Just as I straighten, the wind kicks up again, carrying something across the sand—tumbling, flipping end over end until it smacks against my calf.
I glance down.
A scrap of crinkled paper.
I pick it up.
WANTED: Man, mid-twenties, actor. Room and board provided. One year. Serious inquiries only.
No number. No company name. Just an email address.
I frown, scanning the beach. No one seems to be looking for lost paper.
The wind stills, like it’s waiting. The edges of the paper glisten faintly, damp, like it’s been passed up by the tide. As if the sea itself wanted to hand me something.
I hesitate.
A free place to stay. A full year.
My current contract is about to end anyway; I could use rent money to keep the studio.
I take my phone and open my email.
It’s the second time in less than an hour that I’m standing in front of this red and gold boutique theatre. The first time, I went in on a laugh with my actor buddies, mutually complaining at how tough gigs are to land here in Welly.
This time, I go in with something strange twisting in my stomach. Not quite hope, not quite dread. Something sharp-edged and restless, swinging between.
The paper hasn’t cooled, still sunbaked—in my hand, then my pocket. I’d got a message back right away.
Could you meet now? Empire café. Guy in orange shirt – Trent.
Trent.
There’s a river in Britain named that. It also goes by The Flooder.
Maybe that’s why I see it now: a tsunami warning sign, the kind nailed to the posts along Wellington’s beaches.
Like the one I glanced at before heading back here.
I shake off the stray shiver and try not to think that I’m many blocks away from those blue lines marking safe distance.
I run a hand through my hair, do a cursory check in a reflective windowpane, and kick inside the café.
He’s wearing the exact colour of that dead starfish.
His head is bowed overThe Post, a half-drunk black coffee at his elbow. His fingers tap the table—not quite random, not quite rhythmic. A beat. A clock hand. No, music.
He doesn’t hear my approach, but he senses a shift in the air, or perhaps the flash of my bright shorts catches his eye. He raises his head slowly. The moment his gaze fixes on mine, the hand tapping a beat freezes mid-air.
He has a hard jawline under the shadow of a day-old beard, and his nose has dents at the bridge where his sunglasses—now resting at his collar—have recently pinched. His hair is short, his round head hinting at good parents who must’ve turned him regularly when he was a baby. But that would’ve been a long time ago. Thirty years, perhaps?
There’s a tightness to his dark eyes, yet no lines where there should be from years of laughter. His lips are set firmly too.
What with all that and the dead starfish he’s wearing, I should be skidding the chair I just dropped into back and bolting.
But the way his hand hasn’t dropped to the table...
“You’re Dylan?” His voice vibrates like an echo in my stomach, dropping deeper and deeper. Dylan. Dylan. Dylan.
