Fallen star, p.13
Fallen Star, page 13
Joe had already spent a lot of time working with Scott and Poppy, prepping for the scene, so they only did a quick run-through for lighting and sound before the actors went to change into wardrobe.
The first half of the day involved a lot of kissing and removing of clothing, which required a lot of intervention from the wardrobe and makeup departments. At the end of every take, they had to get Scott and Poppy re-dressed and reapply all the makeup they’d basically just licked off each other’s faces.
Gross.
There were a few lines of dialogue at the beginning of the scene before they started kissing. Then Scott took Poppy’s shirt off, revealing her very pretty, very uncomfortable-looking bra. Then more kissing. Then Poppy took Scott’s shirt off so everyone could see the six-pack he’d done another water cut for. More kissing. He picked her up and carried her to the bed. Kissing. He laid her down and crawled on top of her. Kissing.
There was just a whole lot of kissing.
Complicating matters was the number of angles they had to shoot from: close-ups, mediums, low angles, over-the-shoulders. It was a lot of setups and a lot of takes. And in between every one, Joe was giving them direction on their technique: more intensity, less tongue, gasp louder.
Honestly, the sounds were maybe the worst part of all of it. Grace could almost kind of separate herself from what was happening a few feet away when she was watching on the monitors. Keeping her attention focused on the screen made it easier to look at the shot clinically and only think about the relevant technical details. But all the gasping and moaning and slurping and smacking sounds coming through her headset and going directly into her brain were a lot harder to ignore.
Plus, there was the mortifying fact that she had to actually correct the actors from time to time on the mechanics of their lovemaking.
“Um, Scott,” she said at the end of a take. “Remember, you need to pull Poppy’s bra strap off her shoulder before you start kissing her breast.”
Good thing that wasn’t awkward or anything. Especially now that she knew they were actually sleeping together offscreen. Grace was going to have to anesthetize herself with an entire bottle of wine when she got home tonight.
Scott nodded, like this was all a totally normal day at work. “Bra strap, then boob. Got it.”
Poppy, who currently had a makeup artist cleaning Scott’s saliva off the boob in question, poked Scott in the shoulder and rolled her eyes. “Get it right, sheesh. What are you, an amateur?”
Poppy was amazingly unselfconscious about her body, even when it came time for Scott to peel off her bra. They were shooting her tastefully from behind, so all you saw on-screen was her upper back as he unhooked her bra and took it off. But she was sitting in Scott’s lap at that point with her legs wrapped around his waist, and his face was basically right in her breasts. She was wearing nipple covers, but he was still getting an eyeful. Not that it was anything he hadn’t seen before, apparently. He wasn’t the only one who could see her though. There was a sound guy standing like two feet away, and a camera operator right behind her, and the rest of the skeleton crew off to the side.
Grace couldn’t even imagine being brave or confident enough to do something like that, but Poppy seemed utterly unfazed by it all. After every take, a wardrobe assistant scooped Poppy’s bra off the floor and helped her put it back on in front of everyone. And the whole time, Poppy was just sitting there in Scott’s lap with her chest in his face, cracking jokes like it was no big deal.
By the time they broke for lunch, they’d only made it to the halfway mark. Which meant when they came back, they’d be at the part where both actors were completely naked. Well, mostly naked. There wasn’t going to be any frontal nudity, thank god, so Poppy would still be wearing her nipple covers, along with a flesh-colored G-string.
Scott, on the other hand, had a rather prominent butt shot, so he’d be wearing something called a modesty pouch. Which was a total misnomer, because it did nothing whatsoever to protect anyone’s modesty or dignity or anything else. It was basically just a cloth bag with a drawstring—indelicately referred to as a “cock sock”—that the actor stuffed his genitals into to cover them up.
Grace wasn’t sure how it had been decided that Scott would do nudity and Poppy wouldn’t. Whether that had been Joe’s artistic vision or what the backers wanted. Whether Poppy’s management had put their foot down or Scott had volunteered. She wasn’t privy to those kinds of conversations, and it wasn’t the sort of thing she was going to ask anyone about.
When she’d first gotten the script, she’d been a little excited at the prospect of getting an eyeful of Scotty Deacon’s ass. Not anymore. Now that she actually knew him, it was more uncomfortable than anything else. Not that she wouldn’t be perfectly happy to see him naked—just not under the current, extremely awkward circumstances. The fact that Grace was sitting beside Joe and Ed Dudley with Poppy strutting around looking like a sex goddess took a lot of the fun out of it.
Grace tried really hard to avert her eyes when Scott shrugged out of his robe, but she couldn’t help sneaking a small peek at him. He was…yep. Really naked. The modesty sock did not leave much to the imagination. His body was outrageous—all muscly and hard and wow, that water cut was no joke because his abs were popping way out—but it felt really wrong to be enjoying the view, so Grace fixed her gaze on her laptop screen and didn’t look up again until the actors were in position.
Their position, by the way, was extremely provocative at this point in the scene. Scott was on top of Poppy, grinding away with his bare ass in the air, while she writhed around beneath him and made sex noises. Even though all their NC-17 bits were technically covered, there was still a whole lot of intimate contact happening. Grace was deeply uncomfortable, but then so was everyone else in the room, although they were all trying hard not to act like it.
Scott’s backside was just really front and center in the frame. It was impossible not to look at it. And when you were looking at it, it was impossible not to admire the firm roundness of his glutes, and the perfect curve of his lower back muscles as they met his hips, which were gyrating in a way that couldn’t help but make Grace feel certain things.
Then there was the matter of his skin, which was smooth and unblemished, with no trace of a tan line, which naturally led the mind to wonder things like whether he’d had to get his butt waxed or if he was naturally hairless back there, and whether they used bronzer to get that sun-kissed glow or if he tanned nude—which were not the sorts of things Grace had any business wondering about one of her coworkers.
Every time they finished a take and Scott climbed out from between Poppy’s legs, Grace had to forcibly tear her gaze away from him before she embarrassed herself gaping at the perfect V of his Adonis belt and that one vein in his lower abdomen that snaked down toward—
Yeah. Better just to look away when he was walking around all distractingly beautiful and so very mostly naked.
“Let’s try it a little faster this time,” Joe told them. “Give me more desperation.”
They did it again, and this time Scott ground his hips faster and Poppy’s sex noises sounded more desperate. It was…intense.
But Joe still wasn’t happy. “Poppy, maybe try moving your hands lower. Like you’re urging him on.”
Grace honestly didn’t know how Joe was maintaining his stoic facade through all of this, because she was positive her face must be three different shades of red right now.
“When you say lower, you mean on his ass, right?” Poppy asked wryly. “You want my hands on his ass?”
“That’s what I want,” Joe said, cracking the barest hint of a smile.
Poppy cupped Scott’s butt cheeks with both hands, curling her fingernails into his skin, and Scott let out an undignified yelp that would have made an excellent addition to the blooper reel if the camera had been rolling. “Hey! Careful back there!”
“Too much ass grab?” Poppy said, smirking at him.
Scott shook his head at her good-naturedly. “If you leave scratches, they’re going to have to put more makeup on my butt cheeks, and no one here wants that.”
They did it a few more times, until Joe was finally satisfied with their grinding and sex noises and butt-grabbing. Scott and Poppy kept the mood light, teasing each other and laughing between takes, but they both looked relieved when they’d finished with the wide shots. There was still the medium and the close-ups to do, but they could at least put on pants for most of those, since their lower halves wouldn’t be in the frame.
“Are my hands in this shot?” Scott asked when they were about to start the next setup.
Ed frowned at the monitor, then at Scott. “Yes. Both of them.”
“What are they supposed to be doing again?”
There was a pregnant moment of silence before Grace realized that she was the person who was supposed to answer that. “Uhhhh, hang on,” she said, scrolling back through her screenshots of Scott naked on top of Poppy having pretend sex. Yeah, this was totally not weird at all, no siree. “Um, your right hand”—her voice cracked a little and she cleared her throat—“is propped on the pillow next to her head. And the other…” Grace squinted at the screen. “Looks like it’s underneath her?”
“Like this?” Scott asked, wedging his palm under Poppy’s back and looking over at Grace.
“Lower,” Grace said, praying for a lightning bolt to strike her and put an end to this uncomfortable moment.
Scott moved his hand down and looked at her expectantly.
“Little more. Like on her hip.”
“How’s that?”
Grace swallowed. “Yeah, right there.”
God. How is this my life?
She was literally instructing the man she had a crush on where to put his hands on the woman he was actually sleeping with, while they simulated sex in front of her and a group of her coworkers. There was not enough wine in the world to wash this day away.
By the time they finally wrapped that night, Scott and Poppy had been simulating sex for close to twelve hours, and they both looked drawn and exhausted as they pulled on their robes and slipped back to their trailers. Even good sex would be excruciating after twelve hours, and Grace couldn’t even imagine what it must be like to do this for an entire day. It had been hard enough just having to watch it.
When she got home that night, the lights were on downstairs in Scott’s house. Grace couldn’t tell if Poppy had come home with him again or not, but she tried not to let herself think about it. As soon as she got inside her own house, she switched on the TV and cranked the volume. If Poppy was next door, Grace did not want to know. And she certainly didn’t want to hear them together.
She’d heard enough of Poppy and Scott’s sex noises to last her a lifetime.
11
First up on the call sheet Friday was the “morning after” scene that followed the love scene they’d shot yesterday. Fortunately for everyone, it was pretty tame. Scott and Poppy would be in bed, but they’d mostly just be talking and they’d get to be partially covered by the sheets. Even with Scott shirtless and Poppy flashing copious sideboob, it felt like a cakewalk compared to yesterday.
About halfway through the morning, Grace got a text from Scott.
Scott: What did 0 say to 8?
It was the first text she’d gotten from him since Sunday, when he’d sent her a picture of a bell pepper he’d claimed looked like Nate.
The answer arrived before she had a chance to reply.
Scott: Nice belt
Grace glanced over at Scott’s chair, but it was empty.
“My sister loves that joke,” he said behind her, making her jump. “And you looked like you could use a smile.”
“It’s funny,” she said.
He came around to stand in front of her and raised a quizzical eyebrow. “You didn’t laugh.” He was wearing flip flops and athletic shorts and an unzipped hoodie with no shirt because he was going to have to go crawl back under the covers with Poppy in a few minutes.
Grace tried to avoid staring at his abs and wound up just looking shifty. “Well, it’s not funny ha ha. It’s more like clever funny.”
“Are you all right?” Scott asked, frowning slightly.
She forced a smile and tried to make her voice sound perky. “Yeah, fine. Why?”
“You’ve just seemed sort of distant all week, like maybe you were avoiding me. I didn’t do anything to piss you off, did I?”
“No, definitely not. I’ve just been distracted with…” She waved her hand vaguely. “Stuff.” Ugh. Why aren’t I better at lying?
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really.”
Scott sat in Joe’s chair and bumped his arm against hers. “I feel like we haven’t talked in days.”
“We literally talk all day long at work,” Grace said instead of admitting the truth—that she’d been feeling the exact same way. Because as much as she liked Scott, she didn’t entirely trust either his intentions or her own feelings where he was concerned. Not to mention the whole Poppy situation, which made things even more confusing.
“That’s work talk,” he said. “I mean talk like this.” He nudged her arm again. “Like friends.”
Grace’s chest clenched, and she looked away. “It’s just been one of those weeks, I guess.”
“Tell me about it.” Scott sighed, sagging back in his chair. “I guess I’ve been pretty distracted too.”
She looked over at him—really looked at him—and noticed the lines of tension around his eyes, and the fact that he wasn’t smiling as much as he usually did. “Are you okay?”
He nodded, and his jaw moved like he was grinding his teeth. “I’m just glad yesterday’s finally in the rearview mirror. It’s been hanging over my head all week.”
“Yeah, that must have been”—Grace only barely managed to stop herself from using the word hard—“awkward.”
Scott snorted and reached up to scratch his shoulder. “Try mortifying. Being naked in front of your coworkers is pretty much everyone’s worst nightmare, isn’t it?”
Grace hadn’t realized it had bothered him that much. Not that she thought he’d enjoyed it particularly, but he’d seemed to take it in stride. “You didn’t seem bothered when you were doing it. You seemed really confident.”
He shrugged. “I’m used to pretending in front of an audience, I guess. But it’s hard to look people in the eye when you know you’re going to have to do something that embarrassing in front of them, so I’ve been keeping my head down all week. Thank god for Poppy. It’s so much easier to do a scene like that with someone you’re comfortable with, and she’s a real pro.”
“Yeah. Thank god for Poppy,” Grace echoed, trying not to sound bitter.
Scott shifted to one side and dug around in his pocket. “You want some gum?”
When Grace shook her head, he unwrapped a stick of Trident and shoved it in his mouth. He’d been chewing a lot more gum this week. She’d assumed it was for Poppy’s benefit, because of all the kissing, but now Grace wondered if maybe it was a nervous habit—something he did when he was stressed.
“I think I’ve finally got another job lined up after this,” he said, rolling the wadded-up gum wrapper between his thumb and index finger.
Grace turned in her chair to face him, smiling. “Scott! That’s great!”
He shrugged without meeting her eye.
“Isn’t it?”
His jaw worked as he chewed his gum. “It’s not what I was hoping for. But as my agent keeps reminding me, it’s better than nothing.” He sounded bitter, and a little defeated.
Grace started to put her hand on his arm to comfort him, but stopped herself. He was in a relationship—or something—with someone else. She had no business putting her hand on him, even if it was meant in friendship. “Things will get better,” she said. “Pretty soon people will be beating down your door.”
Scott glanced at her without acknowledging the compliment, which she knew he was mentally talking himself out of. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Do you know what your next job’s going to be?”
She sat back in her chair and stretched her legs out in front of her, pointing her toes. “Not yet. I was thinking it might be nice to take a few weeks off before jumping into the next one. Location shoots always leave me feeling off-kilter.”
Scott nodded and snapped his gum, looking unhappy. “Yeah, me too.”
Grace was just trying to find Carmen.
That was the only reason she was out back by the trailers in the first place. She needed to ask Carmen if she was bringing Dominic to brunch tomorrow, so she’d know whether to make the reservation for two people or three. Grace could have just texted, but she’d been cooped up inside the soundstage all day, so she’d thought it would be nice to take a walk out to the wardrobe trailer and get some fresh air.
Except Carmen wasn’t in the wardrobe trailer. When Grace came out, she heard what sounded like footsteps behind it, so she peeked around the side to see if it was Carmen.
It wasn’t Carmen.
It was Poppy and Sareh, the other actress in the cast.
And they were kissing.
Like, a lot.
Grace backed away quietly and hurried back inside the soundstage.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
Why hadn’t she just texted Carmen?
Once she’d recovered from the initial shock, Grace couldn’t decide whether or not to tell Scott. On the one hand, telling him seemed like the right thing to do. The thing a friend would do. But on the other, it was really none of her business. She didn’t actually know anything about Scott and Poppy’s relationship, or what sort of ground rules they’d set. For all she knew, they weren’t exclusive. Maybe he wouldn’t care. Maybe he even knew already.
