I dug back into my food and stilled mid-chew when Demetri elbowed me and asked again, “So?”
I rolled my eyes. And held up two fingers.
“Days?” Zane.
I shook my head.
“Months?” Alec.
Maybe I’d choke on my burger and die? Yeah that sounded nice.
Another shake of the head.
Demetri’s voice was hopeful. “Dog years?”
I dropped my burger onto my plate and scooted my chair out, “I think, I may just, use the bathroom too.”
“Cool,” Zane nodded, “If you run into Will maybe give him some of your food.”
“I don’t think I need any more brothers!” I yelled over my shoulder.
“Too late!” Zane yelled back.
I smiled all the way to the bathroom, rounded the corner, and ran directly into Will’s muscled chest.
My mouth was still half filled with hamburger.
And I had visions of sharing my hamburger.
But not the one I was chewing.
How were the guys suddenly the bad influence while I was left blushing and gaping, mouth half open, at the only person who had the power to continually hurt me in a merciless cycle of pain?
I jerked away.
His stare always did me in — he knew it, I knew it, America knew it. Maybe it was the way his eyes searched yours like he was prying tiny bits of information from your soul; or in my case, prying bits away so he could use them against me later. He really did have the best eyes, they made you think you mattered, his eyes. They made girls believe that every single time he opened that mouth of his, that his words, his pretty poetic words were just for them.
At one time, I believed they’d been for me.
It was a short-lived fantasy.
There’s a reason that they called his smile the Sutherland Sunset, it made you feel warm, protected, sexy.
But he wasn’t smiling now.
No he just looked — like he always did. Contemplative, angry, reserved, and too damn sexy for his own good, and mine if I was being truly honest.
“I was just going to use the bathroom.” I blurted then tried to sidestep him, his hand pressed against the wall, his arm blocked me. “Something wrong?”
“No.” He bit down on his lip, his lazy sexy eyes focused on my mouth. My feet rooted to the floor even though I wanted to bolt. “It’s just, you have… ketchup.” He rubbed his thumb across my lower lip. “There, all better.”
But it wasn’t.
Nor would it ever be… better.
My brain took action forcing my limbs to move as I ducked under his arm and shoved the bathroom door open, locking it behind me.
I was shaking by the time I made my way to the sink, gripping the porcelain with both of my hands, staring at myself in the mirror like I was a stranger.
I looked… young.
No makeup meant I looked like I was eighteen instead of in my twenties.
It also meant I looked… innocent.
And for the first time in a long time, that word made my lips curl into a small smile as I released the sink and splashed my face with water.
I had to wonder — with all the pestering about food, what would shock Will more? The fact that I’d been celibate since rehab? Or the fact that the last guy I ever slept with that meant anything to me.
Was him.
I could always take it a step further and toss one of his band shirts at him, the one I still hid inside my pillow.
Yeah give him a heart attack at thirty.
Good plan.
I shut off the water.
Forced my shoulders back.
And returned to the chaos.
“JAY!” I WAVED my script in his face. “Dude, why is everything blank after my name? Am I just standing there or what?” I yawned and gave my head a shake. After last night’s dinner, I was emotionally and physically spent, not only was I trying to corral all my clients via keeping in touch with email, but I still had conference calls with tour managers for Zane, not to mention butt loads of amounts of all the other shit that I had to take care of for AD2 and their new merchandising ventures.
Add yet there I was.
On set.
In Hell.
And apparently with a blank script.
Ang and I had shared two words since carpooling to set that morning. I said hello, she said, it’s early.
Okay so that was three.
Wordlessly, I’d made coffee.
She’d poured us our cups, adding sugar to mine.
We were a pair.
Both of us on lockdown since we’d sung together, since I’d jumped in after her in the freaking ocean.
Since I’d agreed to not only be on set but be in the movie for reasons I still couldn’t even understand or even begin to explain to anyone.
“Right, mate.” Jay examined the script, nodded a few times then looked up at me, “What’s the problem?”
“First, don’t call me mate.” I shoved the script against his chest. “Second, if you want me in it, shouldn’t you tell me what I should be doing other than… Will: sit on beach?”
He regarded me with a funny look before grabbing my shoulder and going, “There’s really nothing to say except your only plan is to go sit on that beach right there, and try not to speak when Ang runs her lines.”
“She has lines during that scene? Since when?”
“Since we added them this morning, keep up.” He patted my shoulder and jogged off, grabbing his headphones once again while one of the PAs handed him his coffee. Sometimes I hated his British ass.
At least half the time.
Begrudgingly, I stomped over to my spot on the sand. Honestly, at least I was wearing clothing, poor Angelica was handed a black string bikini and sunglasses while I at least got neon board shorts and a black tank top.
The neon pissed me off, but everything else was fine, including the Ray-Bans that I told Jay I got to keep for emotional duress.
He didn’t argue.
I shoved the aviators on my face and sat.
“Quiet on set.”
“Balls, I hate my life,” I grumbled.
“Quiet on set!” came a second yell.
I threw up my hands and mouthed sorry.
The scene was slated, and I entered into the Seventh Circle of Hell also known as Bikini Armageddon or death by strings.
Ang jogged by me, her heavy breasts spilling out of her swimsuit top nearly blinding me with so much lust that I almost improvised the scene and dove ass first into the ocean.
She stopped just shy from me as the rest of the scene around us played out.
The other characters, including Pris and Lincoln, were playing on the beach, part of the scene including a barbecue and a few other things that I hadn’t paid attention to, partially because I didn’t really give a shit and partially because they kept re-writing things.
Angelica sat.
And hugged her knees.
I stared at her.
Like a creeper.
I had no other direction.
And then she turned her face to me and whispered. “Do you think I’m a bitch?”
I jerked my attention away from her, it was an honest reaction, one I couldn’t hide.
“Never mind.” She flashed a sad smile. “Maybe I am, maybe that’s why they hate me, no matter what I do… sometimes… I think life would have been better like a bird.” Tears filled her eyes. “Where you can fly away, escape.” Her sigh was rough, it hit me right in the middle of my chest as my heart slowed to a stop. “Escape all of this.”
It was eerily identical to a conversation we’d had before breaking up.
“Why?” I croaked. Jay could go to Hell for all I cared. “Why do you need… an escape?” I didn’t say that, because in the past, the conversation had centered around drugs, and I wasn’t sure that’s what this was about, in the movie, shit I needed to read the new changes if I was going to survive any of this.
“Beca
use sometimes it’s better to feel nothing at all, than to feel all of it. I don’t think…” She chewed on her thumbnail then shoved her hands into the sand. “I don’t think I’m wired right.”
“Is anyone?” I joked.
Her smile was breathless. I scooted closer.
Apparently, whatever I was doing was fine since nobody had yelled cut. I wasn’t sure how many more lines she had, so I kept sitting there, sitting near her. It was nice, it was nice not being on the verge of yelling at her or taking out my anger on her.
Because I suddenly realized, maybe acting was the only way we were ever going to be able to have a civil conversation.
Damn you, Jaymeson.
“You’re normal. You don’t look at me like they do,” she finally said. “I think if everyone looked at me through your eyes — I wouldn’t need that escape. I think I would be tempted to…” She gulped. “Stay.” And then she straightened, holding her hands up to the sky as she fell onto her back and sighed. “For you I would stay.”
I leaned back next to her and reached for her hand.
She let me take it.
“For how long though…”
She was quiet.
And then her whisper carried across the wind, kissing me in the face. “Forever.”
We both turned to look at each other at the same time.
I smiled sadly. “I wish that was true.”
“I wish this was real.” She fired back tears in her eyes.
“Are you saying this is a dream now?” I knew what she meant, but I batted that logic away with desperation.
“Maybe.” Her pale lips glistened from her tongue sneaking out and touching them, and suddenly the only thing that mattered was this moment.
This completely unreal fabricated moment.
This moment in time where we didn’t matter.
Where our pasts collided with our present.
Where our present didn’t decide our future, at least not yet.
It was a moment frozen in time.
So I took it with both hands. I cupped the side of her face and brought my mouth down on hers with a soft kiss and whispered, “Sweet dreams.”
“Cut!” Jay yelled.
At some point very soon, I was going to murder him, but not now, now I was… possibly for the first time in two years content.
Until the crew moved around us and started setting up the next scene, shattering the precious moment I’d just shared — one of the few I wouldn’t be able to forget in a long time.
“Perfect!” Jay said jogging up to us, “I knew you had it in you.” He pointed to the trailer. “Ang go back to wardrobe and change.”
When she was gone, he turned back to me and had one of the smuggest grins I’d ever seen in my entire existence pasted cross his face. “So?”
“What the hell was that?” I asked in the calmest voice I could muster.
“It sounded like a conversation.”
“You can’t put that shit in the movie.”
“I can. I will. It’s going to destroy viewers when I kill her off…”
“Say what?” I roared.
“Kidding.” He held up his hands. “Plus, it’s not real right? Just a dream?” His smile disappeared. “Maybe, you should focus on the fact that the only time you can be civil to the one girl you’ve ever loved — is when I force it on you.”
“That’s bullshit.” I kicked the sand.
“Sure, yeah, whatever you say, mate.” He jogged off.
And I was left alone.
With people surrounding me.
But utterly alone.
I used to thrive off the feeling of being in front of people; now I hated it, and yet, I was doing this.
Why was I doing this?
For answers?
Because I was selfish?
I didn’t have time to think it through, because lucky me, I had another scene to do with Angelica.
I was going to die before this was over with.
“I CAN’T DO this anymore.” I hung my head and rested it in my hands. Gem grabbed some light lip-gloss and forced me to sit up so she could spread it across my lips. “It’s too hard, it feels too real.” I choked back a sob and closed my eyes while Gem finished up.
“This is based on true events, right?” Gem asked.
I opened one eye. “Yes.”
“But you never had that conversation in the last scene with Will?”
I squirmed, “We had something similar, a few years ago, back when…” I didn’t say it. I didn’t want to. “Back when things were bad.”
She nodded and dropped the gloss back onto the table then put her hands on her hips. “It feels real because it was your life, it is your life, and your past is suddenly now in your life.” She reached for my hands.
For some insane reason I let her take them. She squeezed. And tears welled behind my stupid eyes again.
“You’re reliving your past through different eyes.” She spoke slowly. “Realizing things that maybe you’ve never thought about before, and because Jay knows both of you very well my only assumption is he’s trying… to maybe help his friends.”
“We aren’t friends.” I snorted. “Trust me, Jay would rather drown me.”
“I see.” She released my hands. “So that’s why every A-lister that begged for this role was turned down? Because you aren’t… what did you call it? Friends?”
I stood. “Will called in a favor.”
“That makes two friends.” Her eyebrows arched and then she said the craziest thing. “How lucky you must be, to have two.”
And oddly enough, my first response was to say, bitch, please, I’ve got loads of friends.
But then I thought about it.
And realized.
I didn’t.
I never did.
Because Will had been my first true friend, and then my love.
And everyone else in my life had been a user. Andrew included. He used me to get back at Will. He used us against each other.
And I let him because I was lost, I was jealous, and I was an attention-seeking whore.
I was jerked away from my thoughts when the trailer door opened and Will was on the other side.
Shirtless.
“Hey, sorry they need Ang.”
Gem smiled at me. “Have fun with your friends.”
I gave her a seething yet teasing look before making my way toward Will, toward the door, toward another gut-wrenching scene that I refused to think about.
It’s not real.
It’s not real.
I had to convince myself it wasn’t real or I wouldn’t get through it, and since Jay liked keeping Will in the dark for obvious reasons that meant it was all on me.
A lot of pressure. Great.
“You ready for this?” Will looked nervous. I side eyed him as we fell into step beside one another.
“The next scene?”
“Yeah.” He clipped.
“No,” I answered. “No, I’m not.”
He stopped walking. “This isn’t you anymore, just remember that.”
“Will Sutherland did you just say something nice?” I teased.
He barked out a rough laugh. “Maybe the sun’s getting to my head.”
We shared a smile.
I felt warm all over.
“Yeah, maybe.”
Too soon the moment broke and I was suddenly in front of the camera, supposedly wasted and throwing myself at Jaymeson, at his character, the same way I had a few years ago.
It was painful.
It was horrible.
I wanted to die.
And when they yelled “cut,” I ran off the set like a woman being chased by monsters. Except you can’t escape the monsters that live within.
I’d tried.
I’d failed.
SHE’D RUN OFF set. Taken an Uber back to the house. And hadn’t spoken to anyone all day.
I knew she was in her room because of the lack of door and suddenly felt like an e
ven bigger ass because she couldn’t suffer in privacy.
And what made matters worse was I was thankful that she wasn’t locked in the bathroom because I couldn’t do it again, I couldn’t barge in on her and see her doing drugs.
“What the hell are you doing?” I roared while Ang stumbled toward me, slinking her dress up so she showed so much thigh I almost saw her underwear. “Ang! What are you doing?” She rubbed her eyes and shrugged, “I was tired, all right? So I snorted some coke, it’s no big deal, plus we can drink more.”
I steadied her on her feet. “Ang it is a big deal, drugs are a big deal, who gave you this shit?”
“Problem?” Andrew came up to the door, “The guys want to get the party started, looking good Ang.” I hated their relationship, loathed it actually.
She gave me a guilty look.
“Give us a minute, Andrew.”
He held up his hands.
“Ang, you can’t be doing this shit, you’re young, way too young to be throwing everything away just so you can have more shots, all right? Let’s just go home, you and me.”
“NO!” She jerked away, “I can’t! This is my life! My career! Sure everything is great for you Mr. One Billion views on YouTube, but not all of us are so lucky! My last movie tanked, thanks to you,” I flinched, mainly because most of my parts were cut they were so bad, “And now, I just… I need to be seen, all right? Andrew gets it why don’t you?”
Murderous rage seeped into my soul. “You talk to Andrew about this?”
“At least he’s around to listen to me!” she yelled. “What did you expect? When you send your bandmates to make sure I’m okay? It’s nice, but it’s not you, it’s like you don’t even have time for me anymore, for us.”
Frustrated, I gripped the side of the doorframe, “Ang, that’s not true, things are crazy now, yes, ask me to give it up.”
She balked.
“Seriously, I’ll walk right out that door right now. I’ll book us a flight wherever you want to go, but that means you give it up too, that means we start our life like I’ve been wanting to do for the past year, that means you agree to marry me that means everything changes.”
“I’m nineteen.”
“Exactly, you’re nineteen, you shouldn’t be in the bathroom doing drugs, thinking your career is over. It’s not over, Ang, it’s just beginning. But if this isn’t what you want, I can support—”
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