by Naomi Niles
“I LOVE fried pickles and mushrooms! Love, love, love them! Did we just become best friends?!”
“Yup!”
We laughed together as I scooped a few pickles onto my plate and covered them with ranch. “So, how long have you been acting? Is this your first big movie? Sorry if I am acting like a groupie, but I just want to get to know the person I will be acting alongside of.”
“Oh, no problem. Just um… let me get a bite of this food first.” I sunk my teeth into the pickle as my eyes rolled to the back of my head. “My God, this is good. So, so, soooo good.” I wiped my mouth with a napkin, then took a sip of my drink to cool down. “So, my acting career. Um, this is my first big time movie. I’ve done a few commercials and some webisodes and things like that for a few friends, but that’s it. Nothing on this level. What about you?”
“Nope. This is my first time on the big screen as well. I’ve done made-for-TV movies and commercials for things that you probably have never heard of.”
“I bet I have. I have done a few commercials for bullshit products over my time. Shoot.”
“Roll-aid.”
I kept a straight face for a few seconds before I burst out laughing. “All right, you win. Shit, I’ve never heard of that before. What is it?”
He scooped a few mushrooms onto his plate. “It’s what I use whenever I have to talk to my ex because she is such a fucking pain.”
“Your ex?”
“Yeah. I mean, we’re not together anymore–”
“Yeah. I think that’s why they call it an ex?”
He paused and glared at me. “Listen, we can’t both be the asshole here, all right? It’s either gonna be me or you, and trust me; I have more asshole ammunition on standby. I was born for it.”
I slid another pickle into my mouth. “All right, it’s yours.”
“Good. So, what about you? Your commercials?”
“I’ve done things for regular companies. Workout gear, insurance companies, you know? Things like that. When you said, ‘roll-aid,’ I knew right from the beginning that you were going to win that battle. Roll-aid.” I laughed to myself as he sat across the table, fighting to keep his laughter away.
“All right, I’ll let you have that one. I’ve done some fucked up things for money, I’ll admit, but hey… I had to take what was offered.”
“So… we are both struggling entertainers who finally found a chance with this movie. Are you nervous?”
“Nah, I’m good,” he said as he took a sip of his drink. “I walked into that audition and damn near did a striptease, then told them that I was the man for the job and they should just go home for the rest of the day.”
My eyes widened as if I were trying to see the world at once. “Really? In front of Leonard?”
“Oh, no. It was three women. Elizabeth, um,” he tapped his finger on the table, “honestly, I don’t remember the other two. I just remember that I walked into that room and owned it. I was going to get this part if I had to kill somebody to do it.”
“That is funny. A striptease?” In my mind, I had already removed his shirt from his body. His muscles were bulging right in front of me, and on cue, I could make them flutter. I saw Ezra’s lips moving, but I couldn’t hear anything he was saying. He laughed out loud and gazed right at me, his sky-blue eyes snapping my mind away from the soft porno that was replaying in my head. “Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was funny.”
His eyebrows wrinkled. “What was funny?”
“Um, your umm, striptease?” He gave me a side-eye and moments later; I burst out in laughter. “I am sorry, my mind was somewhere else. What were you saying?”
“Wow, really?” He laughed. “Never mind, it wasn’t important. I was just saying how I was going to take you home and have my way with you.” He took another sip of his drink as he peered at me from behind his glass.
A part of me wouldn’t have cared if he had his way with me. In fact, my mind had already replayed the scene out 100 times. We ended up spending the rest of the night talking and laughing with each other like we were best friends catching up on old times. Before we knew it, two hours had passed, and we hadn’t gone over one line of the script.
“Well um,” I said, pulling the stack of papers from my purse, “I guess we will have to look over this another day?”
He laughed. “Wow, I completely forgot about that.” He looked at his watch. “We’ve been here for just over two hours. It didn’t even seem that long. It felt like we just got here.”
I looked at the empty plates of food in front of us, “Yeah, but these plates kind of give it away.”
“So,” he asked, “I guess we can try again… tomorrow?”
“Yeah, we can try again tomorrow. I’m free.”
“Yeah, me too. Tomorrow it is.”
He walked me to my car as the moonlight illuminated our path. I unlocked my door as he opened it for me. “I enjoyed myself tonight, Hannah.”
“Yeah, I did, too. I’m looking forward to tomorrow. Maybe we can actually read the script.”
We laughed together as he closed the door. I rolled my window down so he could speak. “Yeah, I think we can. Drive safe, and I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“All right.”
I mentally undressed him as he walked to his car. If I was nervous at all about our possible sex scenes, the fact that Ezra was going to be the man involved eased my anxiety 100 percent. To be honest, I was starting to look forward to it.
Chapter Eleven
Ezra
It was almost 1 pm by the time Jeff and I finished our workout. I sat on the bench inside of the locker room, wiping sweat from my brow with a rag as I tried to catch my breath. I felt like Jeff tried to kill me, but I kept up with him the best I could. My phone buzzed inside of my gym bag just as Jeff emerged from the rear of the locker room with a towel wrapped around his waist. “Who is that?” he asked while he pulled clothes from his locker.
“Hannah,” I said with a smile as I opened her text.
“Hannah?” he asked quizzically before he recollected who she was. “Oh,” he snapped his fingers, “the chick that you are doing the movie with?”
“Yeah, her.” She sent a message to confirm that we were still on for reading over the script later tonight at my place. Even though I was anxious to pick up where we left off the day before, I didn’t want her to sense it. I slid my phone back into my bag and decided I would text her a few minutes later. “We are supposed to go over lines from the script together. Back at my place.”
I stood up. The mirror 10 feet in front of us reflected the muscles that Jeff helped trim during our hours of working out. I admired the dip from my pecs down to my abs and the definition of my obliques. “Your place?” Jeff asked, interrupting my brief stint of narcissism. “Really?” he smirked. “Boy, you move fast!” He nudged me with his arm as a group of men strolled into the locker room with music blasting from their headphones.
“No, no, it’s not like that. It’s strictly business. For real.”
He lowered his eyes as he dropped his towel in front of me so he could slide into his underwear. “Bullshit, man. I know how you are, Ezra, and if this chick looks like you say she does, then she is primed to become another notch on your belt.”
I laughed because he was right. I was known to sleep around with women, barely knowing their names. It wasn’t like that with Hannah, though. I didn’t see her as a one-night stand or anything similar. Our chemistry was evident from the very first time we met. Yeah, she was gorgeous, but there was more to her than that. “Nah, seriously. I mean, don’t get me wrong, she is cute and all and I wouldn’t mind going there with her, but it’s something different about her.” I paused with my hand inside of my locker, recollecting moments of last night’s dinner. The way she finished my sentences like she knew what I was thinking or how I didn’t have to explain my jokes to her after they left my mouth.
“Wait a minute,” he said, pulling his shirt down over his head. “Don’t tell me you are f
alling for her.”
“What?” I said, snapping out of my daydream. I grabbed my jogging pants and leaned against the locker for support as I slipped my legs in one at a time. “Fall for her? Fuck that, man. I just got out of that bullshit relationship with Tanya. I’m not trying to jump into anything serious right now. Shit. That’s why I’ve just been fuckin’ around with different women here and there. No strings attached. That’s how I’ve been playing it.”
“No, fuck that, bro,” he said as he fixed his clothing in the mirror. “I’ve known you for a while now, and I can tell when you are feeling some kind of way about a chick. It happened once that I can remember.” I hung my head, knowing he was about to bring up Stacy. “Remember Stacy?” he asked, right on cue.
I laughed. “Fuck. I knew you were about to bring her up. That was different, man, I swear that was different. Stacy was like… I don’t know, man, Stacy was like the devil. She was so wrong for me, and I knew it, but at the same time, I just couldn’t stay away from her. I think she put some voodoo on me or something.”
“Yeah,” he said as he slammed his locker closed. “If by ‘voodoo,' you mean some good-ass pussy, then yeah. She put some voodoo on you.”
“Hannah and Stacy are not one in the same. I am telling you, Hannah is strictly business. That’s it. Nothing more, nothing less. We both need to be on spot for this movie, especially with it being our first major roles. We just don’t want to fuck up.”
Jeff looked into the mirror one more time to make sure his attire was up to par. His gray slacks were topped off with a light purple shirt and a tie that brought both of the colors together perfectly. His cologne fluttered in the air like morning mist as he turned towards me. “All right, man. Well, you just make sure you keep business and pleasure separated because you don’t want to get in a situation where you start falling for this chick for real. I mean, I guess it worked out for Angelina and Brad Pitt, but um, you’re no fuckin’ Brad Pitt.”
“Fuck you, man. I’m better.”
“We’ll see. Hit me up later, bro. I need to get to the office.”
“All right.”
I threw my shirt on and grabbed my bag from the locker as he walked away. I figured enough time had passed for me to text Hannah back without coming off like a giddy freshman who had just gotten his crush’s number for the first time. I erased my text three times before I finally sent something that I deemed appropriate. “Absolutely. I will see you later, and I promise we will read the script this time!”
Seconds later, she sent a response. “Thank God. I thought we were going to have sex or something.” My mouth hung open as I glared at my screen. Just as a smile began to stretch across my face, another text buzzed in. “Just kidding! What kind of girl do you think I am?”
“The one that likes to get men hard and then go home without finishing the job.”
“Bingo!”
I laughed out loud. “You are a mess. I will see you later.”
“For sure.”
I slipped my phone into my pocket, threw my bag over my shoulder, and made my way out of the gym. As soon as I got home, I hopped in the shower so that I would have enough time to straighten up a little bit before Hannah came by in a few hours. There was never much to clean because I wasn’t a messy guy. The only times that I had to put in extra work was when my boys came by. They had a knack for leaving their toys and clothes in every room of the house except theirs. As I walked down the hallway, I stopped and peeked inside of their room. Their walls were decorated with new-age Ninja Turtle and Power Ranger posters. Their PlayStation sat below their television set, and beside that, there was a small cabinet full of DVDs that they would watch on repeat. Tanner could quote the full LEGO movie by heart. I smiled at the thought as I closed the door behind me and made my way to the front room.
It was 6 o’clock when the doorbell rang. My heartbeat picked up as I stood and headed for the door. Before I opened it, I took a deep breath to calm the butterflies that had begun flapping their wings around inside of my stomach. I hated the feeling. “Hey, Ezra,” she said as I opened the door. She stood with her purse dangling from the fold of her arm as dark clouds covered the sky just above.
“Hey, Hannah. I see you brought the dark clouds with you as well. You should come on in before it starts raining… I mean, unless you don’t mind getting wet.”
“No,” she said as she stepped into my home, “I mind.”
“I was hoping you wouldn’t say that,” I said under my breath as I closed the door behind her.
She laughed and propped her hands onto her waist. “Excuse me?!”
“Oh, you heard that?” I smiled. “I need to work on my inside voice.” I removed her jacket and hung it inside of the closet. “Well, here is my humble abode. If you want, I can show you around.”
“Lead the way.”
I escorted her to the kitchen, the dining room, the bathroom, and lastly, the two bedrooms. Once I opened the door to my son’s room, her eyes widened. “Yeah,” I said, “This is where my boys lay whenever their mother flies them over here on her broom.” She nudged me in the side as she stepped further into their room.
“I didn’t know you had sons.”
“Yeah,” I said as I followed behind her, “Two. Tanner and Nolan, 5 and 3, respectively.”
“Young tikes,” she said as she strolled around the room, admiring their things as if it was the first time she’d seen anything like it.
“Yeah.” I smiled like a proud father, recollecting on the memories I had of them inside of this room like they had passed away. That is what it seemed like, though, especially with the way Tanya was being such a bitch about me spending more time with them. “They are my heart, though. I’d do anything for my boys.”
“That is good, Ezra. That is how every father should be with their children.” She turned towards me. “So, I guess that you and the mother aren’t the best of friends?”
“Oh yeah, we are good friends. I want to kill her every time I see her, but we are good friends.”
“Um,” she responded with a side-eyed glance, “I um, I don’t know how to take that.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said as I led her out of the room. “But, if she happens to end up dead, it is purely a coincidence. I don’t want you running to the police talking about you heard me saying that I wanted to kill her. As a matter of fact, just forget I said anything about that.”
She chuckled as we exited the room. “Um, sure thing, buddy. Sure thing.”
We arrived back in the front room and sat down on the couch with one cushion between us. She reached back and pulled her hair into a ponytail, then removed the thick script from her purse. “My God, this thing is like a dictionary. It’s like carrying around a bag of bricks when I have it in my purse.”
“Yeah, I know all about it. I mean, not the purse thing, but how thick it is.”
She laughed. The gloss on her lips glimmered beneath the living room lights. She licked her thumb and paged through the script as my eyes made a beeline right to her breasts. They were covered up well, but I was still able to see the top of the crease between and my imagination was strong enough to render her naked in my mind. “So,” she said, prompting me to grab my script, “I thought we could read over some of the lines in the umm,” she flipped through the pages. “Shoot, I don’t know what scene this is, but it is on page 27.”
As I turned to the page, I thought about the content of the book and wondered how much of it would translate into the movie. I knew that most movies had to leave certain things out because of time constraints, so I wasn’t sure what parts would be interjected into the script. But, knowing Hollywood these days, the raunchier the script, the better the movie, so I fully expected there to be a few explicit scenes to unfold before our eyes. “All right,” I said as I flipped open to the page. “So, I guess we should just start reading it.”
“OK. You’re up.”
I stood up and paced the room for a few seconds with the paper
in my hand. I scanned the full page to get an understanding of what was going on so that I could get in the proper mindset for the scene. “I’m in here, babe.”
Hannah stood, “I’ve been calling you for the past few minutes. What were you doing?”
“I’m sorry, I guess I didn’t hear you.”
She rolled her eyes, “Whatever. Look, can you button this dress up?” She lifted her hair and turned her back towards me as I pretended to latch the buttons on her dress. She continued, “You know, I am going, to be honest. I hate going out with your sister and her boyfriend. I mean, your sister is fine, but that guy is just no good for her. At all.” She dropped her hair back to its place, then spun around to me.
“Yeah, I know, I feel the same thing. He is a fuckin’ loser, and I’ve tried to tell her about him, but you know how that goes. It does nothing but push her closer to him.”
“Maybe he just needs a little guidance, you know? I mean, he is kind of young.”
“Well, I’m not his father, so I hope you’re not suggesting that I step in and show him what he should have known already.”
“No, I’m not.” She paused, “OK, well maybe I am a little bit. He doesn’t even know the basics. Hold the door for her, pull out her chair, you know? That is basic. He should at least know the basic things.”
“You forgot one thing,” I said, stepping closer to her, “one thing I do without disappointment.”
She laughed and put her hand onto my chest. I could tell she allowed it to linger more than she wanted to. She glanced at her bare fingers, and upon realizing that she had left it there for much too long, she quickly removed it. “Oh,” she said, picking up her spot on the script, “here you go with that again. Babe, why do you always have to take it there when we aren’t even talking about anything remotely close to the topic?”
She turned away, but I gently grabbed her hand and pulled her back to me. “Oh, it is remotely close.” I put my hand on the small of her back. “And you know you can’t deny it. The way you moan when I spread your legs–”
