Acting Out

by Tibby Armstrong

  The actor slated to play McHugh—Matthew Cleary—slapped Kit on the back and said, “I’d believe you as queer any day.”

  Ripping a needle across old-fashioned vinyl couldn’t have cut the sound in the room any faster. Everyone held their collective breath and looked from Matthew to Greg.

  Quiet as thunder rumbling on the trailing side of a storm, the screenwriter said, “One fuckup. You get one. And you’d better hope you’re going to channel that shitty attitude into this role, because if I don’t get one hundred percent from you, I’ll personally pay to reshoot your scenes and make damned sure you never work again, not just in this town but in any backwater literate enough to read your résumé.”

  By the time Greg finished tearing the guy a new one, the actor slid down so far in his seat his chin almost leveled with the table.

  “Sorry, everybody,” Matthew said, looking around. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “Sure, Matt. We know.” The director dared to intercede when nobody else spoke up. “Greg, let’s let these guys go. We can talk to them individually about any questions they have, ’kay?”

  As everyone stood and gathered their things, the director gave out information on the shooting schedule—Tuesday, tomorrow, only Kit and Jeremy needed to report to the set. Everyone else started next week.

  “How come?” Jeremy asked, bringing several cups and plates into the kitchen area.

  “Love scenes,” Kit said automatically, then wished he hadn’t when Jeremy gave him the stink eye. “They give us privacy on the set for them.”

  Arms folded over his chest, Jeremy leaned a deceptively casual hip against the counter. “You mean they don’t invite their girlfriends to watch?”

  “Jesus Christ.” Kit hissed the curse. “Cut the shit, will you? You want me to end up the example Falkner’s trolling for?”

  Jeremy shrugged.

  Throwing back his head, Kit gesticulated at the ceiling as everyone else trailed out the door. “I said it once. I won’t say it again.”

  “What? That you’re a self-centered shithead with more dollars than brains?”

  Jaw tightening with the first real anger Kit could remember feeling before today, he stepped forward and met Jeremy nose to nose. “How d’you know you didn’t take advantage of me? I’m not the one who’s known for liking guys, am I?”

  That shut the kid up in a hurry. Jeremy looked away, his color going high then very pale.

  “I don’t,” he admitted after a minute. “I assumed because you’d fed me drinks all night…”

  “Trying to get you to loosen up and have fun!” Kit finished, exasperated. Every nice thing he’d tried to do for this guy had been thrown in his face from the moment he walked out his door until now. “I felt sorry for you and wanted you to enjoy yourself, not look like a reject from community theater.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jeremy whispered, digging in his pocket. “You’re right. And here.”

  Looking down at Jeremy’s uncurling palm, he saw his cell phone.

  “How…” Cold fury froze his chest and crackled outward. He snatched the phone from Jeremy’s hand. Closing his fist, he brought it under Jeremy’s nose. “You sorry son of a bitch! I trusted you, and you stole from me.”

  “I’ll reimburse you for your new one.”

  “Fuck your money.” He’d felt like such a jackass when he figured he lost his phone in the club. Assumed his friends and business associates would soon receive embarrassing and intrusive calls from a stranger and blame him. “How about giving me a week of my life back—a week I spent trying to get unlisted numbers for everyone from my agent to my friends?”

  “I’m sorry. I freaked.”

  “Freaked? Freaked? You are a freak!” Hurt and anger, emotions all the more raw in their newness, threatened to choke Kit as he got in Jeremy’s face. “It’s not the phone. I invited you into my home, and you stole from me. Do you get that? Stealing? It’s wrong? Do they teach you that back East?”

  Unflinching eyes full of sadness and regret stared back, making him all the angrier for what could have been. The hope for friendship—what Kit considered his first real chance at having someone to talk to he could trust and be himself with—he recognized and lost in one shining, shattered moment.

  PIVOTING, KIT SHOULDERED past Greg out the door. Jeremy watched as the setting sun turned his hair a fiery gold before the glass closed behind him. Regret pulling at him, he looked at Greg’s broad back and wished he knew the man well enough to confide in him. What he’d done was wrong. He saw that. Given another opportunity and the same information, however, would he make a different choice?

  In all the months he’d worked his fingers to the bone—sometimes literally when he cut them wide open doing food prep to earn extra cash before his shift—he’d never stolen so much as a potato. What about the situation with Kit made him feel it’d been all right to take from him? Not desperation. Not Kit’s money. Maybe anger? The sense of betrayal at waking up with him and Amber? Jeremy shook his head, not understanding himself any better for the momentary soul-searching. For now, he’d have to settle for calling himself an asshole, because that seemed the only epithet that fit.

  “Do I have to lock up the silver?” Greg asked when Jeremy met his eyes.

  “You heard that?” Jeremy steeled himself to hitchhike back to the shelter.

  “That and a lot more.” Flicking the switch by the door, Greg cleared the glass, and the sunset came into sharp focus. A private smile tugged at his mouth. “But I don’t have time to discuss it unless I want to reach four.”

  Relieved that Greg didn’t seem inclined to throw him out, Jeremy followed.

  “What’s the counting thing?” He trailed Greg upstairs, taking the risers two at a time. “It was in the script too.”

  Stripping off his clothes as he made his way into a bedroom on the beach side, Greg left the door open, and Jeremy stopped short in the doorway. A waterfall cascaded over glass on the side the neighbors could see in, distorting the view but refracting the orange and gold rays of sunshine across the room in a brilliant display of color and liquid sound.

  “Sure. Make yourself at home. Come upstairs,” Greg groused when he turned, half naked, to spy Jeremy hovering in the doorway.

  “Eh. It’s like watching myself undress. Not very interesting,” Jeremy replied.

  Thankfully, Greg laughed. “I’m telling Aaron to take out my punishment on you.”

  “Is that what it’s about?” Jeremy latched onto the original topic. “Punishment?”

  Considering him for a long moment, Greg seemed to come to a decision. “I’m telling you this in context of the film. For research. Ergo, it’s confidential. Tell anyone and I sue you after I break every bone in your body.” The threat carried no real menace, and Jeremy felt the weight of the trust placed in him as Greg continued. “It’s about boundaries and knowing when I cross them. I used to suck at that, so Aaron invented the game—and yes, it’s sexual—to clue me in. Now, we mostly play it for fun. Though if I get to four, it’s not. Or at least, while it’s still interesting, it’s not quite so…pleasurable.”

  Jeremy leaned his shoulder against the door frame and considered a gull preening on Greg’s upper deck. He imagined waking up in this room next to Kit, like he bet Greg did with Aaron. Wondered what it’d be like to play love games of dominance and submission…and who would be on top.

  “Are you always the bottom?” Jeremy blurted the question.

  Pausing as he shrugged on a tuxedo shirt, Greg arched a brow at him. “What do you think?”

  “I think you’re the one in control but pretending Aaron is makes you feel secure.”

  Long fingers stilled on black buttons. A million thoughts seemed to churn behind those glittering, black-brown eyes, but only one came out Greg’s mouth. “Go to your room. You’re making me late, and I want to be allowed to…finish my dessert tonight.”

  “What happens if you reach five?” Jeremy teased. “You have to eat Brussels s
prouts and liver?”

  A pair of dirty socks whizzed past his head, and Jeremy ducked to the side. Laughing and more lighthearted than he probably had a right to be, he crossed the hallway and left Greg to finish getting ready. Flopping down on the daybed, he took in a desk and a dry-erase wall covered in scribbled storyboards.

  Slipping on his tuxedo jacket, Greg appeared in the doorway looking classically handsome. Elegant.

  Jeremy smiled and rolled his head to look at the desk clock. “Three minutes to spare. I hope he’s coming here.”

  The doorbell buzzed. Greg pivoted toward the stairs. “That’s him. Help yourself to whatever.”

  Padding to the hallway, Jeremy asked, “Is it his birthday?”

  “Shit!” Greg pushed past Jeremy, almost knocking him over. He emerged again from the bedroom with a long, velvet jewel case wrapped in red ribbon and bounded down the stairs.

  From his perch at the top, Jeremy heard Aaron’s soft, “Hey.” Then the rustle of fabric against fabric filled the silence. A whispered “Happy birthday,” from Greg punctuated a deep, audible kiss, and then the door closed with a soft click behind the couple.

  The couple.

  Jeremy wandered into Greg’s bedroom and lifted a picture of him and Aaron from the nightstand. Arms slung over one another’s shoulders, the two faced the camera in their white high school graduation robes. Laughing smiles marked the day as happy, but an indefinable sadness lurked in Greg’s eyes. Jeremy tried to picture having a friend or a lover—someone with whom he shared secrets. Pain. Joy. Perhaps that person could’ve been Kit.

  As soon as the thought popped to the surface, it wilted and died. Even if the actor felt a physical attraction to him, everything about how their association began seemed off kilter. Imbalanced. Kit held all the power—knowledge about Hollywood, experience as an actor, money, fame, and even sexual experience. What did Jeremy have to offer other than a brief diversion? Any scenario placing them both in the same frame could only end badly.

  Setting the photo on the nightstand, Jeremy decided to clean up downstairs, then memorize his lines. Excitement and trepidation warred as he placed dishes in the dishwasher. He’d be on a real Hollywood sound stage tomorrow…while he filmed sex scenes he had no idea how to approach…with a guy who hated his guts. Feeling vaguely ill, he started the dishwasher, then took his script upstairs. Overhead, the night sky loomed, and he turned off the light to better see the stars through the glass ceiling. Light pollution made it difficult to detect all but the brightest.

  Kit stood out like those stars. Jeremy wondered if his own career would shine brightly or dimly. Quickly burn out or glitter for a lifetime? Whether on the verge of a great birth or a quick fizzle, he couldn’t tell, but looking up at the velvet darkness, it struck him. With so much space in between, it must be awfully lonely to be a star.

  Chapter Eight

  Shaking him gently awake at three a.m., Greg loomed above Jeremy in jeans and a wine-red button-down shirt. A half hour later, cradling a warm cup of coffee in Greg’s Mercedes SUV, Jeremy watched traffic pour onto the already filling highway. The sound stages Greg rented lay on the east side of LA.

  After spending an hour in the hushed confines of the car, the set seemed bright and loud—lots of lights and banging hammers. Cables snaked everywhere through the collection of rooms with movable walls representing the interior of a military boarding school. All hustle and bustle, nobody seemed to notice them except to actively avoid collisions.

  Greg directed him to makeup, saying, “Strip and put on a robe. They’re going to do your skin as well. No wardrobe after the sweatpants come off in today’s scenes. Oh, and you’re both getting a buzz cut.”

  “Great,” Jeremy muttered. “Thanks.”

  He found a robe in a dressing room off the makeup area, stripped, and put it on. Then he grabbed the duffel he carried everywhere with him since beginning his stay in the shelter. He introduced himself, and then ignored the hair-and-makeup artists flitting around him as he studied his script. Between his concentration and the clippers buzzing in his ear, he didn’t notice Kit’s presence in the chair next to him until the makeup artist said, “Please stand and drop your robe, Mr. Ash.”

  Startled, Jeremy looked into the mirror and found Kit staring directly at him from the next chair over. Jeremy didn’t know which freaked him out more—the idea of getting naked in front of Kit or the actor’s buzz cut, his beautiful blond hair scattered around the chair. The severity of the style emphasized the curve of his mouth and blades of his cheekbones, making his eyes seem more indigo than ever.

  “I—” In his peripheral vision, Jeremy saw a mottled blush creep up his own neck into his hairline. Tearing his gaze from Kit’s stony stare, he scrambled to erect mental and emotional shields. “Sure.”

  Leaving his script on the counter, Jeremy stood. Taking a deep breath, he dropped the robe from his shoulders to reveal his back. For a minute, the makeup artist just stood there. Feeling Kit’s stare, Jeremy flushed from his toes to his newly shorn hairline. He knew what they saw, and he refused to say a word.

  “We…um…” The makeup artist foundered. “I need a consult with Mr. Falkner. Wait here, please.”

  Jeremy grabbed his robe and punched his arms through the sleeves. Jerking the tie around his middle, he made for the bathroom, where he grasped the sink’s cool porcelain rim. Sucking air through his nostrils, he stared at the dripping tap and repacked memories best left undisturbed.

  “Jeremy?”

  His stomach lurched at Greg’s serious tone. They couldn’t use his ugly, ruined body. They were going to fire him. Straightening, he tried to force nonchalance. “Yeah?”

  Greg stepped inside, closed the bathroom door, and reached out a hand. Curling his palm around Jeremy’s neck, he pulled him in to wrap his arms tight around his back. Sobs welled into Jeremy’s throat, cutting painfully along his voice box as he forced them down. He tried to pull away, but Greg only tightened his arms and refused to let go.

  Shaking with the ache in his chest, Jeremy finally shed any pretense of normalcy as scalding tears cascaded down his cheeks. Fists clenched, he gazed into his gaping internal abyss—prodded at the shredded edges of his tattered sense of belonging. Finding an anchor in the man pressed close to him, holding him, he gradually calmed. After a long while, his breathing returned to normal and he sniffed. “I’m okay.”

  Greg loosened his grip and stepped back—considered him for a long moment. Then took off his tearstained shirt and turned around. In the fluorescent light, thin white stripes covered Greg’s back from the line of his trousers to the cut of his shoulder blades. Some wheals appeared raised, while others formed only a ghost of a line. Rage surged from the depths of some previously unexamined lava pool in the blackest part of Jeremy’s being. He punched the metal paper-towel dispenser, denting both it and—from the feel of it—his hand.

  “Fuck.” He sucked on his knuckles to ease the pain.

  “You’re perfect for this part.” Greg ignored the outburst and tugged his shirt back on. “Still in?”

  “Are you kidding?” Jeremy laughed, the sound self-deprecating. “I thought you wouldn’t want me.”

  Mind still muddled from the tumult of emotions he’d experienced over the past fifteen minutes, Jeremy wondered if he looked as dazed as he felt. Greg rested his hand on the doorknob.

  “Makeup said they can cover the scars,” Greg said finally. “Nobody will see anything you don’t want them to.”

  Though he didn’t know how they’d manage to hide the marks without a mountain of gloppy makeup, Jeremy muttered, “Thanks.”

  Greg cracked the door and paused to look over his shoulder. “And Jeremy?”

  “Yeah?” Jeremy hugged himself around his rib cage.

  “That counts for what’s on the inside too.”

  Mutual understanding traversed the distance between them—their experiences forming an emotional bond most people didn’t develop in a lifetime. Jeremy felt it spar
k to life. Beholding its glow in Greg’s gaze, he gave a small nod. Everything would be all right.

  THE BATHROOM DOOR opened. Kit looked up from his script and tried to feign calm indifference. Jeremy’s eyes seemed glassy and a little freaked—like he’d teetered on some hellish precipice and not gotten away quite unscathed.

  “I want the marks covered for privacy purposes.” Greg spoke in low tones to Quinn, their makeup artist, as Jeremy scrubbed the ruined makeup off his face several feet away. “Do what you have to. We’ll worry about the rest later.”

  “We can work in his trailer,” Quinn offered.

  “Whatever he decides.” Greg turned to include Kit in the conversation. “I don’t want to hear about this later. On set or off.”

  Blinking away a stab of hurt at the lack of trust and faith, Kit nodded his answer. He wouldn’t breathe a word. His cultivated reputation as a party boy didn’t include hurting people for fun. From what he’d seen, Jeremy had already been through enough. Remembering the shiny, puckered circles marring the dude’s back and upper thighs made him want to fly into a blind fury. Only he didn’t know who to blame, or who to kill. The depth of his rage surprised him as he’d listened to Jeremy’s muffled crying. Remembering their argument the day before, he felt more than a little ashamed he’d added to the kid’s burden.

  Jeremy slid into the makeup chair, his expression wooden. Pale skin drawn and translucent, he needed a whole new layer of foundation. As Quinn dabbed on the theatrical makeup, Kit reached out to touch Jeremy’s wrist. Hand jerking, Jeremy shot his startled gaze to Kit’s face in the mirror.

  “Sorry,” Jeremy said after a long pause. “I was thinking hard, I guess.”

  Kit withdrew his fingers slowly. “No. Sorry. My bad.”

  “I’m sorry about your phone.” Jeremy glanced away. “I have the money for you.”

  “Huh?”

  The non sequitur threw Kit until he realized Jeremy thought he still held a grudge… Do I still hold a grudge? He searched his emotions—something he seemed to do constantly around this kid—and came up with nothing. No anger. No hurt. Just…sadness. Discomfort with the unfamiliar tug in his chest made him force a smile.