by Stacey Kade
I try to keep an eye on her, but once we’re rolling, I lose myself in being Smitty. I forgot what that was like, too, how good it feels to be someone else.
Smitty is an unapologetic mess, and it’s a relief to be an unflinching disaster of a human being. Because, as horrible as it sounds, it’s exhausting trying to be a better version of myself. As Smitty, the bar is much, much lower. I can be a dick sometimes, but Smitty, as written by Max, has turned it into an art form.
When I remember to look up during a break, someone has given Amanda a script, and she’s absorbed in reading.
Then, when I glance over later, the AD has pulled her over by one of the playback screens. Amanda’s watching us, watching me, with an intent expression, her forehead creased with concentration.
She’s interested in the story and in what we’re doing. Other girls I dated, they only cared about the results—the cameras, the magazine spreads, the party invitations—not the work.
Not that I’m thinking about Amanda that way. The dating way. Being attracted to her is one thing, an uncontrollable, biological or chemical thing, but acting on it would be just like pressing the button to blow up my life.
I’ve done dumb things, but I’m smarter than that. And she deserves better.
Reminding myself of that whenever my gaze strays toward Amanda, I concentrate instead on doing the best work I can.
In the scene we’re working on today, Smitty and Keller, best friends since kindergarten, are forced to realize that their shared future, long planned and loosely envisioned as owners of the Blue Palace Bar with a little dealing on the side for Smitty, is just a childish fantasy. Keller has an opportunity to get out of Westville, to go to school and become the writer he’s always dreamed of being.
But Smitty can’t handle it. He doesn’t have the opportunities that Keller does, and the Blue Palace was his bright future with his best friend. In one horrible moment, he’s losing both.
The day passes in a long, strenuous blur with a tense director and a cast and crew new to working together.
So it’s not until we break for dinner, when I’m settling on to a piece of curb next to Amanda with my paper plate in hand, that I realize she hasn’t said much lately.
Actually—I frown, thinking about it—she hasn’t said much since this morning, other than perfunctory answers to direct questions.
Momentary panic grips me.
“Is everything all right?” I ask, wondering if I’ve missed something. She was tense when she confronted Max, but after that, she seemed all right, or so I thought. But I was more than a little distracted.
“It’s fine,” she says, but she doesn’t look up from where she’s putting a layer of potato chips under the bread of her turkey sandwich.
“Are the blueberries going in, too?” I tease, tipping my head toward the only other food on her plate. “I just want to be prepared.”
“No,” she says with a distant, polite smile, like I’m a stranger approaching her at an airport. Nothing like this morning.
“Amanda, what’s wrong?” I ask. Then a belated thought occurs. “Is this about Adam?” I glare in his direction, where he and the other cast and crew have gathered to eat, twenty or thirty feet away from us.
Adam DiLaurentis, the guy who’s playing Keller, approached her this afternoon, blowing right past me to say awkward things like, “It’s so great to see you up and around.” Like she was stuck at home with a broken leg for a few years. And then he pressed her on eating dinner with him, away from me, so they “could get to know each other because you seem awesome.”
She was staring him down into awkward silence by the time I intervened.
At the memory, my hands clench, bending my plastic fork until I make myself relax.
“No, no,” Amanda says quickly. She pauses. “You know that was more about you than it was about me, right?”
I pause in the middle of stabbing a forkful of salad. “No.”
She shrugs. “Adam is Keller. Even when he’s not being Keller, you know what I mean?”
Sort of, yeah. Adam doesn’t have the chops. That’s what my acting coach would have said. Adam will always play this type of character. Friendly, guy-next-door, nothing that’s too much of a stretch from who he is in reality. There are a lot of actors like that.
I’m not sure what that has to do with me, though.
But Amanda is done talking, picking up her turkey–potato chip sandwich to eat around the edges.
A secondary and self-centered fear kicks in on me.
She read the script, watched part of it play out today. Granted, it wasn’t the finished version, but there should have been more than enough for her to form an opinion about the story. About Smitty. About me.
Oh, Jesus.
Have you ever watched someone do something they claim to be good at but they’re so clearly not, you can barely stand to be near them? I’ve been in auditions like that, where I’m fighting the urge to cringe on someone else’s behalf. And then there’s that weird fear their incompetence and overconfidence are contagious, ready to leap through the air and land on you like germs blasted out into the room by a sneeze.
Don’t be stupid. Amanda’s not like that.
But now that the idea has taken root in my head, I can’t get rid of it. “Did you enjoy what you saw today?” I ask.
She puts her sandwich down and pulls out the napkin tucked beneath her plate to wipe her mouth before answering. “It was great,” she says, with a bland smile.
My heart plummets to my feet.
I drop my fork on my plate, appetite gone. “Shit, Amanda, if it’s not … if I’m not…” I shake my head, trying to find the words. Acting is the only thing I’ve been good at. I thought I was locked in on Smitty, but it’s hard to judge your own performance. Max hasn’t been effusive with praise, but he never is.
Amanda looks up at me, alarmed. “No, Chase.” She reaches a hand toward me in a placating gesture, but stops well before making contact. “No, that’s not it.”
“But there is something,” I persist, my pulse thumping hard with dread. Laughter and conversation from the others drift over.
Lowering her hand, Amanda sighs, studying her sandwich. She looks tired, dark circles under her eyes. Her shirt, my shirt, is limp and rumpled.
“It’s stupid, but Karen was right,” she says finally. She balances her plate on her knees and folds her arms across her chest.
My breath catches in my throat. “Right about what?” I manage after a second. I never did hear exactly what Karen told her.
Amanda lifts her shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. “You’re good. Really good,” she says. “That’s why Adam’s trying to stir up trouble. You’re better than he is, and everyone who sees this movie is going to recognize that.” She hesitates. “Watching you today … it’s like you disappeared.”
I relax slightly. “Why does that sound so ominous?” I say, trying to joke.
“Because Smitty is kind of an asshole?” she shoots back.
I laugh. “You’re not supposed to like him. He’s basically the bad guy, the antagonist.” For most of the story, anyway. Then he gets his redemptive moment, a chance to save Keller and give him a future without Smitty, or he can take them both down. That’s why I fought for the role. Smitty does what I wish Eric would have done, what I should have done. Stepped up and cared more about someone else than myself. I can’t change what I’ve done, but this part feels like a step in the right direction, like blocking a scene before you do it for real.
“Yeah, I get that,” Amanda says.
I wait, but she doesn’t say more, and an inexplicable tension hangs thick in the air.
With a grimace, I keep pushing. “I’m sorry, but I feel like I’m missing something here. If I’ve done something or…”
Amanda looks up at me, her face shadowed in the dim light. “It’s one of those weird things that I…” She gives a rueful smile. “Forget it. I’m just being a freak.”
“No, te
ll me. Please?” I need to fix whatever it is, if I can.
She bites her lip. “I still have trouble trusting people. Actually, it’s more like trusting my judgment of people, you know?”
I nod. That’s completely understandable given what …
It clicks in my head then.
She has trouble trusting her judgment of people, and she just watched me be someone else, someone awful, selfish, and violent, for ten hours. Even worse, she knows I have a history of being all those things, at times, in real life. Probably in great detail, thanks to Karen.
So she has no idea what to trust, whether to trust.
I set my plate on the crumbling asphalt and turn toward her. “Amanda…” I begin, but I don’t know how to finish. She’s right.
Amanda looks at me calmly, but her dark eyes shine with tears. “I know it’s ridiculous. This is your job, and there’s nothing wrong with being good at it. It’s just … me.”
My throat aches with unexpressed emotion. I want to pull her close, wrap my arm around her, as though that would magically transfer her pain and hurt to me. But giving in to that instinct would be the worst thing I could do.
If I were a good person, the person she thinks I am, I would tell her to run from me, far, far away. But I can’t. Even worse, I don’t want to.
“I promise you, I am not being anybody but myself with you,” I say hoarsely. That much is true. I hesitate, then decide to give her the honesty she deserves in the only way I can. “Maybe a slightly better version.” I clear my throat, feeling the heat rise in my face. “More like the person I want to be. But that’s all.”
Amanda stays silent for a long moment, watching me, and I fight the urge to fidget under her gaze. Then she puts her plate on the ground and edges toward me, the narrow space between us growing smaller.
When she rests her head against my shoulder, her body is a warm solid line against mine, and I can barely breathe for fear of scaring her away.
“Thank you,” she says, looking up at me, holding my gaze.
Staring down at her, I find my attention drawn to her mouth. When she bites her lower lip, pulling it into her mouth and slowly releasing it, pinker and damp, I feel it in the electric zip of attraction firing through me.
The atmosphere shifts, moving from nervous tension to something softer, heavier.
Don’t do this. Just smile, look away, and pick up your food. This is a bad idea.
But I hold still, like I’ve been frozen in place.
She tilts her head up slightly more toward mine; her mouth is just a few inches from mine. Her breath moves against my skin, and on instinct, I lean in to close the gap.
“Hey, Henry, are we doing this or what?” Adam calls.
I jerk back from Amanda even as she straightens up and shifts away from me, her cheeks flushing with color.
Regret curls through me, along with the intense desire to punch Adam. I glare at him and give a wave in acknowledgment, resisting the urge to flip him off.
“I should go.” I gesture in Adam’s direction. “He wants to run a few lines before we start up again.”
“Oh, yeah.” She nods rapidly. “Sure.” She’s very carefully not looking at me, focusing instead on her dinner that she’s reclaimed.
As I scoop my plate off the ground and walk away, I tell myself this is for the best. Amanda deserves better. Better than me. Teasing, flirting a little to make her blush, that’s one thing. But more would be wrong … for both of us.
And I almost believe it.
15
Amanda
“You sure you’ll be all right here by yourself?” Chase asks, his arm holding the hotel’s service elevator doors open for me to exit first.
“I’ll be fine. It’s an hour,” I say, turning to face him once I’m in the hall. “Besides, I think they kind of frown on bringing random tagalongs to these meetings, don’t they? It’s sort of a members-only thing, right?”
His forehead furrows. “I don’t have to go.”
“I was kidding. You should go. You need to go,” I say.
Chase bobs his head in agreement as we walk toward our rooms, but he doesn’t look convinced.
Ever since dinner, ever since that almost-moment at dinner, he’s been extra considerate. Warm, friendly, checking on me during every break through the final three hours of filming … all while keeping a distinct physical distance.
In the van on the way back here, he kept a very circumspect two feet between us on the bench seat. Emily could have fit in that space. She probably would have liked to.
I’m not sure what to make of it. I keep replaying that moment at dinner over and over in my head, trying to understand it from every angle.
I almost kissed Chase Henry. I know that for sure.
I’m a little less sure if he meant to kiss me.
Leaning my head against his shoulder felt completely natural and the right thing to do. And when he looked down at me, the moment snagged and held. My head moved toward his like it was on a track or a wire, drawn along on a path without conscious thought on my part. I just felt this … pull toward him. But was it just me? I don’t know.
“Amanda?” Chase asks, interrupting my thoughts.
My face flushes hot. “Sorry?”
“I said, I’m going to grab a shower first before I head out so I’ll be here for a few more minutes. But after that, I’ll have my phone with me at the meeting if you need anything,” he says.
I shake my head. “Chase. It’s fine. I’m going to find some boring television to watch and hopefully fall asleep at some point. The History Channel is usually pretty good for that.” I shrug. “If not, there’s always infomercial bingo.”
He gives me a strange look, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, as he takes his key card out of his back pocket. “What is infomercial bingo?”
“Based on the name of the infomercial, you pick ten words that you think the host is going to use within the first fifteen minutes. But the name of the product doesn’t count,” I add sternly.
“Seriously?” he asks, amused.
“I invented it in the hospital when I couldn’t sleep,” I say. “Sometimes I still have trouble.”
Everyone assures me nightmares are completely normal. But the weird part is the worst ones, the ones where I wake up struggling to breathe, take place on the porch, not in the basement. I’m standing just outside the front door, seconds before I make that choice to move my foot forward and change my world forever. Only this time, I know what’s going to happen. I try to run away or cry for help. But I can’t move and no noise comes out. All I can feel is that same paralyzing pressure in my throat and chest, robbing me of my voice.
I can’t scream, even when his fist tangles in my hair and he drags me toward the basement, and in that way, the dreams parallel what actually happened.
I clear my throat. “Trust me when I tell you there’s nothing on between three and four in the morning, no matter what cable package you have.”
“Yep, been there,” Chase says as we reach our rooms. “When I was drinking and even now sometimes.” He lifts a shoulder. “I never sleep well in hotels, especially the first few nights.”
“Okay, then infomercial bingo might work for you too. If I’m still awake when you get back, I’ll teach you the finer arts of the game.” I hold my breath, waiting for him to get that polite, panicky look that I’d expect from someone who was almost accidentally kissed the last time we were alone-ish together.
But he just smiles. “Sounds like a plan.”
When he meets my gaze, the moment holds a beat too long, and I feel that same pull again. Like I might be able to step closer and wrap my arms around him.
“Chase—” I begin.
The Starlight theme song plays, tinny and violently loud in the hallway, making both of us jump.
I wince. “Sorry, I need to change that.” I pull my phone out of my pocket and consult the screen, though I already know who it is. I send it to voicemail for th
e moment.
“Your therapist,” Chase says.
“Yeah. She made ‘special arrangements’ to speak to me after hours tonight,” I say, digging out my key card.
“That’ll probably be her chapter heading,” he mutters. “‘Special Arrangements.’”
I stop, surprised.
He makes an apologetic face. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“No, no,” I say. “You’ve got it all wrong. This?” I wave my key card, indicating the space between us. “Easily sequel material for the Miracle Girl story.”
He gapes at me.
“I mean,” I shrug, “if she’s going to get mileage out of me, it should be at least a two-book deal,” I say with mock affront. “I think that’s the going rate for Miracle Girl–related stories these days.”
He throws his head back and laughs, and the sound of it warms me.
But it doesn’t change reality, which is Dr. Knaussen waiting. So I slide the key card into the lock and push my door open.
“Do you want me to come in?” Chase asks.
I look at him, startled.
“I mean, to check the room before I leave,” he adds quickly.
Oh. I glance into the room, confirming that everything is as I left it, with the exception of the bed now being made. “No, I think I’m good but … thank you.”
“Right.” But he doesn’t move, just stands there watching me with that same intensity I remember from the moment at dinner.
Before I can stop myself, I step toward him, testing him, testing me.
Something that might be desire flickers in his gaze, along with wariness, as I approach, but I keep my hands—and my mouth—to myself.
He lets me enter his personal space, so close I can feel the heat of his body, the brush of his legs against mine. It makes me feel shaky, but not in a bad way.
I lean forward, and his breath catches in his throat. Never would I have thought that to be a sexy sound, but it’s such an involuntary desire response, I shiver with a wave of want.
But then I chicken out at the last second, and instead of lifting my chin toward his, I turn my head to the side to rest it against his chest. Which is a smaller victory, but a victory all the same.
