Nate slouched in the armchair, phone glued to his ear, his knee jostling the tiny hotel desk. A white takeout box teetered precariously, cold noodles sloshing inside. He hadn’t been hungry enough to finish it. Or maybe he’d been too distracted.
“Still in Geneva?” Jason’s voice crackled through the line, already laced with that older brother tone that said, I know something’s up, and I’m going to drag it out of you.
“Yeah,” Nate said, spinning a chopstick. “Decided to extend the stay.”
“Extending your stay?” Jason scoffed. “In Switzerland? Collecting lakeside guilt trips now?”
Nate exhaled. “I needed some time.”
“For what? To write a memoir? Stare soulfully at the Alps until they forgive you?” Jason’s voice sharpened, signaling he was about to ask the real question. “Or… you’re not actually serious about leaving the industry this time, are you?”
Nate laughed, but it didn’t make it out of his throat. “Yeah, man. I’m done. For real.”
The quiet dragged on. Nate could practically see Jason raising an eyebrow.
“Okay, what happened to ‘it’s just a job’?”
“It was just a job,” Nate replied automatically. He’d fed that line to friends, strangers, even himself in the mirror at 3 a.m. It was practically a slogan by now. “Some of the best people I knowcame out of it. Decent. Loyal. The kind of folk who’d Venmo you rent without asking questions.”
He could almost see them—the faces, the names—the ones who’d kept him from drowning in his own nonsense more times than he could count.
“But,” he continued, voice dropping, “it’s also crawling with assholes. The longer you stick around, the harder it gets to pretend they’re just an unfortunate coincidence. Like, wow. What are the odds there are this many terrible people in one place?”
Silence.
“I’m not saying I was some victim. I chose it. Signed the contracts. Got paid. And yeah, I was careful. Didn’t wake up missing days, money, or teeth.” He swallowed. “But I can’t act like the fallout doesn’t count just because others got it worse.”
His gaze dropped to the hotel carpet, a tight, geometric pattern in muted grays and blues. Expensive-looking, but hard on the eyes if you stared too long.
“I’ve seen good folk get messed up. I just… I don’t want to be that guy in ten years, pretending I didn’t see it coming.”
Jason cleared his throat. “Maybe? Sort of? Actually, no. But spill. What’s going on here?”
Nate’s knuckles blanched around the chopstick. He could lie, deflect, throw out some vague excuse about needing a change. But Jason had always been the one to call him on his crap, and right now, Nate was too tired to dodge.
“I bailed,” he said finally. “Mid-shoot.”
The confession felt enormous and ridiculously small at the same time.
“You’re kidding?” Jason’s surprise was audible, but beneath it, Nate heard the thread of understanding. Jason knew.
“Yeah,” Nate admitted. “Walked off set. Left my stuff in the trailer and everything.”
“Holy shit,” Jason breathed. “What happened?”
Nate’s jaw clenched. This was the part he hadn’t said out loud yet. “Couldn’t…” He swallowed. “Couldn’t get it up.”
Somewhere across the street, a train screeched to a stop.
“Like, at all?” Jason asked carefully.
“Like my dick decided to go on strike and take the rest of me with it,” Nate said, bitter and rough. “Camera rolling, me standing there naked, thinking about taxes. It was a disaster.”
“Damn,” Jason said after a beat. “That’s rough.”
“Understatement of the year.”
“So, what’d you do next?”
