by April Fire
But he was, and he did. He proved that every time he came through the door and asked me about my day first, every time he got off work early so he could pick me up from my job and the two of us could take a drive together in the late afternoon sunshine, before the sun went down. Every time he rolled over in bed first thing in the morning and pulled me against his chest and pressed a kiss to my forehead and told me he loved me. Sometimes, I looked over at him and felt as though I was going to tear up with the depth of how much I loved him. Even my parents, who’d traveled up for a visit a month or so before, had giving given their approval to both Dominic and the relationship in general. Which was good, because in a few months time I imagined they’d be spending a lot more time in the city with us. Judging by how excited they’d been when I’d broken the news, at least.
“You ready?” Dominic was suddenly at my side, pulling me out of my little reverie.
“Yeah, yeah,” I nodded, blinking. “Sorry, off in my own little world there.”
“Mind if I join you?” he asked, and leaned in to plant a kiss against my lips. I kissed him back, smiling against his mouth; I had finished up my last job a few weeks before and was thoroughly enjoying being able to spend more time being around Dominic at his own work.
He pulled back and clapped his hands together, suddenly businesslike.
“So, where are we going?” I asked, and he tapped his nose playfully.
“It’ll be more fun if it’s a surprise,” he countered. “You ready?”
He slipped his arm around my waist and took my elbow, and briefly leaned forward to brush his fingers across my stomach.
“And are you ready too?” he crooned to my belly, and I rolled my eyes.
“They can’t even hear you yet,” I reminded him, and he shrugged.
“I still like talking to them,” he replied with a smile, and we headed to the studio lot exit. I was already looking forward to getting off my feet – fuck, this was only after a few weeks, I wondered how tired I’d be after a few more months of this?
We arrived at the car, and Dominic inhaled a big lungful of air as he took hold of the wheel.
“Good to be done?” I asked, and he nodded, reaching over to squeeze my leg.
“Good to be with you,” he replied softly, and leaned over to steal another brief kiss before the two of us pulled out of the lot, hit the road, and turned to drive off into the glowing orange sunset.
The End
A-List Temptation
April Fire
Chapter One
Dina
When I stepped off the bus in Devina, it felt very different to when I’d done the same over in Hollywood.
The air felt different on my skin, less heavy with traffic pollution and that bright, peppy feeling that came with a dozen people in the immediate vicinity who had come out to LA in the hopes of fulfilling their dreams and just knew that today was the day. I used to love that feeling, the optimism even in the face of the truth that most of us wouldn’t make it anyway, but it got exhausting after a while. Every friend I had seemed to need a bolstering at least twice a week, and, not being an actress myself, the world I moved in was so different that I often had trouble relating to their struggles.
It was why I got out, in the end. Because I couldn’t face the fakeness of Hollywood much longer. Yes, the job opportunities were numerous, especially for a make-up artist like me with a handful of big-name movies under my belt, but everything felt so…thin. As if it could have gone to pieces at any second. That wasn’t how I wanted to live my life, especially when there were so many fascinating projects kicking off across the country in Devina.
If Hollywood was home to the blockbuster, Devina was home to indie cinema. I’d found my break in independent movies, and something about returning to that felt like a homecoming. I was glad to be there, to be wandering around the streets, seeing directors whose movies I’d sought out at late-night showings and actresses I recognized from that thing that one time. The egos were smaller, and I liked that.
Well, the egos were smaller for the most part. Once in a while, a big star would come whirling through this town and leave a trail of chaos in their wake – and that was exactly what was happening the week I arrived.
I’d been invited to Devina to work on a new movie, a fascinating drama that had drawn me across the country on the sheer strength of its story. I’d been approached by one of the agencies I used to work for, right at the time when I was getting tired of all the artifice of Hollywood and was looking for something new. Any other day of the year, I’d have turned it down – but something about the project called out to me at once, and I couldn’t deny it. The only downside? The movie was going to be directed by Will Derry.
Yes, that Will Derry, practically the biggest movie star in the country, the guy who could guarantee a box-office hit by just sticking his name on a project and keeping his fingers crossed. He had started out as the heartthrob in a popular teen franchise, and had soon risen to new heights of fame the likes of which no-one had really seen before. And man, did he exploit it – he went through models and actresses like they were cigarettes, breaking hearts across the country as he worked his way through a demanding shooting schedule that perfectly balanced awards-bait with blockbuster money-makers. He was one of the biggest names in the acting game, and now he decided that he wanted to turn his hand to what happened behind the camera.
He was exactly the kind of man I had left Hollywood to avoid, and in any other life I would have seen taking the job on his movie as a lateral move more than a rejection of the artifice of Hollywood. But the project was just too good to pass up and besides, I knew that the movie would be a hit, and having my name attached to something that was guaranteed to gain that much attention could only be a good thing. Or at least, that was what I was telling myself.
He had seen my work in another movie, a sci-fi flick I’d done towards the start of my career, and contacted my ex-agency who’d managed to get hold of me and let me know that he was expressing an interest. Judging from the tone of my old agent’s voice when she called, I knew she thought I would have been stone-cold crazy to turn it down, and seemed gobsmacked when I said I needed some time to think about it. I knew she was right, though, and eventually called her back to take the job, packed up my stuff, and travelled across the country just in time to start the shoot.
I had been set up with a small apartment in the center of town, about a mile from where the movie was due to begin shooting the next day, and was taking some time out to get to know the place a little. For a town with such an indie reputation, it was buzzing with activity and life; there were posters plastered everywhere, and it seemed like every time I glanced over my shoulder I caught sight of some aspiring director framing shots with his cheap-ass camera and trying to make the next great indie classic.
I couldn’t help but smile as I watched everyone working around me. There was something so…comforting about being around people who appeared as if they had to muddle along to make things work. Back in Hollywood, everyone had been constantly pretending that they and they alone knew the key to getting movies made, finding real talent, and searching out the scripts that would turn into blockbusters.
No-one wanted to let the façade slip for a second, because if you did, someone would pounce up and take your spot before you had a second to make a crack about company loyalty. Here, I felt as though I could catch my breath without having to worry about some up-and-comer gouging the ground out from underneath me and trying to steal my spot.
Filming started the next day, and I couldn’t help but feel a little nervous skip in my chest when I thought of it. I mean, I’d worked with big stars before, but Will Derry? I had muttered the name to myself when I’d first gotten the job, trying to remind myself that this was real and that I was actually going to be working with one of the biggest stars in the world, but it all felt like some kind of strange dream.
Of course, only a few years before, I’d been crushing on him in t
he posters of the teen movie he’d starred in, his face plastered across the walls of my little sister and all her friends. And, when I’d come to Hollywood, he’d been that one star I’d nursed a little fantasy about – that we might run into each other on the street, and he’d be so taken with me he’d denounce his playboy ways and settle down.
Or, that other fantasy, which was just one night with him to see what all the hype was about…either would do. And now, I’d be working with him. Probably not closely, granted, but close enough that I would be able to put a face to all those heated teenage fantasies I had previously convinced myself I was way too grown-up for these days.
It wasn’t like I’d had much luck on the dating scene in Hollywood, anyway. The place was crowded with the kind of women who would have stopped traffic where I was from, and being pretty wasn’t really part of my job description so I never put in the amount of effort that those women did. As a matter of course, I found myself getting overlooked by the few dudes I’d found who I actually liked, and just resigned myself to the fact that working in the film industry as someone other than an actor basically meant that I was going to struggle to get the attentions of anyone for any length of time. I couldn’t imagine that Will Derry would be any different – but hey, a girl could dream, right?
I came to a halt outside a small coffee job, and ducked inside to grab something to eat. I wasn’t really hungry – too nervous about starting work the next day – but nonetheless, I wanted to get something in my system so I didn’t keel over on Main Street.
Inside, the place was packed with hipsters and students clutching books on classic films. I grinned. This was the kind of place I was used to. When I had been working on getting my qualifications, it had been in a small university town like this, the kind of place that seemed to hold so much promise and opportunity for the hipsters of the world. A couple of people glanced over at me, and I could see them looking me up and down, trying to figure out whether or not they knew me from anywhere and whether they should come up to me and try to get me on their team. Bad luck – I was a nobody, and, as a make-up artist, I probably always would be. But that was the way I liked it.
I picked up my coffee and started making my way back down the street and towards my apartment, tipping my head back briefly and letting the early-morning rays of the sun hit my face. I had some unpacking to do and plenty of paperwork to get through, but right then and there, nothing mattered more than the fact that I was finally out of Hollywood and about to start work on a movie that I actually liked the sound of. Vive le difference.
Chapter Two
Will
I peeled my eyes open one at a time, as though that would lessen the cringe-worthy impact of the sun on my field of vision.
“Fuck,” I growled as I rolled over in bed. What the fuck had I been up to the night before? I searched my scattered memories, and came back with a bottle of champagne – and a girl. The same girl, incidentally, who was fast asleep next to me in bed.
I glanced out the window of my trailer and tried to estimate the time based on the height of the sun in the sky. Maybe…midday? How long did that give me before I had to be at that meeting with the investors, a half hour? I swung my legs out of bed and my head spun, but I forced myself to get up and tap out a message to my assistant asking for a cup of coffee and something savory to take the edge off my throbbing brain. I raked my fingers through my hair and headed for the shower, the sun feeling good on my bare skin as I wondered how the hell I was going to turf this chick from my bed without coming across as a total asshole.
I mean, what did she expect? I turned on the water loudly, hoping the sound would wake her and remind her that she probably had somewhere to be this morning just like I did. Climbing under the perfectly warm stream, I closed my eyes and tried to wash the remnants of the night before off of me. I was still acting like I was starring in this movie, not directing it – it was so easy to forget that behind the camera was so much more work than in front of it.
I had a meeting with the investors first thing today, and then I had to go down and check out the set to make sure there was nothing else that needed changing before we started shooting the next day. I was confident I had everything in place, but it never seemed to work that simply. Directing was already a pain in the ass, and I hadn’t so much as switched on a fucking camera yet.
I climbed out of the shower and grabbed some clean clothes from the dresser, peering back through the door and seeing, to my relief, that the girl was dressing quickly and quietly as though she didn’t want to alert me to the fact that she was leaving. Thank fuck. I didn’t want to have to deal with turning her out. It was always the worst part of dealing with groupies – they never seemed to know where the line was between “well, that was fun, but you should go” and “I secretly want you to stay and get in the way of my entire fucking day”. She was cute, though, a film student, from what I remembered from the night before. I tugged a shirt over my head as I watched her ass shimmying into a pair of black cotton panties. Maybe I could just…
My phone buzzed and I snatched it off the dresser so it wouldn’t alert her to my voyeurism. It was a message from my assistant, Damien, letting me know that the meeting started in twenty minutes and was a quarter-hour walk across town. I dressed hurriedly, waiting for the girl to start her walk of shame back to the dorms, and then dived out the door myself.
“Morning,” Damien greeted me, glancing after the girl who was scurrying off the lot before anyone got a chance to see her. “Good night?”
“Yeah, thanks,” I replied, plucking the coffee from his hands and taking a sip. He cocked an eyebrow.
“You sure you’re ready for this meeting?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m sure,” I promised him. “Come on, let’s get this done so I can go back to bed.”
If working in Hollywood had given me one thing, it was a stone-cold ability to work through even the worst of hangovers, and that wasn’t about to change just because I was all the way out in Devina.
There was a reason I’d chosen this place to shoot the movie. It was so far from everything I knew that it felt like a chance to restart, to establish myself outside the world that had put me where I was today. I had never in my life shot a movie there, and figured that now was as good as any to start. I loved this city, loved the way it seemed ripe with ideas and knowledge and people, and that was the perfect place to shake off all the Hollywood shit that was still following me around and actually get this movie done and dusted.
How long had it been since that script had first ended up in front of me? A year, two? I’d shopped it around to all the directors who I’d worked with before, even the assholes who’d insisted on treating me like shit to get the performance they wanted, but no-one was biting. Everyone liked it, but no-one loved it, and I just couldn’t figure out why. As far as I was concerned, it was about the best script in Hollywood that hadn’t been turned into a movie, and why nobody seemed to want to take it on was beyond me.
I still remember the moment it clicked, the moment I realized that I was going to have to be the one to do this – I was sitting in my apartment, Scotch in hand, right after ducking out of the premier of a new release of mine that I didn’t have a whole lot of faith in. I had that sinking feeling in my stomach, not that the movie would bomb or suck, but that I didn’t like what I had produced. I hated feeling that way and would have done anything to avoid it again – but I was at the beck and call of the directors who liked me, and all the roles they had for me seemed…samey. The bad boy with the heart of gold, the antihero who came through in the end.
They were fun for a while, but I wanted something new, wanted something that would make me sit up and take notice. I’d been cruising through that city on autopilot for a long time, and I needed something to snap me out of my coma. Something big, something different. Something like that script that was sitting untouched in my drawer in my desk.
What followed was a flurry of activity as half the world seemed to tr
y and talk me out of it and half the world shoved me in the direction of my new idea. Before I knew it, we had a handful of investors on board who wanted some say over the direction of the movie, and I was getting in touch with the screenwriter for rewrites and running auditions and trying to figure out how in the hell I was going to make this shit work. I would have funded it all myself, but the studio was reluctant to throw their weight behind something that they knew only I was invested in so they insisted on having some other names in the ring. I was a little pissed at first, until my agent pointed out that I hadn’t exactly cultivated a brand known for my reliability. He wasn’t wrong.
“How long do we have before the meeting starts?” I asked, and Damien shot me a look. One of the reasons I’d kept him about so long was because he didn’t take any of my shit, and he never felt the need to protect me from my own fuck-ups.
“Fifteen minutes,” he replied. “And you’re going to need to walk faster.”
“I might fall to pieces if I do that,” I warned him with a wince as the sun appeared from behind one of the neighboring trailers and scorched my retinas once more.
“This movie might if you don’t,” he shot back, and I grinned. He was as invested in the success of this project as I was, and I could always rely on him to give me the kick up the ass I required to keep me on my toes.
We made our way across the lot, and as we did so, I spotted one of the sets being put together for shooting the next day. I felt a warm rush of excitement as I realized how close we were to actually doing this. After all this time, all this effort, all this money, and all that being told that I would never pull it off, here we were, on the eve, poised to actually make it happen. I knocked back a mouthful of my coffee and continued on my way to the investors meeting with a renewed resolve. I could do this. I could do anything.