by Ren Benton
Gin had a premonition she’d like Olivia’s plan even less than Ethan’s idea to break up Justin Timberlake’s marriage for Twitter followers.
“For god’s sake, Gin.” Simone splashed liquor into a glass with no regard for the recommended serving size. “Look where Olivia’s career is in comparison to yours and follow her lead.”
Gin would be the first to admit she wasn’t on Olivia’s level as an actress — in no small part because she’d chosen at sixteen to no longer be an actress, but Simone had yet to come to terms with her career choice. “Let’s get you two settled before hatching any schemes for world domination.”
Five days relieved of kitchen duty bought Ethan’s services as tour guide and luggage fetcher while Gin went to warn Lex about the invasion.
Lex studied the credits rolling up the screen, trying to coax the theme out of hiding by showing it where it would live.
“I promise, your name will be in the final version as many times as you want.”
Gin hovered just outside the doorway, arms crossed in what he’d come to recognize as her defensive posture. To combat cold, she tucked her frozen fingers under her arms; when she expected something bad to happen, she made an X across her abdomen for protection and rested her fingers on her hips.
If he’d been stabbed in the guts, he’d wear a suit of armor for the rest of his life, so he didn’t fault her for guarding. When she did it around him, though, he had to wonder what he’d done and washed from memory with booze to make her view him as a threat.
He slouched in the chair with his legs outstretched, striving to look too lazy to be dangerous. “What about the opening credits?”
“There’s a sinister undertone during that establishing shot of the river that seems like an excellent place to remind everybody you’re the one setting the mood.”
The intro had a strong blues influence, in honor of the setting, but that dark turn was all his. “Is it too much?”
“It’s perfect. It’s over before anyone will notice it, but the seed of foreboding has been planted.”
“I want to be credited as ‘Gardener of Foreboding.’” He’d have to keep an eye on that seed to make sure it grew steadily instead of exploding out of the speakers in the third act. The movie built dread by degrees, but subtlety was Gin’s forte, not his. Until now, he’d written only in four-minute increments best suited to getting straight to the point and repeating it three or four times at the top of his lungs. He had to learn the elegance of long-form pacing from her example.
He was terrified to fail and deface her art with his clumsy handprints.
Fear, historically, had not enhanced his creativity.
He felt the theme slither deeper into hiding and let it go for the day. Dr. Ogawa could take a crack at calibrating his brain during tomorrow’s checkup. “Is it lunchtime already?”
“Not yet. I bring news from the surface.” Gin took a deep breath. “Liv is here.”
A grin broke across his face. When she didn’t reciprocate, he replaced it with an exaggerated scowl. “You said she was dreamy.”
“I thought the drama might disrupt your work.”
“There won’t be any drama.”
Her brows climbed toward her hairline.
His grin returned. “Okay, there will be, but it will be Livvy kind of drama, not call-911 kind of drama.”
Olivia had a theatrical nature. With every breath, she flung out a performance. Where it led was up to her costar, on set or off. If people wanted fireworks, she would oblige. Met with gentle tolerance, she was content to be entertaining.
“Nothing toxic, I swear.” He wasn’t on great terms with all his former girlfriends — as his besieged voicemail could attest — but Olivia was a friend. “We still talk a couple times a month to make sure neither of us has gone off the rails.”
Her fingers tightened on her hip. “Any chance you’ll be as happy to hear she brought Simone?”
He recoiled hard enough to send the chair sliding backwards. “Christ, why?”
Gin inherited her perfectionistic drive from Simone, who decided at some point that if she was going to be a cliché, she was going to be the best damn stage mother who couldn’t accept her age, basked in her children’s fame, and squandered their money who ever lived. Lex suspected she resented how well her children had turned out because it kept her out of the spotlight, eclipsed in the Nightmare Celebrity Family documentaries by parenting that produced offspring with sex tapes, addictions, and prison sentences.
She’d done her best to compensate for the twins’ good behavior. Twelve years ago, there had been a mildly viral sex tape starring Simone and an actor Gin was involved with. Simone claimed to have done it so Gin would know what a scumbag she was dating.
To Simone Greene, fucking her daughter’s boyfriend in a hot tub and releasing the footage for public consumption seemed like a better idea than having a conversation expressing motherly concern.
Lex also underwent her special brand of “testing.” She probably expected enthusiastic debauchery from a rock star. What she got instead when she hopped in the shower with him was a lot of yelling about her poor decision-making ability and questions about her mental health while he stormed through the house, dripping and wrapped in a towel, until he found Gin and continued yelling, using her as a shield behind which he was safe from further molestation.
His lifestyle hadn’t been tailored to preserve his innocence, but he liked depravity on his own terms — which had never included being groped by the mother of the love of his life.
Even the memory made his skin twitchy. “If you don’t want my work disrupted, you’ll have to protect me from Simone at the expense of your work.”
She laid a hand over her heart and vowed, “I will defend you with my life.”
Her hands fell to her sides, and it occurred to him she’d been defending herself this whole time from the encounter with Simone, not from him. He’d never had a pleasant interaction with her mother, but Gin had been dealing with her for thirty-five years. She needed protection more than he did. “Want to hide down here with me?”
She turned her head to look wistfully up the stairs. “Ethan would never forgive me.”
“I’ll call him, tell him to bring Liv and food. We have a bathroom, running water. We can wait her out.”
“She’ll burn down the house if left unsupervised.”
“That’s a bit of a leap.”
Her long-suffering expression reminded him she was the expert. “Have you heard about the smoldering cigar she dropped in a wastebasket full of paper, the three times she wrapped her hot curling iron in a towel, the fact that every one of her rare attempts at food preparation has involved dumping alcohol over an open flame...?”
“Your passion for fire extinguishers suddenly makes perfect sense.”
She kept several in the house and wouldn’t spend a night in a hotel room without one, but not even that much disaster preparedness seemed to ease her mind with Simone on the scene. “Upstairs, there are a hundred windows we can escape through if somebody falls asleep on Simone watch. Down here, the only options are the stairs and a window well I haven’t checked for feasibility as an exit because the debris on the bottom could be harboring rattlesnakes.”
Her ability to envision worst-case scenarios was a creative asset — even when her audience expected her to deliver catastrophe, the inventive form it took surprised them — but it was no wonder she had nightmares.
Her right hand crept toward her left hip, prompting him to dial down the danger for her again. “I’d risk rattlesnakes to get away from Simone.”
Her lips bent into a weak smile. “So would Ethan. Liv seems to get along with her all right.”
“She’s new. She’ll learn.” He kicked the other chair toward Gin. “Sit for ten minutes. I have an important work-related question.”
A fresh worry pinched her brows closer. “What?”
“I need about nine and a half minutes to make sure I phrase it
correctly.”
“I see.” She reached for the back of the chair. “My answer deserves at least that much attention to detail.”
For two glorious seconds, he thought he would have her to himself for twenty minutes — and then Olivia sailed through the open door on a cloud of perfume and fabulousness. “There you are, handsome!”
“And here you are, gorgeous.” Lex stood to be hugged and cheek-pecked. At least Gin would see right away there was no strife between them.
When Olivia detached, he backed up and leaned against the edge of the console. “To what do we owe this unexpected privilege?”
Olivia flung herself onto the sofa at an artful angle calculated to emphasize her assets and minimize imperfections, just in case someone decided to snap a photo. “I got a sneak peek at the most delightful little story in exchange for giving the writer hope I’d have a comment. It features star-crossed lovers who have nothing but glowing praise for one another and employ coy and enigmatic evasions, respectively, when questioned about whether there’s more to their present relationship than a professional alliance.” Rich brown eyes ringed with smoky liner slid from him to Gin. “No one in this room is new to the business. We all know evasion is synonymous with confession.”
The leather covering the back of the chair dimpled under Gin’s tightening grip. “We’ve both always been hands-off about our personal lives.”
“That’s what makes your present behavior so fascinating.” Olivia’s eyes widened as if truly in the grip of childlike wonder. “They know when they talk to Lex to save personal questions until he’s answered all the rest because he’ll kill the interview. But lately, he’ll smile and ask if there’s anything else they’d like to ask, as if he’s dying to spill the beans if only someone would utter the secret password. And you!”
Gin reared back from the accusing finger jab. “I didn’t do anything!”
“Historically, that’s true. Your sole focus is your movies, and with the notable exceptions of your mother’s dalliance with your boyfriend and your affair with the brat prince of rock-and-roll, your love life has been too boring to waste words upon. And yet” — Olivia stabbed the same finger upward like a prosecutor calling the jury’s attention to an important piece of evidence — “you play dumb at the suggestion there’s anything noteworthy about working with your former lover and plead ignorance that the aforementioned lover and the star of your movie were also briefly linked romantically.”
Gin grimaced. “Frankly, I don’t know how I’m supposed to respond to those questions. Burst into tears? Flip a table? Blithely state it’s cool, we have a threesome every Tuesday?”
Several friends had offered Lex a ledge from which to jump when the news broke about Gin and Olivia working together, but he’d been more interested in their relationship than worried about getting roasted for his shortcomings as a boyfriend. He expected they’d have better things to talk about, and Gin’s indifference confirmed his suspicion. “Tuesdays aren’t good for me.”
Olivia tutted. “No other day would be better. You are the worst rock star. When we met, I thought I’d be in for a sexual circus with Lex Perry as the ringmaster.”
Roasting became a more worrisome possibility now that he was in proximity to the flames. “Suddenly, this is awkward.”
“Not that your performance was in any way unsatisfactory, darling, but it was lacking the element of danger I expect from a man of your reputation.”
Gins brows peaked. “Did you want to be shot out of a cannon?”
“Don’t be silly, but I thought there’d be a trapeze, knife throwing, something to expand my kink horizons.”
Gin angled toward him. “I know this is the last thing you want to think about, but desaturated and with a gritty filter, a sex circus would make an amazing backdrop for a music video.”
“As much as I would love to redirect this conversation from its current course, can we please go somewhere other than the single most ridiculous imposition on my professional time?”
She huffed. “Fine, I’ll keep the storyboards of the clown orgy to myself.”
“As she keeps everything juicy to herself.” Olivia gracefully adjusted her limbs, Cleopatra in repose. “She’s as maddeningly tight-lipped as you are, Lex, which brings us full circle on this pretty little runaround you’ve given me.”
“There’s no effort to generate intrigue,” Gin insisted. “The press is turning an absence of information into a story, like they always do.”
Olivia’s lips slowly curved in a feline smile. “Is that so, Lex?”
Gin transferred her gaze from Olivia to him, waiting for him to add his denial to hers.
His neck heated with guilt. “Ethan may have suggested a few weeks ago that I divulge nothing at a more leisurely pace to keep the jackals salivating.”
Gin’s lips thinned. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Now is no time to be ethical,” Olivia scolded. “The media has exploited you since you were in little purple pigtails. It’s your turn to use them for the only thing they’re good for — putting our movie front and center. All I need to know is this: is there a part in this play for a bitter ex-lover?”
His relationship with Olivia prior to their breakup had been too shallow to generate bitterness. “That would be a stretch of even your tremendous acting ability, Liv.”
She laughed. “What do I have to be bitter about? The first thing you told me was that your heart belonged to someone else. I took you at your word, and you kept it. It is precisely because I’m not bitter that I can play the part. I don’t have to convince you, the people who know the truth. I only have to convince the people who already believe it’s the truth and want validation.”
Gin shook her head. “We’re not going to lie to the press.”
Olivia laid a hand over her heart. “I will tell the absolute truth. I came to consult you about my media tour, which I am doing. Our mutual ex was here, which he is. You could cut the sexual tension between you with a chainsaw.”
Lex wished he knew how much of the latter was truth and how much was a skilled actress validating fiction he wanted to hear. The tension on his part was so dense, he couldn’t see through it to discern how little Gin reciprocated.
“No, a machete,” Olivia amended. “That evokes a steamy jungle of lust. Which makes it sound like Gin needs a wax, which is the sort of catty insinuation that makes their little reporter dicks stiff. Will you be at the premier, Lex? I could dramatize my distress by throwing popcorn in your face.”
“I’ll be on tour by then.”
Olivia adapted without a flicker of hesitation. “I’ll throw popcorn in Gin’s face instead. A catfight is better press, anyway.”
The tour’s effect on the deadline for creating the music had weighed on Lex for weeks, but he hadn’t thought ahead to how it would affect the theatrical release. He looked at Gin. “I’m sorry. I’d be there if I could.”
She brushed off the apology. “I wish I had such a good excuse to skip it. Fly free, songbird. I’ll be vicariously absent through you.”
Dammit, if she had to endure it, he should be there, too. He didn’t have an itinerary yet, but if he was within driving distance on her opening day, he’d cancel his damn gig and show up for her. If not... “Want me to send you pictures of my glamorous life of green rooms and sound checks so you can be that jerk looking at your phone during the movie?”
As soon as the offer left his mouth, it occurred to him that once she was done using him for his music, she might never want to hear from him again.
Before that depressing idea took root, she dispelled it with a soft, “That would be good.”
If that would be good, calling, texting, and emailing fifty times a day would be great, right? No. Not yet, at least. He had time between now and then to become someone she wanted to hear from more than once in a while, though.
“There you go again,” Olivia chimed, “lost in your own little world like I’m not even here orchestrating our en
tire publicity campaign.”
“You’re complicating the campaign,” Gin said more firmly. “We have the usual amount of publicity lined up.”
“And the usual aspirations to break even. You forget you have a talent deferral that’s unusual for you.”
Judging by Gin’s wince, Lex assumed a talent deferral was bad. “What does that mean?”
She took a deep breath. “Instead of paying the star the ten million dollars she’s worth—”
“My agent got me twelve for my next role.”
“Then I’m not worried you’ll starve as a result of your ill-advised deal with me.” Gin continued her explanation for his benefit. “Liv took a hundred-grand advance against the first million in revenue, and she gets ten cents on every dollar thereafter.”
He hoped Olivia would correct his math. “You took one percent of your going rate to be in this movie?”
A nonchalant roll of one shoulder disputed the gravity of her risk. “It’s a damn good movie.”
“You’re damn good in it, but either it’s a smash hit or you get nothing else?”
No wonder she was pushing so hard for manipulating the press.
Gin rubbed the worry line spanning her forehead, likely massaging an ache building behind it. “We can fake a war if you want, but leave Lex out of it. Theater isn’t his style.”
“He is disturbingly forthright, but even if we keep the flying daggers between us, they exist because of him. How about this? You told me Perry-Greene was ancient history to get me to work on your movie for chump change, and then you went behind my back for this cozy reunion disguised as a professional transaction.” Olivia flung a hand toward Lex. “He’s a man, he obviously can’t be trusted, but you were supposed to be my friend and became my betrayer.”
Lex had been shaking his head from the beginning of her plot. “You’re not making Gin out to be a conniving bitch.”
Olivia’s lower lip rolled out. “I lost my man and my friend. I’m the obvious victim of this love triangle.”
The third side intervened with her storyteller’s wisdom. “It’s too much. These people know me. Unless we create backstory in which Lex has developed a fetish for frostbite, they won’t believe he chose me over your supernova of fabulous.”