She was right, though. I couldn’t risk anything tarnishing my new reputation. I’d known that it meant keeping my nose clean of any visible debauchery, but I guessed it also meant pretending all my priorities began and ended with whatever gig I was working.
“You’re right,” I said finally. Heavily.
“Of course I’m right,” Steph said. “Now knock off this unprofessional shit before I use your teeth as earrings.”
She patted my cheek and then grabbed the bourbon again. In the dim light filtering in from the lobby, I could see that her first swig was already putting a smirk on her impeccablylipsticked mouth and pinkening her normally fair cheeks. “What does a woman have to do to get a cherry around here?” she muttered to herself, getting up to poke around the back of the bar.
I checked my phone while she did, seeing that Bee still hadn’t responded to any of my messages. Maybe she was really resting like Sunny and the doctor wanted her to. Or maybe she was furious with me for being a faithless horse companion and she planned on never talking to me again. Maybe I’d lost any chance to laugh with her again, smile with her again,kissher again...
I texted one more time and then finally gave up. With a glum wave at Steph, who’d found a dusty jar of cherries in some mysterious bar cranny, I trudged up the stairs to my room.
Unsurprisingly, I slept like shit, but when I finally pushed myself out of bed, I had a message from Maddie telling me that the night had been uneventful and the plan was still to discharge Mom today.
There was nothing from Bee.
I was due at ten for hair and makeup—and makeup withSunny, so that would be fun—but I showered and dressed early so I could catch Gretchen at the production office before things got moving for the day. I found her in the ground-floor office with a laptop open in front of her and Pearl curled into a human apostrophe on a nearby sofa, fast asleep.
“Hey,” I said, coming in with a light knock on the open door. “Can we talk?”
Gretchen gave me a lifted eyebrow. But after a moment, she nodded. “Come in, Nolan.”
I sat down on the red velvet chair in front of her desk, trying not to feel like I was in the principal’s office. Which was unfortunately a very familiar feeling for me.
“I’m sorry about yesterday,” I told her, meeting her gaze. “And all the days before. It was unprofessional of me to have my phone on while we were filming, and it won’t happen again.”
I hope.But would I really be able to live with myself if I missed another emergency call?
Remember what Steph said: there are no secrets on a movie set. And this isn’t a secret you can afford to have known right now.
I chewed on my lip as Gretchen seemed to think. After a few seconds, she shut her laptop and looked at me with a perceptive gaze.
“I want to take this on its own and apart from the context of your past behavior, but it’s extremely hard, Nolan. The stuff you got away with when we were younger... do you think I would have gotten away with it? You saw how they treated Brooklyn, how they fucked over Winnie Baker after one embarrassing picture. You saw the difference in the way the press treated Emily Albright and you after Duluth, even though you were both photographed with naked speed skaters. Do you think anyone who wasn’t a cute white boy could have trampled on every rule, trampled on other people’s time and feelings, and still have gotten second chance after second chance?”
I flushed. “No.”
She studied me, as if she were waiting for me to say more, and I realized that this was my moment. This was my window to throw Steph’s advice out the window and explain about Mom and Maddie. To tell Gretchen that yes, I was a mess and unprofessional, but it wasn’t because I didn’t care and it wasn’t because I was the same dickhole who’d once flaunted his bad behavior all over the place as his career went up in flames.
But...
But Steph had been right about more than secrets last night. Directors didn’t have the time or energy to be life coaches for every actor on their set, and everyone here had their own problems to deal with. Bee and Teddy, for sure. Pearl with her writer’s block. Maybe even Gretchen was carrying her own baggage. It was probably really creative and interesting baggage, but still.
I wasn’t special. And I was here to prove that I knew I wasn’t special. That I was ready to actually work hard... and work hard for a team. The same way Ihadn’tworked for INK in those final chaotic months. When I should have been salvaging what we had left after our manager left town, when I should have been working with Kallum and Isaac to keep everything afloat. I hadn’t been a good friend or colleague then, too preoccupied with fucking off and fucking around, but I wasn’t that same Nolan anymore. I’d changed; I’d learned that the world was bigger than the next party, the next bed to tumble into.
I was done making other people deal with Nolan Shaw’s problems. And even though my problems felt bigger than ever now, I would figure them out. Somehow.
“You can count on me,” I finally told Gretchen. “There will be no more trouble forDuke the Hallsof the ex–boy band variety.”
And I meant it. After all, I had less than a week left here.
What could possibly go wrong in a week?
Chapter Eighteen
Bee
My body felt like it had aged fifty years in one night as I rolled over with a bone-cracking yawn to find Sunny with a Twizzler dangling from her lips and her magnifying glasses and headlamp on as she embroidered what appeared to be a red-and-green vulva framed with holly.
“Why does it feel like the TV has been getting progressively louder?” I asked with a moan.
