We stand, breathless and slightly shell-shocked, while the line behind us snakes through. I feel oddly detached from my own body, watching the scene from somewhere several feet overhead. Everyone here is beautiful, but somehow nobody else is breathing the same air the way we do. It’s both exhilarating and quietly terrifying.
In the theater, I take my seat between Asher and the director, a soft-spoken French-Canadian whose English is somehow even more charming than his French. The lights go down. All I can hear is blood in my ears.
Eclipse Run begins with a literal bang—a rocket launch, then a cut to my character, sleep-deprived and mascara-streaked, cursing in two languages. I watch myself play a person even more tightly wound than I am, and marvel at how easy it is to forget the cameras were ever there.
I keep glancing sideways at Asher. In the dark, his jaw is tensed, eyes glued to every frame, as if he’s determined to catch any moment where his performance slips. There aren’t any. If anything, I’m the weak link: every time our characters are in the same frame, I wanted to claw my own face off, or alternately, crawl into his lap and die happy.
The audience claps twice during the film—once at the midpoint, and then at the end credits, which roll with an efficiency I appreciate. The house lights come up, and for a second, nobody moves. Then the applause starts, hesitant at first, then rising and rising until people are up on their feet, shouting in at least three languages. A mob forms at the front of the house; Jessie finally appears beside me, winking and holding my elbow to keep me from being trampled.
In the next hour, I shake more hands than I’ve ever shaken in my life, say “thank you so much” on repeat, and let Asher fieldthe heavier questions from men in suits. I’m awash in the feeling of being wanted, needed, anointed—and in the spaces between conversations, I can feel his eyes on me, measuring if this is what I actually want.
There is an afterparty held in a tented maze filled with Hollywood A-listers. No one is sober, least of all the studio heads. Someone hands me something that tastes faintly of lavender, and I down it, partly just to see if I can. Asher is swarmed by French girls, but every few minutes, he surfaces to check on me, as if he is my shadow with separation anxiety.
At some point, Bressard himself appears at my elbow and re-introduces himself with all the gravity of an emperor. “Would you care for a cigarette?” he asks, and I want so badly to say yes that I lie and say I quit last year. He regards me with a crinkle of respect. “Good. It is death. But also, sometimes, life.”
I nod, say nothing, and let him monologue about his vision for cinema, the role that is “not written for you, but could only be you,” and how actors should never trust the applause. “Fame is an anesthetic,” he says. “It numbs whatever it touches.”
We talked for almost an hour. Every minute of it, I keep waiting for the previous shoe to drop. Still, instead, Bressard slides his business card across the table—it’s practically cardstock, with his name in pretentious calligraphy—and tells me to “consider the role with the deepest part of yourself.” Either he means it, or he’s pulling the world’s slowest, driest joke. I hope it’s both. He leaves me standing idly in the tent, holding a drink I don’t remember ordering. My cheeks are hot, somewhere past the reach of blush, and the cobalt dress is, for the first time all night, comfortable.
Asher finds me again. He’s got that expression he gets after too many flashbulbs, a kind of giddy darkness. I realize, with a weird clutch in my chest, that I’ve never seen him look tired until this week.
“You’re missing the real party out on the terrace,” he says, voice low. “Apparently, we’re supposed to act like we actually like each other.”
“I could never pull that off,” I say, and tilt the drink back.
He hooks my arm and steers me through the tent’s maze, ducking photographers and a couple of drunk producers who look like they might try to buy us, together or à la carte. Outside, the Mediterranean is black and bottomless. In the distance, a yacht squats in the bay, radiant with electric light, its windows like a row of casino chips. It could be a floating city, or a hallucination. The air is thick with ozone and the smell of flowering vines.
We lean against the railing, surveying the circus. A weeping German actress dabs at mascara with theatrical precision while directors hover like vultures, alternating between neglect and sudden concern. Across the terrace, some Marvel-adjacent actor performs fellatio on a Cuban cigar before extending it toward a cluster of wide-eyed ingenues. The only sober soul might be the waiter, his thousand-yard stare perfected as he glides between guests with trays of pink wine.
Asher’s hip brushes mine. "The French can’t stop talking about you online.”
"The French appreciate suffering,” I say.
The corner of his mouth lifts. "It’s your pronunciation they’re obsessed with. Apparently, you’ve mastered the French’ r’ better than any American in history. They’re practically claiming you as their own.”
I laugh, but it’s a tired laugh, thin and translucent. The wind lifts the edge of my hair, and I close my eyes for a second, just to feel something that isn’t performance. “I think I’m running out of script,” I tell him. “Too many lines tonight.”
“Just rinse and repeat. That’s what I do.” He toys with the hem of my dress, the edge that floats barely above my knee.“Besides,” he says, “you pull off ‘overwhelmed and radiant’ better than anyone.”
I watch my own hand, white-knuckled on the rail, and realize I want to believe him. I want this to matter, somehow, in a way that isn’t spreadsheeted or strategized or retweeted. The feeling is so intense I nearly blurt it aloud. Instead, I turn toward him and say, “Are you scared?”
He shrugs. “Of all this? A little. I was more scared you’d bail in Nice and leave me to defend my own honor.”
“You don’t have any,” I say, and he grins, and just like that, the tension in my chest falls away, replaced with a drowsy, reckless calm.
The noise from the party swells behind us. Over the water, fireworks explode above the yacht—gaudy, expensive bursts with no rhythm or reason. Asher’s fingers find mine, weaving together, and his lips brush my hairline. "Look at us,” he jokes. "Surviving the world’s most overpriced publicity stunt.”
I lean into him, let my body memorize his shape. “Feels anticlimactic.”
Asher’s fingers tighten around mine. "That’s because the next act is always worse—but we get to write it.” His eyes catch the firework light, serious beneath the playfulness.
“What happens if we don’t want to play the game anymore?” I ask. "What if we just want to be...ourselves?”
He turns to face me fully, his back to the cameras. "Look, we’ve both been playing parts our whole careers. But this? Us? We call the shots now. They need us more than we need their bullshit.” His thumb traces my knuckles. "We play their game, but we set the rules.”
His certainty feels like solid ground beneath the vertigo of fame. I want to believe him—that we could navigate this circus on our own terms—even as I feel the industry machinery humming, waiting to consume whatever we become.
CHAPTER 16
