AllFreeNovel
Share Us
31
Chris’s alarm sounded bright and early at five a.m. to meet with his personal trainer, Yanni. Bronte woke up with the full intention of working out with Chris—moral support and all—but ended up napping on a lounge chair while the six-and-a-half-foot Greek god put Chris through his paces for two hours. The first being strength training, and the second all boxing sequences.
Then after a quick shower and breakfast, which was a frozen meal from a personal chef, Bronte and Taco got into one of Chris’s three cars to head to the studio. He explained that since Taco still wasn’t used to a lot of people, he kept the dog home and hired someone to walk him every day, but since Taco liked Bronte, he could hang out in the trailer with her.
And hang out they did, for three hours while Chris filmed some fight scene, coming back to the trailer for five- or ten-minute breaks at a time. No matter how fake it was, Bronte didn’t want to watch Chris repeatedly get beat up. So instead, she’d met Amy, the makeup artist, Jericho, the hair guy, Deb, the costumer, Trevor, the fight coordinator, Dante, the director, and Ruthie, the costar. They were all lovely but busy and didn’t have a lot of time for conversation with Bronte, which was good, she supposed. She only had to sit in the trailer and not look as awkward as she felt.
Lunch was at three, and Bronte dutifully followed Chris to craft services, where they took a seat at a table by themselves.
“Do you always eat alone?”
Still in his makeup so he looked even worse than the other day, with a black eye, cut cheek, and battered nose, he answered, “I eat with whoever is free. Not everyone has lunch at the same time, and not all the actors are on set at the same time. I only have these two scenes today. But Ruthie and Winston have another one after, and the entire crew is always here before and after we leave set. It’s long, hard days for everybody, but especially the crew.”
Bronte nodded, coasting her attention around the lunchroom where a few groups of the crew sat, scarfing down food. A woman poked her head in the door, asking for someone named Pete, who stood up immediately, taking his sandwich with him as he followed her out.
Chris raised his eyebrows as if to say See?
As they finished up their food, Chris told her he’d be filming a scene with Ruthie next, one where she finds him after the fight. When she would tell him it’s too late; she’s betrothed to another man.
Standing off in the back corner, Bronte watched take after take of Ruthie, as Lillian, run into the ring after the fight Roy lost. She wiped his brow and kissed him tenderly as she broke his heart. Again and again. Watching the scene unfold was heart-wrenching, but seeing someone kiss her boyfriend wasn’t as bad as Bronte thought it would be. There were so many people around, so much movement, she could barely believe the actors were able to push all that aside and focus on their lines.
It wasn’t Chris and Ruthie up there, it was Roy and Lillian, and it was obvious there was no way Chris could ever give this up. Not that she’d ask him to. Just like Bronte would never give up her kids and classroom for Hunter when he’d wanted her to move, she couldn’t ask Chris for a “normal” life, when his career involved all this abnormality.
They were at an impasse.
When he finished filming, he showered and changed in his trailer, and Bronte said goodbye to Dante and the crew, thanking them for allowing her to be on set. Dante hugged her then said something to Chris she missed, but it was clearly positive about her from the way Chris grinned and Dante winked at her. Although it didn’t make her feel any better about the situation.
As a surprise, Chris took Taco and Bronte for a drive up the coast. They ate a dinner of grapes, cheese, and crackers on the hood of his car while watching the sun set over the ocean, but that only mollified her until the next morning.
Saturday began much like the day before, early and with a workout. Wes and Jillian, Chris’s publicist, showed up to go over details for the day. Bronte heard them talking about how next month was going to be crazy after filming wrapped up. He had a commercial and print campaign scheduled for a cologne, as well as some promo work the studio wanted him and Ruthie to do.
Jillian opened her laptop to show Chris some shots for the movie posters, and he waved Bronte over to take a look. They were various photos of Chris, all rough-and-tumble, next to Ruthie in an emerald-green gown, her dark hair spilling over her shoulders with pearls decorating a few strands.
“What do you think?” he asked, wrapping his arm around her hips when she sidled up next to him.
“They’re gorgeous.”
“The studio wants to push up the release date for Oscar season,” Jillian told him.
“What? Really?” Chris bounced his eyes back and forth between Jillian and Wes.
“You’ve seen the dailies,” Wes said. “They’re really good.”
“Yeah, but the postproduction schedule would be shortened. By a lot.”
Wes shrugged. “Dante told me the other day he doesn’t think there’ll be many pickups because you and Ruthie have great chemistry together. He said, and I quote, ‘CJ’s got his magic back.’”
Chris’s face flushed, his fingers lightly pressing into Bronte’s thighs, though there wasn’t any more time to celebrate. Jillian piled everyone, including Taco, into a big Escalade with a driver, and they were off to a GQ photo shoot at the Santa Monica Pier.
With Chris’s nineteenth-century hair and sideburns, they decided his big comeback spread should be elegant and whimsical. Bronte sat in yet another trailer as two women pulled looks for him, all various combinations of pants, suspenders, suit jackets, and open shirts, even a derby hat. They had shut down parts of the pier for the shoot. It was fun to get a behind-the-scenes look at everything, watching as Chris posed and pouted in front of the Ferris wheel, carousel, and on the beach, but it was almost impossible for her not to be in the way. There were a lot of moving pieces, and she felt like a roadblock slowing everyone down.
She headed back into the trailer, where Jillian had set up camp. She was all business, typing away on her laptop while speaking on the phone, ignoring Bronte. Chris finally reappeared after Bronte wasted an hour or so playing on her cell phone. “There you are. I didn’t know where you ran off to.”
“I got bored,” she said when he sat down next to her, running a hand over her head.
“I feel like I’ve been apologizing a lot this weekend, but I’ll say it again. Sorry about that.”
“It’s okay. This is your job.”
