Only one person calls me that. I turn to see Elsie at the bottom of the stairs. Her light-pink pixie cut hair is sticking up at odd angles, and she has a massive cup of coffee in her hand, and suddenly, my desire to hide fades away.
“Elsephant!” Elsie has written the screenplays for three other films I’ve been in. She is a genius, by far the hardest-working person in the room and the funniest. We became good friends after a particularly grueling shoot in Alaska, where I had to do a lot of scenes with very little clothing in the snow. That’s when she started calling me Milesicle. Some days she would send me fake pages of more and more ridiculous scenes in the snow or on a frozen lake just to mess with me. She’s like my little sister—well, if my little sister was a pale, pink-haired smart aleck.
I dash back downstairs, my hamstrings screaming at me that I should have stretched after my run. Picking her up, I swing her around in a bear hug, making her coffee splash everywhere.
“Whoa there. Don’t mess with the caffeine.”
Skye comes in the door, muttering under her breath, just as I’m putting Elsie down.
“I’ll clean this up.” I motion to the coffee droplets on the stone floor. “Skye, this is my friend, Elsie MacDonald. She’s a writer too.”
Skye nods.
Elsie smiles. “It’s so nice to meet you. Thank you so much for letting us film here. It means a lot to me.”
Skye half smiles. “It was my father’s decision, really. I should… I have to go.”
“Oh, okay.”
As Skye walks upstairs, I watch her go. Those jeans are made for her. Elsie swats me on the arm.
“What was that for?”
“Put your tongue back in your mouth, dude.”
I run a hand over my face and sigh. “Is it that obvious?”
Elsie laughs. “Yes. Are you two…”
I shake my head. “We’ve just hung out a couple times.”
Her eyebrows shoot up to her hairline.
“No, not like that. Just friends.”
“Okay. Good. We don’t need that kind of drama on this set. Remember Barbados?”
Another film I’d been on with Elsie. We were making a sexy heist movie calledSwipe, kind of a take onMr. and Mrs. Smith, if they weren’t married but had just met on Tinder and were thieves instead of secret agents. I started dating my co-star the first week of filming. She was so hot, and we had all these trivial things in common, like we both loved that old movieHigh Spirits.We both took our coffee black. Little things, but I thought we were meant to be.
It turned out she wasn’t really a one-man-at-a-time kind of woman.
We stopped dating the sixth week of filming on a ten-week shoot. It was the most awkward time of my life, and unfortunately, it wasn’t just awkward for me. It was terrible for everyone. The director came to Elsie to try to write fewer scenes with us together. Butwewerethe movie.
“Don’t worry, I already got an earful from Natalie. I won’t date anyone on the set.”
Elsie gave me a pat on the shoulder. “I’m not trying tomomyou. You’re both grown-ups. Do what you like. Just don’t get us kicked out of the castle.”
“We’re just friends.”
I drag myself upstairs to finish my workout, the planks won’t do themselves, and nearly run into Skye at the top.
“Skye.”
She just gives me a curt nod as she heads the other way. Did she hear me talking to Elsie? Her full lips are pulled into a small frown.
“Hey.” My mouth completely forgets about everything I just agreed to and says, “Do you want to go for a walk later this afternoon?”
Skye’s lips twitch at the side, and I know I made the right choice. “Aren’t you going to be busy filming?”
