Acting Brave (Fenbrook Academy #3) (42 page)

I had to fight to remember my line. “H—Here?” I was meant to sound nervous. That part was easy.

“I’ve been trying to keep quiet,” said Tyler. “I can’t, anymore.”

I looked over my shoulder at the empty room. I was meant to be Isabel, checking the coast was clear, checking that my lover, Tony wasn’t watching. What I was actually doing was seeing if Ryan was anywhere in sight. He wasn’t.

Tyler grabbed my shoulders and I jerked my head round to face him. “I should have said it in our first year,” he said. “Or the next. Or the next. But I never thought...I thought there’d be
time.”

“I—I’m with someone,” I said. And, just then, I saw Ryan. He’d circled around and re-entered the briefing room through the rear door, out of sight of the cameras. And he was watching us.

“I know,” said Tyler. “And I...don’t...care.” He moved in very close to me, close enough that I had to move back. My ass hit the wood of my desk and suddenly he was right up against me, his muscled body hard against mine. This was all in the script. But in the script, it hadn’t seemed so—

I looked up into his eyes.
Real.

I gave a quick, desperate shake of my head and ran for the door, just as the script said. Except that, in my hurry to get away, I banged into a discarded chair and went stumbling. I kept going and made it through the door and into the hallway. I heard Dixon yell “Cut!” behind me. Only then did I stop and walk back in.

“Do you want me to do that again?” I asked. “I hit the chair.”

Dixon was beaming. “Nah, it looked great. Made it natural. You two work well together.” He was looking between Tyler and me. Tyler grinned modestly.

I smiled myself, pleased. And then looked up and saw Ryan, glowering at me from the back of the room.

Shit.

Chapter 48

Ryan

O’Malley’s had been a cop bar as far back as anyone could remember, a place where you could go to bitch about your shift and City Hall and the public and everything else that only cops really understood. The brass stayed away so it was just beat cops.

I’d arranged to meet Jasmine there. Sort of a cultural exchange, I guess. She’d shown me her world, and her friends, in Flicker. Now I was going to show her mine. Except that, since Hux dying, I hadn’t been around O’Malley’s all that much. I told myself that that was better than being around a bar
too much,
but I was still on edge. O’Malley’s used to feel like home, with its dark wood paneling and vintage jukebox. I’d used to be able to come there and know I’d find some guys from my shift. Now, with me off the force and barely around the station, I felt like an outsider.

And the whole plan of Jasmine coming there? That had been hatched on the way to the studio, before the whole Tyler/Greg thing happened.

Part of me thought that I was being stupid, getting jealous over it. It wasn’t
real—
I understood that. And yet...can you really say it isn’t a kiss, when, physically, it’s no different? It would still be
his
tongue playing with
her
lips,
his
hands on
her
body. Jasmine. My girlfriend.

My girlfriend.

Exactly what I’d dreamed of, for years, and now it had happened. And, almost immediately, her job was coming between us. What other guy has to put up with his girl kissing someone else?

I looked around to see who was in. Charlie C, the littlest of the Charlies, was getting a beer at the bar. Hooper, an aging hippy who always took shit for driving too slow, was there. Julio, still wearing his dark hair slicked back and no doubt still trying to chat up every woman he met. There were a few others I recognized, but those three were the ones I knew well.

I nursed my own beer as Charlie C came and sat down at my table. “Slumming it?” he asked. “There ain’t some Hollywood bar with fifty-buck cocktails you should be at?”

“It’s just a TV show. Probably won’t even get picked up for a series,” I told him.

Charlie grinned. “What about the redhead. You get a piece of that, yet?”

I hadn’t told anyone about Jasmine and I going out. I stared at my beer, unsure what to say.

“She get her clothes off, yet?” asked Charlie. “I was watching this show last night, all dragons and swords and shit, and there were titties
everywhere.
You should get on a show like that.”

Hooper came over carrying some ridiculous organic, brewed-by-authentic-vegetarians microbrewery ale. I was surprised it wasn’t green. “What are we talking about?” he asked.

“The redhead that’s with Ryan in the show,” Charlie told him.

“Oh! Saw her at the station. Hot.”

“That’s what I said,” said Charlie. “Hey Ryan, how much are we gonna get to see, when this thing hits the air? Underwear? Topless? Full frontal?”

“Full frontal of who?” said Julio, sitting down. “This big lunk?”

“Nah,” said Charlie. “The redhead.” He looked expectantly at me. “We see some skin, right?”

“It’s all very...tasteful,” I said tightly. I could feel the anger building in my chest. When we’d done the bedroom scene, I’d been focused on trying to stop Jasmine discovering I was crazy about her. Now we were together...and suddenly, I was realizing that
all these guys are going to see her, virtually naked.
Hell, they’d shot it so that she looked completely naked.

“But you must get to see more, right?” asked Charlie. “Like, the bits they edit out? The bits they can’t show on TV?” He leaned closer. “Do the carpets match the drapes or what?”

I loved these guys. I’d backed them up and I’d had them back me up plenty of times. But right then, it hit me how raw they were, how…

...
how much like cops
they were. I winced.

I’d always believed I never had a chance with Jasmine because I wasn’t in her social circles. Then I’d smashed down that wall and realized she wasn’t so different. But now I realized that maybe I’d changed, too. Maybe I’d become a little more like her. Because suddenly, I was looking at these guys and not liking what I saw.

“Show some respect,” I muttered.

Charlie and Julio glanced at each other. Hooper looked bewildered. I knew why. Their conversation wasn’t so different from millions we’d had, before Jasmine. Women on TV and in movies, cheerleaders at football games, they were all somehow...
not real.
It was okay to letch over them and discuss them because it wasn’t like you’d ever meet them.

“Who took a dump in your cornflakes?” asked Charlie. “They not payin’ you enough? Your trailer too small? Wrong kind of mineral water on the set?” The others laughed.

“Maybe it’s
him,”
said Hooper wisely. “Do
you
get your clothes off in this thing?”

I tried to think of an answer that wouldn’t involve lying. That was a mistake because my hesitation told them all they needed to know.

This is the downside of having cops as friends. It’s difficult to keep anything from them.

“Oh,” said Julio, nodding. “I get it.
That’s
why he wants us to respect naked actors.” He put on a mock-sympathetic face. “What’s the matter, pal? Was it cold in there?”

Charlie leaned close. “Oh my God.
Please
say you whip it out on camera. Because I’m freeze-framing that motherfucker. That shit’s going up on the break room wall.”

“I don’t get it out,” I grated. And then, because I’m a lousy liar anyway and I wanted to keep the conversation away from Jasmine, “I think you see my ass.”

The table erupted into laughter. “No
way!
” said Charlie.

I gave them all a glower, but I could feel my anger lifting a little. At least they weren’t discussing Jasmine.

Then Hooper took a long swallow of his beer and said thoughtfully, “Wait. What kind of scene is it, that we see your rear? I mean, are you getting changed, or taking a shower, or what?”

I felt myself flushing. “Why all the interest in my ass?”

“Answer the question,” said Julio. “Why do you get naked?”

I said nothing. A hush fell over the table as they got it.

“Holy
shit!”
said Charlie. “Is it a sex scene?”

“He’s meant to be with the redhead, right?” said Hooper, figuring it out.

Charlie thumped both hands on the table, making beers jump and spill. “SAY IT’S THAT!” he yelled. “SAY IT’S WITH HER!”

I sighed and nodded. The other guys all groaned with a mixture of awe and heartfelt frustration.

“You lucky SOB,” said Julio.

“What the hell?!” said Charlie. “You’re an actor for like a few weeks and you get to bang
her?!”

Hooper steepled his fingertips. “You are
blessed,
” he told me solemnly. “Truly
blessed.”

“
I
want to be an actor,” said Charlie. “Sign me up!”

I sat back and just let them get it all out of their systems. I should have expected it, of course. I guess it had started to become normal to me, since I’d been working with Jasmine. I’d forgotten how crazy and unreal that world seemed to everyone else. Also, if I’m honest, I wasn’t beyond being a little bit proud. I mean, I
had
got to do a love scene with Jasmine. Terrifying as it had been, it had also been hot as hell.

And that thought took me right back to Tyler and how he’d get to kiss Jasmine the next day. Would he really be professional about it? Or would he do what any guy would do and enjoy it?

“So, seriously,” said Charlie, leaning forward again. “
Do
the carpets match the drapes? Because that’s been driving me crazy.”

Instantly, the anger was back. How dare he be thinking like that about her? How dare he be imagining her naked? I could feel the rage building and twisting, lashing around like a living thing.

He’s just doing what all the guys watching at home are going to be doing.
My stomach lurched and the anger burned brighter, hotter.

“And nipples,” said Julio. “Because sometimes, chicks with big tits are all out of proportion, like they have these tiny little—”

“Shut up!” I yelled, standing up. My thighs bumped the table and Julio’s beer tipped over. “Just shut up!”

The whole bar turned to look at me.

“What?” asked Charlie, shaken. “What’s the matter?”

“Yeah,” said Jasmine, walking in behind him. What’s the matter?”

***

She looked stunning. She looked so beautiful I could hardly speak. The dress she was in—some expensive, gray thing—was completely inappropriate for a down market bar but, being Jasmine, she pulled it off. It felt as if
we
were out of place, as if the whole bar better smarten itself up to come up to her standard—that’s how much presence she had.

And then she introduced herself as my girlfriend and I felt about a thousand feet tall. Charlie didn’t manage to close his jaw for fully ten seconds.

But something was different about her. There was none of that scared, traumatized woman I’d gradually been seeing more of. This was the old Jasmine, how she’d been before the TV show. Charming and funny and flirty.

Flirty.
She didn’t just say
hi
to Charlie and Hooper and Julio. She insisted on kissing each one on the cheek in a big, extravagant, actress way, a cloud of perfume and silken auburn hair. They all looked shell-shocked. Then she was racing off to the bar to replace Julio’s beer.

Charlie kept looking between Jasmine, over at the bar, and me. His meaning was obvious:
what the hell is she doing with you?!

I shrugged and managed to smile.

“Un-fucking-believable,” said Charlie.

Jasmine brought over Julio’s beer. And then, instead of sitting down beside me, facing them, she sat between Charlie and Julio. I saw both of them instinctively glance down at her breasts—there was a lot of cleavage on display, in that dress.

And then she started talking to them. Asking how long they’d been cops, where their beats were, what it was like. It wasn’t just small talk. She was
flirting.
She laughed at their lame jokes. She held their gaze for just a little too long. Was she
trying
to make me jealous?!

If she was, then it was working. I wanted to scream at her. Why was she doing this?

I didn’t understand it. Everything had been going so well until that day. Then the Tyler thing had happened and now
this.
Was she having second thoughts? Was she trying to break us up?

I gritted my teeth, unsure of how many more seconds of it I could withstand.
Jasmine, what the hell are you doing?!