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I also didn’t hear anything from Ivy, and I told myself that was okay. Better. A clean break, a chance for her to find someone who can give her what she needs. A chance for me to throw myself back into acting with my full attention.
Except acting doesn’t seem to matter much right now.
This is the third beautiful, talented starlet that I’ve read across from over the past few days, and I can’t seem to strike the slightest spark of chemistry with any of them.
It’s not them. They’re all amazing.
It’s me.
A week has passed, and I don’t feel any more like myself.
It’s like I left the best part of myself in Rush Creek, and the thing that’s left here, reading with various potential costars, is just an empty husk.
Maybe that’s why all the pairings feel empty, too. I haven’t read with anyone I’ve clicked with yet, and Tim is getting impatient with me and the process.
“Go home,” he tells me now. “Go home and do some more character work. I don’t feel like you’re deep enough with this character.”
Ashamed, I nod. I know he’s right. I want to make this work. I want to bowl Tim over with what I can do. And instead I’m giving him half a man and half an actor. I need to pull myself together, forget everything that happened in Rush Creek, and get back in the game.
“Joe Abrahms has been fighting this battle by himself for a really long time,” Tim says. “You’ve got to totally get into that mindset. Like you believe you’re the only guy on earth who can change this injustice.”
I hang my head. I don’t want to let Tim down. He’s an incredible director, and he’s taking a chance on me, because I haven’t tried anything with this kind of depth and pathos before. I want to show him I can do this. For him, but mostly for me. “I will,” I say.
“Give me a call when you feel like you’ve got it, okay?” he says. “I can wait. We’re not in a huge hurry. Not yet.”
“Okay,” I say.
I head back to my car. When I get there, I check my phone, which has been on Do Not Disturb, and discover there’s a call from Quinn. I panic for a moment because the only other time Quinn has ever called me there was a family emergency threatening to undo all our hard work to save Hanna’s business.
This time, however, Quinn sounds cheerful and non-panicked. His voicemail says, I’m in town. Call me.
When he picks up, I say, “What the hell are you doing in LA?”
“I was meeting with a potential scientist recruit,” he says.
“Since when do you travel to meet them?”
“When they’re so brilliant they could work for any lab in the entire country,” he says. “But the point is I’m here, I’m done with work for the day, and I have two Dodgers tickets.”
It’s testament to how bad I’m feeling that I don’t cheer up at all when I hear that. I just think about how much traffic we’ll have to sit in—not just rush hour, but the stadium and surface-street traffic. Then there will be paparazzi and fans who want autographs and, if I’m especially unlucky, even reporters who’ll want a quick interview with me.
“I’m wiped,” I say. “I think I’m going to just head home and sack out.”
“Shane,” Quinn says quietly. “Sonya said you might try that. She said, and I quote, that I need to tell you that I came all the way from Oregon and I’m not going back without seeing my brother.”
“You came all the way from Oregon for a business trip,” I point out.
“Nah,” he says. “I made that up. I came down to see you. And I’m going to fucking see you. So if you don’t want to go to the baseball game, we won’t go to the baseball game. But tell me where to find you, and I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
“No, you won’t,” I say. “This is LA. It’ll take you forty-five.”
“Then stop wasting time and tell me where you are.”
39
Shane
Forty-five minutes later, I join Quinn in one of my favorite drinking holes, the kind of dive bar where everyone’s too busy drowning their sorrows to give a shit about what celebrity walks through the door.
