Maybe Charlie was onto something after all.
“Devon told me to come over,” Nick says, and then looks up at Trey.
Valiantly combating his nerves, Trey motions for Nick to follow him to the other station and sits him down, drifting a drape over his shoulders to protect his shirt.
“Saw your dad,” Nick says to me, and then immediately adds, “Wait. Should I call him your dad or Ian?”
Charlie laughs, but I turn, wearing a bewildered grin. “Seriously? Why is everyone asking me that?”
“Maybe because you’ve been acting forever and never did a movie together?” he says.
“Maybe it just wasn’t ever the right time?”
Nick mm-hmms and grins at me. I haven’t seen him since we did a chemistry test with Gwen and the studio heads, and we had to read one of the moments leading up to a love scene, and kiss at the end. They made us do it about seven times, and—let me be clear—I was not complaining.
Nick is a star on the rise, winning Best Actor at the BET Awards last year and Best Hero at MTV. Not just handsome, he has that special something that makes it hard to look away. His eyes are wide set and hypnotic, dark and glimmering with a constant hint of mischief. His skin is a warm chestnut brown, luminous under Charlie’s bright makeup lights. His hair, once cut close to his scalp, has grown out a little for the role. But he’s still built like the DC action movie star he is: his Mon El feature just wrapped a couple weeks ago—it has summer blockbuster written all over it.
There’s something about Nick’s eye-crinkling smile that reminds me a little of my ex-boyfriend and former co-star on Evil Darlings, Chris—but Nick has a calmness about him that Chris never quite managed. Chris and I were only actually together for about seven months, but we agreed to continue the ruse of our relationship for another three years because the more enthusiastic viewers were so fanatical about Violet and Lucas being together “in real life” that our off-screen reality became an intense focus of promotion.
Unlike Chris, though, Nick has that acute kind of focus, the tendency to maintain prolonged eye contact, the slow-growing smile. Whenever he catches my gaze and holds it, I feel like he’s carefully translating my thoughts directly from my brain.
“You two have such great chemistry,” Charlie says, glancing between us as she works. “Going to look great on-screen.” I feel heat push to the surface of my cheeks.
“That’s what Gwen said,” Nick tells her, finally breaking eye contact. “Though I feel like now is the time to tell you: I’ve never done a love scene before.”
“Not even in Mon El?” I ask.
“Nah, that was just some kissing.”
I bite my lip and grin at him. As he knows, there are two love scenes in Milkweed, and both of them are pretty intense. “You’ll be fine.”
“You ever do one like this?” he asks. “I should’ve asked you this that day they made us read it.”
“A few. Nothing like this, though. They’re awkward, but they don’t have to be too bad.”
“Maybe they could even be good,” Charlie says, low enough that only I can hear.
“Okay,” Nick says, “so if this is the trouble trailer, who’s going to give me the dirt on the crew? I’ve only worked with Deb Cohen before—everyone else is new to me.”
I’ve never worked with most of them, either, but have heard enough stories from Dad over the years to have a general sense of their eccentricities. “Liz is the 1st AD, and she’s amazing. Cool and organized. I’ve been warned not to hit snooze because Devon will come in and wake us up himself. The production secretary has decided this shoot is the best time to quit smoking so, seriously, avoid him at all costs. And from what I’ve heard, Gwen can be intense and a bit of a perfectionist.”
“Yeah,” Nick says, nodding, “I’ve heard that too.”
“But whatever, it’s Gwen Tippett.”
“Right?”
“Honestly,” I tell him, “I think this is a pretty solid crew.”
“So, it’s just us young up-and-comers trying to prove ourselves to Ian Butler,” he says with a knowing gleam in his eye. “Do I have that about right?”
I laugh, melting a little. I have an ally here. “Something like that.”
An alarm goes off on Charlie’s phone, and I peek at it—we need to head down to the Community House for the table read. The loose-limbed ease I’ve found in the trailer immediately hardens back into a tense anticipation.
“Wait.” Charlie halts me, finishing some work on my contour. We meet eyes and she smiles a soft smile that she doesn’t give just anyone. “Don’t be nervous,” she says quietly, and helps me stand. “You’re going to be amazing.”
* * *
Nick and I leave the trailer with the sounds of music—and Charlie and Trey laughing hysterically about something said after we left—filtering along after us. We are immediately swallowed by the serenity of the farm; in contrast to the makeup trailer, the space outside is so quiet it’s a little like stepping onto an empty soundstage, with that hollow, echoing silence.
“You’ve known Charlie since you were kids?” he asks.
“Eight years old.”
He grins back over his shoulder at the trailer. “She’s a trip.”
I laugh at this, nodding. But Charlie is more than a trip. She’s a sparkler, a firecracker, a fistful of gunpowder. Marco is my calm, Mom is my home, Nana is my conscience, but Charlie is my wide-open sky, my free-dancing, stargazing wild rumpus.
“There’s your dad,” Nick says, voice low. He clearly took my word for it that it’s okay to call him “your dad,” but had some reservation about whether or not I need careful warning.
I follow his attention up the path toward the Community House. Even at a distance, it’s easy to recognize my father—it’s his posture, the cocky lean. He’s in jeans, a worn leather jacket, and sunglasses, and wearing the ubiquitous brilliant grin. Facing another man, Dad is listening in the intent way that makes a person feel like the only important thing on the planet. I have a pulse of envy that this is the only sign of intimacy I ever get from Dad—his attention, his complete focus—and it’s really just something he’s mastered to appear sincere. He gives it away to anyone.
Dad spots me over the man’s shoulder and perks up, waving. “There’s my girl!”
The other man turns. I don’t know him, so my smile is that instinctive kind of bright that I’ve learned makes me seem friendly, chases away any potential diva concerns. He’s enormous. Oh, the writer, my brain sings back to Charlie in the trailer. Bearded, frowning, eyes like moss, with a scar through his—
Shock is a cold hand on my shoulder, a complete standstill in my brain and chest and veins. Nick collides with my back, and reaches forward, gripping my arms from behind. If he hadn’t caught me, I would have fallen forward onto the dirty path, face-first, straight as a board.
“Tate.” Nick’s deep voice is surprised, and seems to come in and out. “Whoa. You okay?”
Dad’s words float to me, also muted and fuzzy. “Tate! Up here!” He waves wildly, and his grin is something from a carnival; his head is too big, his mouth too wide.
I blink down to my feet; my heart is a hammer, my ribs are nails. I’m trying to put all of this together, to figure out if I knew, if someone told me and I forgot. Did I lose this important piece of information somewhere along the line? How could he just be here? The trail weaves in front of me but I stare at it, willing it to come into focus, unable to look at the man beside Dad.
His face registered immediately who I was, but his expression revealed no shock. He stared grimly down the path at me and then bowed his head, exhaling a long, resigned breath.
He knew. Of course he knew. The question is, did I?
Unable to get a word out, I turn, and start moving stiffly in the opposite direction.
I remember being drunk one night with Charlie, so drunk I could barely walk. At least, that’s what she told me happened. At the time I’d felt like I made my way down th
e hallway in a seductive saunter. But the next morning while I nursed a lurching, debilitating hangover, Charlie told me I’d ricocheted my way down to her bedroom, stopping twice to catch my balance against the wall, before falling into her room and passing out just inside the door.
This memory rises in me like bile. I wonder how I’m walking now; it feels like walking, but it could be crawling, tripping, ricocheting down the path. The stones leading to my cabin come into view and some internal fail-safe tells me to turn. Like a joystick has been jerked to the left, I pivot, tripping over a cobblestone and catching myself on the first step.
I hear a voice, voices.
“What’s going on? What did you say to her?” It’s Dad, accusing Nick of something. Nick’s voice pleading innocence, his own confusion.
And then I hear the quiet words, “Let me get this.”
It’s the voice of Sam Brandis, jogging down the path, showing up out of the blue fourteen years too late.
thirteen
I THINK I CLOSE the door but there’s no slam, only footsteps carefully making their way up the three small stairs behind me.
“Tate?” He’s at the threshold now but doesn’t step inside, and in this weird fugue I’ve entered, I find his hesitance hysterical.
Did he watch me on Evil Darlings? In the mirror, seeing myself in costume for the first time, I didn’t look like nineteen-year-old Tate. I looked like timeless, feral Violet: ruthless, manipulative, like I could murder someone with a flash of my teeth against their neck. In every attack scene, I imagined I was attacking Sam.
But that was so long ago. Thirteen years? My life scrolls past me: lovers, sets, the swimming faces of cast and crew. At some point it stopped feeling like London actually happened. It was just a terrible dream I had once.
“Tate, can I come in?”
“No.” My voice sounds far away, even to my own ears.
He doesn’t leave, he just moves back from the door. Heat seems to fill the cabin, like he’s standing in there, enormous, warm, alive right in front of me.
“Tate,” I hear him say quietly. “We’re going to have to deal with this.”
I sit heavily on the couch, and the springs squeak. Leaning back, I count the number of exposed beams overhead. Seven. This cabin is old, so old and rustic and loved. I idly wonder how many knock-down-drag-out fights it’s seen before.
“What is going on?” I ask the ceiling. Suddenly my head is pounding. “Seriously, what is going on?”
Sam seems to take this as permission to join the conversation and very slowly steps into the cabin, keeping a safe distance once the door has closed behind him.
Pressing my hand to my mouth, I struggle to not laugh. Laughing isn’t the right reaction here. Dad is somewhere out there, waiting for me to come do my job and wondering what the hell just happened. Nick, too. Sam Brandis is here, of all places, for some reason? I’m grappling for logic, but it’s completely evading me.
Sam steps closer, kneeling a few feet away, staring at me. I’m unprepared for how it feels to meet his mossy-green eyes; a sharp pain spears me somewhere vital, making it hard to breathe. I look back up at the ceiling.
Where do we even start in a situation like this?
“What are you doing here? And how?” I frown. “Wait. Are you here with my dad?”
He laughs out this single, incredulous breath and then blinks to the side, like he isn’t sure he heard me right. “Tate, Milkweed is mine. I wrote the film.”
I squeeze my eyes closed. But—“The writer is S. B. Hill.”
“Sam Brandis,” he says quietly. “Hill was Luther’s last name. I legally took it before he died.”
Luther. I knew him. Can still remember his bursting laugh, his teasing, glimmering brown eyes. A tiny, conscientious part of me feels a pang at the idea of him dying. But a louder, brittle voice carries above the fray: They used you, Tate. They probably made it to the Lake District with a shitload of money in their pockets.
“Should I have known this?” I ask him. “That you would be here? I feel like this shouldn’t have been a surprise to me today.”
“It’s understandable,” he says quietly. “You’re so busy. You have so much—”
“Don’t do that,” I cut in. “Don’t patronize me.”
“I’m not,” he says quickly. Immediately. His eyes are so wide, like he can’t quite believe this is happening either. “Tate. I’m so ama—”
“Who even are you?” I ask. “I thought you were a farmer.”
“I am.” He opens his mouth and then bites his lip, shaking his head as if in wonder. “But you knew I wrote, too. I write, still.”
“Okay, let’s be honest, Sam. If we’re going to do this, at least be honest: apparently, I didn’t know anything about you.”
He looks like he wants to argue this but blinks away, seeming to search for words. “Well, I write. I’ve always written, but Milkweed is different. It’s—”
“No. Stop.” I lean forward, pulling my arms in, curling into a ball. Suddenly I feel devastated: not just that he’s here, but that he’s a mallet and my love for this project is a precious sheet of glass, and I worry just having him near me is going to shatter it. I love Milkweed so much I don’t want him to say a single thing that ruins it for me. “I don’t care. I don’t. This was the film that was going to really test me; maybe even get me short-listed for awards. This is my shot at something better. Don’t try to tell me about you, or this, or why.”
I feel like I’m going to cry. I take an enormous breath, pushing back the emotion until I feel nothing. I fill myself with nothing but air. It’s been a while since I did this—since I felt this much and needed to tamp it down—but the instinct comes back so easily.
Sam shifts in his crouch, resting a forearm on his knee. He’s wearing a soft cream Henley, open at the throat. Olive jeans. Boots. I chance a peek at his face again. The comma scar is hidden beneath the beard. He has barely looked away from my face.
“I tried to tell you,” he says. “And I knew it would be hard. So I told the studio heads we might want to go a different direction for casting.”
“Are you serious?” I ask, grateful for the anger rising out of the blankness, stabilizing me. “You told them you didn’t want me as Ellen?”
He exhales and looks at the floor for a beat. “I said we knew each other when we were younger and I wasn’t sure you’d want to take the role. Contractually, I had casting approval. They held firm, though, and I’m glad. I think you’ll be great in it, Tate. I really do. It wasn’t about my preference, it was about yours.”
“How can I have a preference if I didn’t even know there was a choice?”
He frowns. “I emailed you four times.”
Liar. “I never saw anything.”
“I promise: I tried to contact you.”
This is impossible. And it’s impossibly frustrating. I’m caught so off guard, but I don’t have the luxury of working through this with some quiet and a glass of wine. The minute I step out of this cabin I have to be on, I have to be poised. I have to get to work.
I look up at him again, and he attempts a sad smile. His eyes search my expression. In them I see regret, but also so many other things I can’t bother to decipher. It’s so much—too much. He’s still… Sam, with the dark green eyes I wanted to fall into, the mouth I kissed until it was red and bruised, the body that felt like a fortress.
“Tate,” he begins, heavily, and I shake my head. Too fast; the room tilts. “God. We have so much to say to each other.”
“We don’t, actually.” You’re a liar and a thief You stole my shiny innocence, my belief that my first love would be pure and real and good.
And yet he managed to write a masterpiece like Milkweed, with a heroine so strong and brilliant I cried the first two times I read the script, hoping alone, in the privacy of my house, that I could be even a tiny bit like Ellen someday. He wrote tenderhearted, unbreakable Richard, and the flawed, loyal William. Sam may be a monster, b
ut every part of this gorgeous script came from his brain. I don’t know how to reconcile the two.
He stands now, sliding his hands into his pockets and bowing his head again. He stares at his feet, shoulders hunched. I’d forgotten how tall he is, how much space he takes up. Physically, yes, but in my memory, in my past—and now, in this room, on this set, in my present day, he’s just so present.
He glances at his watch. “Tate.”
“God, stop saying my name.”
“It’s six thirty.”
I close my eyes—hating the weird goose bumps that rise on my skin when he speaks—but as soon as my lids close, I know I could immediately succumb to the blackness of sleep.
“Should I tell Gwen we need some more time before the table read?”
Eyes flying open, I stand, irate. “Absolutely not.”
He sighs. “This is big, though. I thought you knew. I mean—really? You’re going to go to do the read right now? You look like you’re about to fall over.”
And with the insinuation that I might be delicate or need any help from him, I feel my spine come back together, the muscles reconnecting, my brain zapping awake. I’ve been doing this for nearly a decade and a half. It has also been that long since he used me and ran. I am not the amateur here, and I will not let Sam see me fall apart.
“It’s a shock,” I admit. “And not a good one. But I’m okay. I’ve dealt with bigger problems than having a scumbag ex come onto the set.” It’s a lie, but he winces, so at least I got what I wanted. “Give me five minutes. Tell Gwen I’m on my way and you held me up.” I lift my chin to the door. “And we’re not friends, Sam. Keep away from me.”
fourteen
WHEN THE DOOR CLOSES my bravery seems to desert me.
“You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re okay.” I repeat the words through gulps of air, willing them to be true. There’s a whooshing in my ears, a pinprick that registers in a dusty, hidden spot in my rib cage.
It was only two weeks of my life, a long time ago, but I loved him. I remember the feeling; it’s still the only time I’ve ever felt it. Maybe this is why I can call it back whenever I need to—though it’s been a long time since I tortured myself that way. And it was easier in some ways not having any photos to pore over. But seeing him here—completely without warning—after not seeing his face for over a decade has me light-headed.
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