“Smile, orsmile?” I ask, reaching for my best cool-girl nonchalance.
His breath is so close that it brushes my hair. “Both, probably. Did you sleep?”
“I did. Briefly, I dreamed I was late to a press conference and forgot to wear shoes. You?”
“I dreamt we eloped to an uncharted island and the only restaurant served nothing but kale and existential dread.”
For a half-blind second, I almost reach for his hand. That’s the effect he has on me: the tendency to believe he’s the only other real person in the simulation. I shake it off, blinking as we step onto the runway, where a candy-red Gulfstream G450 gleams in the sunlight, and next to it, Ciaran Doyle does his best Bond villain impression.
He stands at the top of the metal steps, huge smile on full display, with one hand raised like he’s planting a flag, and the other clutching a glass of what might actually be Champagne at 8:17 in the morning. The effect is both gross and magnetic, as if he crafted his own entrance in the mirror until it felt like a punchline.
“Hello, angels!” he calls, and I’m briefly reminded that Ciaran, for all his preening, is the only person in the cast who is both exactly as he appears and, in some deeper way, entirely untouchable.
The G450’s staircase is both steep and glossy, and I’m one misstep from tumbling onto the tarmac like the clumsiest ingenue in America, so I focus on my feet, not meeting Ciaran’s eyes until I’m level with him. He kisses both my cheeks, a gesture so European and artificial that I wonder if he learned it in finishing school, and then he does the same to Asher, minus about an inch and a half of meaningful tongue.
Inside, the jet looks less like an airplane and more like an oligarch’s garden shed. Everything is leather, glass, or brushed gold, the color palette somewhere between “Romanian nightclub” and “Scandinavian spa.” Ciaran’s duffel bag is tossed lazily across an entire loveseat. He gestures us to sit, pours both of us a drink, and then launches into a monologue about the “savage bleakness of Texas as a metaphor for Hollywood’s primitive id.”
This is a prelude for what comes next, which is him turning to me and saying, “You know, Em, I heard you shredded your old reps. That takes balls.”
Asher sinks into the seat beside me, crossing his arms and radiating composure, but there’s a slight tension in his jaw—a muscle I’ve only seen flexed once before, when the director cornered him about reshoots.
I take a sip from the glass—definitely not juice, definitely too sweet. “It was more of a budgetary decision, honestly. They were never big on spreadsheets.”
Ciaran laughs, leans forward, and stares hard until I match his gaze. “No, really, though. I like it. You’re not like the others. You’redangerous.”
The word hangs in the air, juicy as a secret. I glance at Asher, expecting some kind of comical retort, but he’s silent, watching me instead of Ciaran. Not out of boredom or disdain—he’s looking at me like I’m a moving target and he’s calculating the exact second to fire.
The jet shudders as we taxi, and I realize we’re already airborne, already on our way to Austin, and every second, the space is getting smaller. Ciaran launches into an impression of the film’s director—dead-on, devastating, and brutal as only a true friend can be. Asher, oddly, doesn’t laugh. He sits, glass untouched, knees angled toward mine, but arms still folded.
It’s only when Ciaran excuses himself to use what he calls “the finest flying water closet in the continental United States” that I turn to Asher.
“Okay, what is it?” I whisper.
He shrugs, intense and unbothered at once—a yoga pose of a man. “He flirts with everyone. Don’t mind him.”
“You’re acting like you mind,” I say.
He glances out the porthole, fingers drumming on the armrest. “I mind when I think he might get a reaction out of you.”
I tilt my head, not buying it. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you sound jealous.”
He breathes a laugh through his nose. “Only of the attention.”
I lean into him, close enough that I can see the day’s first stubble on his cheek, the tightness at the bridge of his nose when he frowns. “Isn’t this the point? We’re supposed to look like a couple.”
He turns, and for once, the cool is gone. “That’s easy, Em. I just don’t want you to become another of his stories.”
I don’t know what to do with that, so I let it hang, and the next half-hour passes in a series of high-wattage banter volleys between Ciaran and me, the two of us performing for each other while Asher mostly watches. There’s a lull, though, when Ciaran finally falls asleep, mouth comically open, limbs sprawling like he’s star-fished onto the world’s thinnest bed. I reach for my phone, flipping through headlines about the festival, the premiere, the movie. There’s already a BuzzFeed gallery of our “electric chemistry” and a Reddit thread about whether I’m the “real” Emma or just an algorithm-driven construct.
I shift in my seat, and Asher, eyes still closed, rumbles, “That stuff will kill you.”
“Not if it gets me the next job,” I reply, but he’s not joking.
“Let it go for the afternoon.” His hand finds mine, not as a calculated move but as something unconscious, like he’s catching a glass before it rolls off a table.
“This is the last day before everything changes, you know?”
I squeeze his hand, surprised by my own relief. “You mean before they start talking about how I’m too short to be in an action movie?”
