“Who the fuck is that?” he asks with a condescending laugh.
“He played the enigmatic Jacques Toussaint onSunset Cove.”
“Never heard of it. Is that, like, an old lady show?”
Maddox laughing at my mentorandmy favorite daytime show pisses me the hell off, and I really want to smash his chiseled jaw with my fist, but I try to channel Cassius and his way with words. “Just curious, but did you have to suck a dick for your part?” I ask.
His face goes ashen, which makes me think that he did. “What are you even talking about?” he blubbers.
“I was just wondering because I almost had to do it, but my boyfriend managed to get me out of it. Pretty fucked up, though, isn’t it? Anyway, I heard that’s how Brad Pitt got his start.”
Maddox gets up and storms off with only his base coat of foundation. Zeta, trying to hide a smirk, shakes their head at me. “Sweetie, you shouldnothave gone there.”
“I know,” I groan, “but he was really pissing me off.”
Zeta pretends to have something to do with my hair, even though it’s not even long enough to run a comb through anymore. “Bit of advice, don’t tempt a bull unless you’re ready for the horns.” Zeta forks their fingers like two tiny horns, and I nod in misery. I wish Cassius were here. He’d know exactly what to do.
I discover on day three that I’m not the only one Maddox is bullying. Chloe, who plays Regina Parsons on the show, declined Maddox’s invitation for drinks and now he mutters “slut” under his breath whenever she passes by him. What kind of middle school bullshit is that?
“What is his deal?” I lament to Chloe and Zeta on our last day of read-throughs. We’re in hair and makeup again, our only place of refuge in this toxic environment. The whole experience reminds me of my freshman year of baseball when the varsity team hazed us by getting us wasted and making us run around the bases with our pants around our ankles, tripping and falling everywhere.
“I heard his dad is some finance guy who does all the Hollywood budgets and that’s how he got a leading role,” Chloe says.
“I heard he sucked the producer’s dick,” I offer, because it certainly seemed that way to me. Zeta gives me a look and I shrug.
“If he interrupts me one more time during read-through,” Chloe warns with her fist raised, but of course, there’s nothing she can do either. We’re both expendable and we know it.
I only have one line that day, the lead-in to Tris’s fight scene with Carson, which is “I swear to God, Carson, if you don’t take a step back, I’m going to…” Maddox is supposed to interrupt me, but he’s slow to respond, which makes me sound like an idiot.
We then go through the trouble of blocking the scene, which is basically a pantomime of me getting my ass kicked. “Don’t you think Tris should at least throw one punch to make the fight a little more realistic?” I ask the director.
“Tris is a posh pretty boy with no real-world experience,” Maddox says. “He seems more like the hair-pulling type anyway.”
An attack on my character is basically an attack on me.
“Well, your character is supposed to be an all-star quarterback, and you don’t even know how to hold a football.”
“Now, gentlemen,” the director says. “I appreciate you embodying your roles to the fullest but let us stay focused on the scene.”
I don’t get to land a blow the entire time, don’t even get to throw a halfway decent punch, but Maddox does, and on his last swing, he doesn’t hold back like he’s supposed to, but comes in full force and clips my chin solidly enough to send me staggering backward.
“What the fuck?” I yell, gripping my potentially dislocated jaw.
“My bad, man,” Maddox says with a shitty little smile.
“Are you all right, Tris? I mean Adam?” the director says, barely looking up from the viewfinder on the camera. He then calls for his PA, “Dakota, can you take Adam to first aid and get him an ice pack? Why don’t you take the rest of the day off, champ? Pop some aspirin and ice your face. Make sure it doesn’t swell.” He finally looks at me. “Hopefully this won’t delay production. We’re on a tight schedule as it is.”
Then Maddox says with an arrogant drawl, “It shouldn’t matter all that much, considering I off him in episode four.”
The director shoots him a look like he wasn’t supposed to tell me that, and I feel as though the rug has been pulled out from underneath me.
“Is that true?”
The director grimaces and says, “We’re still working out the details. Let’s focus on getting through these first three episodes for now.”
Maddox grins at me behind his back, and it takes all my self-control not to jump on top of him and pummel his dumb face until it looks like a mashed potato. Dakota comes to collect me, and I wave her off.
“Fuck this. I’m getting a drink.”
