by Eden Butler
***
Despite the heat from the overhead lamps and the slow, hot breath moving from Will’s mouth and mine, my body moved between the paradoxical sensations of heat and a coolness that came from his proximity to me, not the dropping temperatures from the outside set.
“Okay guys, let’s pick up from the ‘I hated you’ line and then go to the kiss.” Cooper had lost his teasing tone. The curiosity he’d held throughout the entire shoot got dropped in his eagerness to get the job done and his perfectionism to create something sound. But damn if he wouldn’t drop that amused grin. “And…action!”
“I hated you,” Will started, keeping his voice low. It held the subtlest hint of seduction; a cadence that was half fascination, half desperate need. I didn’t know how he managed it, but every Will Callahan character, at least the ones using seduction as a weapon, had the same silky tone meant to twist away the toughest resolve not to bend. It was an act, I knew, but it wasn’t a stretch to fall for him. “Do you remember that? I hated everything you stood for.”
As Isolde, I was meant to tease back, to volley with Will and flirt my way into our kiss. It was my own character’s seduction—the helpless need for a man that she shouldn’t want. I was damn familiar with that conflict.
“You called me a fascist,” I answered, pulling up the right side of my mouth to dent in a dimple. It was the tickled effect, something I’d seen my mother do anytime my father amused her. I’d stolen it to seem approachable and sweet. I used the gesture now because Isolde needed to flirt.
There are cues we facilitate. It’s human nature. A woman who is attracted to a man will use subconscious gestures to affect a reaction. I did that now, slipping the ends of my hair between my fingertips. It was meant to be a nervous gesture, something the character would use to distract herself from the moment and the impending seduction that would lead to the greatest conflict in the script.
“You said I was nothing.” Will moved his eyes, watching the slip of hair brushing my fingers. “You don’t believe that anymore?”
He moved closer, taking the strands from my touch and pulling them through his. The camera was behind my shoulder, picking up the slip of his eyes, how they moved to my hair, to the slow slide of each strand, then back to my face. “You saved me.” This time his voice went softer, his words slower and for a second I almost forgot the role. I could use this. “I was injured and you healed me.”
I swallowed, feeling hotter by the second, repressing the need to wipe the forming sweat from the back of my neck. “Any…anyone would have.”
Will had the fattest bottom lip, the softest, pinkest skin that darkened in the center. I stared at that small discoloration, trying to ignore the memory of how his mouth tasted on my tongue all those months ago as he dropped my hair and slid an arm behind my head on the truck seat. He came so close now that the fine hairs on his arm tickled against my ear. “You aren’t just anyone.” Will touched my face and I let him maneuver my head, urge me to move my chin, angle my cheeks between his long fingers before he delivered his line. “There’s no one like you.”
There were two small seconds before the kiss came. I counted them both and it felt like everything was happening in slow motion. The soft tickle of his fingertips against my jaw. The slow, sweet breath that fanned against my open mouth when he inched closer. The low, wild sound of his throat vibrating when he finally kissed me.
It was an act. I knew that. There were fifty people around us watching, filming, lighting the set, assuring that the sound was optimal. But just then as Will kissed me…well, as Tristan kissed Isolde…I pretended that we were alone, that we were back in my house, drunk and blissfully un-mindful of how epically stupid it was to sleep with your best friend.
Just then, I let Will move his mouth over mine and thought about the sweetness of his breath and how warm, how strong his tongue felt in my mouth. We went on kissing, reacting, setting up the steps that would lead to the rest of the scene. And I forgot about the script and the audience. I kissed Will back and let that chemistry Coop had mentioned the night before spill out from my body and shoot into Will’s. I moved when he pulled on me. I reacted when he subconsciously asked for a response. He led, I followed and in the progression of the scene, Tristan drew Isolde onto his lap, tugging at her shirt, slipping fingers up her back, pulling on the collar to expose her bare shoulder.
And then, his hand came to my breast, those long, perfect fingers gripping, tweaking until I could not help myself. Until I threaded my fingers into his hair and let Will squeeze and touch and take whatever of mine he wanted.
“God…” I managed, holding his mouth to my neck, moving up and over his lap, pressing him closer, harder against my skin. “Oh God.”
“Baby…” I’d never heard that pet name from Will. He’d never referred to anyone he was with as his baby. He’d only ever called me Rainey or Pinkie or sweetie and none of those times had those pet names held any of the sweetness or need that he’d just used to call me that.
No. Not me.
Not Will.
Tristan and Isolde. Not us.
He kept kissing me, taking and I let him go on, cursing myself, my stupid logic when I heard Cooper repeat over and over again, “Guys, that’s a cut. Cut!”
Will followed, leaned toward me, seeming unwilling to stop kissing me when I pulled away, shaking my head to clear away the tension tightening my body. When I looked over to Cooper and JoJo on the other side of the camera, Will finally stopped trying to kiss me.
“That was perfect,” Coop said, leaning back in his chair, not remotely ashamed at how wide he smiled at us. “That was just…perfect.”
I only vaguely heard him and decided that grin would pull me out of the moment so I focused on Will, how he rested his hands on my hips, how he hadn’t removed them even though Cooper had cut the scene.
“It was good,” I told him, lacking anything remotely sensible to say. I didn’t move, loved too much how close we were, not willing to separate from Will. I had gone months and months not speaking to him and though I knew I needed to retract my limbs from his lap, that I had to keep myself distant so I could begin to stop wanting him, it felt too good to have him so close. I didn’t want to move.
“Yeah,” he said, voice sounding awed. “Damn good.”
My mind did things to me when Will was around. There were moments that I was certain he’d gone on looking at me too long, that there was something in that look that meant more than honest friendship, but I’d always managed to remind myself that I was not his type. I was his friend and that’s all I’d ever be, that drunken stupid night notwithstanding. But just then, with Will clinging to me still, with our bodies pleasantly entwined, I could have sworn the look he gave me, that amazed, satisfied expression wasn’t a figment of my desperate imagination.
“Rainey.” It was a breathless sound that didn’t sound like my name at all. Those soft, slow syllables that made my name sound like a song had come from my best friend. It sounded like a promise. It felt like a dream and when I looked up at him, when he touched my cheek, made to guide my head again, bring my mouth closer to his despite there being no running camera filming it, I was sure Will Callahan, not Tristan was about to kiss me.
And then, while the crew reset and ignored us, just as Will was tugging me closer and the moment was amping up, the tension doubling as I held my breath, waiting to see what he’d ask of me next, Will suddenly froze and let out a soundless gasp, as though someone had just flicked a switch on in his head. For several long seconds he just sat there, his mouth hanging open, his eyes searching my face but not really seeing me. Then, just as suddenly, he dropped his hand, unceremoniously moved me off his lap and hurriedly left the truck without so much as a backward glance in my direction.
INTERVAL
Will: I’m pretty sure Cooper is trying to steal you away from me.
Raine: Is this about the steampunk show again? I told you, it’s only a two-month shoot. Then a mid-season break.
<
br /> Will: DURING CHRISTMAS
Raine: We’ll do New Year’s at Lana’s. I miss your mom.
Will: It won’t be the same. Christmas, Pinkie. There will be no Christmas.
Raine: Am I your only friend? Won’t J.J. and Erik be cooking?
Will: You aren’t serious.
Raine: He isn’t that bad. Besides, it’s L.A. Get take out.
Will: It’s like you forgot you’re your mother’s child. I am so telling on you.
***
Raine: I air-Princed all alone last night. It was pathetic. Come to Canada. They make snow here.
Will: ‘Darling Niki’ or ‘When Doves Cry’?
Raine: ‘Purple Rain’
Will: I’ll catch the red eye.
CHAPTER TEN
PRESENT
There may have been delusion coloring my judgment. It was feasible. I could nearly count on two hands the number of times my assumptions and imagination had lead me down a path that ended with my face flaming red and my ego wounded near to complete destruction. On all those occasions, rum and Will had mended my pride. This time, however, it was Will I was banking on to feed my hope.
The rooms along the back of the mansion were quiet and dark. I could make out the flicker of soft light under Will’s door and heard the faint tone of Jimmy Fallon’s laughter as the talk show host worked his monologue. Behind that thick, oak door, my best friend hid from me. I needed to know why.
The black antique bolt holding the hinge to the frame had worn the wood underneath until it was smooth and shiny. That was the only thought I had as I held my hand in front of the door, knuckles inches from the wood, debating whether or not I should knock. He could tell me to leave. He could shout and curse and rage against me for keeping my distance all these months. Knowing I deserved that kept me from knocking. Told you I was a total coward.
But Will touching me, kissing me just an hour before with Coop and JoJo and the entire crew looking on had felt different. It had felt so damn real. I wanted to feel more of it. I had to know if it was that or something else that my desperate imagination had invented that had caused him to leave so abruptly.
Holding my breath, I rapped my knuckles against the wood before I lost what little nerve I had. It took him several seconds to respond. There wasn’t the clip of his boots against the hard wood or the rustle of his clothes as though he hurried to dress. Instead, the only indication that he moved at all was the lowering of the TV volume and then, Will swung open the door.
I didn’t know what to make of the expression he wore. It looked like irritation, maybe surprise, but as he stared at me, his features shifted to something harder, something grim.
But even though his face intimidated me, now that I was here I wasn’t going to back down. I stood taller, moving my chin up a little to throw a silent challenge his way. Will reacted by working his jaw, as though he needed a second to decide if he was going to slam the door in my face, but when I would not cower away from his glare, when I held his gaze and didn’t so much as blink, Will released a breath, shifting his mouth to relax a little as though he thought it was pointless to avoid me. Then, he held the door open wider and I walked inside.
“I take it, by the quick disappearing act back there that something’s bugging you.” He waited for me to come inside, to fidget a little with the small knick knacks and wooden framed pictures along the fireplace mantel.
“Bugging me?” he asked, keeping his distance folding his large arms over his chest. He reminded me of a bouncer mildly annoyed by a club kid wanting behind the velvet ropes without dropping a dime on the cover. “What do you think should be bugging me?”
“Um…” Will using that calm, low voice really bothered me, more than his challenging glare had. In ten years, I’d only heard his lethal calm once before and it hadn't been directed at me—that night had ended with some drunk, handsy asshole who wouldn’t stop hitting one me knocked out when Will caught the jerk’s chin with his fist. “Well…”
He waited a second, watching me, arms still folded as he took two steps toward me, eyes squinting, dangerous. “What’s bugging me, you ask?” I nodded, not wanting to answer, afraid my words would come out in a squeak. “I’ve been asking you the same thing for months, Raine. Damn months.”
“I…I know but…”
“And you’re ‘go to’ reply has been silence. You’ve ignored me. You left me on my own to mourn our friend and to grieve without you. You've left me to wonder night after night what I did wrong, what it is that went bad between us. And then tonight I realized…during the scene…I remembered.” Will paused, untangling his large arms to push his fingers through his hair, leaving them twined at the back of his skull when he paced away from me. He took his moment, letting his breathing even out as he dropped his arms, giving me his back like he wasn’t sure he could remain calm if he continued to speak.
“Will…please don’t…”
Then he jerked around, coming just steps from me. He moved so quickly that I had to stumble back to keep upright as he charged toward me and my shoulders connected with the wall right next to the large bay window behind me.
“You…you and me, Rainey…we...” He squeezed his eyes shut, taking another breath as though speaking the words cost him too much before he blinked, refocusing a glare at me. “We slept together.”
I couldn’t speak. This was out of the norm. Will drank and when he did, sometimes he got blindingly shitty. When he drank tequila, and got drunk, he got completely forgetful. He couldn’t remember a thing the next day. In ten years, he’d never remembered anything that happened when he spent the night with Mr. Cuervo.
“We…I mean…I suppose…”
“We slept together,” he repeated, sounding a little amazed and a lot scared. “That night…we slept together?”
I wanted to tell him it wasn’t true. I wanted so badly to make a joke or call him a ridiculous Sith loser and tell him there was no way I’d ever let him touch me. I wanted to do both and was stupidly desperate for a way out of this room, a way from Will’s desperate, hopeful face as he watched me.
I had none. I said nothing.
“Raine,” he said, walking closer, trapping me against the wall with one arm stretching to rest against the side of my head. “We slept together?” My words got trapped somewhere near the back of my throat and that’s where I let them stay. The only answer I gave him was the slow nod of my head. Will’s shoulders lowered and he moved his hand down the wall until it rested next to my own shoulder as he moved in close. “We slept together and you didn’t… the next morning when I woke up, I was naked, wrapped around one of those stupid Potter throws you always buy at the airport. And you…you promised nothing happened. You made me believe I’d stripped off in a drunken fit.” He looked sick. His face had gone pale and he leaned most of his weight against the hand at my side, as though he needed the wall to keep him upright.
“Technically, you did.” Will didn’t appreciate my lame joke. Sad, really, considering he always at least laughed at my stupid jokes. His expression went from bad to worse, paling even more as he shook his head, focusing on the ground, his hands, anything but my face. I could only stammer out a single, pathetic word. “Sorry.”
“You…you lied to me.” Will backed away from me, shifting on his feet as he moved his gaze over my face—first at my mouth, then my forehead until he seemed brave enough to look me in the eyes. The next second, I wish he’d gone on ignoring me. “I asked and you lied.”
The surprise I understood. His disappointment, I expected and in that one look, that raw, honest displeasure that we’d gotten drunk and crossed a line, reminded me why I’d lied to him in the first place. I’m sure to him it made sense. I was his friend. I was like family and this was L.A., not some backwoods cousin-marrying mountain town. Family doesn’t cross those kind of lines here.
When Will went on watching me, silently demanding an explanation, something reasonable or at least apologetic that would make him feel better, I
decided, for once, I wouldn’t humor him. He wanted the truth, I’d give it to him. It wasn’t me who’d have to deal with any new consequences. I’d been dealing with them for months, all on my own. It was his turn.
“You didn’t want to know the truth.”
He moved away without a fight, sidestepping me as I pushed off the wall. I was nearly to the door before Will stopped me, holding my arm with a grip tighter than it should have been. “You don’t know what I wanted.”
Will didn’t fight me or try to keep his hands on me when I moved away from his touch, but he wouldn’t let me ignore him anymore. That I knew by how closely he trailed after me when I took up pacing, trying my damnedest to think of an excuse that made even the smallest bit of sense.
“Raine…”
“You didn’t want to know,” I told him, holding up my hand to stop him when he came too close. He wouldn’t get the explanation he wanted if I let him get too close. “I saw that clear enough that morning. You were scared. You…you were disgusted.”
“Disgusted? Rainey…why would you…” He exhaled, head shaking and I wondered what ran through his mind. I wondered if this was more disappointment, more regret. Finally, he moved an inch, coming so close I could smell the faintest hint of sandalwood. “You’re beautiful.” That, I hadn’t been expecting. I forgot about keeping my distance when he said that. Will was only an arm’s reach from me before I realized he had my fingers in his palm. “Why would I be disgusted?”
“Are you serious? You woke up and you went all green. You kept saying ‘please tell me we didn’t. Please tell me I didn’t fuck up that badly.’ What was I supposed to think? What was I supposed to tell you, Will?”
“The truth. That’s all I wanted.”
Will moved his palm up my arm, holding my elbow as if I was going to try to step away from him, as though he was trying to keep me from fleeing. And for some strange reason, I suddenly noticed the damp curl at the back of his hair. He’d had a shower after our scene and the self-doubting idiotic part of my brain wondered if he wanted to wash the smell of my lips, my perfume, off his skin.
