No. Fucking.
I’m serious.
When I had landed from my red-eye, I was going on nearly twenty-four hours without any sleep. But now I was finally here in this quiet Christmas village that was like the Target knockoff ofWhite Christmascome to life with Pearl Purkiss escorting me around and Nolan Shaw standing mere feet from me. Nolan. Fucking. Shaw.
“And if you need any extra crystals,” Pearl said, “I keep some loaners at the ready. I like to think of them as, like, energy insurance.” She turned away from the dreamy landscape to see Nolan staring uncertainly at me, his blue eyes even icier than they were on every poster in my teenage bedroom. A muscle jumped in the pale slice of his jaw.
My knees suddenly felt weak.
“Oh.” Pearl’s voice dropped an octave. “This is good. I can already sense the energy between you two is rich with tension.” She took my hand. “Bee, we just knew you were the right choice.”
“Bee, is it?” Nolan asked, his voice raspy and indifferent. “I guess that makes you New Winnie?”
“No,” I said, the word sharp as I forgot for a moment who I was speaking to. “I’m not New Anyone. Just Bee.”
“Just Bee,” he repeated as he twisted his beanie in his white-knuckled fists.
He gave me that look. The one that I was pretty sure said no one told him his new costar would be fat. I learned really early on in my career to set expectations. The porn industry wasn’t exactly known for its communication, so it took only a few failed scene partners suddenly backing out of a job once they got to set before I realized that for better or worse, it was always best to be very clear about exactly who I was.
Pearl shrieked with excitement before reclaiming her serene energy and motioning to the script clutched to my chest. “So what’d you think of Felicity?”
“She’s... great,” I said. “So intriguing... and—and compelling. I really am excited to dig into her motivation and discover exactly why she wants to escape the modern world and all of its conveniences for corsets and bedpans.”
Thankfully Pearl’s blond lashes fluttered under the weight of my compliments, because there was not a whole lot to say aboutDuke the Hallsother than: “Actually, I was reading on the plane,” I continued, “and I noticed that I’m missing the last page?”
Pearl looked at me, blinking over and over again, like if she did it enough times my question might vanish into thin air. Finally, she took a deep, centering breath and said, “You’ll get it when it’s time.”
And then, even though the only sound was the rushing creek just days away from freezing over beneath the picturesque wood-and-iron bridge we stood on, Pearl perked up and said, “Oh! I just heard my name. I’ll leave you two to get better acquainted.”
Nolan and I watched as she floated off toward the square, which was half functioning town and half movie set. The steeple of the white clapboard church, where I assumed I would soon leave my fictional husband at the altar to travel back in time and fall hard for the Duke of Frostmere, cast a shadow over us.
I looked back to him with my head still tilted in Pearl’s direction. “Was that... weird?”
He scratched the base of his throat, his Adam’s apple moving under the stubble on his neck. “She’s been pretty cagey about the ending.”
I opened up my script to the last page, which cut off mid-dialogue. “It literally says ‘And all along, the meaning of Christmas was right there in front of me. The meaning of Christmas was—’”
He bit back a smirk, the kind of smirk someone gives when they’re just a little too delighted by a whiff of chaos. “I heardthe director of photography talking to someone on the phone about how Pearl keeps rewriting the last page. She can’t decide what the meaning of Christmas is.”
I snorted out a laugh and immediately clapped my hand over my mouth. “What? Are you serious? How are we supposed to film a whole movie if we don’t know the ending?”
He thought for a moment, and his pause was just long enough for my brain to remember thatOh my God, this is Nolan Shaw. He was somehow taller and a little broader than I expected. Every inch of him was slender muscle, with a strong, firm frame. He wasn’t some bulked-out beefhead, like so many I’d met on set after set, and I was so used to seeing guys like Nolan and feeling like I could snap them if I sat on them with all my weight. But something about him felt tested and sturdy. It made me think thoughts I couldn’t unthink. I clenched my thighs together, begging my body to remember every one of Teddy’s very serious rules. Worst of all, Nolan had the kind of face—the kind of smirk—that helped him get away with just about anything.
“I guess it’ll be a surprise,” he finally said. “I better get back to my fitting, but it was nice to meet you, Bee-ee.” The way he said my name was drawn out and abrupt at the same time, like he was sounding it out even though it was only one syllable. “Maybe we could run lines at some point once you get settled?”
“Sure. Yeah, of course. Lines. I’d love that.” My insides tingled, even though this was a totally routine thing that people who were in legit movies did. In porn, there were lines . . . sometimes, but it was more about the blocking and the boundaries and the ad-libbing. I hadn’t had actual lines to memorizesince I played Yente, the meddling matchmaker in my high school theater’s production ofFiddler on the Roof. (Truth be told, I auditioned for TevyeandGolde and was robbed of both. Suburban high school theater programs in Texas weren’t too kind to fat girls.)
Nolan turned to walk back toward the costume department at the center of the village and I watched for as long as I could before anyone noticed that I was eyeball stalking one of my adolescent idols.
The first time someone broke my heart I was fourteen years old. I had waited three hours in a Texas downpour for a chance to meet Isaac, Nolan, and Kallum after INK’sFresh Inktour stop in Dallas while my moms protected me from the crowd of relentless fans, the three of us outfitted in matching ponchos that Mama Pam kept in the center console of her Honda Odyssey just in case. In the end, the boys had fled in an unmarked car just moments after their encore, leaving their tour bus parked outside the American Airlines Center, along with an army of drenched, disappointed fans.
If I’m being honest, that first heartbreak still stings.
Even though I should have taken a power nap, I was a little wired from my flight and from meeting Nolan, so I headed back to the Edelweiss Inn, where I was initially dropped off but wasn’t able to check in then because I’d been too early. (Despite the fact that the only people staying in the hotel were cast and crew.) The inn, with its timber-frame-cottage feel, was fashioned like something straight out ofThe Sound of Music.
