Chapter 14
ALISON
“I can’t believe this is your first ever wrap party,” Sarah gushed as we wound through the crammed parking lot towards the brightly-lit warehouse. “You’ll see just how amazing they are and come with me forever.”
“Casting is sort of like the ghost of Hollywood.” I shrugged. “We set the balls in motion but we never stick around to see them in motion. There’s always more balls.”
“Unless you’re sleeping with Jack Steele, in which case your hands are always full of balls,” Sarah teased. I side-eyed her, but she only laughed. “You left it open. Much like your legs. Hey-oh!”
I started to bite back, but had to laugh it off. “You’re not wrong.”
The place was packed inside. One of the open lots in the back of the studio was completely repurposed into a giant mess of people and lights and drinks and music. It almost reminded me of my birthday party but on a much bigger scale, and I found myself grinning like an idiot at absolutely nothing while reminiscing over the magical night Jack set in motion for me. It was really the start of everything, and I’d thanked him many times over for putting it all together. If you know what I’m saying.
Off in a corner, Josh and Jack were sharing a beer and laughing over something on Josh's phone. I nearly spilled the unknown contents of the red plastic cup shoved in my hand when we walked in because those two hated each other for almost three months, yet here they were. Jack caught my eye and smiled before going back to Josh.
While we weren't exactly quiet in his trailer, we didn't want to make a big deal about anything going on between us or let rumors circulate. Hell, we weren't even officially an item.
"We going to go say hi?" Sarah asked, pointing in his general direction with her cup while scrolling through her phone. "At least make sure there isn't any blood?"
"Nah." I scanned the rest of the crowd. "I'll let them handle that like big boys. Where's this dunk tank? I want to watch Gerald drown."
Sarah cackled. "Savage. But he deserves that shit."
"Agreed."
My phone buzzed as we wound through the crowd. It was a text from Jack with several suggestive fruits and a message that read, "Hook up later when everyone's wasted?"
I wrote back, "Great idea. They'll never see us."
"Found it!" Sarah yelled in my ear.
A huge line stretched out before us leading up to, as promised, a dunk tank. Gerald sat in the hot seat wearing an oversized pair of sunglasses and a smug smile.
"Actors can't throw for shit!" He sloshed around a beer. "Bring it on!"
"Oh, fuck this guy." I shoved my cup into Sarah's hand and jumped in front of Lena. "Excuse me, pretty lady, but I need to have words with this guy."
Lena laughed. "Oh, girl, I am so glad I can be here to witness this. By all means, knock his ass out."
Everyone behind me started chanting, "Knock his ass out! Knock his ass out!"
Gerald offered up his shit-eating grin and stuck his tongue out. "Come on, Babysitter. Think you can take me down?"
Oh, he was so dead. I took a ball from Lena, focused on the bullseye attached, and hurled a solid ball towards it.
Missed.
"Ha!" Gerald slurred. I guess he'd been hitting the bottle hard since we wrapped. "I knew you couldn't throw for shit. Can barely cast movies, too!" Everyone behind me said a collective ‘ooh!’ and Gerald cackled. "Come on, Babysitter! Let's see if you can get at least one hit in your career?"
Lena gasped and laughed all at once. "Oh, he's vicious."
"Don't actually hit him." Sarah leaned over to me. "Since, you know, that's like a felony or something. Dammit, I really need to get hired on to one of those damn lawyer shows."
"It's fun," Lena chimed in.
While they were chatting and Gerald was cackling, I focused. I leaned back, threw the ball, and smacked it dead center. Gerald went careening into the tank below. Everyone cheered and high-fived me and Lena handed me a shot of something green and delicious.
I walked up to the tank and winked at Gerald. "I'll see you Monday."
The party was... amazing, really. I should have made it out to one of these parties months or even years earlier. Sarah was always inviting me, but I didn't ever really have connections to most of the people on set. They hadn't seen me in months. And when actors thanked me for casting them for roles, it was kinda awkward.
That was my job. My job was literally to pick the best person, be it acting ability or star power. I didn't deal with their meltdowns or their drama. This movie was a special case and so it merited a visit. But now, I had a feeling I'd go with Sarah every single time.
It didn't take long for the cast and crew to get weepy and start sharing stories and pictures from the filming. One of the production assistants made a video compilation of the last ten weeks and set it to Coldplay, leaving everyone a little teary-eyed.
From across the room, I felt Jack staring at me, a smile on his lips. We were locked in that moment, connected across all these bodies, an intense energy passing between us. I wished there was no one else in the room so we could be alone. So we could talk, decide what was going to happen to us now that everything was over, and celebrate the end of filming with some celebratory fucking.
A chorus of whooping broke me out of our trance. The production assistant had a whole montage of me following Jack around, mostly looking annoyed.
"Babysitter!" someone yelled.
"Did they fuck yet?" someone else yelled.
"Never fuck the babysitter!" came someone else.
The whole room dissolved into yelling and laughing until it ended in more crying. I always thought it was a bit ridiculous, but it was clear they all cared for each other. The last ten weeks had been intense. I was grateful to see the end because I was no longer juggling entirely too many responsibilities, but for them, this was a big deal.
Denver and I were already discussing an upcoming film for the following year, so things ended on a high note in this corner.
The night wore on into drunken revelry. Singing and crying and laughing. I kept my alcohol content moderate because I was waiting for Jack, but that didn't stop some of the others from losing themselves. It wasn't long before I got a text from Jack, letting me know he'd scored a bottle of champagne and the key to the roof. I slipped out with ease.
It was windy up top, but Jack stood in the middle of it, stoic as ever. Slightly tipsy and maybe feeling a little frisky, I ran over to him and hugged him from behind. He smelled like aftershave and whiskey and cigar smoke.
"Missed me?"
"You have no idea." Jack covered my small hands with his large ones. "They took longer to douse than I thought."
"You actors are a riotous bunch."
"Guilty." He spun me around before him and kissed me tenderly. I tried to deepen the kiss, but he pulled away and instead offered me a glass of champagne. "I want us to toast to something first."
My stomach started doing flips and I wasn't even really sure why. "What are we toasting to?"
"Honesty."
"Honesty?" Here, my heart bottomed to my stomach. Was this the part where he told me I was nothing more than a filming fling? I didn't matter to him outside of the free pussy I'd been giving up for weeks?
"I really like you, Alison. A lot. I want us to become something... special. I want us to be on red carpet events and have people write trashy, bullshit articles about how we're having threesomes or sacrificing goats or getting divorced when we aren't even married. I want you. All the time."
I laughed, but quietly. At this point, I could barely breathe. Something about him rendered my body incapable of functioning properly, like he stole up all my oxygen.
"But for us to be this wonderful thing I crave so deeply, I need to be completely honest with you... and hope you'll still accept me."
"O-okay."
Jack took a heavy pull of his champagne and kissed me softly. "I'm crazy about you in the best possible way. I want you to remember that."
Now, I was terrified but also painfully curious.
"I don't know if you know this, but I grew up with Lena. Childhood friends who met again in Hollywood after years apart. Her family took me in, treated me like I belonged. She helped get me a few gigs. She has a little sister, Brianna, who called me Uncle Jack from day one. She is this pure ball of innocence. She makes you feel impossibly strong and brave."
"Is that who Lena had with her this afternoon? Sarah was telling me about her."
"That's the one." Jack nodded with a smile. "Eight years ago, I caught Greg Addott's son, Jensen, trying to molest Brianna at a barbeque. The Addotts were old friends with the Nichols family, but no one ever knew the son, Jensen, was a fucking piece of pedophiliac shit. I lost it. That little girl meant the world to me. She was four years old, Alison. Four.”
I stood, frozen. “Holy shit. Holy shit. This is….”
“I beat the fuck out of him. Broke a few ribs. Smashed his face in. Sent him into a coma. This… it wasn’t like me at all. I want you to understand that. This piece of trash violated a small, defenseless girl. My niece.”
I covered my mouth out of sheer horror. “This is why you went to prison. You were protecting her. How did he not…? How was it you, Jack?”
His chin hit his chest. Jack took another swig, this time straight from the bottle. His eyes were so heavy, sad. “No one saw anything. That piece of shit denied everything and Brianna was too small and scared to tell anyone what really happened. I mean, she was horrified. That fuckface Addott spun the whole story that she was so scared because she watched me beat up this old family friend, see? Greg Addott was a goddamn congressman and I was this nobody from Fucksville without a shred of credibility. Lena, she didn’t buy it for a second. She and her parents supported me, helped pay for legal fees.” He shrugged limply. “Didn’t matter. I fucked up. I should have pinned the guy down and called the cops, but fuck. What he was doing was so terrible and wrong that I couldn’t help myself.”
“Let me get this straight.” I set down my glass so hard it almost cracked. “A congressman’s piece of shit son molested a small girl, you defended her honor, and yet you got slapped with six years and that walking pile of ass was permitted to go free, like nothing happened?”
“Like nothing ever happened.”
He just looked so sad. I took him by the face and kissed him hard. “Jack Steele, you are one of the kindest, sweetest, most compassionate souls I’ve ever met.”
“No, I’m not. I’m an asshole.”
“Bullshit. You only want people to think that because it fits some weird image you have of yourself in your head. You did nothing wrong here. The system, and a few terrible human beings, fucked you over. Not the other way around. You didn’t deserve any of this and I am so, so sorry.”
He reached out and grabbed me, like he wanted to be rough but was almost afraid to. “I thought you’d leave me.”
“Because you saved a little girl from being raped?” I stared at him in disbelief. “Boy, you really are crazy.”
“Alison.” He got to his feet and took my hands. He wasn’t as sad, but he was just as serious. “I need to—”
My cell phone rang obnoxiously loud. I winced. “Sorry! I had it turned all the way up while waiting to hear from you inside. It was so loud.”
I rejected the call, but it immediately rang again. Jack shook his head. “Take it, it might be important.”
“Alison?” someone yelled in my ear as I answered. My phone said it was Sarah, but this was definitely a dude on the phone. “Where are you? Sarah is wasted and trying to get naked in the middle of the room. Can you take her home? She’s refusing to go anywhere without you.”
I squeezed my eyes tight, trying to keep the disappointment at bay. We were having this huge moment, out here under the stars, and I was being pulled away. This stupid movie was always pulling us apart.
“Yeah, I’ll be there in a minute.”
I hung up and looked at Jack, apology written all over my face. “I’m so sorry.”
“No, don’t be. She needs you.” He enveloped me in his arms and rested his chin on the top of my head. “Thank you for listening to me, Alison.”
“Thank you for trusting me, Jack. Can we…can we meet tomorrow and talk? This feels unfinished.”
“Incidentally, my calendar just cleared up.” I heard the smile in his voice.
His story was gut-wrenching, but he’d peeled back an entirely new side to him that I didn’t even know existed. And, more than that, we had a date for the following day. Off set. Amazing. We kissed goodnight on the roof, surrounded by stars, with champagne on our tongues and hope in our hearts.