“I just want to do what’s right,” I finally admitted. “And I think… I think Reese is a good person.”
Alina clapped her hands. “Finally! Ugh, that was like pulling teeth…”
“Hey! I’m just… I have morals, okay?”
Alina shook her head. “You are so from Ohio…”
“What!? You’re from Michigan! It’s pretty much the same thing!”
She jerked one of her perfectly manicured nails at me. “Don’t you dare try to say Ohio and Michigan are the same.”
I raised an eyebrow at her sudden aggression.
She recoiled. “…sorry, the rivalry’s kinda seeped into my blood at this point.”
“I’m tired of hearing about all of that while growing up there,” I groaned.
“Ugh, whatever, let’s not talk about sports. What are you going to do about the whole Reese situation now?”
I sighed. “I guess I should go apologize before Reese fires me…”
“Before he fires you? Charlie, he bent his own rules to get you on the set. To get you acting. Why would he throw that all away?”
“I don’t know, but honestly I’ve been feeling this creeping sensation of dread this whole time. At any minute over the past few weeks, I’ve thought he’d come knocking at my door to give me bad news. To send me back to L.A., and this dream would be over.”
She blinked at me quietly.
“I’ve felt… I’ve felt so temporary here. Like I’m easily replaceable,” I explained. “Do you ever feel that way?”
“Charlie, we’re all replaceable. You just have to chill and go with the flow.”
“But if I toe out of line at any point, they could take this dream away from me!” I said suddenly, my fears bubbling to the surface as I stood up. “If Reese doesn’t like me, he can just send me away! He has all the power!” I said.
Alina smirked and crossed her legs. “He doesn’t. You signed a contract, remember? Why do you think he keeps Rachel on the set? Why do you think he invited her back for this season? He submits to the power of the producers— they’re the ones that call the shots. You signed a contract, right?” she asked.
“Well, yes,” I said, my eyebrows coming together. “But he could just wave his hand and make that all go away…”
“What makes you think that? You saw the script recently, right? You’re already written in as soon as we get to Morocco.”
“What?” I asked. “To my knowledge, I didn’t have a part yet. It was just the promise of a part.”
“When was the last time you saw the script?”
“Um… two days ago?” I said.
“Well, they made the changes earlier today. You and Crim are both added. I was surprised by how little the whole thing changes— none of my parts are switched around.”
“Wait, are you serious?!” I asked, pulling out my phone and opening the google doc. Sure enough, there were edits made earlier at 3:07 pm. Several scenes had been added.
“What, did you expect the writers to just write it in the sharable document as they came up with it?” she asked with a laugh.
“Um… actually, yes,” I said, feeling ridiculous.
She laughed and I felt stupid. Then she saw the expression on my face and touched my shoulder. “Hey, I used to think that when I was on set for my first Netflix show, too. It’s super stressful and confusing, and you don’t know when and if all of the pieces are going to fall into place.”
“Yeah, you hit the nail on the head with that one,” I said, slumping down on the couch next to her. “This is like living in a whirlwind of uncertainty. And I might get sent back to L.A. At any moment—”
“You won’t,” Alina said, her green eyes pinning me to the couch like she had me locked in a vice. “I guarantee that.”
“But all the guys— they’re all mad at me,” I said, running my hands through my hair.
“I think they’re more resilient than you think,” Alina comforted. “All I know for sure is, they’re not getting rid of you. They can’t — you’re already written in. You’ve got the proof right there in your hand.”
I looked down at my phone, where my scenes were neatly woven in with all the other parts. It seemed unreal that my character’s name was peppering each scene next to Mason’s, and sometimes next to Leo’s. I was just playing some village boy, but by some divine stroke of luck, I was rubbing shoulders with royalty.
It was just like my life right now, even though I had trouble believing it. Even though I was certain that at any moment, it would all come crashing down.
“Okay, I guess I should go apologize to Reese…” I said, my shoulders sagging. “I was being a huge dick.”
Alina stood up, a warm smile on her face. She put her hands on my shoulders like we were about to slow dance or something. “We can all be dicks sometimes,” she said. “Some of us are just better at forgiving ourselves than others.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Alina’s words rang in my mind as I made my way across the sand back to Reese’s trailer. The dark shape was on the other side of the beach, the yellow lights shining in the windows against the dark landscape.
I was… I was terrible at forgiving myself, let alone other people. Every single day, I still held myself accountable for what happened to me in high school. I made a poor decision and slept with that guy, then he was harassing me — just a bit of high school fun, he said. At least I’d pruned all of his gaslighting down to full-blown bullying; uncloaked his lies.
Then I told on him. The school didn’t do anything to punish him because his dad was some real estate guy who played golf with the principal. Instead, I was punished by my peers for being a snitch. No one believed me when the bullying started, and then I just stopped fighting it.
Every day after school, I’d come home fighting back tears. Beating myself up for not being able to handle the rejection, the exclusion.
The feeling that I didn’t belong; the fact that I was an outsider among all of the popular kids.
And here I was, immersing myself in that same feeling. It was like I was about to march straight into a clique of popular kids and lay myself open again. Even though this time I was going there for a different reason, I couldn’t shake the feeling of deja vu.
My mouth went dryer and dryer with each step I took toward Reese’s trailer, the sound of my footsteps muffled in the sand.
My heart beat faster and faster as all those feelings of rejection came bubbling to the surface again. Would these guys reject me? Would they tell me to leave? Would they kick me off the set?
I thought of what Alina just told me — that I was bound by contract and they couldn’t get rid of me. Holding onto that truth like it was a lifeline, I reached for Reese’s door handle.
Pausing before I grabbed it, I bit my lip.
The door burst open and the hulking form of Leo rushed out.
I was still against the side of the trailer — he hadn’t seen me.
For a moment I hesitated, longing to stay in the shadows and go unnoticed. But the way I saw it, I had two choices: Follow Leo, or make myself go inside and face Reese.
I chickened out. I followed Leo.
“Hey!” I called from behind him, hurrying to catch up.
He stopped in his tracks, then turned to face me. Moonlight bathed his face, making him look somehow even more beautiful now that all of his golden features were forced to be silver.
“Charlie,” he said breathlessly.
I examined his face carefully; trying to read the expression that was there. I’d never seen that look on his face before.
He was… uncomfortable.
“What… what’s this?” I asked, gesturing to him.
He scoffed. “Nothing, just…” His eyes went past my shoulder and locked onto Reese’s trailer. “They’re just talking about things that don’t concern me.”
“What kinds of things?” I asked.
He brushed me off. “Didn’t you go home or something? You’re not c
ool with what Reese did—”
“I was being stupid and dramatic,” I said. Even now looking back at myself in my memory, I cringed. “I made a big deal out of nothing.”
“It’s not nothing,” Leo said. “I thought you standing up for what you believed in was admirable. More than what I can say…” he said, his jaw tight.
“No, I was being dumb,” I maintained, picking at my thumb cuticle. “It’s really not a big deal… it’s just…”
Leo studied me carefully, waiting for me to talk. It was so different from everyone else who tried to fill up the silence with their voice.
“It’s… just a lot. Nevermind, it’s not important.”
“Of course it’s important,” Leo said, taking my hand in his as we started to walk along the beach. “Everything you say is important. At least to me, anyway.”
My heart was beating faster and faster, thundering against my chest. “Okay, but it’s really stupid, okay?”
Leo waited patiently, taking quiet steps in the sand. There was no noise except the calming waves of the ocean.
“I get really worked up about things like that sometimes, and I don’t want it to sound like I’m whining or anything, but a lot of it has to do with being bullied,” I admitted.
Leo nodded in an understanding way, so I opened up a bit more; I kept going.
“There was this guy… I made a mistake and got close to him, or so I thought. It turned out to be a setup, and then he bullied me.”
Leo nodded quietly, then said, “That couldn’t have been easy.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“You must have felt alone,” he said.
“…I did. I felt lonelier than I’ve ever felt in my life,” I admitted.
He squeezed my hand. “It’s okay to feel that, you know,” he said.
I brightened. Never before had someone validated my feelings about the whole thing. Whenever I’d worked up the bravery in the past to tell someone about what had happened to me — with varying levels of detail — it was usually brushed off as me being some whiney kid. Get over it. Grow up.
But with Leo, it felt like it was okay to be open, at least a little bit.
I smiled.
“Standing up for what you believe in can be lonely. If you’re preaching to the choir, you’re not doing anything,” he said, frowning.
I wondered where he was going with this.
“Some people like to push boundaries,” he said, glancing back at Reese’s trailer.
I frowned, matching his. I wasn’t sure if we were talking about my experience or his. “What happened, Leo?”
“Nothing. Just a bunch of folks that are out in the open, trying to convince me to be out in the open as well,” he said, his shoulders sagging.
“You can come out when you’re ready,” I encouraged, squeezing his hand. “You’re on no one’s terms but your own.”
“It doesn’t feel like that,” he grumbled. “No one ever talks about the pressure to come out. It’s like, I’m surrounded by all of these people, and they’re trying to drag me out of my hiding place.”
He paused.
“You know, there’s something messed up about that. The fact that others think they know what’s best for you, when it’s best for you.”
I nodded, thinking of how my old coworker Scott kept trying to get me to shed my midwest identity and become an “L.A. Boy.” It was exhausting.
“I’m going to stay in the closet until I’m damn well ready to come out,” he said. “It’s even harder for people like us — people in the limelight. Because nothing like this is a personal, private experience anymore. It becomes about that image of you that others see. It’s always about the image...”
I was quiet, afraid to say anything. This was the most I’d ever heard Leo talk; and I was nervous that if I said anything, he’d clam up again.
“You know, sometimes I think about what it would be like if my life went differently. Like if I stayed in that small town, got married to a woman like my parents wanted. Never got famous.”
“What’s that like? That image in your mind, I mean.”
“Well, everything about it sounds terrible, except the part where I’m not famous. I could go to the grocery store and people leave me alone. I could find a quiet place to read and no one will come up and bug me for an autograph. I never wanted this. I never wanted any of this.”
“You know there are millions of people that want what you have,” I mused. “They want that fame. They want to be recognized. They’d give up their identities to do it—”
“That’s not me,” Leo said with finality.
“I know, I’m just thinking out loud here.”
“Did you ever want to be famous?” Leo asked. “I mean, as soon as you go back to the U.S. Once filming is over, you’re going to have this crazy life.”
“I’ve wanted to be famous for a long time, I think,” I said, looking off into the horizon where the bloated full moon was hovering over the inky ocean. “I want to entertain people more, though. Fame is kind of just an aspect of it.”
That was half-true. I wanted to be famous secretly; rabidly. I wanted it so much that I’d written down that quality in my heartmate on the crumpled pieces of paper, most of which were still in my pockets.
Leo nodded and smiled. “I like entertaining people, too. Honestly, I had no idea it would blow up this much; that I would be running sprints trying to keep up with this image,” he said solemnly.
By the way he kept casting glances back at Reese’s trailer, I wondered what else he was running from.
“Did they try to make you come out or something?” I asked.
“Oh? Oh, no. Not tonight, I mean,” he said.
“Leo, what’s going on?” I asked, pausing in the sand.
He sighed and said, “Well, you know how Crim is…”
Immediately my mind was filled with the image of Crim on top of me while Oliver was at my side, sucking on my nipple. I tried to put things together…
“Are they… are they having a foursome in there?” I asked.
Leo laughed, a full, baking sound that filled up the beach.
“No! At least, they weren’t when I left. Come on, Charlie. Mason hates Reese, Reese hates Crim. When I left, they were starting to yell at each other.”
A strange disappointment crashed through me. “Oh.”
“Yeah they were yelling at each other, and then they tried to drag me into it. Saying I wouldn’t even come out of the closet publicly. So I excused myself from that situation, because that… that really gets to me.”
“I understand,” I said, squeezing his hand.
Guilt swelled within me as another montage of flesh swam before my eyes… how good it felt when Crim was inside me and I was inside Oliver, all pulsing together like we were one being. And how I could make it happen again.
My hand in Leo’s right now felt like it was something sweeter than I was prepared for; something more gentle and pure. I wonder how he’d react if he knew that I’d shared a night with Oliver and Crim?
“Leo, there’s something I need to tell you,” I said, squeezing his hand.
“What is it? Don’t tell me you’ve been sleeping with Reese…” he said.
I paused. “What?!”
Leo looked at me, his eyes shining in the moonlight. “I’m just kidding around.”
But the edge to his voice told me that he very much was not kidding around. There was something sharp and dangerous there; a warning.
“No, but it’s related to that,” I continued.
Leo stopped in his tracks.
“It’s about… this,” I said, squeezing his hand. “What is this?”
“This? I like you. It’s that simple. You’re quiet like me, there’s something more to you than all of these famous… these actors, er, no…”
“These starboys,” I finished for him with a smirk.
“Right. Okay, starboys. There’s more to you than the rest of these guys, even Reese,�
� Leo said, the admission slipping out from his lips and fluttering away in the air.
I thought that he would object to that term, but I guess we were going to roll with it.
“I thought you and Reese were a thing,” I asked, my insides coiling at the thought.
“Well, it’s complicated. Because Mason’s around, and they’re exes and everything.”
“They still care for each other,” I said bluntly.
“They do. And I’m not ready to come out of the closet, and Reese is so high-profile…”
“So you like me because I’m not?” I asked, the unpleasant feeling in my gut transforming into something uglier; more hurtful. “You like me because I’m a nobody?”
“No, Charlie, I didn’t say that—!” he said, his voice filling with an unsteadiness that was unfamiliar to the confident, smooth tones.
I yanked my hand out of his. “You like me because I’m an unknown.”
“No, I like you because you’re not used to fame,” he explained, a pleading bleeding into the edges of his voice.
“That’s the same thing!” I said, standing my ground.
“No Charlie, I mean you’re different from all of the other — er, starboys here. You’re special!”
But it was too late. I was already working myself into a rage. “I’m not one of you. I’m never going to be one of you. You know that I’m different—”
Leo wrapped me into a hug, his strong arms like barrels coiled around me.
It felt good to be in his arms like this, pressed up against his chest, but I wouldn’t let myself relax here. It wasn’t safe.
“You’re different in the best way. You’re not used to fame; you’re real.”
I wiggled free from his grasp. All of the angry feelings and the reservoir of feeling inadequate was boiling, swirling, humming within my veins as a dam broke within me. Then the truth came firing out of my mouth like a weapon. “I slept with Crim and Oliver.”
Leo’s face was unreadable in the darkness, but he didn’t say anything so I thought it was safe to assume he was shocked.
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