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Sudden hot anger surged in my chest, pushing my dismay off to one side. If I could lose Sam over something like this — if he could dismiss half a lifetime of friendship — then what kind of friend was he to begin with?
“See you,” I said, and stalked out the door. And as for Lacey, whatever had crawled up her ass, she could’ve come and talked to me like an adult. If she couldn’t do that, then that was her problem.
Me, I was here to do my damn job. If that included a healthy side order of drama, well, I would treat that like the rest of the movie — a role I would play, and then I’d forget it.
CHAPTER 9
LACEY
Berg barged in before breakfast the day of theSwipestylesshoot, banging on Eric’s door till he answered, sleep-bleary. I was in there already, in my bathrobe and slippers, in case the crew showed up early and caught us in separate suites. We had to look real for them, and really in love. Which, the way Eric had been acting since we signed our contracts, I had my doubts he could pull it off.
Berg shoved in past him and grabbed an orange from our fruit bowl. He stood squeezing it like a stress ball, denting its skin.
“I need to talk to you two about shooting.” He squeezed the orange again. It made a wet sound. Eric cocked a brow at him, likefine. Go ahead.
“Today can’t be sloppy. It can’t be all…” Berg flapped his hand about, the one not holding the orange. “You two have been off. You’ve been stiff and unfocused. I can’t have that today. This reflects on me too. I can’t have your puff piece turning into a, a…”
Eric frowned. “Hit piece?”
Berg crushed his orange so hard it sprayed juice. “Exactly, a hit piece. So none of your nonsense. None of this bickering you think I don’t see, this sneaky pick-pick you’ve been doing offscreen. Youfocusbetween scenes. You rest. You run lines. Don’t make me look foolish. Do you understand?”
I nodded, abashed. He’d noticed our friction?
Berg narrowed his eyes like he didn’t quite believe me. “I want you to both treat this like an audition. Because it is, if you want to keep working with me. I make a lot of movies, and they make careers. I like to hire the same actors when they do good — and you two are good. But you’re emotional. Messy. You come to work angry, but you don’t channel it. You point it at each other, and not at my camera. I need that passion onscreen, in your work. I need you to prove, today, that you know how to do that. Act like two adults, not pig-snorting kids.”
I flushed at the reminder of my Old MacDonald disaster. Thathadbeen childish, as had this whole week. I’d let Eric get to me, first at dinner, then on set. I could’ve just talked to him, but I hated that he’d hurt me. I hated that he’d been able to. That I’d let myself trust him.
“We’ll do that,” said Eric. “And as for our friction, I’m afraid that’s on me. I had words with my manager, a major blowout, so the bad vibes on set have been coming from me.”
Berg dropped his orange back into the fruit bowl, squeezed into a moon shape and dribbling juice. He eyed Eric coldly. “And have you resolved that?”
“Yes, sir, I have. We’re good now, I promise.”
“Yeah, well, you’d better be. I’ll see you on set.” He strode out of the suite and let the door slam behind him. I turned to Eric.
“Is that true about Sam?”
Eric didn’t look at me. “It doesn’t matter. All that does matter is, we need to kill it today.”
I took half a step toward him. “Why did you take the blame? You didn’t have to say anything, but—”
“I said it doesn’t matter.”
I must’ve shrunk back from the snap in his tone, because his expression softened and he let his shoulders go loose.
“Look, whatever the reasons, we’ve had a rough week. But wecanget along when we put our minds to it, like on our date, or when we’re sparking on set. So let’s just, let’s just… Let’s do that today. Whatever it takes, let’s show Berg we’re in this.”
Breakfast ended up being a staged photoshoot, me tucked up in bed, Eric bringing me waffles. We posed six different ways with the same dripping bite, a hunk of real waffle, but the syrup was resin. I tilted my head back, pretending to lick it. Eric kissed whipped cream off the tip of my nose. I fed him a strawberry. He cut up my waffles. We finished up giggling over our syrup-smeared plates, our bathrobes arranged to show the Seaview logo.
After our shoot, we rushed to get dressed, and I met Eric down by the limo.
“Did you get any breakfast after all that?”
He made a disgusted sound. “A strawberry. You?”
“Two sips of coffee.”
We piled into the limo, but it didn’t pull out. Eric leaned forward and tapped on the glass.
