Fallen star, p.4
Fallen Star, page 4
Scott sighed, closing his eyes as he dredged up the memories. “I couldn’t get my lines out. I knew them, but then we got last-minute pages and it threw me. I kept blanking, or mixing the old lines up with new. I couldn’t remember my cues, I didn’t hit my marks. I was like a complete amateur out there, like I’d never done this before.”
“That’s just nerves.” Alfie’s voice was deep and velvety, like an old-time radio host. “You put too much pressure on yourself, and this is what happens. You gave yourself the yips.”
Scott pulled the refrigerator door open and stared at neatly stacked rows of dietician-prepared meals designed to maximize his physique. He’d fallen behind on his macros today, which meant he probably needed to eat two more meals before bed, but the thought of eating anything made him queasy. “I’m pretty sure Joe Lincoln thinks I can’t act.” He grabbed a plastic container without even reading the label and slammed the fridge door shut.
“Lincoln’s seen enough cases of first-day nerves to know better.”
Scott stared glumly at the meal he’d chosen: “guilt-free” Italian chicken parmesan. “Shit, Alfie, what am I gonna do? How do I go back there tomorrow and face everyone?” He shoved his “guilt-free” dinner in the microwave and angrily jabbed his finger at the keypad.
“You just do,” Alfie said. “The same way you stay sober: one day at a time, one hour at a time, one minute at a time. Focus on what’s right in front of you that you can control. Prepare for tomorrow’s scenes, try to get some sleep, and when you walk back onto that set, don’t dwell on past mistakes.”
“Right. Like that’s possible.”
“You’re too hard on yourself. No one is expecting perfection from you but you. Everybody fucks up sometimes. What matters is what you do after. So you pick yourself up and you try again. You think everybody’s rooting against you, but they’re not. For one thing, they don’t give two shits about you, because they’re all too busy worrying about how they might fuck up. But more importantly, it’s not the worst thing in the world to show a little vulnerability. That makes you human, and when people see that you’re human, they’re more likely to be on your side.”
“No one on that set is on my side. I managed to make an enemy of the scripty, the costume department, the makeup department, most of the PAs—”
“All on the first day? That’s gotta be a record, even for you.”
“I know.” Scott watched his dinner rotate inside the microwave, feeling even more dispirited than before.
“Have you tried—I’m just spitballing here—not acting like an asshole?”
“This was me trying not to be an asshole,” Scott said petulantly.
“Clearly not very hard.”
“Has it occurred to you that this is just who I am? That I’m not capable of being anything other than an asshole?”
“Bullshit,” Alfie shot back. “I know you, kid, and you’re made of better stuff than that. Your problem is that you spend too much time inside your own head. Try focusing all that nervous energy on someone other than yourself for a change. Take two seconds to think about the people around you and what you can do to make their lives a little less miserable. You do that, and not only will you not be obsessing so much about your own mistakes, but people might even start to like you a little.”
“I guess.” It was good advice that seemed simple enough, but Scott wasn’t convinced he could pull it off.
The microwave dinged and Scott took his dinner out of the oven, burning his finger on the escaping steam in the process. Fucking perfect.
“What’s Step Ten?” Alfie asked as Scott sucked on his injured finger.
Scott sighed. “Continue to take a personal inventory and admit it promptly when we’re wrong.” It was one of his least favorite of the Twelve Steps, and the one that most consistently seemed to trip him up.
“Did you do that today?” Alfie asked in a reproachful tone.
“No.”
“Then you better pull your head out of your ass and do some work on Step Ten, huh?”
Grimacing, Scott carved off a piece of chicken breast coated with a micro-layer of soggy breadcrumbs and stabbed it with his fork. “Yeah.”
“Also—and I know you’re gonna hate this—you need to start asking for help.”
“Alfie—”
“Shut up and listen. People can’t help you unless they know you need help. Those people on that set are on your team, whether they like you or not. You’ve all got the same goal. So when you need their help, tell them. Go sit down with Joe Lincoln tomorrow and talk to him about what’s going on and what he can do to help you through it.”
“Fine.” Scott shoved the bite of chicken parmesan in his mouth. It tasted like his mood.
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
“So you’re really gonna do it? Promise me.”
Scott forced himself to swallow the bland, dry chicken in his mouth. “I promise,” he answered grudgingly.
“Good. Buck up, kid. Today was just a bump in the road. Hopefully tomorrow will be better. And if not, then the day after probably will.”
“Sure.” The one bite of chicken parmesan sat in his stomach like a lead ball. Scott dumped the rest of it into the trash, uneaten. His macros could go fuck themselves today.
“Hey. You can do this,” Alfie said in a softer voice. “I believe in you. And Joe Lincoln believes in you too, or you wouldn’t have this job. Trust us, even if you can’t trust yourself.”
Before Scott could reply, there was a knock on the door. Not the front door—the one that connected to Grace’s house. Because that was just what he needed tonight: more face time with the woman who’d destroyed his confidence.
“Is that your door?” Alfie asked.
“Yeah, I better let you go,” Scott said as he strode through the living room. “Thanks, Alfie. Seriously. I mean it.”
“That’s what I’m here for. Night, kid.”
“Night.” Scott slid the phone into his pocket, steeling himself before opening the door.
Grace stood on the other side, looking at him like he was the last person in the world she wanted to talk to.
The feeling was one hundred percent mutual.
4
Grace was having a spectacularly shitty night.
Thanks to Scott, they hadn’t wrapped until ten, after which she’d had to stay to finish her daily reports for the editor, so by the time she finally got home she’d put in a sixteen-hour day. That was on top of the not-so-great sleep she’d gotten last night—also thanks to Scott, and his predilection for blasting death metal after midnight. Basically, everything bad about her day was his fault.
All she wanted to do was curl up on her couch with a glass of wine and decompress in front of the TV for a while before crawling into bed.
There was just one small problem: the power in her stupid house was out.
She could see lights on in the other houses around the park, so it wasn’t a neighborhood outage. It was only her house that had lost power. Wonderful.
For a moment, Grace seriously considered saying “screw it” and going straight to bed without dealing with it. But then she’d come home to the same problem tomorrow night, and meanwhile all the food in her refrigerator would spoil, and anyway her phone was almost dead, and she needed to charge it and her laptop for tomorrow and…crap.
Instead of going to bed like she wanted, she set off in search of the breaker box. Using her dying phone as a flashlight, she searched the entire house from top to bottom, and when that didn’t turn up anything she went out and searched around the outside of the house.
No luck.
The breaker box must be inside Scott’s house. His lights were on next door, so whatever was wrong with her power didn’t seem to be affecting him. But if the two houses had originally been built together as one, they probably shared a breaker box.
Fucking fantastic.
Because after a long day of dealing with Scott Deacon and his attitude problem, what Grace really wanted to do was come home and interact with him even more.
Muttering under her breath, she trudged back inside, unlocked the connecting door, and knocked—a little more politely than last night. After several long moments she heard the bolt on the other side slide back, and Scott opened the door.
He quirked a quizzical eyebrow at her without saying a word, because apparently even a civil hello was too much effort for him.
“Sorry to bother you—again,” Grace said, pasting a patently false smile on her face. “But my power’s out, and I think we share a breaker box.”
His eyes flicked to the pitch blackness behind her, then he stepped back to allow her inside. “Come on. It’s in the laundry room.”
“Thanks,” she said, letting out a breath as she stepped over the threshold into his living room, grateful he hadn’t just turned her away.
His house was decorated similarly to hers, but with a little more rock star flair than her humbler cottage. Two huge leather sofas flanked a carved stone coffee table, a baby grand piano sat in front of a set of bay windows, and an enormous painting of a naked woman adorned the wall opposite a giant flat-screen television. Classy.
“This way,” Scott said, and set off without a backward glance.
Grace followed him through the living room, past a dining table long enough to seat a dozen people, into a spacious kitchen, and to the small laundry room set off to one side.
He opened the ancient-looking metal panel set into the wall and peered at it, his brow furrowing. “Um…”
“Those are fuses,” Grace said with a sinking heart. “That’s a fuse box instead of a breaker box.”
“Yeah.” Scott rubbed the back of his neck. “Do you know how to replace a fuse?”
She could Google it, probably, but the real problem was— “I’m pretty sure you have to have a new fuse to replace it with. I don’t suppose you’ve seen any extra fuses lying around?”
“Not that I’ve noticed.”
“Do you mind if I…?” She gestured to the cabinets in the laundry room.
“Knock yourself out.” He dug his phone out of his pocket. “I’ll call the landlord.”
Scott stepped out of the room while Grace rummaged through the cabinets and drawers in search of a fresh fuse. She found laundry detergent, fabric softener—TMZ would probably be thrilled to know that Scott Deacon liked the dryer sheets with the teddy bear on the box—spare light bulbs, a toolbox with an assortment of screwdrivers and wrenches, a toilet plunger…but no extra fuses.
By the time she gave up and wandered into the kitchen, Scott was just getting off the phone.
“Apparently they don’t keep spare fuses in the house because they don’t want the tenants messing with the panel themselves.”
“That’s probably wise,” Grace said. “Inconvenient for me, but wise.”
“He says he’ll have an electrician come out first thing in the morning. Sounds like this happens a lot.”
“Terrific. So in the meantime…” She glanced toward the yawning blackness waiting for her in her house.
“In the meantime, you’re kind of screwed, I guess.” He almost managed to sound sympathetic.
Grace rubbed her hands over her face in frustration. “Now I’m really wishing I’d charged my phone and laptop before I left the set.”
“You could charge them here,” Scott suggested, surprising her. Based on their acquaintance so far, she wouldn’t have trusted him to call 911 if she was on fire, and now here he was, calling the landlord for her and inviting her to hang out in his house and share his electricity.
“I don’t want to impose,” she hedged, cringing at the thought of spending even more time with him. She kind of really did need to charge her laptop tonight though. The alternative was to try to find a coffee shop that was still open, but she was so tired, the thought of it legitimately made her want to cry.
“It’s fine,” Scott said, flicking a dismissive hand. “Really.” And then he smiled at her for the first time ever—a brilliant, beautiful, movie star smile that seemed to transform his whole appearance. “What are neighbors for, right?”
Grace gulped as her stomach did a traitorous somersault. Holy shit, that smile of his was downright lethal—when he bothered to deploy it.
He tilted his head toward the door to her house. “Go get your stuff.”
It would only take an hour or so to charge her electronics. One hour of imposing on Scott’s hospitality, and then she could collapse into her own bed. She could survive his company for one more hour, surely.
“Thank you. I really appreciate it,” Grace said, and went and got her laptop and phone charger out of the bag she’d left by her front door. “Where should I plug in?” she asked when she came back.
“Wherever you want.” Scott had settled onto one of the couches and was slouched back against the cushions with his bare feet propped on the coffee table and a copy of the script in his hand. “There’s outlets everywhere.” He waved vaguely without looking up at her.
After a brief survey of her surroundings, Grace chose an outlet in the dining room, dragging one of the chairs over to the wall to set her devices on while they charged. Once that was accomplished, she straightened, feeling momentarily panicky because now what?
Should she go back to her own house and sit in the dark? Or stay here with Scott? And if she stayed here, would they have to, like, talk or something? Because ugh.
“You’re welcome to hang out here while you wait,” he said, apparently sensing her hesitation. “There’s beer in the fridge if you want something to drink. You can help yourself.”
“I didn’t think you—” She stopped, snapping her mouth firmly shut, because his addiction wasn’t any of her business.
His face was completely devoid of expression as he lifted his eyes to hers. “I keep it on hand for guests. Beer was never my poison of choice, anyway.”
Somehow, Grace managed to resist asking him what was his poison of choice, because again, not her business. And also, she did not actually want to know the sordid details of his life. It would be easier to work with him if she didn’t have to imagine him doing things like snorting coke off a prostitute—which was how he’d reportedly spent his twenty-first birthday, and was a thing she dearly wished she’d never read about him, now that she was standing in his living room beneath a giant watercolor nude.
“Sorry,” she said, biting her lip. “I didn’t mean to—”
“Don’t worry about it.” He looked back down at his script. “It’s not like my history’s a secret.”
Grace retreated to the kitchen in search of the offered beer, grateful for something to do with herself. “Wow, you really like chicken,” she observed, staring into the fridge. The shelves were lined with plastic containers of custom-prepared meals, almost all of which involved some sort of chicken. Chicken and green beans, chicken stir-fry, chicken salad, chicken chili. It was a lot of chicken.
“Like’s a strong word,” Scott replied ruefully. “I have to consume two hundred grams of protein a day to maintain my current muscle mass, and I don’t like fish, so…”
“Sounds unpleasant.”
“It’s not like I do it for fun,” Scott said. “It’s literally what they pay me for.”
There were two varieties of local craft beer in his refrigerator, and Grace took her time choosing between them. “Bottle opener?” she asked, settling on the one called Canebreak, because she’d never had it before.
“Drawer to the right of the fridge.”
Grace popped the top off her beer, then cast her eyes around the kitchen in search of the trash.
“Cabinet to the left of the sink,” Scott supplied before she could ask.
She wandered back into the living room and sank down on the couch across from him. “I worked with an actor once who used to drink chicken smoothies every day. He’d throw a whole chicken breast into the blender with a bunch of raw spinach, and walk around the set drinking it like a protein shake.”
Scott’s hazel-green eyes cut her way. “I tried that once.”
“Really?” She scrunched her nose in disgust.
“Made me throw up. Never did it again.”
Grace nodded and took a swig of beer. “So when you finish this shoot are you going to pig completely out and eat all the things? Because I totally would.”
“Depends if I’ve got another project lined up after this one.”
“Do you?”
“No.”
The beer was already working to loosen the knot of tension that had been lodged at the base of Grace’s neck all day. “This is good,” she said, gesturing at the bottle as she settled back into the couch.
“I wouldn’t know. I just bought what the guy at Whole Foods recommended.”
“Well the guy at Whole Foods has excellent taste.”
Scott watched impassively as she sipped her beer, making Grace wish he’d go back to not looking at her. Though his gaze lacked the animosity he’d exhibited earlier in the day, it still made her uncomfortable to be the focus of his attention.
He sat up, dropping his bare feet to the floor. “Actually, since you’re here…there is something you could do for me.”
“What?” she asked warily. If he asked her to fetch him a fucking water again, she’d—well, she’d probably go get it for him, because he was doing her a favor and she was a guest in his home. But she’d be silently resentful while she did it.
“Would you mind helping me run lines?” He looked pained, like it embarrassed him to ask. “I haven’t quite mastered all the new pages.”
“Really?” she replied dryly. “I hadn’t noticed.”
Instead of the glare she’d expected in response, he blew out a breath, shaking his head. If she didn’t know better, she’d almost think he was amused.
Running lines after work was the sort of thing that fell firmly into the category of Not Her Job, but since Scott was letting her charge her devices in his house, it seemed like the least she could do. Besides, it was an easy way to pass the time without either of them having to strain themselves attempting to make small talk. Not to mention, Scott actually knowing his lines would make everyone’s life a hell of a lot easier on set—particularly hers.
