Sins? What the hell was this guy talking about?
At a loss for what to say, I offered what I thought was a simple question. “You’re religious?”
His laugh cut harshly through my ears.
“My sins have nothing to do with God and everything to do with regret.”
The intensity of his words left me speechless—gave me time to study him—and in the silence that resulted, Anderson shoved off of the building and stepped back to the door.
“It was nice to meet you, Easie,” he said with a smirk, pulling the door open and stepping back into the chaos that waited inside.
“It was nice to meet you too,” I said to the space where he used to be, throwing my half-smoked cigarette to the ground and stubbing it out with my toe. “You fucking lunatic.”
A chill swept down my arms, raising the hairs and bringing my hands up to rub the goosebumps away. The previously busy street seemed quiet, and the light from the door beckoned like a lighthouse. I hated to follow him inside so quickly, but now that my rage had dulled, being out here alone was giving me the creeps. And the whole rape/murder combination completely lacked appeal.
A wave of noise hit me as I pulled the door open and jumped back inside. I worked hard to reorient myself, pausing to let the hostess gather menus and take a waiting couple to their table. Laughter rang out and people mingling throughout the bar jostled and moved, waving at lesser known acquaintances across the room and signaling the bartender to help them sink into the night just a little bit more.
When the crowd parted, a lone Ashley sat perched on her chair typing away at the screen of her phone with a crease of concentration between her eyes. There was no sign of Anderson anywhere, and believe me, I looked.
Feeling the coast was as clear as it was ever going to get, I power-weaved my way back to the table, anxious and uneasy about the fact that we had yet to even eat. There was no way Ashley was going to leave without eating her tacos. At least not without the help of chloroform or Rohypnol.
“Hey,” she greeted, the sound of my chair legs scraping the floor bringing her attention up and away from the screen of her phone. “You made it back alive.”
“Yeah,” I confirmed, trying to dig up some sort of witty response but coming up painfully empty.
“Are you okay?” she asked and narrowed her eyes to assess me more closely.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I lied, feeling completely twilight-zone-level out of my skin. All I needed was to get my fucking focus back.
Using the first thing I saw as a contextual crutch, I asked, “Who are you talking to with so much concentration? I could see your frown lines from all the way across the restaurant.”
“Larry,” she muttered easily, throwing me for my forty-second loop of the night.
“Larry? What the fuck are you talking to him about?”
Her face was incredulous yet faintly pink. “Um, your call sheet for tomorrow. What else would I be talking to him about?”
“Tomorrow? What do you mean tomorrow?”
“You start shooting tomorrow,” she said, but the combination of words sounded strangely like what the fuck is wrong with you?
“WHAT?” I shrieked. Unknown wide eyes blinded me from several directions.
“Are you on drugs?”
“No, I’m not on drugs! But I am probably going to end up in prison!”
“For what?”
“For killing that prick, Larry!”
“He didn’t tell you we start tomorrow?”
“No!” I screamed. “Obviously fucking not!”
“Okay, relax. Jesus,” she placated. “He told me, and now I’m telling you. No harm done.”
“No harm done? NO HARM DONE?”
“Shhhh!” she commanded, grabbing the first waitress that walked by at the elbow. “I’m sorry, can you please bring us our tacos to go?”
Huh. Look at that. Apparently, an inappropriate outburst will get my sister to leave just as effectively as kidnapping drugs. Good to know.
The poor, random server was surprised, but the imploring look on my sister’s face went a long way to ease the awkwardness. With a nod and a fake smile, she scurried off to get our tacos. Or, presumably, to disappear until we did.
“God, you’re ridiculous tonight. What’s got you acting so dramatic?”
Anderson.
“This. Larry. Stupid. Surprised,” I evaded nonsensically.
“Riiiight.”
“Sorry. I’m calm. I swear.” She eyed me skeptically. “Really,” I promised. “Meditation’s got nothing on me.”
Fearing that anything I said could or would be used against me in the Ashley court of law, I sat silently, staring down at my fiddling thumbs instead of looking around. I blocked out time, letting it pass without inspection.
Warm fingers brushed my arm as Anderson reached between us to set our bag of to-go tacos and the bill on the table.
“Ahhhhh!” I screamed in surprise, my promise becoming nothing more than a broken memory in record time.
Perhaps sensing my instability, Anderson didn’t say a word, instead opting for a simple nod and masculine salute before taking off again.
Ashley didn’t know what the hell was going on, but she knew it wasn’t good. Fishing around in her purse for enough money to cover the bill, she threw it on the table and grabbed me by the arm to lead me out of there before I could start a brawl or wave my vibrator around. That’s the kind of gesture it would take to make even bigger fools out of us.
“Let’s go,” she instructed, moving me through the restaurant and out the door with precision.
Electing to drive herself rather than chance me under these circumstances, she settled me into passenger side and rounded the hood on her own.
As soon as the ignition fired, my tired brain outlined the next twenty-four hours of my life aloud and prayed it would go better.
“Tacos. Sleep. Start over. Quirky Kinkery.”
“Needlessly concise, but accurate.” She shrugged, ready to put this night behind us too. “Sounds like a plan, E.”
“DIDN’T LARRY EXPLAIN THIS to you?” Ashley asked after the third time I required detailed instruction about where to go, what to do, and generally any-fucking-thing about my new job since we’d arrived this morning.
The set wasn’t big, and the accommodations weren’t exactly five-star, but I had my own dressing room with a light, mirror, and locking door. Considering my expectations, I was declaring it a win.
“Does it look like he explained any of this to me?” I asked, standing in the middle of the room for the millionth time and looking around aimlessly.
“Well, no, but—”
“You’re surprised? I didn’t even know that we were shooting today! Of course that asshole didn’t tell me anything.”
“I’m not sure why the two of you rub each other the wrong way so much,” she said, digging around in her big bag full of answers. She was the woman with the information while I was nothing but a puppet strung up helplessly on its strings.
I shot her a surprised glance which she read immediately upon looking up from her rummaging.
A delicate laugh puffed the air around her and moved one stray blond hair away from her mouth. “Oh, no. I know why you rub him the wrong way, but I don’t know why he buys into it. I have no trouble talking to him.”
“Yeah, I get it. You’re nice and I’m not. Can we cut to the chase about what I’m supposed to be doing with myself?”
A knock on the door interrupted my bitching, and Ashley turned to open it.
“Oh, great!” she said into the small opening, accepting something I couldn’t make out and shutting the door.
“Well, here’s the script,” she declared, handing it to me with a small flourish. “Abby and Mike are real people, and they’re here on the set.” She made sure I held her eyes as she explained, “Your main goal is to be as respectful of them as possible. They’re volunteering their story for our use on the show with absolutely no reimb
ursement, so the last thing we want is for them to feel uncomfortable.”
“Larry didn’t even think I should have the fucking script before now? Does he actually want me to fail?”
“You’re reading too much into it and, frankly, giving him too much credit. He’s just human, and the success of this show is all on him. If he didn’t get you the script before now, it wasn’t on purpose. It actually says something really positive that he was willing to take the risk on you.”
“That he positively hates me.”
“Easie, there’s a very good possibility that if this thing goes under, Larry loses his job. He loses all the years he’s put into this industry, this company, and he has enough faith in you to believe you’re not going to let that happen. Honestly, you guys fight like brother and sister.” She heaved a deep breath.
“Besides, the show’s going to be shot in short, choppy segments, so memorizing a piece at a time shouldn’t be any trouble at all.”
As she spoke, I cracked open the script to get an idea of what I was in for. Before I knew it, my eyes were making a valiant attempt to bug all the way out of my head.
“Clown sex?! These people are into clown sex?! Jesus.”
Ashley’s eyes widened comically as she pursed her lips, but her normally quippy mouth stayed closed. Reading further, I let my mouth run, venting about the ridiculousness of this show now so that I wouldn’t do it later in front of Mike and Abby. Heaven forbid I run off the people with a fucking clown fetish.
“Red noses?! The last time something that red and shiny tried to come close my vagina, I ran the other direction and wound up going straight to my doctor’s stirrups for an STD test.”
“Larry thought that this show would be more successful getting us off the ground if we linked it with Red Nose Day and tied it back into charity. When he asked my opinion, I agreed.”
“Since when is Larry asking your opinion on this stuff?” I asked skeptically. She was awfully close with a guy I didn’t like.
“Believe it or not, Larry and I share a common goal. We both want you to succeed. We talk.”
“Pffttt!” The thought of her having a serious consultation with Larry about my success was enough to make me scoff. But I had other stuff on my mind at the moment. I didn’t have time to waste hashing out stupid stuff about Larry. “Whatever. If you can stand him, good for you.”
Focusing back on the script, the next line jumped out at me like a bag of bricks in mid-swing approach to my face.
“I”m pregnant?!”
“WHAT?” Ashley screamed, dropping the papers in her hands and sending them flying all over my dressing room.
“Not ‘I’m pregnant’ period!” I yelled. “‘I’m pregnant’ question mark.” When her saucer like eyes didn’t narrow, I shook the papers in my hand. “In the script!”
“Oh, thank God!” she swore, clutching her now empty hand over her heart.
“Jesus, Ash,” I grumbled, bending down to collect some of her paperwork, “I actually have to have sex to get pregnant, and that sure as hell hasn’t been happening.”
“I know, I know. I just panicked. I mean, you, with a baby.” Her body gave a full height shudder, and I froze as a pang gripped my chest.
In order to distract myself from the shame I felt—the upset of the brutality of my sweet sister’s opinion of me—I stopped picking up papers and went back to reading the script.
Wanting to stop the toxically spreading ache, I forced myself to hold on tight to my quickly fleeting joviality.
“I swear to Mary, Mother of Jesus, my willingness to get freaky with some dude in a clown nose will significantly diminish when I’m with child.” She looked up from her position on her hands and knees and met my eyes. “And it’s already pretty low to begin with.”
“Why Mary?”
“Huh?”
“Why did you swear to Mary instead of Jesus himself?”
I hadn’t even been conscious of my choice, but in the face of her questioning, the reason became abundantly clear. “Because Mary is a sister, she’s had the kid high-jumping on her bladder, and she would understand.”
“Shit!” she yelled, jumping up from the ground to point at the clock. Two quick steps to the side had her grabbing my robe from the hanger on the door and throwing it at me. “Put this on! We’re late!”
“Late for what, goddamnit?!” Pointing angrily towards the floor, I laid out my demands. “From this day forward, I want a printed itinerary! I’ve been like a hooker without a john all morning, and I’m fucking sick of it!”
“A hooker without a john?”
I rolled my eyes. “A little lost, a lot desperate, and constantly begging you to give it to me. ‘It’ being information.”
“Fine,” she conceded. “You can have all the printouts you want, but for now, just get in the robe. You’ve got hair and makeup, and wardrobe, and you’ve got to meet your co-star.”
“Great.” I fake smiled and stripped off my t-shirt and yoga pants. “All things I can’t wait to do since I found out I’m going to be clowned up, carrying thirty extra pounds, and pretending to hump some stranger.”
Settling my arms into the sleeves, I tied the sash, slipped my feet back into my flip flops and scooped the script up off of the table. “Ready. Let’s go.”
“It won’t be that bad,” Ashley soothed as she ushered me out the door. “I’ve never seen you this out of sorts. Take a deep breath, calm down, and find the confident inner bitch you’ve got living somewhere in your body.”
“Right.”
She was right. The sooner I stopped freaking out and put on my game face, the better off I would be.
Preparing, I steeled my face and hardened my eyes.
“But not too bitchy,” she amended, obviously worried that she was going to push me into being unreasonable. Her micromanaging panic was enough to bring me back to my happy place. A place where I could handle anything and had the awareness I needed to tell her everything was going to be alright.
“Relax, would you?” I teased. “Everything’s going to be fine. I’m going to be the best pregnant clown sex deviant you’ve ever seen.”
She giggled softly, sounding the youngest I ever heard her these days. Being my agent came with too much responsibility. She’d started too young, become jaded too fast. I liked any time I saw a glimpse that I hadn’t completely ruined her youthfulness.
“You’ll be the first pregnant clown sex deviant I’ve ever seen.”
“See? I’m betting you’re not the only one. I like things where I have a built in winning streak due to a lack of competition.”
This time both of us laughed, looking at each other as we entered a random room. At least, it was random to me. Ashley had been the one to lead us here.
“It’s about time you showed up,” Larry barked without preamble, turning away from the guy next to him. I couldn’t make out any of his features other than a dark complexion and hair.
I was all fired up to lay into him when Ashley touched my arm in warning instead. She didn’t bristle or yell or turn any of the many shades of red I’m sure graced my face.
Nope.
She smiled. Sweet and innocent and completely unlike me. She obviously got the good set of genes from our parents.
“My fault, Larry. Sorry about the wait,” she cooed softly, tilting her blond head just so and blinking her navy blue eyes daintily.
Was Larry actually fucking blushing?
“No worries, Ash. We have plenty of time,” he said with a genuine smile.
Okay . . . what?
His eyes lingered just noticeably before turning to me and hardening. “Come here, Easie. I’d like you to meet your leading man.”
Confused and curious, I gave into his command, moving toward him and the shadowy stranger but looking back at my sister’s face. She busied herself, looking everywhere but at me or the other occupants of the room. Especially one very specific male occupant of the room.
My sister and Larry? N
o way. He was, like, fifteen years older than she was, and she was too smart. Wasn’t she?
Fuck. I didn’t have time to follow this yellow brick road right now. I could only handle one ginormous, uncomfortable thing at a time.
Ha! That’s what she said.
Shut up, brain.
Larry grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the man in the chair, introducing me in an effort to multitask as he did. “Easie Reynolds this is—”
It was as if time slowed down as my eyes followed the line of his hand to the mystery man. Black shoes and finely pressed pants disappeared into the abyss of his dress coat, the tan column of his throat flexing noticeably as he made an effort to turn toward me. Dark hair sat just perfectly askew, and in one heart pumping moment, recognition kicked in.
I could feel it coming, the slap of the Karma God’s hand as it struck violently against the apple of my cheek—those torturous eyes. Those evil, world destroying—
Blue eyes.
Blue.
“—Ryder Thompson.”
Not Anderson What’s-his-name.
Oh shit. Oh shit. I was losing it. One completely discombobulating conversation, and the hot waiter at the restaurant had burrowed his way so deep inside my head I was mirage-ing his face onto the bodies of unsuspecting strangers. Holy brown gravy, get your shit together, Easie.
“Ah, nice to meet you, Ryder,” I forced out, somehow pep-talking my way back out of the black vortex of a panic attack.
Unfortunately, when the panic was gone, the smarmy look on my new co-star’s face remained. Mirth lit his eyes as he muttered, “Nice robe,” but it wasn’t the good kind. Under the scrutiny of his gaze, I felt naked. And dirty. Like, dipped in a vat of molasses, rolled in cow manure, buried in mud kind of dirty.
Skeeve-central.
“Easie, over here!” Larry called impatiently, and for once, I didn’t have any desire to protest. Ryder’s wandering eyes had traveled enough unapproved miles, thank you very much.
Helping me into the makeup chair, he spoke. “It’s showtime, kid. For as much as we throw blows at one another, I know you’re talented. So, read up on that script and add your flare. Snarky is good, as long as it’s the charming kind.”
Quirks & Kinks Page 3