by Jackson Kane
I clung to Dante as if my life depended on it. Because it most likely did.
Dante shielded me, bracing against the fiery bits of exploded car that clattered all around us like twisted, smoldering metallic rain. I could feel the debris impact though his thick body. The sinewy muscles in his clenched jaw flexed as he let out a few soft grunts to ward away what must’ve been excruciating pain.
Then in a blink it was all over. The fireball dissipated just as fast as it arrived.
No one waited for the AD to call cut. When the danger was over, the crew burst into motion. It felt like the whole city collectively exhaled then exploded again with pent up energy. The crowd of hundreds that gathered outside the police barricades to watch cheered at the show, having no idea I was almost killed. PAs wrangled dozens of laughing, excited extras out of the way so that the safety teams could extinguish the fires and the medics could survey for wounded.
And high above us in the crane basket I could hear the director screaming at the botched shot. A thousand things should’ve swirled around in my mind, like whether or not I’d get blamed for screwing things up and be fired on the spot.
But with Dante still hovering over me, his skin tightly clinging to mine, everything else felt so far away. Dante’s scorching exhales cascaded over my neck and chest, instantly prickling them with goosebumps.
I couldn’t find the words to thank him or even reply at all. I was sweating, frazzled, and weirdly freezing all at the same time. Was that a near-death-experience sort of thing?
Concern sent a flare rippling through his strong, stubble-shadowed jaw line as Dante looked me over to make sure I was alright. I didn’t know if it was my hyperventilation or the fact that his whole body was pressed on top of mine as I stared into his charcoal eyes, but my toes and fingers tingled when he finally spoke.
“Looks like we made it.” His thick eyelashes and piercing gaze made my stomach tremble a little.
A man like Dante Marks could only be described as brutally handsome.
His tussled coffee-brown hair fell carelessly across a thin scar that divided the brow over his left eye. Years of dangerous stunt work was carved across his skin like a tombstone epitaph. I could only imagine what the rest of his rock hard body must look like…
Glancing past him to the fire blackened spot where the nearest car had been. I would never know for sure whether he’d saved my life, but I’d at least be covered in third degree burns if it wasn’t for him.
I wrapped my still shaking arms around him and hugged tightly, trying not to cry. When a stinging heat bit into my fingers I gasped, and pulled away. I was horrified to find that my hands came back bloody.
I quickly realized it wasn’t my blood. That’s when I saw the wisps of smoke dotting his back. Dante’s mocap suit was ripped to shreds. The flaming bits of metal that hit him had melted the spandex to his skin!
Empathy pangs at was he must be feeling rippled through me. It was horrible.
“It’s nothing,” he said, somehow impossibly unconcerned with the pain.
To say I was ill prepared for a brush with death was a hilarious understatement. How the hell did guys like Dante do this for a living? The thought of ever going through something like that again made me suddenly tremble. My nerves buzzed so hard it made my skin itch.
“Take it easy. You’re OK.” The smooth, confident texture of his voice was so incredibly reassuring that it was easy to believe him. I buried my head in his broad chest and started to cry.
Chapter 2
Autumn
“Hey Autumn nation! It’s Friday and…fuck I can’t—I can’t fucking do this right now.” My chipper, upbeat attitude diffused like sugar grains in coffee as I spoke into the camera. My brain was a muddy, turbulent mess of conflicting emotions. Shame and embarrassment pooled behind my cheeks and eyes, turning my skin into a tingling lead that slowly dragged my head down to my keyboard. The computer’s incessant whining at not knowing what to do with ten mashed keys all at once was the only reason I sat back up.
“Coffee,” I rubbed the numbness of yesterday’s lingering failure out of my face. “That’s what I need.”
This sucked!
It’d been a few days since what happened on set. I was glad I wasn’t shaking anymore, but I still hadn’t slept much. It blew my mind that I wasn’t fired. The director took time to personally come down and ream me half a dozen new assholes. I tried to explain what happened with the air ram, but the director gave zero shits about hearing anything I had to say. The gaunt man’s face turned a shade of purple from screaming that would’ve made an eggplant blush.
The worst part was that Dante just let it happen. After he waved off medical attention, he disappeared, leaving me to fend for myself! He knew that equipment malfunctioned. He saw it happen!
Why didn’t he say anything?
Downstairs in our tiny south shore apartment I groaned out loud to drown out the torrent of questions swirling around my brain. I fiddled with the K-cup coffee machine until it cooperated.
What was I expecting? The man might’ve saved my life, what else could he possibly owe me?
I felt guilty just thinking about it- and I still knew next to nothing about him.
Of course I Googled Dante like crazy after the incident on set. The only thing I found was a stunt demo reel on YouTube—put together by a fan—and his absurd IMDB page listing all his film credits. Aside from that, there were no pictures of him, he had no social media presence and nothing about him was in the news.
Hell, in half of the articles about how he saved me he was only credited as “a stunt man”. I got that most people knew the actors and not the stuntmen, but this was a bit extreme. It seemed crazy to me that Hollywood’s best kept secret would be a stuntguy.
The guy was a ghost.
As far as the internet was concerned Dante Marks didn’t exist. How could a man like him fly so far under the radar? Unless… I was beginning to wonder if “Dante Marks” was just a stage name.
Was I Googling the wrong person?
With all the work I had to do on my channel today I decided my super-sleuthing would have to be done some other day. Reaching around blindly in the cabinet that was always too high for me I pulled out this gaudy ceramic mug I made for my mom during middle school art class. A cups a cup. I shrugged. I just need coffee. The Keurig machine gurgled then unceremoniously peed out a breakfast blend.
“I heard the peeing!” Mom shouted from somewhere deep in her bedroom’s closet. “Make me one too!”
“No! You need sleep not coffee!” Most of our conversations were yelled back and forth, not because we were angry, but mostly because we were too lazy to actually walk over to each other. We either needed a bigger apartment or a smaller one; at the very least one with thicker walls. I could only imagine what the neighbors thought. They probably knew everything about us down to our favorite deodorant.
“Sleep is for the weak! I took a short afternoon shift at the restaurant, but I’ll be back before the party tonight.”
“But you just got home!” I protested. Why was she working so much lately? I barely saw her anymore. She missed the last two weeks of Supernatural, and Orange Is the New Black had just dropped on Netflix, but we hadn’t watched it yet either. Whatever was going on I didn’t like it. “Mom…”
“Yes, love-of-my-life? Dearest, sweetest, coffee-est making-est child of mine?”
“Stop working so much! I don’t like it!” I pouted like the spoiled child I was. The bank cut her down to part time a few weeks ago and ever since then she seemed to be picking up hours wherever she could. She had three jobs now and was working even more than before! Whatever she was doing, it wasn’t healthy.
“Hawaii isn’t going to pay for itself!”
“I don’t want to go to Hawaii!” I argued. “I don’t even like pineapple. I want to watch TV on the couch with you!”
“Oh. Sweetie…. You think you’re invited?” She laughed.
“Funny.” Brat.
I
pulled back the metal handle of the Keurig and trashed the spent plastic cup that popped forward, replacing it with another fresh breakfast blend from the coffee carousel. Grabbing a plain black mug, I set it under the nozzle and waited for it to percolate. In the idle minute that followed I closed my eyes and rubbed the nagging pressure out of my temples, letting my guard down, my mind drifted…
If I wasn’t constantly distracted, moments from set would replay in my head. My brain was weird and I was pretty sure it hated me. I agonized over all the mistakes that led me to the terrifying, fiery, near-death stuff, but over all that loomed the shadow of the man who saved me.
I remembered every detail from the coarseness of Dante’s hands, to the musk of his deodorant, to the way his forehead lightly kissed mine. I couldn’t get him out of my damn head.
The Keurig’s wheezy, sputtering sound snapped me out of it—of him. I swallowed the bitter cocktail of emotions that were constantly being mixed, sighed and reached for my coffee. Pausing, I ran a thumb down the asymmetrical, multicolor rings that made up the ceramic mug. It really was the ugliest cup in the world. I had no artistic talent to speak of. But Mom loved it for some silly reason.
I took the black cup instead and headed back upstairs.
“Coffee’s ready!” Hopefully that would remind her there are more important things than working all the time for a stupid vacation.
I returned to my desk and sat cross-legged in my computer chair, blankly staring at my glowing screens. Both my monitors were full of news and gossip sites that I was going to talk about today. The small red light on my webcam beamed, letting me know that it was recording.
The first story I saw was a little too heavy for my audience—and for me as well. It turned my stomach. It was about an armed robbery in a San Francisco where the criminals all wore masks. The weird thing was that they didn’t rob a bank. It was a home invasion where they forced a CEO to log on to their company’s servers and wirelessly transfer millions in payroll funds into offshore accounts. Millions of dollars vanished, but only for a little while. The FBI was able to get most of that money back. A shiver jolted down my spine at the censored picture that was leaked. It was the CEO’s kids who found what was left of him the following day.
I closed that tab with a heavy heart. It was not what I needed to see right now. After a little light searching I found a juicy celebrity scandal instead. Ok, I thought, clearing my head, this I can work with.
I opened my mouth and nothing came out.
I took a sip of the hot black brew and tried again. Still nothing. I leaned back and tried to focus. My old, office chair creaked like a burnt-out runner’s knee joints when I leaned back, mirroring how I felt at the moment about celebrities, gossip, rumors…
It was all so frivolous after what I’d just gone through.
It was days like this that I hated having a daily YouTube show. Monday through Friday was news and gossip and Sunday was movie parody, a silly skit or just some nerdy thoughts I had on a nerdy topic. Most of the time I loved what I did! But not today, or the last three days either.
Being fun and funny today felt about as sincere as posting a smiley selfie in a dentist chair before a root canal #excited #lovethatdrill. #flossingforfunsies
“This is your job, Autumn. You can’t miss another day…” I reminded myself, especially now that my budding acting career was so thoroughly squashed. The director publically promised as much in his heated tirade.
Doing a quick check of my email before buckling down to get some actual work done, I found had an unread message from Lionhouse Studios. The subject line read upcoming audition. I thought it was a mistake, maybe an old email from my last movie that got lost and resent by accident. But I was wrong. It was for an upcoming project. They wanted me to audition for the lead.
“Ha! You’ve got to be kidding me…” My skepticism flared, before I forced myself to read on. It was legit. There was a time and date and everything. Casting would be at a baseball stadium. All I had to do was reply for confirmation and show up on time. “They actually want me to audition after what happened?”
I’d had about enough of nearly getting killed and making a fool out of myself for one lifetime, thank you very much. Besides I could only imagine how many other women—real professional actors—were going to be there. This wasn’t some glorified extra role; they were looking for a co-lead on a big budget movie.
Of course I liked dreaming of the crazy amount of money that came with that kind of role; it’s just that I knew all that was way out of my league. Not only that, but after getting a taste of the real film life I realized I didn’t want anything to do with it. It was fast, loud, unforgiving and cold. And none of that even touched on the fact that landing a speaking part in a film was a miracle in itself.
No thanks, I scoffed, deleting the email. I’d stick with real life.
Wasting a little more time before finding a plastic smile and helium attitude to plaster on my face, I clicked over to the backend of my channel. You’d think with nearly two-hundred-thousand subscribers I’d been rolling in that sweet, sweet internet money, but that really wasn’t the case.
YouTube was a fickle beast, like one of those old gods you had to sacrifice virgins to in order to win their favor. Half the time my videos were demonetized or removed for copyright infringement or adult content or just if someone complained really loudly. I made enough to pay off my hilariously high student loans, give Mom some rent and buy fancy coffee a few times a week. That was all I cared about.
I was only about fifty subscribers shy of my goal of—
I didn’t exactly spit out my coffee. I kinda choked on it a little and I think some of it dribbled out of my nose.
“Four-hundred-thousand subscribers!” I gasped. What the ever-loving hell! How did I double my goal overnight?! This had to be a mistake. I frantically clicked through all the built-in management tools, scrutinizing over the video view counts, thumbs ups, and subscribe/unsubscribe numbers. Their backend graph showing an unbelievable spike in the past twelve hours dropped my jaw and made my tongue dry out. “This can’t be real…”
“What about baby zebras?” Mom called out from her room down the hall. “I love baby zebras!”
I ignored her and headed to the home page to see if any other channels I followed were talking about a weird sub spike. I tried not to get my hopes up. Every once in a while the dark magic that was YouTube algorithms would do some wacky stuff. I clicked on trending and that’s when I saw it.
Me.
Someone leaked a video of Dante rescuing me!
I was everywhere.
I had enough social media followers that I wasn’t uncomfortable with attention, but seeing so much of me all over the place was surreal…and a little embarrassing if I was honest. Although I was known in some circles I’d never felt like an actual celebrity. I was just a quirky girl that made goofy skits and talked about real famous people.
“Oh my God.” I scrolled through dozens of thumbnails of me on set with titles reading, Newest Ronald Emerin Movie Finishes with a Dangerous Bang!; Real Life Superhero Saves Actress on Set; Lights, Camera, DISASTER! Internet Star Forgets How Legs Work and Nearly Wins Darwin Awards. “That last one’s not fair at all!” I scowled, muttering, “I know how my legs work.”
Mustering up my courage I watched the video labeled simply, run bitch!
“Run, Bitch!” The woman recording yelled as the cars started going up one after the other. She was on the general public side of the police barricade. The footage was shaky and all over the place, but you could clearly see me screaming my head off getting dragged across the road by the jerk vest I was wearing.
Not my finest moment.
Then Dante, in his Kermit the frog outfit, scooped me up right before the car I was leaning against exploded! My stomach twisted. Dante shielded a lot more of the blast than I realized…
“That was some crazy shit! You seen that shit? Pfft. Bitch shoulda ran.”
“Aannnd
that’s enough of that,” I muttered to myself, muting the video.
A shiver ran up my spine at Dante running toward me, knowing what was about to happen to that car. A sliver of shame pushed into my gut. Would I have been brave enough to do the same?
Halfway through the second replay of my worst fears Mom burst into my room yet again this time wearing a white button up blouse over her underwear. She brought two skirts with her. She’d spent most of the morning in various stages of undress trying out clothes for the party tonight. In the last hour alone she modeled her entire summer rotation for me.
“What do you think? The Dolce and Gabbana…” Mom was all smiles as she pinned a hanger to her waist. It was a pleated, rose print skirt. “Or!” She tossed the skirt on my bed, brushed a lock of long brown hair from her face and held an off-the-shoulder, airy sundress up to her chest. She shook her hips, modeling it for me and my full length mirror and sang the words in what she claimed was her sultry voice, “The Autumnentino.”
“Mom…” I finally turned my full attention to her and realized that both outfits looked a little loose on her. “You lost some weight.”
She always blamed her not-at-all noticeable pudginess on having me, which was total BS! I got almost all my looks—and some of that softness—from her. We were both short and had an athletic build, which was a super polite way of saying no curves whatsoever.
“Are you exercising without me, Miss three-jobs?” I scowled at her. These days I worked out about as often as I remembered to floss, which was once, maybe twice a week, but before she started working like a crazy woman we used to go for light afternoon runs before dinner.
We called them our jog n’ bitch sessions.
“Oh?” She glanced down at herself as if dropping ten pounds had somehow snuck up on her. She shrugged and offered a less than convincing smile. “Must be all that green tea and power walking lately.”
I squinted at her. Gone all the time, losing weight, and saving up money… What are you hiding, Mom? Do you have a boyfriend? I remembered how weird she got when she was trying to date the guy who worked at the deli who was probably a little too young for her.