by Stacey Kade
Knew I should have been paying attention to Emily’s schedule rambling.
I search again and find one that’s later: 9:30 p.m. at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church. I don’t know how far it is from where we will be, but Wescott’s not that big.
“Yeah,” Chase says. “That could work.” His smile is crooked and tired, but real, as far as I can gauge it.
I highlight the information to send it to him, only to realize that I have no way of doing that.
Before I can say anything, he takes my phone from me, types for a few seconds, and then hands it back.
It’s open to Contacts, and I have a new one: Chase Mroczek. And a cell phone number with a 323 area code.
Liza would know for sure, but I’m guessing that’s his real last name rather than another alias.
Something about the fact that he not only trusts me with his number but also lists himself by his real name makes me slushy with warmth.
I text him the information because he’s watching me, and I feel the buzz of his phone in his pocket against my hip.
My breathing catches, and he’s still watching me.
We are sitting so close, and … it’s not bothering me. It’s the opposite of bothering me.
Emily makes an obnoxious throat-clearing noise, snapping the delicate thread of the moment and startling us into looking at her.
“Sorry,” she says but mostly to Chase. “I just really need to get through this.” She waggles her clipboard in a gesture that manages to be both hurt and snippy.
“No, that’s my fault,” Chase says easily with a hand up in apology, as if vouching for his sincerity. “I’m sorry. Go ahead.” He gives her an encouraging nod.
And it’s like watching time-lapse photography: Emily blooms under his attention like a long-neglected African violet positioned under a sunlamp. Even though it’s been, what, three minutes since he last talked to her?
Geez.
With a blush and more eyelash fluttering, Emily continues her clipboard recitation. Chase keeps his full attention on her, asking questions or clarifying details just frequently enough that she can’t help but feel engaged. Engaging, even.
I lean back in the seat, watching their interaction. It’s partially an act, I think. Not insincere, but he’s working to make her feel comfortable.
He’s good at what he does. Very good. Giving pieces of himself away to her.
To me.
It makes me wonder if he gets to keep anything for himself. It also makes me wonder how much of it is real.
* * *
It doesn’t take us long to get to where they’re shooting.
Three beefy security guards stand over sawhorses borrowed from the Wescott police and possibly Home Depot, based on the orange color. The barricade blocks the street, holding back a cluster of photographers, who snap pictures as our vehicle passes them.
Once we’re dropped off on the other side of the barrier, Emily leads us to a row of trailers parked along a side street in a mostly deserted industrial area.
Empty—or mostly empty—warehouses with broken-out windows dominate the scenery, though there are small square houses with overgrown yards about a block away.
I shudder. It would be even creepier, but the whole area is buzzing with activity. People in the black Coal City crew shirts and hats are hustling with a purpose. Some of them have walkie-talkies and clipboards like Emily. Others are carrying random pieces of equipment: moving blankets, two plants in terra-cotta pots, a shiny metal screen, one of those fuzzy microphones on a long pole.
Unidentifiable black cords stretch between the trailers, X-taped to the ground, and somewhere nearby there’s the loud, persistent hum of a generator.
Across an open field that might have once been a warehouse parking lot, I can see behind one of the other abandoned warehouses, which is where most of the activity is centered. There are tall lights on metal stands, what look like small railroad tracks on the ground, and a couple of big cameras. And that’s just what I can pick out.
From the look of it, they’re already filming something. Or maybe just testing equipment? I have no idea.
At this point, I’m utterly out of my element.
“Here we are!” Emily stops in front of the second trailer from the end. It has horizontal orange and brown decorative stripes along the side. Chase’s name is on the door, written in black marker on a crooked strip of white tape.
The utter lack of glamour is shocking. Not just with the trailer but the whole setup. It doesn’t look like a movie set as much as a moderately upscale trailer park. I wonder if Mia knows this is what it’s like, if that would change her mind or her ambitions at all.
Probably not. Mia comes with glamour—and drama—included. Just add water and air.
Emily climbs the two metal steps, pulls the handle to swing the door open, and then hops down, making room for Chase to ascend.
“Remember, twenty minutes,” she says to Chase in a stern voice, which she then ruins by giggling.
I hurry to follow him in before she can close the door on me. She’s staring at me like she can’t figure out what I’m doing here.
Honestly, I’m not sure either. I don’t have any specific task. That was done as soon as we pulled away from the hotel and the photographers.
The door snaps shut after me, and I’m squinting in the dim light to see.
Chase steps in deeper and fumbles for the switch.
After a second, my eyes adjust and … wow.
“It’s really, uh, peach in here,” I say, reaching to touch the edge of a curtain. It’s a hideous Southwestern pattern in the aforementioned washed-out peach with blue and green as accents. The whole trailer—couch cushions, walls, countertops—follows the motif. It’s blindingly ugly.
Chase snorts. “Yeah.”
“I didn’t even know wood paneling came in this color,” I say.
“I don’t think it’s wood,” he says.
I’m not sure what I was expecting. Something with a heart-shaped Jacuzzi in the floor? Strobe lights overhead? A special cocaine drawer, the handle a custom-designed star in 24-karat gold?
But it’s a standard RV, aside from the stunning decor choice, and smaller than the one my grandparents used to take to Arizona. The right side holds a small seating area with a bench sofa and a table that folds down. To the left, there’s a tiny stove top and sink set in a kitchen area with narrow wooden doors that, if the layout is similar to my grandparents’, lead to a pantry and a bathroom.
Through a doorway at the opposite end of the kitchen, I see a double bed covered in a spread that matches the Southwestern pattern, only with blue as the dominant color.
Unsurprisingly, that does not help.
It smells mildewy in here, with a faint hint of cleaning spray, as if someone opened the door, squirted some 409 in the air, and then ran away.
When Chase moves past me to the table, it stirs the air and the musty, moldy scent grows stronger. For a moment, I’m back in Jakes’s basement. The smell of the thick black mold in the leaky shower and the barely functional toilet pervaded the dim and shadowy room, the boarded-up windows allowing nothing more than thin slivers of light.
I reach out and steady myself with a hand on the kitchen counter, curling my fingers around the sharp edge of the corner, grounding myself in reality.
I must make a noise, because Chase pauses in emptying his pockets onto the table and turns to face me, his phone and script pages still in hand. “All right?” he asks, his forehead furrowed with concern.
I nod, concentrating on my breathing until the moment fades. Which it always does, but it’s hard to remember that when it’s happening.
“What about you?” I manage.
He blinks and his gaze skitters away from mine. “It comes and goes,” he says finally, putting his phone and pages down next to his hotel key card on the table with more care than necessary. “Eleven months sober. It’s … I’m a work in progress, I guess.”
“I know the feeling,” I s
ay.
He gives me a rueful grin. “Yeah.”
After a quick look around, he locates the wardrobe bag hanging on the bedroom door.
He doesn’t bother shutting the door to change, though. He’s stripping off his shirt before my brain catches up with what’s happening.
I turn quickly, but it’s a split second too late for true self-preservation. I shut my eyes for good measure. But that turns the black curtain of my eyelids into an uninterrupted screen on which to play that moment of Chase undressing himself. Over and over again … in slow motion …
Kicking off his shoes, he reaches over his head, grasping the neck of his shirt and pulling it forward. Revealing those muscles in his stomach, the ones that so entranced me this morning. They shift and flex beneath his skin with the movement.
And watching him take clothes off is so, so much better than watching him put clothes on.
What are those muscles called? They should have monuments built to them. Statues in museums. Paintings by the masters.
But, mainly, to truly appreciate them, I’m beginning to think I might want to touch them.
Just the thought makes me shiver, though whether in excitement or fear I’m not sure. How quickly it might slide out of control, and that’s if he didn’t run away screaming at the idea first. With my history and hang-ups, I’m a tricky prospect, more than most guys would likely want to deal with.
With that cold slap of reality, I swallow hard and try to focus on something, anything else.
“It’s safe, Amanda,” Chase says after a moment, the amusement plain in his voice. Clearly, it doesn’t bother him, getting dressed and undressed in front of strangers. Probably a job requirement.
But I think he and I might have different definitions of the word “safe” in this context, so I wait until I hear the zip of a zipper going up and the jangle of a belt buckle before I risk peeking over my shoulder.
He’s dressed but …
I frown at him. “They buy the clothes used?” He’s wearing a grungy white sleeveless undershirt that, while tight and lovely on him, looks like someone stomped it into the dirt for a few hours first.
“Yeah, or they distress them.” Chase shrugs into a dark blue hoodie, reaching back to pull the hood out. “Rub them with sandpaper or whatever else they’ve got to do the job.”
“The sleeves are disgusting.” One arm of the hoodie is marred with what looks like dried blood and white trails of snot. The other is covered in bleach spots and clumps of mud, and the cuff is torn and flapping loose.
“We’re filming out of order,” he says with a grin.
I know that happens, of course. I just never thought about the practicalities of it. The clothes would have to be dirty before the mess that dirties them. There has to be a massive spreadsheet somewhere for keeping track of all of this.
Liza would probably want to take it home for the evening and stroke it.
With a strange pang, I realize that’s the second or third time I’ve thought of my sisters in the last ten minutes.
When I was “gone,” I couldn’t let myself miss them. Not and stay sane. But once I was back, it was even harder to appreciate having them again. My condition, for lack of a better term, dictated everything. Jamming us together, pushing us into each other’s paths, and I became the stumbling block for everyone, tripping them up, dragging them down.
As Chase shoves his feet into battered construction boots, his face a mask of distant concentration, like he’s preparing for the day ahead, I think about pulling my phone from my pocket and sending a text to Mia or Liza.
But doing that now will only generate a series of angry and concerned texts—or God forbid, calls—asking if I’m all right or if I’ve learned my lesson and am ready to come home now.
Uh, no.
Besides which, so far today, my phone has been suspiciously quiet. That makes me think my family is up to something. Better not to trigger that, whatever it is.
A sudden banging on the trailer door behind me makes me jump and spin to face it, my hand clapped against my chest.
“Come in,” Chase shouts, unfazed.
The door swings open, and Emily’s head appears, then her upper body as she steps up and in. “I’m so sorry,” she says breathlessly. “The schedule … something happened. They need you in Hair and Makeup right away.” She bites her lip hard, as if she’s delivering news of an unmitigated disaster and expects to get slapped down for it.
“It’s okay,” Chase says soothingly, and her shoulders relax. “I’m ready.”
He reaches down and scoops up his clothes from the floor, making it blindingly obvious that he changed right there, with the door open.
My face goes hot.
For the first time, Emily’s gaze flicks over me with true, albeit hostile, interest. I watch her catch on to the fact that I’m wearing a man’s shirt. Chase’s shirt, likely, given the situation.
A tiny crease appears between her eyebrows. Ooh, she’s not happy.
“Is your friend staying here?” Emily asks in a cheery tone that still somehow manages to convey her idea of the “right” answer.
Chase glances at me in question as he drops his clothes over the back of a chair.
I don’t love the idea of being out in the open and surrounded by strangers staring at me all day. But when compared to the possibility of being alone in this dim, musty-smelling space for hours …
“I’d rather tag along,” I say. “If I can.”
“Well…” Emily says slowly at the same time Chase says, “Sure.”
That settles that. A tiny evil part of me feels a little triumphant at Emily’s crestfallen expression.
Once Chase has his phone and key card back in his pockets and his pages in hand, a sulking Emily leads us out of his trailer, across the crumbling street, and to the former warehouse parking lot. She stops at a trailer much closer to the lights and the action.
HAIR/MAKEUP is labeled on the outside with tape, just like Chase’s trailer, but the exterior looks newer.
“I’ll be back to pick you up,” Emily says with a sniff.
“Thanks, Emily,” Chase says as he steps up and pops open the door, but even the mention of her name isn’t enough to warm her up this time.
She spins on her heel and stalks off.
“Sorry,” I murmur. “I think that’s on me.”
He shakes his head as he climbs into the trailer. “No. She just—”
Chase stops dead, his gaze fixed on someone or something I can’t see.
“What’s the…” I begin.
But instead of answering, he turns with the bleakest look I’ve ever seen. Then he says quietly, “I am so sorry, Amanda.”
12
Chase
“Hey, Karen,” I say, my voice cracking in a way it hasn’t since I was fucking thirteen. I stuff my hands in my pockets because I don’t know what else to do with them. “I didn’t see your name on the crew list.”
Karen looks up from her kit, brushes in hand, distaste written plainly across her face. I haven’t seen her in a couple of years, but she looks the same. She’s a few years older than me, short, wire-thin, every movement full of purpose and energy. Her black hair is divided into pigtails that should make her look like a little kid but somehow reinforce the idea that she’s badass, doesn’t care what you think, and is not someone you want to be on the wrong side of.
Too late for me on that, I’m guessing.
“Max asked me to fill in for Keelie, so I’m pulling double duty, hair and makeup,” Karen says after a moment, as if she contemplated ignoring me and only reluctantly decided against it.
Behind me, I hear Amanda coming up the stairs, and a cowardly part of me wants to send her back to my trailer before it’s too late. Amanda likes me, I think. And I like that she likes me. Not many people do these days, and quite selfishly, I want to hang on to her regard. I don’t want to see the disappointment and disgust slowly filling her expression as Karen details my every fuck-up
and failure, as Karen will definitely feel compelled to do. She’s not one for holding back.
But hiding the truth—or avoiding it—is how I got into this mess so deeply in the first place. I can’t go back to that. So I keep my mouth shut.
“Her kid has the measles, if you can believe that.” Karen’s bright tattoos look like watercolors across her chest and down her arms, bared by her tank top. They move and shift with her muscles as she sets up her station with her tools and supplies. She’s a walking work of art. Something and someone my mom would have appreciated.
I told Karen something like that once, blurted it out one extremely late night early in the first season. We were both new then, nervous novices on a set of experienced professionals. She laughed at me. Told me her family didn’t think so. We were friends pretty much from then on. Until I messed it up.
The trailer door slams shut after Amanda, and she edges carefully around the side of me. There’s not much room to maneuver in here. “Hi,” she says to Karen.
Karen’s eyes move from me to Amanda, and confusion dominates her expression. She’s trying to place Amanda.
This has potential for complete disaster.
I clear my throat. “Amanda, this is Karen Vega. She was one of the makeup artists on Starlight. She’s the one who did the tattoo, actually.”
Amanda smiles at her. “You did a great job,” she says with a self-deprecating laugh. “I thought it was real.”
Karen gives a quick bob of her head in acknowledgment of the compliment. “Thanks.”
“Karen, this is Amanda Grace. She’s here visiting for a few days.” I hear the distant, professional tone in my voice, as if that will cover and contain the situation, like one of those boxes the bomb squad uses when detonating strange packages at LAX.
It doesn’t help, though.
Karen jolts, her eyes widening as she stares at Amanda, clearly comparing her against whatever image she has from the media.
Then she looks at me and gives a tiny shake of her head in disgust. She may not know what I’m up to, but she suspects something.
I stiffen, waiting for the tirade.
But she ignores me, looking away from me as if I don’t exist. In a way that’s worse than her yelling.
