I was still glaring, but she did have a very small point, which was that I had been slightly declarative about the fact I was over Angel breaking my heart in the most callous and ungentlemanly way. Which I was. I was over it.
Obviously.
“There’s no need,” I sniffed. “I’ve already forgotten about him.”
“Good.” Bee put a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “And anyway, what are the odds you’ll see him again? LA is huge.”
I never did get that secret out of Bee, a fact I realized the next day as I was on the set of the latest Uncle Ray-Ray’s masterpiece, a porn remake ofPretty Woman.
While it would be a stretch to say that costuming is the tentpole of any adult entertainment production, Teddy Ray Fletcher did have a soft spot for remakes, and part of selling any good porn remake was a decent facsimile of the costumes. Of course, the budget was never great and the timeline always super compressed, but in a way, it was no different than being in fashion school. And it also helped me creatively. When the budget was juicy and the time to make something was endless... well, then it was hard not to want something to be perfect. And the more I wanted something to be perfect, the less I was able to actually work on it. It was weird. Or maybe it was undiagnosed ADHD. Only Dr. TikTok could tell.
Luckily, the call to perfection was very rarely a problem at good old Uncle Ray-Ray’s. Although I was pretty proud of the costumes I’d been working on for this one, and especially today’s: a faithful recreation of Vivian’s streetwalking outfit, complete with thigh-high boots and a beret.
I was pulling the outfit out of a small tote box in the cheap rented mansion that would double as the penthouse when the director—none other than Sunny Palmer—bounded up beside me.
“Hey, hi, heyyyy,” she said. “Are we ready to roll? Mackenzie’s naked in the next room. Like ‘ready to get dressed’ naked, not ‘ready for fucking’ naked.”
“Tell Mackenzie to cool her tits,” I replied as I carefully reshaped the beret, which had gotten a little smashed in the tote.
“Mackenzie doesn’t have much tit to cool, but sure,” said Sunny. She was bouncier than normal, up on the balls of her feet and practically vibrating.
“Are you feeling okay?” I asked and then narrowed my eyes. “Are you drinking that energy tea again? You know the FDA has formed a committee to work on banning it, right?”
Sunny shook her head emphatically. “I’m on one hundred percent raw, organic nerves right now. It’s my first time behind the camera, you know.”
Sunny was a bit of a porn polymath—she fucked, she sex-fluenced, and she did professional makeup on the side, most recently forDuke the Halls. But she hadn’t ever directed anything until now.
“You’ll do fab,” I told her, and I meant it. I didn’t give out compliments lightly, but Sunny was the real deal. Smart, hilarious, and with an ass that would have knocked Rubens dead.
“Merci.” But from the way she was clutching her headset, I didn’t think she felt that reassured.
Mackenzie wandered in like a naked baby deer, lost-looking and spindly-legged. “Um, hi? Does anyone know where my Julie Rogers dress is?”
“The younger generation,” I said in low tones of condemnation, even though Mackenzie was probably only three or four years younger than me. “Okay, missy,” I said louder. “Let’s get you ready for your big moment.”
With Mackenzie dressed, the last performer I’d need to dress was the guy playing the Richard Gere character, who’d been listed in the email asTBD. It wasn’t that unusual in the porn world—sometimes a performer wasn’t even officially cast until the day of the shoot—but it did make my job a little harder, since the trick to making a suit look good was the tailoring, and I couldn’t tailor without measurements. But I was used to working wonders with ironing tape and a portable sewing machine, so I’d make it work.
Or so I thought, because the actor who walked into the room that was doubling as my wardrobe department was very familiar. So familiar I thought surely I was imagining him. Surely I’d fallen asleep and was having a nightmare and so it wasn’t really Angel’s ex-boyfriend Blake walking into the room right now. It wasn’t really a Hemsworth lookalike pulling off a hoodie and kicking off his sneakers before even sayinghello.
I stared as he yanked down his pants and then turned and faced me, his penis swinging around like a beige windsock. “Hey, I’m Blake,” he said in a deep voice. “I hear you got a suit for me?”
“I do,” I managed to say, spinning around to fumble for the suit. I’d known that Blake did porn—he and Angel had met at some Uncle Ray-Ray’s holiday party a year and a half ago while I’d sulked in the corner and watched their chemistry blossom.
But he’d been off the scene for a while, and I’d put him in the coffin showroom of my brain. May he never rest in peace.
But here he was. Muscled thighs, windsock dick, and all.
After forcing my eyes up, I yanked his pants off the hanger and threw them in his general direction. “Try those on and we’ll see if we can make them work. I’ll be right back.”
I marched out of the room and slammed the door behind me as I roared, “Sunny!”
Weaving in and out of crew members and cast members, I pushed down the hallway into the room doubling as the hotel suite. “Sunny,” I called again. “We need to—”
I stopped right there in my special edition Doc Martens tracks.
Right there on a stepladder, positioning lights, was Angel.
Sunny looked up from where she was perched on her director’s chair with her laptop balanced precariously on her thighs.
