Close Up

by Elise Faber

  Enough.

  I pulled out the script and my pencil and started going through it again. There was a scene toward the climax that was going to be tricky to balance the comedy aspect of the film with my character’s growth.

  And yes, I understood it was a comedy, but without proper growth and development of the main characters, it was going to be boring and very one-note for the audience.

  My phone rang just as I’d turned to the scene, and speaking of people I paid, Maggie, my publicist, was on the phone.

  “Hey,” I said, putting her on speaker.

  Maggie was an awesome publicist, had first worked with athletes, training up in San Francisco with a big firm called Prestige Media Group, but had then transitioned to celebrities and Hollywood and was now running her own company.

  Artie had recommended her to me, and it had been one of the best things I’d done for my career.

  Maggie made it so I didn’t have to think about anything except for acting.

  No games. No going out to be seen. I could just be me, sitting at home in my PJs, picking the films I wanted, and not overexposed by unnecessary press and interviews.

  So, yeah, maybe I gave Maggie a paycheck, but I was also lucky enough to have her steady presence in my life.

  “You ready to go?” she asked. “I’m not interrupting?”

  “I’m good,” I said, setting the script aside. I was fussing and tinkering when I just needed to stop. Rehearsals would begin tomorrow, and I needed to be fresh enough that my performance wouldn’t be stale.

  “Good. Just a couple of things. The studio wants to get a couple of publicity shots, so they were hoping you could do that Monday or Tuesday.” A pause, and we’d been working together long enough that I knew Maggie was waiting for me to chime in if I had a problem with that. Since I didn’t and I remained silent, she went on, “People wanted to see if you’d give a quote for the importance of female representation in Hollywood. I agreed, since Artie is doing it as well. It’ll be a bit of a fluff piece, but it fits in with your brand. I’ll put something together and you can approve.” Another beat. Another moment of me keeping quiet since that was fine.

  Maggie kept working down her list, all minor commitments, all easy to do now since I was in L.A. for the time being.

  “You’re easy today,” she said.

  “I’m easy every day.”

  She laughed. “That’s true enough. You never create drama for me.”

  “That’s because I don’t have a personal life.”

  “You do give me a challenge in that way.”

  I frowned. “What?”

  “It’s all about image, babe, you know that,” Maggie said. “And you’re the Queen of Single.”

  My brows drew further together. “Um—”

  “Oh, no,” Maggie said. “I’m not trying to say that’s a bad thing at all. You do you. Be happy. Be single. It’s just that the press sometimes loves nothing better than a good relationship story, and so I spend half of my time killing stories about your potential boyfriends or fiancés, rather than talking about all of the good things you’re doing, work wise.”

  “Oh.”

  “And the shitty thing is that if you were in a relationship, it wouldn’t be any different. Every other story would be about when you two were getting married or is Eden Larsen wearing a ring or is that a baby bump?”

  Slice.

  Slice.

  Slice.

  Married. Ring. Baby.

  Damn, the past would just not stay tucked away.

  I heard Maggie suck in a breath and realized that I’d been silent too long. “I . . . uh . . . that would be fine if you were pregnant or secretly engaged . . .”

  The careful question at the end of her trailing off snapped me out of it. “Sorry,” I said. “You won’t be able to use your Secret Agent Ninja PR skills on me right now. I’m not engaged or pregnant. I’m not even dating anyone right now, let alone having a sex life.”

  One night didn’t count as a sex life, right?

  “It would be okay if you were.”

  I snorted.

  “Sorry, that sounded asshole-y,” Maggie said, contrite now. “I just meant—”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m just doing my part to not be easy all of the time. Okay, so let me play celebrity gossip columnist. What about you? How’s Ben?”

  A sigh. “Ben is now firmly in the category of ex.”

  “Ugh. I’m sorry.” Her tone told me it hadn’t been a pleasant breakup.

  “He decided that being tied to one woman was too much pressure for him . . . and also that he wanted to sell my lingerie on eBay.”

  “Ew.”

  “Dirty lingerie.”

  “Double ew.”

  “I know.” A beat. “Men suck.”

  “Yes,” I agreed, but even as I commiserated with her on the suckage of men, I couldn’t help but think that not all of them were bad.

  Pierce staring at Artie, love all over his face.

  Damon smiling down at me from my porch, pizza boxes in hand.

  Tim’s angry eyes, fist descending—

  I blinked, caught the tail end of Maggie’s sentence

  “. . . and so then I threw all of his underwear out of the window,” Maggie said. “God, I’ve seen them do that in movies, but actually doing it in real life was so satisfying.”

  The image of cool and collected Maggie launching underwear out her window made me laugh, made the past fade back away.

  “Please tell me they were tighty-whities.”

  “Unfortunately, Ben was strictly a boxer brief man.”

  “Disappointing.”

  “In so, so many ways.” Then she sighed and shifted back to business, promising to touch base with me about the shoot on Monday or Tuesday, wishing me luck for rehearsals, telling me I was going to kill it.

  Supportive. Sharing. Funny. Caring.

  All the things a friend would do.

  By the time I thanked her and hung up, I realized that maybe I wasn’t quite as alone as I’d thought.

  A Month Later

  Rehearsals were completed, filming had started, and I’d quickly gone from being beyond excited to begin shooting to absolutely dreading showing up to work every day.

  My male costar was . . .

  An ass.

  Grant Seagurio had been the hottest thing in town about five years before, lead billing on every movie he’d made, films hitting the top of the box office, paparazzi trailing his every move.

  And now . . . a little of that star power had dimmed.

  He’d headed a few busts, but that wasn’t what he was struggling to overcome. Nope, what had really shuttered his fandom was the video of him yelling at a valet. Okay, not so much as just yelling, but screaming, throwing things, kicking over a trash can, and then running over the foot of the poor valet.

  All for grinding the gears of his Ferrari.

  Oh, man. He had it so tough.

  I snorted to myself as I watched him on set. I’d been reticent to work with him after the incident, but it had been several years without anything else happening to make headlines and so I’d hoped he’d grown up, grown out of the asshole-ness, especially when jobs had begun to dry up. Clearly, I’d been wrong. Nothing seemed to faze him. Grant’s ego was something to behold, and I felt like I’d been around Hollywood and the model world long enough to have seen some huge ass egos.

  Grant’s was . . . on a whole other level.

  He yelled at the makeup artist for having made him look too shiny in one shot, never mind that he’d batted the girl away when she’d come in to touch up. He screamed at the boom operator for having had the nerve to shift positions and distract him. He’d argued with the director about the shot list and been late to set when he’d disagreed.

  And he’d . . . barely spoken a word to me, even though we were supposed to somehow be creating chemistry on screen.

  I’d heard him rage into his cell that first day after rehearsals about how h
is agent had forced him to work with a former model.

  As though it were the lowest thing that could possibly happen to him.

  Meanwhile, it was going to be my name as top billing because my agent was good and because . . . well, I’d become the bigger star over the last year.

  Normally, I didn’t give a damn about things like that.

  But with Grant being the way he was, wreaking havoc and ejaculating his ego all over the set—

  I bit back a chuckle.

  Ejaculating his ego?

  I’d been watching too many Netflix comedy specials of late, apparently. Though it didn’t seem like much of it had rubbed off on me if I was passing the time by making internal jokes about ejaculating egos.

  Or maybe, too much of it was rubbing off on me.

  First stop, rom-com. Next, comedy tour.

  Yeah, right. Stifling a snort, I continued watching the scene unfold in front of me. So ejaculating egos might not be the best metaphor, but I got a few extra points for alliteration.

  Hey. No judgment, okay?

  Sometimes there was a lot of downtime on set, and since I couldn’t rip the microphone out of the boom operator’s hands, cross over to Grant, and then use the long metal rod to beat Grant senseless, I had to satisfy myself with imagining the pleasure.

  And ejaculating, rods, and pleasure.

  Heh.

  But speaking of ejaculating, rods, and pleasure, I was horny. Like really horny. In fact, if I were being honest about the amount of my horniness, I was more pent-up than I could ever remember.

  Or maybe a more apt description was that I was more pent-up than my early twenties addiction to all things Chris Hemsworth.

  Okay, not gonna lie, I still had that addiction.

  I was just slightly more addicted to a certain chocolate-eyed photographer, whose quiet and velvet-lined voice never failed to make me shiver and who’d been perfectly friendly while somehow making me want him even more.

  And speaking of ejaculating, Damon’s cock had been—

  “Absolutely not!” Grant exploded. “I will not do it again. That was perfect, and I will not let some two-bit director tell me how to do my job . . .”

  My cell was in the pocket of my chair, and I felt it buzz.

  Thank God.

  Not only that I’d remembered to put it on silent, because imagine the conniption that Grant would have had if it wasn’t, but also that because I hadn’t left it in my dressing room and now I had something to distract me from the disaster that was unfolding in front of me.

  My phone vibrated again, and I saw that Damon had texted.

  Then immediately felt my lips curve up into a smile.

  Things had gone back to the way they were before, well, almost exactly like they were before. Damon had returned to being my friend, randomly texting me throughout the week, though our standing Thursday night phone call had morphed into Pizza Night at my house.

  We’d tried one time at his condo, but he lived . . . slightly Spartanly, should I say. Or to be more specific, I wasn’t impressed by his lumpy couch and bare pantry. Though, he’d at least bought the good beer and had promised that he’d have me over when the stuff he’d shipped over from the U.K. had arrived.

  But it was either his place or mine, because going out to eat wasn’t exactly feasible for me at the moment. Or at least, not feasible without pictures documenting the event ending up splashed across the gossip sites. I didn’t want to get all dressed up, to do my hair and makeup. I wanted to be in my pajamas or sweatpants and an oversized sweater with my air conditioning blasting—and not as a protection from Damon, or protecting me from my reaction to Damon, but because they were cozy.

  And because we were friends. Just friends.

  No lingering touches. No more sex on the kitchen table.

  No awkward silences or limited explanations of the past.

  It was just him and me. Just as we should have been.

  So, why did it feel like I was missing out on something?

  Buzz. Buzz.

  I blinked, pulled myself out of my head, and focused on Damon’s messages on my cell.

  How’s the Ego?

  (I know you’re on set for the day, so just call or text when you can)

  I was smiling already because Damon was texting, but his use of our nickname for Grant had me stifling giggles. Because, man, was it apropos. But then my cell vibrated once more.

  Also, can we reschedule Pizza Night tomorrow? I have a date.

  My smile faded.

  A date?

  Damon had a date?

  What the fuck? How dare he have the nerve to go on a—

  “No, Eden,” I muttered, so maybe I was growing used to having him in my life frequently, but it wasn’t like I was ready to forget everything that happened to me and get myself a boyfriend.

  Even if that boyfriend was Damon? my brain asked

  Yes. Even then.

  “This is a good thing,” I murmured. “He’s moving on. Just as it should be.” I sucked in a breath, forced my fingers to type out a reply.

  Sure, we can reschedule. Want to do Friday night instead?

  A few moments before another buzz.

  I can’t. I’m leaving Friday for my trip.

  We’d just talked the day before, and he’d told me he was going to take a trip up the coast, leave on Saturday, make a long weekend of it. Had that changed already?

  I thought you were going on Saturday?

  Also, why did my heart pulse at the thought of him making plans without me?

  Changed my mind. So next week then?

  Because I was slowly going insane, wanting things I had no business wanting. Sighing, I shoved down the urge to revolt and forced myself to remember this was a good thing. He was moving on, just like I’d asked. We were friends—

  Except, date?

  Fucking really?

  I wrinkled my nose and then I tucked all the extraneous emotions away and sent him back a response.

  Next week is great.

  Then I turned off my cell, shoved it back into the pocket of the chair, and returned my focus to Grant and bearing witness to the insanity of his ego trip.

  It was going to be a really long day.

  I hadn’t heard from Damon.

  Okay, fine. That wasn’t entirely fair.

  He’d texted me a couple of images, pretty shots of the coast and one striking photo of a child climbing a tree, but that was it. He hadn’t given me any words or responded to me asking about his date, and he hadn’t texted me to ask me what I wanted on our pizza for our weekly hangout tonight.

  He always texted to ask.

  Even though my response was always the same.

  Extra pepperoni and don’t skimp on the garlic bread.

  He never did.

  But now . . . radio silence.

  “Shit,” I muttered, grabbing my cell and pulling up DoorDash. I’d order my own damn pizza and garlic bread, and I’d watch a bad movie all on my own.

  I didn’t need yummy-smelling, velvet-voice Damon Garcia.

  No ma’am.

  No—

  The doorbell rang.

  Since I was in the middle of a huff, I didn’t stop to glance through the window to check who it was, and actually, I was feeling a little off. Not just emotional, but also really tired and cranky.

  Though that probably just circled me right back to emotional.

  Plus, my boobs hurt.

  And also another thing to be cranky about. My period was afoot.

  Ah, to be a woman.

  Such a joy.

  Anyway, I’d already turned the knob and was pulling the door open by the time I’d realized that was a stupid thing to do. “Shit,” I muttered and slammed it shut.

  Then I looked out the window.

  Then I saw Damon, balancing some pizza boxes.

  At which point, I realized he'd seen me acting like an idiot.

  Cool.

  “Shit,” I muttered, reaching for the
knob, just as the bell rang again. I pulled it open and stood back.

  “I thought you were holding last week against me,” he murmured, lips curving up at the edges. “I didn’t want to cancel. I just . . .”

  “It’s fine, it’s fine,” I hurried to say. “And I’m sorry I slammed the door on you. I was distracted and didn’t look through the window.”

  “You should be apologizing to the pizza,” he said, holding up the boxes. “Your extra garlic bread almost hit the dirt”—he glanced down at the porch as he stepped inside—“or the concrete, rather.”

  “Meh.” I locked up behind him, already feeling better because he was nearby. And no, I wasn’t contemplating that feeling further. I was going to be blissfully ignorant and just pretend my heart hadn’t expanded with joy when I’d seen him there standing outside my door. Good plan, Eden. Can’t backfire at all. “Shut up,” I said under my breath to my ever-spinning mind and then pushed everything extraneous from my thoughts and focused on Damon. And the garlic bread. “That’s what the five-second rule is for.”

  “You okay?”

  I nodded. “Just tired.”

  “Hmm.” He stared at me for a heartbeat then did some nodding of his own before heading into the kitchen. “You do know that the five-second rule is not a thing, right?”

  I grinned. “Yes, I do know that,” I said, moving past him as we undertook our usual routine of gathering plates and napkins, pulling beers from the fridge. “I know it because you made me watch that stupid Mythbusters episode three times.”

  Damon dished up slices then carried the boxes and plates into the family room. “It sounds like you’ll need to watch it another time if you think it’s so stupid.”

  I shuddered, grabbed the beers and napkins. “God, no. It wasn’t stupid. I just objected to the volume of viewing.”

  “Volume of viewing?” he asked. “You one of those fancy actors who warm up with those alliteration word games, are you now?”