Chapter 13
Autumn
“Hi. What are you doing here?” I asked, after rushing down to answer the door.
The lessons with Reggie had all been very laid back. He encouraged me to be as relaxed as possible, even if that meant wearing pajamas. I never went that far of course, but the plain T shirt and casual pants I wore weren't too far off from a Saturday morning of cereal and Charmed reruns with Mom.
That said, I was not prepared for Jason, who wore a linen, button down shirt and vest over perfectly tailored pants and loafers with such a high gloss that I could see myself in them.
“Hi,” Jason said, with his warm sweeping smile. He tucked a thick manila folder under his left arm which freed him up to shake my hand. “Reggie won't be able to make it anymore. He was offered a part on a sitcom.”
“Wow. I didn't even know he was auditioning.” But I guess it did make sense that an acting coach would want to make that leap. In fact, I was getting the impression that most people out here did odd jobs in the hopes of being discovered. I thought about the limo driver that dropped me off here from the airport. I wouldn’t at all be surprised if I saw him in a movie at some point too. “Things, uh, happen fast around here.”
“They certainly do.” Jason nodded, looking amused and knowingly resigned. Jason glanced past me to see if anyone was in the house. “May I come in?”
“Yeah!” Wait. Could I invite him in? I didn't actually live here. But Dante did say the house was mine for as long as I was training with him. I guess that meant I could have guests over, right? That wasn't something that had come up yet. “I mean, I guess so. This isn't really my place.”
Even if I could have guests over, would Jason specifically be allowed? I remember the look Dante gave him at the audition. There was obvious animosity between the two. At some point I hoped to find out what that was all about.
“Ah. Of course.” Jason nodded, seemingly reading my mind. He opened the folder he held in his other hand. It was two bound stacks of paper. The name written atop the pile was the working title of our film. “If it helps, I was sent by the studio to be your new acting coach.”
“Really?” I didn't want to disrespect Dante, but the last coach was allowed in so I’d imagine that Jason would be too. “Y'know what? Sure. C'mon in. It’s fine.”
I hope.
“I'll be ready to sneak out the bedroom window, just in case.” Jason winked one of those crushingly blue eyes at me and walked inside.
“Have you already eaten?” Jason asked, when we entered the kitchen. “I can have something delivered.”
“No! Thank you, but no. If I even think about food again today I'm going to explode.” I grabbed a few cups and filled a pitcher with water. Reciting lines always made me super parched. It helped to have some water around.
“Ah, yes. The training lifestyle,” He said, wistfully, probably remembering the last role he had to bulk up for. “I do not envy you.”
It sounds a little cliché, but Jason wasn't as physically impressive in real life as he appeared on television. Nothing like Dante, who was a cut, hulking monster. Jason was only about an inch taller than me. Jason filled out his clothes well, but was trimmer than he was muscular. If it wasn't for who he was, you'd think he was just some handsome guy, with a well-paid dentist.
While Dante looked more at home in the UFC.
Jason cocked his head back and inspected me, which made me wish I had on something other than a loose T shirt and rolled-up capri pants. “You've already started to tone up a bit. I can see it in your arms and shoulders. Nice work.”
“Thanks.” I turned away to keep the flush from my face and grab the cups and pitcher. Had I really started to change? Dante’s torture was already starting to pay off, I guessed. Either way it still made me feel embarrassed to be noticed like that. I had no idea how to deal with a completely harmless compliment from a celebrity! All I could do was try to ignore it to keep my face from turning into a tomato. “Should we get started?”
Jason nodded, lifting the pitcher of water out of my hands and followed me to what was easily my second favorite room in the house. Three bookshelf-covered walls greeted us in the bedroom-sized library, with the forth reserved for eight-foot tall windows and an elaborate stone fireplace. Two human-swallowing couches faced off in the center of the room with only a plain coffee table between them. It was gorgeous.
Needless to say, I filmed as many videos in here as I could.
“Do you mind if I set my camera up and film some of this?” I asked setting the cups down on the table.
“I’m nothing if not a camera whore.” He flashed a grin, before raising his eyebrows in concern “Just make sure you run all that by the social media manager before you post it anywhere. All it takes is one sentence in a video to break your contract, and trust me. You do not want that to happen.”
“Of course! I always CC’d Sarah in my content emails with Mom. Some times Sarah even acknowledges my existence with a reply.”
“Yes.” Jason shook his head, probably having a similar experience “The don’t make it easy on us in that regard.”
“So why are you coaching me? I mean the studio could've sent anyone. Isn't this...” I was terrified of coming off ungrateful, or even worse, patronizing. “Beneath you?” Not great start to that thought! “I mean, I'm sure you're crazy busy.” I quickly added, verbally back peddling. “Wouldn't this take up too much of your valuable time?” And the pendulum swings the other way.
Could I possibly sound more fangirlish?
Jason smirked, slipping off and pocketing his cufflinks, before rolling up his sleeves and sitting on the couch opposite me. He filled both waters, took a sip of his and then replied. “Not at all.”
I fought an overwhelming urge to break the silence with an apology for something I couldn't even begin to put into words, but decided to try and let the whole thing go. The whole concept of acting normal around a celebrity was about as possible as driving normal with a cop behind you.
“When I heard about Reggie leaving, I offered.” Jason crossed his leg with his knees close together the way Europeans tend to do it. “I think training together is important. I'd like to understand you so that our characters have better chemistry on screen.”
“For tonight, let's simply do a table read. Feel everything out.” Jason handed me my copy, then quickly began to clarify. “A table read, if you’re unfamiliar is—”Seeing the smug look on my face he stopped. “Am I preaching to the choir?”
“I’m a celebrity and entertainment video blogger.” I shrugged innocently. “A table read is a line-by-line reading of the script with each actor reading their part. It's kind of a first rehearsal so that the actors can read against the people they'll be acting with. If I’m not mistaken sometimes the directors and writers will sit in on the session to see if any of the dialogue needs rewrites. That about cover it?”
“I am impressed” He nodded with raised eyebrows. “It’s just that I saw that look on your face and— Well, I apologize for assuming.”
“I may have watched the Avengers table read a hundred times…” I buried my hidden nerd and continued. “It’s not that, it’s just the thought of reading the entire thing this late after such a long day crashed into me like my friend's, big, dopey mastiff.”
“Oh no! We aren’t reading the whole thing.” Jason chuckled. “I doubt either of us has that much time. Just the parts we have together. We can always stop if it gets too late. I’m not as strict as Dante is.”
Relieved, I nodded and we got started. We had a dozen or two significant scenes together, not including the unspoken exchanges our characters had while in the company of others, but those were mostly reaction shots into the camera so we skipped them. It was halfway through an emotional section of dialogue that Jason, who had begun to frown in this second time reading through, abruptly stopped. He laid his script down on the coffee table and looked up at me curiously.
“Did I do something wrong?” I asked. My stomach flipped in search of the most painful knot to form itself into. Acting was even more important than the stunt training. Despite having an acting background, it was easy to feel like an imposter sitting next to an international, award-winning actor like Jason.
What the hell am I doing here again?
“You're not comfortable with me yet. I can hear it in your voice,” he said casually. “I love my fans, but I need a costar right now.”
“I'm sorry.” I took a deep breath. “It's just all this is still so— I feel a little like Alice down the rabbit hole, you know? I used to poke fun at celebrities in my videos, and now here I am reading lines, sitting across from... Well.” I gestured toward Jason.
“You want to know the biggest lie in entertainment?” Jason cleared his throat, leaned in and quickly glanced at the camera I had set up, smiling. “That we know what were doing.”
“We're just like you.” Jason laughed. “Most of us have no idea how we got here, not really.”
They were like me how?
“I appreciate the gesture, but I don't know. It feels different, like someone is waiting around every corner ready to pop out and say, 'Got you! Are you crazy, you think you deserve any of this? You've been pranked!'” I laughed awkwardly, hiding behind an extended sip of water. When Jason didn't say anything, I compulsively continued. “It's easier with Dante, because I'm always too distracted to ask myself if that makes any sense. All my mental, and physical—and occasionally emotional—energy goes into not screwing up. Self-doubt and existential crisis is kinda impossible while spinning in a car at forty-five miles an hour.”
Acting though... Holy crap. All I did was over-analyze. I'd take physical pain over think-y pain any day of the week.
Jason nodded thoughtfully, then he stood up. His features took a hard turn toward severe intensity. It was something I hadn't seen from him in person yet. Anxious energy poured into me as he untucked his shirt.
Shit, I must've said too much and made him angry. I should've kept my stupid mouth shut. He didn't want to hear about my insecurities. Or maybe it was because I mentioned Dante? Worry was a cyclone in my mind as I pushed myself into the couch, hoping that it would swallow me whole.
Jason's icy stare locked my gaze as he cleared his throat and slid a hand under his armpit. Then he brought his bent arm down...making fart noises.
The way a third-grader might.
I laughed nervously at first having no idea what was going on. He carried on, earnestly trying to produce the loudest sounds. Only one in every three arm flaps made any kind of noise at all, the rest fizzled out. It was easy to tell he wasn't very good at it, but he dove into it with an Oscar-winning level of concentration.
The absurdity of it all made me laugh for real. My death grip on the couch loosened. Was I really seeing a famous, twenty-five-year-old millionaire make fart sounds, and poorly at that?
“See,” he said with that same overflowing intensity. Then gradually his demeanor lightened back to normal joviality. He sat back down without tucking his shirt in. “We're all frauds. My first casting in The Whitescales wasn't divine providence. I was the back up's back up. Both boys ahead of me came down with mono and had to back out of the role.” Jason spread his hands, “Thus me.”
I dropped my head and laughed again. This time it was at myself for taking all of this too seriously. “OK. OK! I get it.”
“Good.” Jason switched on his more proper tone and finally tucked in his shirt. “Now that all the adoring fans have left the room, let's work through these scenes as actors.”
The rest of the session went amazingly well. We switched from heart-wrenching, to funny, to dramatic, to even angry scenes. I got tongue tied a few times and flubbed up some lines, but Jason was incredibly patient with me. He even offered me suggestions and tricks that he'd learned along the way.
For so long he was this unattainable celebrity crush in my heart that it was liberating to let that unrealistic ideal go. Jason stopped being a sexy, perfect poster on the wall of my fantasies and started to be a real armpit-farting person.
“How do you feel?” He said, putting the spent script back into his folder.
“I feel great actually. A little emotionally exhausted, but I feel like I made some real progress.” I shrugged. “At least I hope I did.”
“You did.” Jason reaffirmed me with a soft smile. “You're already leagues above me when I first started. Did you ever see The Whitescales?”
“I...did,” I said, hesitantly. I was able to keep most of the cringe out of my expression. Because I was obsessed, I'd only seen the handful of episodes Jason was in before they killed his character off. It was a science fiction soap opera with every bad trope you could imagine—evil twin brother coming back from the dead, absurdly convenient timing that bordered on literal time travel, and of course weird over-the-top incestuous shocker reveals that made less than no sense. The writing was bad; the acting was super melodramatic and hammy. It wasn't a good show, but it had a so-bad-it's-good, crazy cult following.
“It's fine, you can say it. I was atrocious in it.” Jason held up a hand. “Fortunately for me, so was everyone else. How it ran for ten seasons is beyond me.”
“Oh no, it's not over. It's still on the air!” I might not have seen many episodes, but the show was too crazy not to keep up with the Wikia fan page. “We just found out that the space wizard is actually Lena's Dad from an alternate timeline, where those two had gotten married. Lena found out while she was giving birth to her own mother.”
“Please stop.” Jason protested, practically fleeing from the library with the water pitcher.
“But it gets so much crazier!” I walked after him with the cups. I hadn’t had this much fun in a long time! Who knew that Jason would be such a funny nerd? We would’ve totally been friends in high school.
We joked around a little more while slowly walking him out.
“Hey,” Jason passed the door's threshold then stopped to a linger. “You and Dante aren't—” Jason trailed off, but it still took me a second to switch gears and deduce what he was asking.
“God no!” I chuckled nervously, like a girl in study being asked if she liked liked the cute exchange student. “Aside from training I never see the guy. I'm not sure he even likes me.”
“Ah.” Jason's gaze flicked away, only to return with a sexy smirk. “Anyone else then?”
Was he asking me out? My eyes flashed, and pulse quickened. A tsunami of mixed emotions stirred in me. “Uh, no, actually. Not at the moment.”
“Let me take you out to dinner then?”
“I—” I swallowed hard as the wave crashed.
I'd never even considered he'd be interested! He's him and I'm just me. Why would I ever think that was possible? But here it was, blindsiding me like a drunk driver.
I was always allowed to come and go as I pleased during my free time, not that there was anywhere to go...or much free time. I’d have to clear the actual food with Dante, but as long as I ate what I was supposed to I didn’t remember anything in the contract that said I couldn’t go on any dates.
A real date with Jason Brenner… Probably the one moment I’d fantasized about the most in my life.
“I—” I stuttered. Am I really going to do this? Autumn from a month ago would’ve punched me in the stomach for what I was about to do. “I think I need to focus on my training.”
I did have to focus on my training! Mom was counting on me.
“I completely understand and I apologize for being so forward.” Jason looked surprisingly wounded. I was willing to bet he barely ever got turned down. “If you'd like I can arrange for the studio to send another acting coach. I don't want you to feel uncomfortable.”
Oh man. That felt terrible.
I liked Jason a lot. He was an amazing guy and saying yes made so much sense considering who he was, but I just wasn’t in the right place to even consider it right now. That was along the lines of ‘No thanks, I don’t need that gorgeous jacket from All Saints.’ Or ‘A lifetime supply of Lush bath bombs? Nah I’ll pass.’
Then there were those stupid lingering feelings I had for Dante that muddied everything up even more, especially being that he went out of his way every chance he got to tell me that he didn’t care about me outside of training.
“No!” I put a hand out to emphasize how that wasn’t what I meant, and touched his chest by accident. I quickly pulled away. It felt really nice, but something had changed in me. I didn’t need childhood crushes right now. I needed to focus on what was important. “I mean, I really like working with you. I'm sorry. I'm just all over the place right now and I’m afraid of screwing everything up.”
Jason’s face relaxed from disappointment to understanding. He nodded warmly, then looked up at me with those impossibly blue eyes and asked, “A rain check then? After this is all over?”
I pinched the stud in my ear and squished a smile to one side of my face. “Maybe!”
“Have a good night, Autumn.” Jason tipped his head and walked back out to his waiting limousine. “See you next week.”
After Jason drove off I slumped against the door frame, letting gravity pull me down to the cool stones below. I sat there with the door open and watched the endless sky for a little while. I couldn't believe what I'd just done. I turned down a real date with my celebrity crush! I felt like I'd let fan girls all across the world down somehow.
When I made it back to my room, I stepped out onto the balcony and saw a light on in the window above Dante’s workspace. A darkened figure was near enough to the glass to blot out half the yellow glow. I knew immediately that it was Dante.
How long had he been watching?