and start to imagine being committed to an insane asylum screaming the words ‘Stephen Peace of Shit’ over and over.

Then, just as I’m about to really flip, one of our writers bursts into the editing room carrying his phone.

“He’s dead,” the writer says.

“You sure?” I ask.

“A hundred per cent. Had a heart attack on set in Croatia—I’m half-Croatian, so I spoke directly to the hospital staff. No doubt about it.”

My stomach tightens. “Has anyone else reported it yet?”

The writer shakes his head.

“Not yet. But I doubt it’ll be long. Apparently the hospital’s full of the actors and crew he was working with.”

“Ok,” I say, turning to the editing desk with a newfound burst of determination.

After a few more last-minute alterations, the piece goes live, views rack up almost as soon as it’s up, and the three of us share some belated, relieved high-fives. The editor and writer leave me in front of the monitors in the editing room, where I slump into my chair, only just realizing how tired I am, how many hours have passed, and how little I’ve thought about anything else but this segment all day.

Other than that, the one thing that could lift my mood right now is seeing Teo, and when I check my phone to find a message from him, it’s almost as good.

It’s a photo, kind of dark, but I can make out the goofy dragon I won him at the fair last night, sitting on a cabinet behind the tattoo chairs. Something else catches my eye though, next to it, and I zoom in, peering at my phone as I try to make out the shape.

It’s another fluffy toy, battered and torn, as if it’s been dragged across deserts and roads. A small gorilla—the same one I won for him all those years ago. My lips start to tremble a little, the image goes blurry with the wetness in my eyes, and I look at what he wrote beneath it.

ONLY MEANS SOMETHING WHEN YOU HAVE TO EARN IT.

I feel some immense shift in my body, as if all my muscles are relaxing at once. Through the open door I hear the shouts of celebration from the corridor outside, but I’ve almost forgotten the trials of the night. I brush a few stray tears from my eye, and read the text again. My heart soars.

Teo always had a knack for saying exactly the right thing, just when I needed to hear it. I guess some things never change.