I blinked at him.
Yesterday he’d come out with this big philosophical theory about expression and beauty, today he’d asked me the hardest question of my entire life.
“I’m sorry,” he said, probably in reaction to the look on my face.
“No, no, don’t be.” I took a breath and tried to think of an answer, any answer, something that wouldn’t make me look like a complete idiot in front of this kid who, to my surprise, I wanted to like and respect me. “Nothing to be sorry for, just a big question,” I said.
Spike smiled, not quite shy, but not quite confident either.
“I—”
My phone vibrated in my pocket, cutting me off.
I knew before I took it out of my pocket that this was it. The Call.
My stomach dropped to somewhere around my ankles as I stared at Astrid’s caller ID on the screen.
“We’re definitely talking about this later,” I promised. “But if I don’t take this call my agent will skin me.”
Spike nodded, smile widening a little as I swiped to answer, waving at him as I walked away.
“Hello?” I asked as though I didn’t know it was Astrid calling.
“Ryder! I’ve got Rita Mayweather here in the office with me.”
My stomach slingshotted back up to where it was supposed to be and pinballed my heart into my throat.
“Umm,” I said. “He-uh. Hello.”
Great. Now I sounded like an idiot in front of the casting director who turned nobodies into Walk of Famers.
“Have we caught you at a bad time?” an unfamiliar voice that had to be Rita asked.
“Uh, no, umm. I was just, uh, taking a drama class I was invited to teach.”
“We can call back,” the same voice offered.
Astrid would kill me.
“No, it’s fine, it’s finished now. You caught me right at the end,” I said, laughing nervously.
“Great,” Astrid said. “I think you’ll really want to hear what Ms. Mayweather has to say to you.”
“Absolutely,” I agreed.
But when I glanced over at Ward, and at the kids starting another exercise under Seth’s instructions, and it felt like a lie.
Everything was so perfect right now.
I knew it couldn’t stay like that forever, but would a little more time have been too much to ask?
“You know Ryder, you’ve really got the look we want for a brand-new property in development with Netflix. It’s not the lead role, but you’d be in every single episode, and it’d really be an opportunity to show off your range. Modern audiences want to see more LGBT representation and it’s like you’ve fallen right into our lap. And you’re currently playing really well with women twenty-five to forty, which is an important demographic to nab for these shows. How do you feel about nudity?”
How did I feel about nudity?
I couldn’t decide whether the most important casting director of the moment somehow didn’t know exactly what’d happened to me—somehow hadn’t googled me before even considering offering me something like this—or whether I was the only person in the world who thought what had happened to me was fuckingserious.
Would I be able to intentionally take my clothes off and stand in front of a camera in a room full of people, lights burning into my skin, someone hovering over me with a boom mic?
