Page 69 of Get A Fix

Ash groaned and smacked me on the shoulder as my buddy’s eyes narrowed.

I shook my head at him. “I have worked with you too long for that face right there to scare me. None of the ire you think is coming at me is, in fact, coming at me.”

“Yeah, we’re just getting the…what did you say?” Owen asked me, baiting Nash.

“The emotional constipation,” I reiterated.

“Yeah, exactly,” Owen said.

“Leave him alone,” Ash ordered me and Owen.

“All done now?” Nash growled at us, arms crossed, biceps bulging, looking the picture of annoyed.

“He’s actually very kind,” Owen defended the man whom we’d all take a bullet for, giving Nash a hard pat on the shoulder. “It’s just, until you know him, all you really see is the hard outer shell and none of the warm gooey center.”

“Have you lost your mind?” Nash snapped at him.

“He’s a lot like Locryn,” Owen went on, directing his words to me. “Locryn is even more closed off, except with people he cares about. Nash is the nicer of the two.”

“Really? You think that?” I asked him.

Owen was silent a moment. “Well, other than us, Nick, of course, and his mother, Sherri, can you think of anyone Locryn doesn’t growl at?”

Now it was my turn to put some thought into that.

“Oh, for the love of—we have shit to ask you,” Nash barked at Ash. “So come over here and siddown so we can.”

The movie star turned to me. “Does he know who I am?”

I grinned. “Maybe don’t open with that.”

Ash scoffed playfully.

Moving from the living room to the dining-room table, the four of us all took a seat. Ash took my hand. Already, one of the best things about him was that he could not keep his hands off me.

“Okay,” Owen began, smiling at his favorite actor.

I understood the feeling. It was surreal. Normally Ash was on a screen, and we watched him. Big ones, small ones, we took him places with us on our phones. The characters were like friends we counted on to make us feel a certain way. And now, suddenly, here he was, speaking back to us. Surreal was exactly what it was.

Slowly, Owen turned his laptop around so Ash could see Voss’s picture. “Do you know this man?”

“Sure. That’s Kit Riggs.”

Owen shook his head. “No, that’s Elliot Voss.”

“No. That’s Kit Riggs, and I’m sure of that because first, I know him well, and second, he came to the meeting looking like that, transformed into Voss for the pitch.”

The three of us just stared at him.

“I was amazed,” Ash gushed, oblivious. “I couldn’t get over it, so though I’m not usually the one taking pics, this time I simply had to snap a few because it was seriously impressive.”

No one spoke. It was hard to wrap my brain around what he was telling us.

“I mean, between the makeup and the prosthetics—that is so not Kit’s nose—it’s an incredible transformation.”

We were all still staring at him.

“Was that it?” Ash sounded a bit disappointed.