That night, we go to the beach, just Asher and me, ditching everyone on the PR machine. The wind is cool off the Mediterranean, salt-stung, winding little snarls through my hair. He takes off his shoes and rolls up the cuffs of his tuxedo pants, and I do the same, shivering as we walk ankle-deep in the froth. For a moment, we’re just people again—two silhouettes thrown across a beach, laughing over nothing, our hands brushing as we comb the jetty for sea glass.
“This is the part they never print,” Asher says, crouching to examine a blue shard. “The after, when you don’t know if you’re more tired or relieved.”
“Or who you were before.” I can still feel the heat of the lights on my skin, the prickle of a thousand eyes. The scamperingadrenaline makes my muscles jitter now, in the anticlimax. My feet are numb, but my bones are humming.
His smile reaches all the way to his eyes, creating a map of fine lines. “Next time, let’s disappear to Tangier for a week. Not tell a soul.”
"The industry would implode,” I say. “Deadline would run a dozen conspiracy theories by lunchtime.”
He shakes his head, sea breeze ruffling his hair. “They’d only be looking for you. This is your moment, Em.”
Something in his tone—a reverence, a certainty—makes me feel simultaneously significant and exposed. I glance down at the sand between my toes. “Please. The Valentino gown got more press coverage than I did.”
He stops, pivots, standing barefoot and childish in the surf. “That’s not how it looked from my seat,” he says. “It’s like you walked up there and every camera in the world remembered how to blink.”
He means it. I want to bat it away, but it lands. “You’re such a romantic for someone who hates poetry,” I say, and then, “Are you proud of me?”
He snorts in disbelief and closes the space between us. “Em, there are astronauts who could spot you from orbit tonight.”
His arms are around me, and the ocean’s roar covers everything, and for a second, the night feels private again, the world a blank page. I bury my face in his jacket and breathe the clean soap and salt of his neck.
“I’m scared,” I say quietly. “I won, and it doesn’t even feel real.”
He strokes my hair, careful. “I know. The trick is, you get up tomorrow, and it’s still there, and you keep doing it for as long as you love it. That’s the only real thing.”
That’s the only real thing. For a moment, I remember Holcomb in the car, and the way he said you can’t be a starforever, but you can be present, for right now. No one tells you what comes after you win except more of the same, but higher.
Asher kisses the top of my head. “I’m proud of you,” he says, “but I was proud already, before the prize.”
I walk up the sand in silence with Asher until we reach the causeway, where the streetlights cut the darkness into manageable fragments. We’re both damp, both buzzed on cheap French vodka and something unnameable but sharper. Red carpet crews are still setting up for tomorrow’s films, even at this hour—striking lights, coiling cables, rebuilding the stage for the next cycle of arrivals. The festival never really sleeps; it only recedes and surges with its own tidal schedule.
Asher’s phone vibrates. “We’re being summoned, apparently,” he says, scrolling through a notification with mock gravity. “Conference room at the Carlton in ten minutes. Must be favorable, unless they’re sacking me with extra fanfare.”
I groan. “Jessie warned me. The execs are having a late pow-wow, champagne optional.”
“Shall we?” he asks, offering his arm in parody of old-world courtship.
I link my arm through his and let him lead me toward the hotel, sand still stuck between my toes.
Inside the Carlton, the contrast is cartoonish—the hush of brushed marble, the emptied hallway scented of lilies and hotel soap. It’s past midnight, and yet black-suited men patrol the lobby, women in backless dresses warm the bar like well-placed brandy. The gilded mirrors, scalloped ceilings, and the chandelier massive enough to collapse the universe haven’t changed since Nixon was president.
The “conference room” is more like an after-hours parlor. Hal Quincy from Paramount is already there, perched on the arm of a wingback chair. A Netflix woman—domed glasses, white bob, fashionably severe—sits beside Jessie, who looks calculatedly approachable in flat shoes and a sundress. Someone from the festival press team plays the role of a neutral observer, a blue notebook open on her lap.
I know my lines. Asher and I enter linked at the fingers—the classic “authentic couple” move. A low hum of approval ripples through the room, and someone in the back even claps.
Hal stands and tugs at his sports coat cuffs. “There they are! Cannes royalty. We’ve been looking for you two for hours.”
He pours champagne into flutes and hands me one, then one to Asher. The Netflix exec gestures for us to sit at the head of the table. The power move is so transparent that Asher gives me an amused glance before pulling out my chair.
Pleasantries begin, followed by sped-up replays of all the good press from the day. Eclipse Run is trending globally, but more importantly, “the Emma-Asher story” has broken out of its algorithmic sandbox and gone viral with people who’ve never set foot in a theater. There’s a montage of our kiss from the afterparty, the way we locked eyes at dinner, the damp, windswept walk down the Croisette that didn’t escape fan cameras after all. It’s horrifying to see myself in slow motion, cut up and meme-d, but some masochistic part of me is thrilled.
“Pure electricity,” Quincy says, clicking through slides on his phone as if we’re in a first-date PowerPoint. My cheeks prickle, though I hold the smile.
The Netflix exec, whose signet ring probably costs more than my first car, clears her throat. “We have a very rare scenario here. The numbers are off the charts. Early reviews are almost an afterthought—you two have become the story.”
Asher tips his glass at me in a silent toast. I swallow the champagne—sweet and destructive on my tongue.
Quincy gazes at me with what feels like grandfatherly pity. “Has anyone given you the real numbers?” Without waiting for an answer, he reads them off his phone. Every digit crackles through my brain. International presales are eighty percent higher than any projection. Even the studios’ skepticism—everyone’s fear that the world would eat a feminist space opera for breakfast—has vaporized. Now the only question is whether Cannes’ jury, in perennial search of “serious” cinema, will take us seriously.
