“Bang.”

Alice pretended to flinch at the second assistant director’s monotone impression of a gun firing. The other extras around her dropped to the floor in halfhearted impressions of panic, but she stayed where she was. She was playing a patient today instead of a nurse, stuck on a gurney with her regular clothes hidden under a hospital blanket, and she was supposed to stay put when the gunfire started.

It was just as well. Unlike most of the other extras, Alice hadn’t gotten into background work because she wanted to be an actor. Let the rest of them have their spotlight and put their acting lessons to good use throwing themselves to the floor. She was content to lie on her gurney with her back to the camera, mostly hidden from view.

The soundstage was crowded this morning, and the cast hadn’t even showed up yet. There were even more crew on set than usual because of the firearms they were using today, which required armorers and additional makeup and safety personnel as well as a stunt team.

“Alice.”

Her stomach lurched as Robert, the second AD, approached her. Did I not flinch well enough? She bit down on her fingernail as he picked his way through the extras huddled on the floor.

“Ethan will be standing here examining you at the start of the scene,” Robert told her, “and when the gun goes off, he’s going to shield you with his body. Okay?”

Alice’s eyes widened. Ethan was Griffin’s character. And he was going to be shielding her with his body?

She gave Robert what she hoped was a convincing thumbs-up. “Got it.”

So much for lying on her gurney unnoticed. Now she was going to have a member of the principal cast—a very muscular, very attractive, very male member of the principal cast—sprawled on top of her.

“Our gunman’s got a couple lines of dialogue,” Robert went on, flipping to the next page of his script sides. “Then Gary the security guard shows up on the scene, yada yada. After their exchange, Alfie enters from here.” He pointed to one of the doorways. “When he starts talking, I want some of you to start crawling to safety.”

Robert picked out a few extras and assigned them a specific dialogue cue and a direction to exit during the three-way exchange between Alfie, the security guard, and the gunman.

“While you’re doing that,” he said, moving on, “the heroic Dr. Convey is going to wheel Alice’s gurney out of frame, so make sure you stay out of his way and watch your fingers and toes. That gets us to page twenty-two, when the gunman shoots good old Gary the security guard.”

Alice had been pretty sad about that when she’d seen this script. Gary had been playing a security guard on the show for most of its run. It was nice that he was getting a little bit of a spotlight in the show’s final season, but killing him off in episode eighteen meant he wouldn’t be around for the series finale.

Robert went through the rest of the scene, but since she would be off camera by then, Alice didn’t bother paying attention. It was a pretty sweet gig being on a gurney. She got to lie down for the whole scene, and there was no chance of her tripping or dropping something, which was what she spent most of her on-camera time worrying about. Since her screwup the other day, she’d been even more paranoid about it.

By the time Robert had finished choreographing the background action, the cast had started wandering onto set. Gary the security guard was joking around with the guest actor who was about to kill him, while the other extras loitered on their marks. Alice lay back on her gurney and pulled out her phone to check her email, in case there’d been a response to any of the dozens of apartment inquiries she’d sent out.

She’d devoted every free moment of the last four days to looking for a place to live, scouring all the online classifieds sites she could find and responding to every non-crazy-sounding female roommate situation out there. So far, the few who’d bothered to contact her had either been filled already, or wouldn’t be available soon enough to save her bacon. She’d even spent hours over the weekend driving around apartment-heavy neighborhoods looking for For Rent signs and calling leasing agents, but everything had been out of her price range. Even the toilet studio in Reseda had been snatched up. And yes, she’d actually called on that one, because that was how desperate she was.

What she wasn’t yet desperate enough to do was consider a male roommate, and unfortunately the majority of the roommates classifieds had been placed by men. It probably shouldn’t be surprising that more men than women were willing to let a stranger from the internet move in with them.

To her disappointment, she had no new emails or phone calls since the last time she’d checked twenty minutes ago. She wondered what would happen if she begged Isaac for more time. He’d have to give it to her, wouldn’t he? What was the alternative? Putting her stuff out on the curb and changing the locks? Surely he wouldn’t go that far if she made it clear how hard she was trying to find a new place. Maybe if she offered to pay for Diego to put his stuff in storage for a month? Not that she could afford to do that.

Honestly, at this point she wanted to move out as badly as Isaac and Diego wanted her gone. Whenever she was around the two of them, she could feel the resentment pouring off them in waves. Feeling unwanted in her own home totally sucked donkey balls.

“Hey!” Griffin said, appearing beside her gurney in his doctor’s scrubs.

Alice looked up from her phone and attempted to return his smile. “Hey.” They hadn’t interacted much since she’d turned down his offer last week, and she still felt awkward about it.

“Looks like we’re scene partners this morning.”

“Looks like it.”

“Cool.” He took the stethoscope from around his neck and put it in his ears. “Where would you like to be examined?”

Alice stared at him. “What?”

“I’m supposed to be examining you when the bullets start flying.” He waggled the stethoscope at her. “What’s your complaint? What brought you to the hospital today, ma’am?”

Right, the scene. He needed a reason to be standing here next to her when the shooting started. “I dunno,” she said. “You’re the doctor-actor. What do you want to do?”

Alice didn’t usually put much thought into her scenes. She wasn’t ever chosen for the featured background roles that required actual acting, so most days it was just a matter of walking from one place to another, or handing a particular instrument to one of the doctors. Some of the extras invented elaborate backstories and motivations for their presence in the scene, but Alice had never bothered going that deep.

Griffin’s mouth tugged to one side as he thought about it. “You could have some kind of wound, like a scalp lac, that I’m looking at. Or if you’ve got the flu, I could feel your glands.”

Alice narrowed her eyes at him. “Which glands exactly?”

He rolled his eyes. “The glands in your throat, knucklehead.”

“That’s okay, I guess. As long as we keep it outside the bathing suit area, I’m cool.”

“Bikini or one-piece?”

“One-piece.”

He nodded and hung his stethoscope around the back of his neck. “So no palpating your abdomen. You’re on your own if you have internal injuries.”

The sad thing was, Alice wouldn’t actually mind being palpated by Griffin Beach in a perfect world. It was pretty pathetic that she couldn’t even enjoy being in this scene with him. But when Griffin was looming over her about to play doctor for the camera, the reality was a lot more intimidating than the fantasy.

Alice hadn’t played many patients—patients tended to have lines, which required SAG cards and SAG pay scale—but she’d always thought it must be hella weird to have all those people standing over you, touching different parts of your body. The trauma and surgery patients really got manhandled sometimes, and in places Alice generally preferred not to be manhandled by coworkers. Workplace norms were different for actors though. Their bodies were their instruments, and they were freer with them than the average person.

Too bad Alice wasn’t an actor. She was just a sociology grad student trying to pay her rent, and she wasn’t chill about getting physically intimate with people she wasn’t dating.

“That shirt looks hideous on camera,” Dean Harwell shouted at the costume supervisor as he gestured at the actor playing the gunman. “Why is he wearing that thing?”

“It’s the shirt you insisted on last week,” she replied through clenched teeth.

Griffin rolled his eyes and twisted his face into an impressive approximation of Harwell’s scowl. “Why did you let me insist on such a butt-ugly shirt, Carmen?” he mocked under his breath. “Don’t you know I’m incompetent?”

Alice bit her lip to stifle a laugh and Griffin grinned at her.

“Budge over.” He gave Alice’s foot a poke. “It looks like we’re gonna be waiting a while.”

She pulled her knees up to her chest to make room for him, and he hoisted himself onto the edge of her gurney. It felt weird lying down when he was sitting next to her, so she sat up and scooted her back against the wall. After a moment, Griffin followed suit, scooching back to lean against the wall beside her. Their legs stuck out in front of them, Griffin’s scrub pants and vintage Adidas next to Alice’s jeans and plaid Toms.

“Cool shoes,” he said.

She clicked her feet together like Dorothy in Oz. “Thank you.”

“Did you find a place to live yet?”

“Nope. Still looking.”

“You’ll find something.”

She glanced over at him. “Did you ever find a dog sitter?”

He shook his head. “Still looking. I interviewed a couple prospects this weekend, but…” He trailed off, shrugging.

“You didn’t like them?”

“They were fine. My agent’s assistant got their names from a service and I’m sure they’re great, but I’d rather go with a person recommended by somebody I know—someone who’s used them before and knows they did a good job.” He shrugged again. “My agent says I have trust issues.”

“Taco’s your family,” Alice said. “And you’re his whole world. You can’t leave him with just anyone.”

Griffin looked over at her and smiled. “Exactly.”

Guilt pooled in the pit of Alice’s stomach. “I’m sorry I couldn’t—”

“Hey, don’t worry about it. It’s fine.”

She still felt bad. It would be nice to help him out—and even nicer to be able to take him up on his offer and not have to worry about finding a place to live anymore. But she had a few trust issues of her own. “So what’s the movie in Atlanta?” she asked, changing the subject.

“It’s called Prepare for War. I play an ex-marine SWAT rescue specialist who has to save his daughter after she’s kidnapped by a Mexican drug cartel.”

“Sounds great.”

He shot her a cynical look. “Liar. It sounds like a piece of shit. But it’s a piece of shit costarring Kimberleigh Cress and directed by Jerry Duncan, which isn’t bad for my first leading role in a major studio picture.”

By Hollywood calculus, Griffin’s piece of shit had all the earmarks of a blockbuster. Jerry Duncan’s movies usually starred actors like Tom Cruise or The Rock and always broke box office records on opening weekend, and Kimberleigh Cress was just coming off the success of a breakaway hit trilogy based on a popular young adult book series.

“That’s awesome,” Alice said. “You’re gonna be great.”

“Can we get this walk-through started sometime today?” Dean Harwell shouted, as if anyone but him was causing the delays.

“Twenty bucks says that vein in his forehead bursts by lunchtime,” Griffin whispered as he hopped off the gurney.

Alice snort-laughed, clapping her hand over her mouth, and Griffin grinned at her.

“Stop it,” she whispered as she lay back down on the gurney. “You’re going to get me in trouble.”

The other actors and extras shuffled to their positions with the peppiness of a slow-moving zombie horde—six days of working with Harwell had taken its toll on morale. When Robert cued the background, Griffin shifted smoothly into serious doctor mode, grabbing the chart hanging off the side of Alice’s gurney. She didn’t have anything to do, so she watched him as he flipped through the chart pretending to read it. His eyes were really strikingly blue, and framed by crazy long lashes that contributed to his boyish appeal. And the costume department had expertly tailored his scrubs to emphasize the bulginess of his biceps. Well done to them.

The other extras moved around them, pretending to do bits of business. Behind her, Alice heard the actor playing the gunman start his dialogue.

Griffin set the chart down and shook his head at her gravely. “I’ve never seen a case of athlete’s foot this disgusting.”

She pressed her lips together, trying not to smile. Background were only supposed to pretend to talk, but Griffin wasn’t background, and he wasn’t miked for this scene, so she supposed he could do what he wanted.

He lifted up her right foot, prodding it gently as he pretended to examine it. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to amputate.”

Alice struggled to keep a straight face as he grinned at her, waggling his eyebrows like Groucho Marx.

“Bang!” Robert shouted.

Griffin dropped Alice’s foot and threw his body across hers.

Even though she’d known it was coming, she wasn’t prepared for it. He was heavy and firm, all hard muscles and warm skin, and did she mention heavy? She let out an embarrassing squeak of surprise as the breath rushed out of her lungs.

“Am I hurting you?” he whispered. His lips were next to her ear, and his breath tickled her neck.

She shook her head. It was fortunate she wasn’t supposed to talk, because at the moment she wasn’t sure she’d be able to. She lay frozen beneath him, hyperconscious of every place his body touched hers, which was pretty much everywhere. Although his IMDb bio claimed he was six feet, Alice put him closer to five ten—but it was five feet ten inches of concentrated muscle mass that radiated heat like a furnace.

Griffin shifted on top of her and she tensed—until she realized he was just trying to move some of his weight off her. “Better?”

She managed a small nod and let out a slow, careful breath, forcing herself to relax. This was just part of the job. He did this and way worse than this with other actors all the time. It was nothing to him.

Any normal woman in her right mind would be thrilled to have Griffin Beach’s amazing body on top of her. Hell, Isaac would expire from jealousy if he knew. Alice knew she should be enjoying it, but instead she was trying to fend off a panic attack.

Griffin turned his head to watch the scene unfolding down the hall. She couldn’t see anything, but she could hear the actors reciting their dialogue. Gary the security guard had arrived and was shouting at the gunman to stand down.

Alice squeezed her eyes shut and concentrated on slowing her breathing. Relaxing her limbs one by one. Just when she was finally starting to unclench a little, Griffin slid off her and pushed the gurney away from the gunman through the closest open doorway.

When they came to a stop off camera, Alice bolted upright. She was still breathing a little heavily, and she had a bad feeling her face was as red as a beet.

“Sorry if I crushed you,” Griffin said. “I’ll try to be more gentle.”

“It’s fine,” she told him. Better for him to think he’d squished her than the truth—that she was freaked out by a little innocent physical contact with an actor filming a scene. Fuck Dr. Gilchrist for doing this to her. She should be having the time of her life right now, and he’d ruined it for her.

“Bang bang,” Robert shouted from the next room. “Bang.”

“Poor Gary,” Alice said.

Griffin bowed his head. “May he rest in peace.”

“Back to one!” the first assistant director shouted when the scene was over. “This time’s the real deal.”

One of the crew guys came and wheeled Alice back into place, and she arranged the blanket over her so none of her street clothes showed.

Griffin wandered back over to her side and gave the blanket a tug. “You should probably take your shoe off. If I’m examining your foot, I wouldn’t do it through your shoe, and it might be visible on camera.”

“Right. Sorry.” She sat up and pulled her shoe off, thanking the gods of personal grooming that she’d made time for a pedicure last week.

Griffin leaned his hip against the gurney, sucking on an Altoid as he watched the crew work around them. He glanced down at her foot with its bright blue nail polish, then away again. “You’re not ticklish, are you?”

“Nope.” Thank god.

A crew member came by to pass out ear protection because of the firearms and admonish them to wear it during every single take unless they wanted to suffer permanent, high-frequency hearing loss.

The crew finished setting up, and when Harwell called action, Griffin flicked aside the blanket and laid his hand on Alice’s bare foot. He frowned as he manipulated her ankle like he was checking for a sprain, then his fingers squeezed her big toe. “This little piggy went to market.” He moved on to her other toes, one at a time. “This little piggy stayed home and ordered pizza. This little piggy picked up a double-double with cheese after work. This little piggy had none because he was on a water cut for a shirtless scene he had to shoot the next day.”

By then, Alice was biting down hard on her lip to keep from laughing, and Griffin was clearly enjoying her struggles to keep a straight face as he wiggled her pinky toe.

“And this little piggy—”

BANG.

She didn’t have to pretend to flinch this time. The gunshot was so loud that even with ear protection, it legit scared the shit out of her. In the midst of her adrenaline spike, Griffin threw himself on top of her. He didn’t crush her with his weight as much this time, but his body lay draped half over hers with his arm across her chest and his face pressed next to her ear.

“You okay?” he whispered, and she nodded as her heart raced at Mach 2 in her chest.

The unexpected shock of the gunshot had diverted all mental resources away from her tension at Griffin’s proximity. In fact, the reassuring weight of his body actually made her feel calmer. It was almost sort of comforting, like the lead apron they laid over you at the dentist for x-rays. If this were a real active shooter situation, she’d be thankful to have him there.

They lay there for a few more moments, until Griffin’s cue came to wheel her out of danger. Once they were safely off camera, he gave her a sympathetic look. “It’s always a lot louder than you think it’s going to be.”

Alice sat up and hugged her knees to her chest. “I thought I was ready for it, but apparently not.”

“Hang on, there are more coming.”

Three more shots rang out as Gary the security guard was gunned down, but this time they didn’t startle her nearly as much.

The scene ended, Alice’s gurney was wheeled back into position, and the armorer and his team reset the weapons so they could do it all again from the top. And again. And again.

Each and every take, Griffin would make a new joke as he pretended to examine her:

“I’ve identified the problem: you have two left feet. Literally.”

“According to your chart, you’re missing a kidney. Do you happen to remember where you left it?”

“We’re going to have to do a brain transplant. Unfortunately, the only brain we have in stock is a baboon brain. You don’t have a problem with that, do you?”

And each and every time, Alice would struggle to maintain a straight face.

By the fourth take, she wasn’t startling at the gunshot anymore. By the fifth take, she’d gotten almost blasé about the physical contact with Griffin. When he flopped across her, she just rolled with it.

Somewhere around the tenth take, as Griffin lay with one leg hooked over hers, his arm across her waist, and his nose pressed into the side of her neck, she started to reconsider his dog-sitting offer.

He’d been nothing but sweet and respectful all day, without once taking advantage of this totally weird situation they were in or making her feel more uncomfortable. She’d actually had fun, once she stopped being so nervous. He was perfectly easy to get along with, and his goofy jokes had eased some of the tedium. Would it really be that bad, living with him for a few weeks? Sure, it might be weird at first, but just like today, she’d get used to it.

As Alice lay there pinned beneath Griffin’s body, it seemed silly to be so paranoid about sharing a house with him.

On the next break in between takes, she worked up the courage to broach the subject. “Listen, about that offer you made me the other day…”

Griffin turned to look at her, eyebrows arched. “Yeah?”

“Is it still on the table? I mean, have you decided on another dog sitter yet?”

He reached up to rub the back of his neck, and she tried not to notice the way his biceps flexed. “No.” He winced and shook his head. “I mean yes, the offer is still good. I haven’t found anyone else yet.”

“I’ll do it, then. If you still want me.”

“Yeah, definitely.”

“Okay.” She let out a nervous laugh. “Thank you. I really appreciate it.”

He broke into a smile. “Shit, that’s a load off my mind. You have no idea.”

“For me too.” She bit her lower lip. “Is it still okay if I move in this weekend?”

“Absolutely.” He stuck out his hand. “Roomie.”

She took a deep breath before returning his handshake. “Roomies.”