Behind the Scenes

by Christina C Jones

  I still remembered the conversation I’d had with Nubia about it. How grateful I was, because she hadn’t tried to talk me out of it. As soon as I mentioned going to Vegas to write, she was right there with me, offering not just her support, but dangling the carrot in front of me that if I wrote it, she would put everything in place for me to actually make this show.

  I was thankful for my family, beyond words.

  “So you’re here now,” Steph spoke up. “Is it everything you thought you wanted?”

  My eyebrows went up as I thought about it, not wanting to give just a knee jerk answer.

  “Honestly? It’s more.”

  Steph reached his bottle out for me to bump with mine, which was still in baby girl’s hands, and made her laugh. “That’s exactly the kind of shit I want to hear.”

  It was a good way to spend a Sunday morning, into the afternoon.

  We talked, we laughed, we ate, I subjected myself to Elodie sticking a camera in my face for social media, and took a picture with Weezy that was so cute Mari insisted I put it up online.

  Ugh.

  Logan and Nubia had both been in my ear about their whole changing the narrative plan. On its face, it made sense, and I wasn’t even completely opposed.

  I just hated it.

  After the way celebrity news media had treated me in the wake of my father’s death, I hated the idea of offering up my happiness to them.

  “It’s not for them though,” Logan had assured me. And she was naked at the time, which made me a lot more willing to listen. “Are they going to see it, and use it? Yeah, probably. Sure. But it’s for your fans. It’s for the people who want to see you win. And… it’s for you. How is anybody going to know who you really are, the things that really make you happy, the people you really care about, if you don’t show them?”

  Fine.

  But I still hated that shit though.

  We ended up kicking it at my house all day, until it was time for dinner. Then everybody got packed up and dressed to go out together for a meal before they left in the morning. They’d be getting on a plane at the same time me and Elodie were due on set.

  I’d been out alone in Vegas several times since I’d been back without anybody bothering me. Even while I was with Elodie, I’d been able to enjoy a certain level of solitude because I wasn’t personally that recognizable. If they knew who she was, they likely wrote me off as her boyfriend or something. When women stared, it was because I looked good, not because they knew who I was.

  Tonight, with the combined star power of El, Nubia, and Steph – plus that little bullshit “scandal” because of Sienna – I felt like everywhere I looked, somebody was pointing a camera in my face.

  Okay.

  Maybe it was just one or two people.

  But still, it felt like one or two too many, and the shit was irritating when I was just trying to go out and enjoy a meal with my family. I knew it would be fine once we got inside the actual restaurant, but in the meantime we had to walk through the crowded boulevard with folks staring, and I was annoyed.

  Which didn’t make the next thing my gaze fell on any easier to process.

  We’d gotten through the doors of the building where the restaurant was housed – this communal type spot with several eateries in one place. The doors we walked through were just the main ones for the building and we could see the front entrances of the others. Steph was giving our name to the hostess waiting out front of the one we’d chosen when I looked up and saw Logan.

  Wearing the kind of dress that made me want to peel her out of it.

  Which… wasn’t saying much because I wanted to peel Logan out of all her clothes all the time. But it was the accessory on her arm while she was in that dress that really had me going.

  Not the bracelet, no.

  Who the fuck is this nigga?

  With my hands in my pockets, I broke away from my family to approach where Logan was walking arm in arm with some dude who looked like he was fresh off a Sugar&Spice cover. She’d been too busy giggling at whatever the fuck he was talking about to notice me when I noticed her, but as I approached, I must have caught her gaze because her head turned in my direction and her mouth spread into an easy, happy smile.

  “Pierre, hey!” she greeted, breaking away from her date to offer me a quick hug. “What are you doing out here?” she asked.

  I gestured behind me to where the rest of my family had already gone inside the restaurant, but Steph was hanging near the front door obviously waiting on me. “Just having dinner with the fam before they head out in the morning,” I told her. “I see you’re out here looking good for a date. How you doing, man?” I said, addressing dude that had been just patiently standing there.

  “Oh God,” Logan muttered under her breath as he accepted the hand I’d offered for him to shake.

  “Can’t complain, bruh.”

  Yeah, I bet you can’t.

  “Pierre, this is my friend Trei Norwood,” Logan said, giving me the evil eye like I was doing something wrong. “His family owns a local spirit company. Trei, this is Pierre Perry. My… well… you’ve heard a lot about him from me.”

  Trei chuckled. “Indeed. Good to finally meet the man behind the mystery,” he added, and… I didn’t know what that shit was supposed to mean, so I didn’t like it. So I was about to ask about it when another woman walked up and Trei slipped an arm around her.

  Immediately, I caught that their vibe was much more intimate than anything that had been going on with him and Logan when I spotted them.

  “Pierre, this is Zoraya Whitfield, Trei’s girlfriend. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to catch up with both of them, and since this was my night off from work, they asked if I wanted to get dressed up and join them for dinner.”

  Oh.

  Oh.

  “Yeah,” Logan murmured under her breath, and I found my manners to properly greet a very amused-looking Zoraya as well.

  “It was lovely seeing you guys tonight,” Logan told them, as they prepared to part ways. “Pierre will see me to my car. Won’t you?” she asked me, with a very pointed glare.

  “Yeah. Not a problem.”

  She came with me to say hello to Steph, so that I could send him on to be with the rest of the family while I got chewed out.

  I mean, while I saw Logan safely to her car.

  “You want to tell me what that was about?” Logan asked, thankfully grinning, which let me know she wasn’t too pissed about it.

  “My bad. It looked like you on a date,” I explained, opting to just tell the damn truth. “You’re out in public with this dude, out in public with Anthony’s corny ass, with no problem. But me and you gotta damn near pretend we don’t even know each other.”

  “That is an exaggeration and you know it,” Logan laughed. “Before shooting started, you and I grabbed dinner together plenty of times. I’ve never said anything about having a problem being seen with you!”

  “Yeah, on a professional level. I’m talking about romantically. You can be out looking like this for date night with other niggas, but not me?”

  Logan huffed. “Have you asked?”

  “If I did, what would the answer be, Logan? What are we even doing?”

  Stopping at her car, Logan pushed out a sigh and turned to face me. “As much as I understand why some certainty and clarity would be really important for you… I am in no way ready for a what are we? conversation,” she told me earnestly, holding my gaze. “What we did in your office, me staying overnight with you, your family knowing about us… all of it is already way out of my comfort zone. And even if it wasn’t, I’m just… I don’t know what we’re doing. It’s been like a week, barely, and I’m lost as fuck, and I’m confused too,” she admitted. “But at the same time, I’m also very… certain. Whatever it is that we’re doing, this dynamic we’ve created… It feels good. And I’m hoping that it’s okay with you for us to just kind of take our time with this, and let it be what it is, until it’s s
omething else. And then we can let that be what it is until it’s something else too.”

  “Absolutely,” I reassured her. “I get all that, shorty, and I’m not trying to rush you into something. It’s new for me too. I don’t know,” I chuckled. “I probably seem crazy jealous right now, huh?”

  Logan laughed. “I wouldn’t say crazy jealous. Definitely a little bit though. But I get it. Things changed between us, without like… a full-blown conversation, we were just going with the flow. So everything looks different. But there’s only one person I’m interested in like that right now. And I’ve got way too much going on to be able to juggle men, so if you see me with someone else, I promise you, you have no reason to be jealous. You’re the only person who has my attention.”

  “Oh damn,” I grinned. “It’s like that?”

  “Yeah it’s like that, and it better be like that for you too.”

  “Absolutely,” I guaranteed her. “Unquestionably.”

  Logan bit down on her lip, trying to keep from smiling as hard as I know she wanted to. “So… I should probably let you get to your family,” she said. “I saw that completely adorable picture of you and Mari’s baby. Thank you for actually giving the social media thing a try – that was an excellent addition to your feed. Has getting this time with them been as restorative as I hoped it would be?”

  “Yeah, it really has. Good call.”

  She nodded, then stepped away from her car door, giggling when I opened it for her before she could do it for herself.

  “I’ll see you in the morning, okay?”

  “Yeah, you will.”

  She surprised me a bit by glancing around to see if anybody was looking in our direction before she leaned in to give me a quick kiss. She didn’t even say anything else after that, just climbed in her car and pulled off, leaving me to make my way back to the restaurant feeling good as fuck about the clarity just that quick conversation had given me.

  It must have been all over my face when I got back to my people, because as soon as they saw me, they laughed.

  “Steph says I’m wrong for not telling you who it was when you saw Logan with Trei,” Nubia said, as I took the seat she’d saved for me beside her. “The look on your face was just so crazy I couldn’t pull myself together to tell you before we had to go ahead and go in. And you were already walking off like you were on a mission, and I was trying to see what was gonna happen, and –

  “It’s cool, Nubia,” I laughed. “I got my little feelings hurt for a second, but that’s the price I paid for jumping to conclusions. We’re good though.”

  “Me and you, or you and her?” she asked.

  I grinned. “Both.”

  23

  Logan

  “Shaw is a nice-looking kid. It can’t be that bad, right?”

  In the dressing room mirror, Elodie gave me a look that very clearly implied it was, indeed, that bad. There was only one – incredibly tasteful, non-gratuitous – sex scene in the whole show, and it was only there because Pierre, Nick, and Miko had all agreed that it was necessary. Not just tossed in for shock factor like it seemed with so many other shows. They were really hoping to create a show that didn’t use tricks to pull the audience in; nothing was here just for the novelty of it.

  Of course, all that put added pressure on the people who were actually going to be in the scene.

  Elodie and Shaw.

  Tracy and Jason.

  “It’s not about how he looks,” Elodie revealed, shaking her head. “It’s about… how I look.”

  I frowned. “El, you could be a freaking model. You’ve been a freaking model.”

  “You have to say that, you’re my brother’s girlfriend.”

  “I’m not his girlfriend,” I corrected her, “And I don’t have to say anything. It’s the truth. You look amazing El, and you’re not about to walk out there and get treated like a piece of meat on this set anyway,” I reminded her. “Neither Nick nor Pierre is even here, so that takes away that awkwardness. Miko is directing this episode, remember?”

  She’d asked me to be here as her backup – God knows why – but I was ready to do whatever was asked of me. And we were going to make it happen.

  “Hey,” I said propping my hip against the vanity table as something else occurred to me. “Nobody’s… making you uncomfortable or anything, right? Is Shaw being a creep or something, and you’re not comfortable doing this with him?”

  El immediately shook her head. “No, not at all,” she said, giving me a look like I’d lost my mind for even thinking something like that.

  And hell maybe it was off target, but after my own experiences, I had to make sure.

  “Shaw has been… really great to work with,” El said, her face slipping into this serene expression that clued me in to something I hadn’t picked up on before. “He sent me those,” she revealed, pointing to an oversized bouquet that was taking up a large amount of the vanity table. “They were waiting for me when I got here this morning”

  “Oh really now?” I exclaimed, plucking the card from where it was still hanging from the little holder.

  “Ellie don’t worry. I’ve got you today, and we’re going to kill this.”

  Understandably, there was no name on it, since they were obviously keeping what seemed like a bit of a budding romance under wraps.

  “Ellie?” I asked with a grin as I looked up, and she snatched the card from me, embarrassed.

  “Do not say a word to Pierre, okay?” she asked, and I nodded.

  “Only if I thought you were in danger or something would I ever,” I assured her. “But it’s quite clear to me you are in good hands… Ellie,” I teased, making her shake her head.

  “I keep telling him not to call me that.”

  “But you don’t actually want him to stop calling you that, right? Cause that shit is adorable.”

  “Right?” She gushed. “We haven’t... Like nothing has actually happened, you know? We’ve gone over lines together on the phone and ended up talking until we fell asleep, stuff like that, but nothing else. Which… I guess is what’s making this whole thing weirder. Like he looks good, and he always smells good too, so it’s very easy to be his love interest on screen. But… him kissing me, holding me on camera for certain scenes is one thing. Him seeing me naked, us acting out this scene… is something else.”

  I didn’t patronize her by reminding her that the world had seen her in an itty bitty, may as well not even be there type of bikini on more than one occasion. A shot like that was much different than the up-close familiarity of being one on one with a person, TV set or not.

  “I really think you’re going to just have to tune all of that out, El,” I told her. “I know you know how to lose yourself in your character so you’re going to have to just… sink into this, and get it done. You’re not Elodie. You’re Tracy. He’s Jason, not Shaw. We’ve only got essential staff on set that for this one, and the intimacy coach to make sure you guys are as comfortable as possible. And we’re going to make this thing happen, right?”

  She pushed out a sigh at first, but then she nodded, looking up at me with a smile. “Yeah,” she nodded. “I’m going to make it happen. Thanks, Logan. I knew your never frazzled ass would be the one to talk to about this.”

  “Never frazzled?” I laughed. “Oh baby that is a front. This whole thing, the show, all this work to make it happen? It’s driving me nuts. My cycle is all out of whack, I’ve been messing stuff up. Never in my life has this stuff happened to me,” I told her, shaking my head. “It is absolutely stressful for me too, I think it just comes out in different ways for all of us.”

  El nodded. “Yeah, different manifestations and all of that, I get, but your cycle is messed up? Girl you’re about to have another Pierre,” she cackled, making my eyes go wide.

  “Cute joke, but absolutely not,” I declared.

  Just like Pierre had assumed about me, weeks ago, I literally had an app for that.

  And the intra-uterine equip
ment to back it up.

  “Whatever you say,” Elodie sang, checking her makeup in the mirror again.

  “You just focus on not making a mess in that bed with Shaw, Ellie,” I teased, making her blush again.

  “That’s cold, Logan. You ain’t right for that.”

  I laughed as I left her in the dressing room to finish up and get ready to move on to the set. It really was much quieter today, at least for now, while we filmed this love scene.

  I had read too many horror stories from other actors about extra crew members and whoever else crowding around set just to get a glimpse of the actress naked. Or worse, a bunch of faces around the room while she had to mimic great sex.

  It was gross.

  Luckily Nick and Miko both had the experience and integrity to not create environments like that for their actors, and Pierre had certainly needed no convincing.

  He and Nick were taking this time while Miko was in charge on set to go over the next few episodes now that we were right in the middle. With the way it ended up working out, the network wanted to debut the show alongside some other, already proven premieres.

  This was a good thing.

  The shows that would be coming on before and after One Day Sober already had buy-in from established viewers. So in addition to the people who would have heard the buzz about the show and wanted to watch it just because of that, we would pick up viewers from people who simply left their TV on and thought this new show looked interesting and kept watching. Or, from people who tuned in early for the show that was coming on after and committed to catching ODS next time it was on.