Starboys

by Jeremy Jenkins

  He seemed like he was about to have a mental breakdown with the stress that was coming off of him. It was as if his entire body was vibrating like a tuning fork.

  “You don’t have to be so nervous,” I warned him, my voice icy.

  “I have zero chill right now, Charlie!” he snapped.

  I didn’t like the way my name came out of his mouth.

  “ZERO chill!!!” He emphasized as he pulled a thread through Alina’s outfit.

  Rolling my eyes, I curled one last strand of Alina’s white hair. Then thankfully, I got to turn the curling iron off and set it down. Moving my arm in a circular motion, I stretched it out. Orbiting clients with equipment like that was always tough on the shoulders.

  “You should calm down, you’re ruining the vibe,” I said crankily.

  Oliver blinked several times, his eyelids fluttering as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Easy for you to say — you have the easiest job here! All you have to do is hair. I have to create and re-create art every single time they shoot!” he spat.

  A sour taste formed in my mouth. Though a younger version of me would have spat venom at him, I now had enough patience to let it go.

  It just wasn’t worth it.

  “I’m going to get some more coffee. Alina, you want anything?” I asked, making sure to leave Oliver out of it.

  He didn’t seem to notice anyway; he was entirely focused on threading a needle with what looked like spun silk.

  Alina looked up from her phone, gave me one of those million-dollar-smiles, and shook her head. She had been completely oblivious throughout me and Oliver’s entire exchange.

  Huffing, I stomped over to the breakfast table to get away from him.

  It seemed like every time I had an interaction with the guy, I’d liked him less.

  He reminded me of the types of guys in L.A. — Where the first impression was absolutely amazing: Attractive, charming, larger-than-life personality, but when you got to know them, it turned out they were super vain and insecure.

  Pouring myself another cup of coffee, I swirled it in my hand and watched as the liquid shone in the morning light. That shine was obscured by a shadow that loomed over me.

  “Charlie,” said a voice that was somewhere between a hum and a purr.

  I jumped, nearly spilling my drink everywhere.

  When I looked up, I was surprised to see Reese Riley standing there.

  He was tall — taller than I remembered, and his slim build was slightly bent, arching over to the side slightly like a line of calligraphy. He cocked his head and the sun shone on the swirls of silver at his temples.

  “Y-yes?” I asked as blush rose into my cheeks.

  I took another sip of coffee, effectively burning myself for a second time. I was hoping to disguise the fact that I’d been caught off guard.

  A million scenarios flashed before my eyes: Reese firing me, Reese telling me off because I was spending too much time hanging around Alina, Reese reprimanding me for kissing Mason…

  “Can I speak to you in private for a moment?” He asked, his eyebrows knitting together in concern.

  My stomach dropped. “S-sure.”

  Chapter Seven

  I followed his tall, slim form across the grass to the entrance of the castle. His purple tie was billowing in the wind.

  He opened a door, then another, and then finally we were alone in a huge, deserted entrance hall.

  It looked like the set designers had already gotten to it, because this place was completely decked out. Tapestries hung on the walls depicting the various warring clans, candles were clustered around the edges of the room, and four long tables stretched out across the floor, practically spilling over with colorful food.

  Reese took a seat at the end of the nearest table and motioned for me to take the chair across from him.

  As I sat down, concern crossed his face and he began to rearrange the cornucopia next to him. He shuffled an orange, a bunch of grapes, and a few plums around in such a way until they pleased him.

  It was at that moment that it finally hit me like a sledgehammer: I was actually on the set of The Black Castle.

  And I was about to get fired. I’d screwed it up.

  There was a knot forming in my chest, tightening. My mouth went dry, and I began to pick at my thumb cuticle.

  Reese finally finished rearranging the fruit and drew his long, thin arm back out of the cornucopia. His spidery fingers were wrapped around a fat, juicy apple.

  “Ah, that’s more like it. My favorite,” he said, squinting at it as if inspecting it for flaws.

  I swallowed, wondering if he’d ever looked at me that way.

  As soon as that thought bubbled up to the forefront of my mind, Reese’s steely gray eyes were on me.

  I stiffened, petrified.

  “Am I getting fired?” I asked, the question escaping my mouth before I could stop it.

  Reese filled the hall with booming laughter then stopped abruptly, fixing me with that gray gaze again.

  I couldn’t read him. The knot in my stomach tightened.

  “No, Charlie. I’m not firing you,” he said, his British accent sharp in the air.

  My shoulders sagged as relief flooded through me. A few seconds passed and then I met his gaze again. “Then… what did you want to talk about?”

  He cleared his throat and tossed the apple into the air, catching it with ease. “I wanted to ask if you’d be open to being filmed.”

  My mouth popped open. “What?!” I asked.

  Reese pinched his violet tie between two of his fingers and ran them down the length of the silky fabric.

  It only lasted a second, but it made me wonder how it would feel if he ran his fingers down my inner thigh like that.

  My crotch pulsed and heat rose into my cheeks.

  “Nothing complicated, of course,” Reese said, staring at the apple as if he was asking it instead of me, “just a small part.”

  “What kind of part?” I asked, trying to keep the disbelief out of my voice. Was this normal for directors to ask people on set to be actors? “I don’t have much experience with acting,” I admitted, hoping he was kidding.

  “That’s fine; the part I’m thinking of putting you in wouldn’t require much.”

  Suspicion and curiosity began to weave their way into my mind.

  He continued, and I was thankful that it was him that broke the silence. “I woke up this morning from a dream,” he started, pushing the apple across the table from one hand to the other. “And in that dream, I was stricken by a creative thought. As soon as I woke up, I knew I had to execute on this vision. It’ll make The Black Castle even better than it would have been if we stayed on script.”

  “Y-you’re going off-script?” I asked, my mouth popping open. Suddenly, I was mired in thoughts of the fans of the show making mean online comments about me, holding me accountable for “ruining” the show.

  He nodded and fixed me with those steely gray eyes. There was something about his gaze that made me want to do everything he wanted— made me want to please him.

  “Going off-script is sometimes necessary,” he replied, laying one of his long, delicate hands on the table. His fingernails were perfectly trimmed, as if he got regular manicures.

  I tried to resist picking at my thumb cuticle, placing both of my hands on top of each other on my lap.

  “You know that today, we’re filming an intimate scene between Lady Bryn and Prince Valentine,” he said.

  I swallowed hard and nodded.

  “We are also going to introduce Mason’s character, Chronis. So far we’ve filmed the sword fight at dawn. But a part of it feels unbalanced; the scales are tipped in Prince Valentine’s favor. He gets an entire sex scene in this episode, plus a few more engaging scenes. All Mason’s character gets is a sword fight.”

  I leaned forward, resting my head on my hands.

  “There needs to be yin and yang between Prince Valentine and the bastard Chronis.
More balance to foreshadow the intense competition between them later in the season.”

  Suddenly I knew what he was getting at, and I knew it a second before he said it.

  “I want you to be in a sex scene with Chronis.”

  My mouth dropped open again. Me and Mason Vayne, on a bed, filmed in front of the millions of audience members? No way.

  “I— I don’t know if…” I stuttered, looking down at my hands. “Why me?”

  “You have the right aesthetic,” Reese replied sharply, a smirk curling across his face. “It was always suspected in the books that Chronis was bisexual. I want to plant that seed in the audience’s minds early on. It would make for more well-rounded character development.”

  “But… But why me?” I repeated, “I’m just a stylist.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short,” Reese said. “We did a background check on you — I saw that you took some acting classes when you went to L.A., and did some auditions. We found your audition tapes from when you tried out for those plays.”

  Fear formed a tight ball in my gut. I didn’t think anyone would ever be able to find those tapes. Embarrassment took over and heat rose into my cheeks as I remembered trying to fake a southern accent and saying some poorly-written lines.

  “Oh, bugger up,” Reece said, flashing his movie star smile at me, “No need to be embarrassed, you’re twice as good as when I first started!”

  I looked up at him and he was looking at me like that again — fixing me with his steely eyes as if he saw something in me; as if I was something more than what I was.

  I straightened up as if I could measure up to his expectations.

  “But I’ve never acted for real before,” I said. “I never got any of the parts I auditioned for.”

  “I don’t care about that,” Reese said. “I want you in this part. You have the right aesthetic, you move with fluidity, and you have all the right angles. Behind the camera, you’ll look stunning.”

  He was still looking at me with that intense gaze; there was no escaping it. It pinned me there, gluing me to my seat. I looked at the random assortment of fruits in the cornucopia so that I could have something else to look at besides his magnetic eyes.

  The words repeated over and over again in my head: Why me, why me, why me?

  I was nothing — a nobody. Sure, one time I tried to be an actor, but I failed at it. At most, it was a hobby to me and nothing more.

  Now I was getting asked by the freaking director of The Black Castle to film a sex scene in front of him. Millions of people would see my naked body, either on top of or underneath Mason’s. My body wasn’t perfect; I still had to lose a little weight before I could even dream of being in front of someone intimately comfortable. This was — it was too much pressure.

  “I can’t do it,” I said, not meeting his eyes.

  Even though he was wearing a suit jacket, I could see his shoulders sag ever so slightly. “I see…”

  There was an uncomfortable silence that stretched out between us. The only noise was the ticking of a clock somewhere in the background.

  He was still staring me down as if waiting for me to change my mind.

  I closed my eyes and thought of Hazel, how she told me to choose love over fear. Here I was, retreating back to fear. It was safe there.

  Saying no to this guaranteed that there was no way I could humiliate myself. And for a moment, I found myself questioning what she’d said to me about that. Sometimes, wasn’t it more appropriate to choose fear? To say no to things to keep yourself safe?

  After a moment, Reese got up with all of the heavy disappointment of a kid being denied his favorite flavor of ice cream. “I’ll have to go with my backup plan, then.”

  My head swiveled around to follow him as he made a beeline towards the door. Something in is voice picked at my curiosity.

  “Backup plan?” I asked, my voice echoing in the huge hall.

  Reese turned back to me, his jaw tight. “Oliver,” he said.

  I clenched my hands.

  “He’s the only one other than you with acting experience, and he has almost the aesthetic I’m looking for,” Reese explained quickly.

  There was something hidden there in his voice; something was making him nervous. I knew with all of my people-reading senses that something had thrown him off-guard.

  It was probably because he wasn’t used to people telling him no.

  But I was equally thrown off-kilter. He was picking Oliver over me? I could see why; Oliver was so… so pretty. I could see him being all pompous and entitled in New York, taking acting classes and auditioning for Broadway.

  He’d probably be more suited for the part than me.

  There was something in that thought that I didn’t like at all. Despite all of my self-criticisms, I couldn’t stand picturing Oliver getting famous off that scene, becoming even more smug and entitled than he already was.

  Reese turned and took a few steps towards the door.

  Choose love, echoed Hazel’s voice in my memory.

  I swallowed, clinging onto my fear.

  Reese was closing in on the door to the outside, and my opportunity was floating away from me…

  Choose love, repeated Hazel’s voice.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, and heard Reese push on the door handle.

  “Wait!” I called to him.

  His slim form stopped in its tracks.

  “I’ll… I’ll do it.” I said, the words leaving my mouth before I could stop them.

  Reese’s hard, angular features softened, and he turned to face me. “That’s good to hear then,” he said. “Here’s what you need to do…”

  A few minutes later, I was putting finishing touches on Alina’s hair for her sex scene, making it a little tousled. Even though she was trying to make it look like she wasn’t nervous or bothered about this at all, I caught glimpses of her staring at her nails. That paired with the fact that she was less talkative than normal led me to believe that hell had frozen over: Alina was nervous.

  “You’ve got this,” I offered softly as I wrapped one of her alabaster locks around the barrel of the curling iron. “No one can do this better than you.”

  I still hadn’t told her that I’d agreed to do a sex scene with Mason. I didn’t want to give her more things to stress out about right before her scene.

  “It’s not that — I’ve done sex scenes before,” she said, meeting my eyes in the mirror. “It’s that… me and Leo don’t have any real chemistry.”

  “Wait, what?” I said, letting her newly coiled lock fall and join the others. “You could have fooled me! That scene on the beach was fire, girl!”

  She smiled weakly. “We’re both good at acting. We can fake it if the conditions are right.”

  “Well, then just fake it this time too,” I said.

  I knew it was weak comforting, but I was half distracted, watching Oliver out of the corner of my eye. He was frantically putting on some finishing touches on a beautiful sheer dress that was clinging to a mannequin.

  Alina followed my gaze. “I shouldn’t have eaten those doughnut holes this morning… poor Oliver has to let out my dress a little in the tummy,” she said sadly.

  “No no, you’re doing that thing now. You’re beautiful — have you ever looked in the mirror?” I said, pointing her face forward so that she was forced to stare at her reflection and acknowledge the truth.

  She smiled a little bit, and I could almost feel her spirits being lifted.

  “Thanks,” she said, fixing a warm, genuine gaze on me. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  I smiled and wrapped another one of her locks around the curling iron. “So, what is this about you and Leo not having chemistry?”

  I thought of when I first saw him in the patio of that cafe; not interacting with anyone, his nose deep in one of the Black Castle books. The way he was so aloof— so golden and untouchable. And the way it felt when we shared that look…

  I shuddered, feel
ing like a cool liquid was running down my spine.

  “We just… don’t. I’ve tried everything to get to know the guy, but it’s like talking to a concrete wall. He doesn’t seem to be interested in me, or anyone on the set. We’ve all been here for a few days, and he hasn’t made any friends or buddied up to anyone. I’ve never seen anything like it,” she admitted.

  “Maybe he’s just shy?” I offered.

  “Shy? Leo Knight?! Ha,” she said, crossing her legs. “He’s an actor. He’s paid the big bucks to not be shy.”

  “Alright, alright,” I said, releasing my reins on the conversation. “What do you think it is, then?”

  She looked at my eyes in the mirror and shrugged. “Maybe he’s just weird? I don’t know. But I can’t let these thoughts leak into my head a few minutes before I shoot this scene with him. If there’s any hesitation between the two of us, any sort of wall at all, the audience will pick up on it.”

  “I’m sure you’ll carry the scene,” I said. “You have enough charisma for both of you, and he seemed pretty passionate about delivering a good performance.”

  She was staring off into the distance, and I could tell there was something on her mind; something she was holding back.

  “Care to share?” I probed, curling the very last straight strand.

  “No, it’s nothing,” she insisted.

  “Come on Alina, you can tell me anything!” I said as I fluffed her hair, giving it the illusion that she had been windswept by the beach breeze.

  “Well,” she started, keeping her voice down.

  I had to lean in closer to hear.

  “There’s some drama that I’ve been hearing about…” she said.

  I felt like my ears turned towards her. “Drama?” I asked.

  Though I prided myself on not being a gossip, I couldn’t resist.

  “Oh yes,” she said slyly.

  I was drying to tell her about my upcoming sex scene with Mason now that we were spilling tea to each other, but I had to let her have this. I had to let her tell me what she knew first.