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Great. Not like I need coffee to survive.
Oh, wait. I do.
Rolling my eyes, I look up to find a familiar pair of clear blues eyes staring at me with genuine interest.
After a long moment of his eyes holding mine captive, Eli walks to the driver’s side, kneels so he’s eye level with me, and taps on my window. My dream comes rushing back to me, and I feel the blush creep up in my cheeks as the window slowly lowers.
“Good morning,” he says, his upbeat tone a bit much for such an early hour.
“Morning,” I retort as I reach into my center console and take out the napkins I keep in there for emergencies just like this. After shifting my car into park, I lean over and begin to clean up the coffee mess the best I can.
“How many did you lose?”
“Only one.”
Grabbing the cup with his name on it, I shimmy it out of the holder and sit back up, extending it to him through the open window. “Here ya go. Consider your coffee delivered.”
“Keep it. Give it to the person whose coffee was spilled. I’ll make a pot in my trailer.”
“It’s no big deal,” I say, thrusting the coffee into his hands. “I’ve got to get going.”
Shifting into drive, I’m about to pull away from him when he leans into my car, across me, his fresh scent tickling my nose, and places the coffee in my cup holder.
I’m so caught off guard by his actions I don’t say anything. I don’t hear anything. I’m not sure how long has passed but I can still smell Eli when a horn sounds behind me. I shift my eyes to my rearview mirror to find it still tilted upward to avoid the morning glare.
After parking, I rush around delivering coffees and call sheets. Eli’s not in his trailer when I drop his off, but it smells like fresh coffee, and I notice a half-full pot on the counter. I contemplate fixing myself a cup when I remember his is still in my car.
Detouring to grab it, I’m taking the first sip when Ansen hollers my name.
I’m standing two feet behind him, yet he doesn’t bother to turn around.
“Yes?”
“Where is Celia?” he demands, flipping through the heavily marked up script in his hands.
“She won’t be here until after lunch. I sent you an email.”
“And who the hell is supposed to fill in for her until she decides to grace us with her presence?”
“I, uh—”
“Taylor can do it. She ran lines with me yesterday. She knows the material.”
Closing my eyes, I send up a silent prayer that Ansen doesn’t take Eli up on his suggestion. Not only do I not want to fill in for Celia, but I have things of my own that need to get accomplished.
“She’s the same height and build,” Eli continues. “She knows the lines. You can always lay a voice over.”
I am not built like Celia. She’s thinner than I am, at least an inch taller, and don’t even get me started on the difference in size of my real breasts to her fake ones.
“We’ll shoot it from behind and lay a voice track over later,” Ansen says without a second thought, and then screams, “Someone bring me Celia’s wig!”
Wig?I think to myself.I didn’t realize she had to wear a wig.
Suddenly I’m being shoved toward the set, surrounded by bodies as they pull my long, dark brown waves into a high ponytail, tucking it under the mesh, and then fitting the wig over it. My clipboard is ripped from my hands. My arms are shoved into a designer jacket as someone powders my nose and highlights my cheekbones.
This all happens in the span of a minutes as we move toward the marker on the floor where Celia should be standing.
I’m a jumbled ball of nerves when Eli steps into my line of sight, the rest of the crowd moving away. Our eyes connect, and it’s only us in this moment. Him and me. No one else is around. The buzz of the room falls silent. Even the heat from the lights beaming down on me fades away.
