by Naomi Niles
“No, you’re not wrong, but I just don’t trust him. Like, I think he may be trying to pull you into some shady shit. Like, I think he directs porn on the side, and that is what he wants you for.”
“What?” I laughed. “Please, Ezra, that is sad. If he did have his hand in directing porn, I think that would’ve made some kind of splash by now. I’ve told a lot of people in Hollywood who my director was and nobody said one bad thing about him. Well, if, ‘that guy is an amazing director’ is a bad thing, then I take that back. But seriously, Ezra, you are worrying over nothing.”
“Nothing?” A cold, hard glare escaped his eyes and pierced my soul as I sat across from him. It was a look that was foreign to me until now. His jawbones gyrated inside of his mouth like he was grinding meat. “So, my girl is going out with a porn director, and she is sitting here telling me that I have nothing to worry about?!” His raised voice attracted the attention of neighboring customers.
I dropped my face in embarrassment. “Ezra? Will you please lower your voice? We can talk about this like civilized adults.”
“No! Look, I don’t care what you tell me. If you are my girl, then you are not going to that dinner date with him. My woman is not going to be a porn star, and I am not giving that director the chance to do anything with you when I’m not around! That’s for real.”
The area we sat in grew silent as more eyes turned in our direction. I sat quietly as tears bubbled at the bottom of my eyes. It was all going so wrong. I thought he would be happy for me. I thought he would trust me to do the right thing, the same way I trusted him just minutes ago. I looked away from him for a few long seconds as the waitress came to our table. “Hi, my name is Shannon, and I will be your server today. Can I start you all off with any appetizers? Drinks?” She waited for a response, but there was none given.
I grabbed my purse, stood up from the table, and made my way back to the hotel. “Hannah... Hannah!” he called out to me, but I didn’t turn around. I wiped my tears as I walked down the sidewalk and disappeared into a crowd of people. Somehow, I still felt alone. Lonelier than I had felt in a long time.
I didn’t talk to Ezra much at all the following day except to tell him that I was still going to dinner with Leonard. That made him even more upset, but I wasn’t going to sell myself short just to appease him. If he didn’t understand, then he would have to cope with my decision another way. I didn’t want to miss out on any opportunities to fulfill my dream.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Ezra
“Aaaaand, action!”
The camera started rolling as Hannah walked up to me. “So, babe, how was your day?”
I rolled my eyes and looked away from her, “It was fine. I just–”
“Cut! Cut! Cut! Cut!” Leonard stood up from his chair and threw his loudspeaker onto the ground. Pieces of it flew in each direction as it shattered on the concrete. He stormed up to me as I stood still, undaunted by his aggression. “What is wrong with you, Ezra?! Huh?! What is the problem?! We have five days to get these scenes shot with perfection, and you have no passion! No attitude! No nothing! This is not who I hired to play this role! What is the problem, Ezra?! We must resolve this now, because time is money!”
I glared at him, then at Hannah. “Nothing. I’m fine.”
He turned around to the cameramen. “He is fine. This man says he is fine.” He laughed obnoxiously, then turned back towards me. “All right. If you are fine, then show me!” He clapped his hands together. “Show me right now! We will run this scene one more time, and I want you to knock it dead!” He put his hands on my face and pulled me closer to him, his breath nicking at my nostrils. “You can do this, Ezra! Focus! Focus, focus, focus!” He spun around and walked back to his chair. “Places, people, we’ve got a fucking movie to shoot! Places!”
He hopped back into his chair as Hannah looked at me. In her eyes, I could tell she wanted to say more, but she couldn’t. She walked away from me and went back to her place as Leonard yelled out, “Goddamn it! Where is my loudspeaker?! Oh, never mind! Action! Fucking action!”
Hannah walked up to me again. “So, babe, how was your day?” She slid her arms around my waist and moved in for a kiss, but I didn’t respond. A lock-lipped glare was given, and right after that, a loud, erratic sigh exploded from Leonard’s mouth.
“Cut! Goddamn it! Cut!” He hopped out of his chair, “You know what, we will take a break. Yes, that is it. We will take a 15-minute break, and after that, I will wake up from this FUCKING NIGHTMARE, and EZRA will run his FUCKING PARTS LIKE WE ARE PAYING HIM TO DO or HE WILL NEVER WORK ANOTHER FUCKING MOVIE IN HIS FUCKING LIFE!” He stormed off the set, yelling for one of his assistants to give him a glass of scotch.
I turned away from Hannah and started towards my trailer. I wasn’t feeling it today, especially after Hannah still went on a date with Leonard last night. I didn’t even want to talk to her about it. All night, I kept replaying images of his hand sliding up her thigh while he showed her how much money she could make in the porn industry. I nearly punched a hole in my hotel room wall, but I was able to bridle my anger for the moment. Hannah caught up with me. “Ezra?” I ignored her and continued walking. “Ezra? Ezra! Will you just wait a fucking minute!”
She grabbed my arm, but I yanked away from her and spun around. “What? Now, you care about what I think? Now, you care about how I feel? Huh? Because you sure as fuck didn’t yesterday.”
She sighed and reached for my arm again, but I moved it out of her reach. She sucked her teeth. “Ezra, I’d rather not talk out here in front of all the movie people, OK? Cameramen. Set crew. Please, can we just… can we just go inside your trailer? Please?”
I wanted to tell her no and slam the door in her face, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. The bottom line is that I loved her and the thought of someone else coming between us drove me crazy. “Fine,” I said as I opened the door. When we got inside, I walked into the kitchen and grabbed an energy drink from the small refrigerator. “Talk. You wanted to come in here and talk, so talk. I’m listening.” The can popped open as I pulled the lid back.
“Look, Ezra. Nothing happened last night.”
“Something did happen. You went on a date.”
“Really? A date? That is the last fucking thing that meeting was. Now that I think about it, he just might be gay. But he wanted to talk about movies, and that’s it. There are two movies coming up at the end of this year, and he mentioned both of them to me. They were not fucking porn or anything like that. One was another love story, kinda like The Notebook, and the other was a romantic comedy. That’s it. No funny business.”
I took a sip of my drink, mostly to hide my embarrassment for acting like an idiot. That bad part about what she said is that I believed her. I didn’t, for one second, think she was telling me anything but the truth about what happened on their date. “You know what, baby, I believe you. I do, for real.” I went over to the small couch and took a seat, and soon after, she followed behind me. “It’s just that,” I looked away from her, hesitant to release what was in my heart. I had a thing about showing vulnerability, especially in the face of a woman, but I wanted to be honest with her so she could understand me better.
“My ex, Tanya. She had a thing with one of my directors in the past. It’s not like the lawyer thing because right now, that is just speculation, but I caught her red-handed with him. The flirty text messages and pictures they sent each other. It was all going on behind my back with a guy that I figured would never go for Tanya. He always said how she was pretty, but she wasn’t his type, but the whole time, it was just a smoke screen to get my attention from them. I kind of felt like it was the same thing with Leonard. Like, I know he has his tendencies or whatever, but in my mind, it was all an act to throw me off again. That’s why I was always unsure about him.”
She sighed. “Baby, come here.” She pulled me closer to her, and I leaned on her breasts like they were pillows. “I completely understand your appreh
ension with everything now. At first, I thought you were just some lunatic or something, you know? Like, I didn’t look further into it, and I didn’t think to at the moment, but when I thought about it, later on, I knew that your past experiences had something to do with it. It only made sense, and when you told me the story, everything clicked.”
She kissed me on my forehead. “Listen, you have nothing to worry about with Leonard. Not only is that guy weird, but like I said, I really believe he is gay. Or bisexual at the least. If anything, I would think that he would pull both of us in and ask us to have a threesome with him and some of his other old, wrinkly friends. Yuck!” She shivered. “I almost threw up at the thought of it. His old, sagging, hairy balls, and you know they are hairy because the guy’s chest hairs make it look like he is hiding a fucking jungle beneath his shirt.”
I laughed. “Yeah, it does look like that. But, I don’t know, I guess my insecurities got the best of me when I heard that you were going out with him. In the back of my mind, I knew it was nothing, but I couldn’t stop the ‘what if’ thoughts from creeping into my mind. It drove me fucking crazy last night, and I almost left my hotel and marched through the whole city to look for yall.”
“What?” she said as she laughed, covering her mouth. “I am so glad you didn’t. The only thing you would have seen is Leonard fawning over how beautiful you are. He said he wanted to ask you out for a personal dinner as well, but he didn’t get a good one-on-one vibe from you, so he didn’t even ask. But,” she paused, “he wanted me to at least throw the idea your way and see what you–”
“No.”
“–said. Well, I guess that is that, then.”
“All right, everyone,” Leonard said through his loudspeaker. “I hope we are done PUSSY FOOTING around so we can finally record this scene and get on with the rest of the day. Places, everyone, places!”
“Well, that’s our cue. Will you be all right now?”
I stood up and extended my hand to her. “Yeah. I will be. Thanks for listening and for dealing with my craziness. I think I owe you an apology now.”
After she had stood next to me, I pulled her in for a kiss. Our lips intertwined as I slid my hand down her backside. She held it in place and halted the kiss. “No! No, no, and no again! Leonard will kill the both of us if we started making out and missed our cues.” She kissed me again. “But, you just save that for later, and I’m sure we can pick up where we left off.”
I smacked her behind on our way out, and just like that; I was back in my right frame of mind. “Ezra. Are we ready to go now? Are you done with whatever the hell was wrong with you before?”
“Yeah, Leo,” I said with a smile. “It’s all good. I’m ready, and I apologize about that before.”
“No, no. You show me your apology with actions, not words. Knock this scene out, and that is when I will accept any apology you throw my way.” He clapped his hands. “Places, everyone. Let’s get this down!”
Hannah and I knocked the scene out of the park on one take. The emotion that I needed for the particular scene flooded back into me like a rushing stream of water and left Leonard speechless. “Yes! Yes! Now, that is my Ezra! That is my Ezra!” He wrapped his arms around me while Hannah looked on, smirking at our interaction. I tightened my lips and shook my head at her, forbidding her to encourage him to continue.
“Yes, that is your Ezra!” she added. Her face turned red as I threatened her with violent facial expressions. When he finally released me, I smirked at him as if I didn’t mind the extra hug. I figured I owed him that much since I gave such a shitty performance earlier in the day.
“All right, so, that just about wraps up the shoot for today. Quick work, right? Right. So, same energy tomorrow bright and early at 7 am. We have the auditorium downtown rented out for a few hours, so don’t be late. Time is money! Stay out of trouble you two, and enjoy the rest of your day!”
We walked back to my trailer with my arm around her shoulder and her hand on my stomach. It seemed that we had either grown comfortable enough to let people on set know about our relationship, or we just didn’t care anymore. Either way, it was a known fact that we were an item. “So, are we going to go out somewhere tonight?” she asked once we got inside.
“Go out? Where do you have in mind?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I’ve only been out to eat with Leonard and then our shitty date when I got up and left the first day we got here. I kind of want to see what this city really has to offer. Maybe a little of the nightlife or something? Not too much, though, because we have to be up early.”
“Hmm… let me see what I can put together.”
Later that night, we ended up on Cuban Street in Wellington, New Zealand. There were a lot of bars and nightclubs lined along the streets, but there were some areas that had a DJ booth set up just outside the store and people walking past would stop and dance to the music. People cleared space for a dance floor right in the middle of the large sidewalk, and couples joined together, dancing to the sounds spewing out of the speakers. The crowd was a mix of adults in their mid-30s, to older adults that looked to be closer to their mid-40s.
The air was still, and the atmosphere was electric as I stood to the side with my arm around Hannah. “This is nice,” I said with a smile. I had to speak directly into her ear so she could hear me over the music. “I almost want to go out there and dance a little bit with the rest of them.”
“Well, let’s go.” She tugged at my arm, but I held still.
“No, no, I mean, I don’t dance. At all. I’ll go out there and look like a fool.”
“But, you’ll be my fool. Come on, Ezra. Please?”
“Nah, nah. I can’t.”
She sashayed onto the dance floor just a few feet away from me, and as the music switched to something more uptempo, she spun around and swung her hips right in front of me. Teasing me. Trying to allure me to step out onto the dance floor with her. She faced me again and lipped, “Come on,” as she curled her finger, begging me to come closer. I smiled and licked my bottom lip as she ran her hands down the sides of her body, still moving seductively like a hula dancer, popping her hips left to right. Her breasts moved vigorously as if they were trying to break free from their red cage. She wiggled her finger again, urging me to step out onto the dance floor with her.
I looked around at the crowd and noticed a number of guys looking her way as she gave me a private show in public. Finally, I walked out onto the dance floor with her. She quickly spun and put her back towards me, then shoved her ass into my crotch as the bass from the music vibrated the concrete beneath us. She leaned forward, grinding on me as I stood there, moving to the beat the best that I could without looking like an idiot. People around us cheered as if we were the center of attention, and suddenly, my apprehension went out the door.
I let myself go, and as a smile stretched from ear to ear, I grabbed hold of her hips and swayed right along with her in the middle of the floor. A few other couples danced beside us, and soon after, more people moved onto the dance floor. We were crowded with people around us on each side, but in my mind, it was just us two dancing like there was nobody else around. I rubbed my hands over her breasts and down to her stomach as she leaned the back of her head onto my shoulder. I kissed her on her neck as I felt her heartbeat speed up. I stiffened below my waist and poked her on her behind. Once she felt it, she pushed her backside further into me as if she were aroused. Suddenly, she turned to face me, and in the blink of an eye, her lips were pressed against mine.
The music played in the background as we kissed under the lights on Cuba Street while the DJ spun his records. After a few moments, we stopped dancing, and the only connection we had with each other was our lips. Our tongues slid around in each other’s mouths as we stood in the midst of a sea of people, oblivious to what else was going on around us. As the music slowed down, so did we, but the fire in our eyes burned bright like a supernova. Her dancing. Our kiss. It all lit a fire in me that only she
could relinquish. Without saying another word, I grabbed her by the hand and led her from the dance floor.
Our hotel was 15 minutes away, and during our walk, we could barely keep our hands off each other. We stopped periodically. I pinned her against brick walls of closed buildings and kissed her while my hand slid up her dress. She would smile and smack my hand away, then quickly pull me along so we could get back to the hotel before we did anything in public that would get us arrested. As soon as we got into the room, she pushed me onto the bed and kicked her shoes off. “No, baby,” I said as her heels crashed into the wall. “Put those back on tonight. I want to see you in those.”
She smiled and slid her feet back into her heels, then removed her dress from over her head. Her breasts sat upright beneath her bra as she walked towards me on the bed. I lifted myself onto my elbows and waited for her to reach me. I was anxious for this to happen like it was going to be our first time.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Hannah
I pulled my dress off, exposing the work I had put in on the treadmill since we started shooting the movie. Carrie helped me stay focused, and once I started the routine, I didn’t stop. My stomach wasn’t flat like an ironing board, but the pouch was fit and on its way to being toned. My confidence was on a steady incline.
I smiled and went in to kiss him again as he slid his hands over my ass. I climbed on top of him as he laid on the bed with a smirk, looking directly at me. The bulge in his pants grew as I inched closer to him. The illustrious glow from the moon shined through the window that overlooked Wellington. As I walked closer to him and slid my fingers onto his legs, he leaned back onto the bed and motioned with his finger for me to come closer, and without hesitation, I unbuckled his pants and removed his penis from its cage. I slowly moved my lips onto it, increasing his anxiety and testing his will to remain motionless while I controlled every aspect of his enjoyment. He reached his hand towards my head, but I slapped it away. I didn’t want this to go fast; I wanted him to savor the sensation.