Costars (New York City Bad Boy Romance) (25 page)

“You can’t be here,” I tell him, trying to
keep as calm a look on my face as possible.

“I’m out on bail,” he says. “I’m a free
man and I plan on staying that way. I’m going to need you to ease back with all
the stories you’re telling about me,” he says. “And I want you to drop the
charges against me. If you don’t,” he says, “I’ll kill you before this thing
ever gets to trial.”

My head slams into Ben’s face and I swear
I can feel the cartilage in his nose popping out of place. When I lift up my
head again, he’s standing there, covering his bleeding nose with both hands.
I’ve broken his glasses.

Someone in the crowd shouts, “That’s him!”

Someone else yells, “Get him!”

“No!” I shout with all the force of my
lungs.

The people around me stop in their places,
though they’re now restraining Ben.

“We are going to call the police and he’s
going to go back to jail,” I shout. “We’re going to show him that we’re better
than he is.”

There seems to be general agreement among
the group, though there are still a few people throwing bottles and various
detritus at him.

This is just going to be one more thing in
the papers and on the television, and I’m sure if the internet’s not broken
already, it’s got to be nearing that end, but right now, I’m not so worried
about that.

Really, I’m just feeling pretty good about
the throbbing pain in my forehead and the fear in Ben’s eyes as he continues to
bleed while someone calls the cops. Nobody’s physically holding him back now,
but nobody’s going to let him leave here, either.

Along with the restraining order I should
have filed years ago, Ben will now be receiving another set of charges and, if
I’m lucky, he’ll be too old and decrepit when he comes out to even consider
trying to come back into my life a third time.

The police arrive with an ambulance not
far behind them and they take Ben away.

We’re all standing around for a long time talking
to the police, but eventually, they let us go. I tell one of the officers that
I want to file a restraining order against Ben and he gives me a quick lowdown
of the process involved with that.

I’m not a violent person. In fact, I
deplore violence.

That said, though, nothing in my life has
ever felt better than making that son of a bitch bleed.

Chapter Eighteen

Making Amends to Those Who Deserve It

Damian

It’s our last day of filming. I’ve
personally set back production by about three weeks: A personal best.

Things are starting to turn around,
though. With Ben finally remanded, Emma’s doing a lot better. With Danna
planning to move back in tonight, a lot of crap is finally off my mind.

Danna’s decision to move back came as a
bit of a surprise. She had, like she said she would, sent someone to pick up
her things and her stuff was gone, all of it. Then, out of the blue a few days
ago, I get a call from her saying that she’s had a change of heart and, if I’d
still have her, she’d be happy to move back in with me.

My sister, my twin—she can be quite the
handful and she has mood swings like nobody I’ve ever met, but she’s always
been there. Even when we weren’t together, we were always talking and being
completely out of contact with her, even for such a short time, was more
difficult than I thought it would be.

Maybe it’s a twin thing, maybe it’s a dead
parents
thing, but when you’ve been through a certain
kind of chaos for long enough, you really start to value the things that don’t
change and the people that stick around. I’m just glad that Danna decided to
remain one of those people that stick around.

Before I get to the set, I stop by Ed’s
hospital room. We’ve been getting along a little better now that he’s dying.

I’d love to be able to put it less bluntly
than that, but I’m pretty convinced that if the old rotten bastard wasn’t
dying, we’d never have been able to bury the hatchet as much as we have.

“Shit,” he says as I walk into his room,
“it’s
you
.”

“Yeah,” I tell him. “It’s me.”

“Haven’t I told you never to come back
here?” he asks.

“Every time I’ve come to visit,” I answer.

“Stubborn,” he says. “I guess I can
respect that.”

“You’re calling me stubborn?” I ask. “You
were supposed to die weeks ago.”

“True,” he says, “but I’ve never been that
good about
keepin
’ to a schedule.”

“Have they found a heart for you yet?” I
ask.

“
Nothin
’ yet,”
he says. “Mine’s hanging in there better than the doctors thought it would,
though. Son,” he says, “I think there’s something we need to talk about.”

Son? That was a bit unsettling.

“What?” I ask.

His mouth moves like he’s trying to move a
bad bite of food into his cheek.

“I loved my daughter,” he says. “I loved
that little girl since before she was born and I love her even now that she’s
been gone all these years. Do you know what it’s like for a father to see his
daughter look at another man like he’s going to solve all of her problems?” he
asks.

“No,” I answer, “I don’t.”

“Well, it pisses
ya
right off,” Ed says and has a small coughing fit. “That’s the look she’s
supposed to have reserved for her father, but that’s not the way it works out.
One day, the little girl becomes a young woman and there’s someone else she
thinks can take on the world in her honor and when you started coming around, I
saw that look going to you more and more. That’s why I didn’t like you while
the two of you were dating.”

The only thing I can think is that he
knows he’s going to die and he’s just trying to clear his conscience before he
goes because, despite the fact that we have made some pretty huge progress
since that first visit, we’ve never been anywhere near this.

“After she died,” Ed says, “I knew it
wasn’t your fault, but I wanted somebody to blame and you were custom tailored
for the role. Penelope and I’ve had a long, good life together and I love my
wife, but Jamie was the light in both our worlds. When she was gone, I felt
like hurting someone else the way that I felt hurt, and because we’d never
gotten along and because she was pregnant with your child, I made that someone
you. For that,” he says, “I really am truly sorry.”

This isn’t what I was expecting when I
came here.

“Thank you,” I tell him. “That really
means a lot to me.”

“All that said,”
he
continues, “I still think you’re a pompous idiot who gets paid way too much to
do something a reanimated corpse with a decent set of teeth could do.”

Given the nature and number of our
conversations to date, that’s still on the list of nicest things he’s ever said
to me.

We talk for a while until he starts to get
tired and I excuse myself with plans to see him again sometime in the next
couple of days and I walk out of that hospital feeling pretty damn good.

I leave the hospital, drive straight to
the set, and it’s not long before I’m in wardrobe, getting ready to do my last
scene. I’m wondering if I’m going to miss this set like I’ve missed others in
the past. This is where I met Emma, so I’m sure it’s going to have a certain
significance to it, but with everything else that’s happened while this movie’s
been getting made, I’m not sure that significance is going to be all positive.

“Are you nervous?” Tammy from wardrobe
asks.

“Not really,” I tell her. “It’s just
another day on the set. It’s just another scene.”

“Yeah,” she says, “but it’s the last one
of the movie. That’s a pretty big deal.”

“I guess,” I tell her.

She hands me my clothes for the scene and
I quickly change into them. I’ve still got makeup to go through, but in less
than an hour, assuming I don’t totally blow the scene repeatedly, they’ll call
a “wrap on Damian Jones,” and after that comes the wrap party and after that
comes a few weeks’ peace before I have to start making the rounds promoting
this thing.

“I want you to know that it’s been a real
honor to work with you,” Tammy says. “You’ve really helped open my eyes to a
lot of things.”

That’s kind of weird, but okay.

“I’m glad to hear it,” I tell her. “Where
are you going from here?”

“I don’t know yet,” she says. “I’m going
to miss this set, though.”

“Yeah,” I agree mindlessly. “I’m not.”

“Well,” Tammy says, “I know that a lot’s
happened since filming started, but you can’t let that be the only thing you
take away from this. After all,” she says, “people get whatever they get. You
can fight it, but you’re going to go crazy trying.”

She gives my outfit one last once over
and, with a smile, she waves and bids me farewell.

Me, I’m stuck in place. I can’t move and I
have to make a very conscious effort to breathe.

“People get whatever they get,” she said. “You
can fight it, but you’re going to go crazy trying.”

I remember those words.

I remember
using
those words.

That’s something I told Rita that night on
the phone. I haven’t told anyone about that conversation, much less any direct
quotes from it.

Tammy is Rita. Rita is Tammy.

Part of me just wants to let her go, but I
don’t know for a fact that she’s not going to just keep doing what she’s been
doing if I don’t stop her, so I get out of that room and I find Trey. I ask him
if he’s seen Tammy, but he hasn’t.

She’s been quiet since that phone call,
but she’s unpredictable. As much as I’d love to pretend that my sage advice
must have simply changed her entire character and demeanor, I’m not that
stupid.

I ask Trey to have security stop Tammy and
bring her back to the set when they spot her, but even before I go in to do my
scene, I know she’s already gone.

Either I’m going to have to deal with her
for the duration or something did change, though I don’t know what, and she’s
going to leave me alone now.

It would be great to know which.

The scene I’m scheduled for right now—my
last scene of the movie—is one of the first shots in the film and it’s just of
me sitting in a room, correcting English homework. There’s really nothing to
screw up here, but I thought the same thing before the scene with the towels
and the hotel room.

This is going to be part of the opening
montage and though it’s likely this scene isn’t going to put up more than a
total of twenty, thirty seconds at the most, despite what I told Tammy, I
am
nervous.

I’ve been nervous before, during, and
after every scene I’ve ever done.

That’s just the way it goes when you take
what you do seriously.

I talk with Dutch a moment and then I sit
in the chair in front of Emma’s character’s stepdaughter’s homework and I start
looking over it as if I am the tutor and this is the work that I love.

While I’m looking through the pages,
“correcting” this and that as I go, Dutch yells action and, apparently he’s
yelled cut because everyone’s cheering and Dutch is saying, “That’s a wrap on
Damian Jones.”

There are still more scenes to be shot
before the movie’s done and then there’s effects and editing and everything
that comes with postproduction, but as far as I’m concerned, the making part of
this movie is over.

Looking back, I don’t know that my
performance has been worthy of the Oscar I told Emma I was going to win from
doing this film, even if everything inside and outside the walls of the set had
gone smoothly, but that never really mattered. To be honest, I think I’d just
be embarrassed if I got a nomination for this movie.

It’s right around there that I finally
decide to decide what I’m going to do with my career. Maybe I’ll stick with the
fluff; maybe I’ll take on something more serious, more demanding. I’m not going
to decide now, but I’m finally ready to think about what it is that I really
want and stop treading water.

Emma is supposed to come over tonight for
our own personal wrap party before the official one in two days when she’s done
with her scenes, and I’d really like to get home before she shows up. Danna’s
coming back tonight, and I’d really love to keep the two of them separated as
completely as I can for as long as I can.

Danna says she has some things to talk
about and some things to apologize for, but she gave me free reign over when
that happens.

It’s for that and many other reasons that
I’m surprised at what I find when I get home.

Emma’s car is parked out front, but that’s
not the strange thing. As I drive over the fading scrawls of one of Tammy’s
many professions of love and at least temporary psychosis, I spot Danna and
Emma sitting on the porch, drinking iced tea together.

I park the car and get out, walking with a
certain caution toward the pair, hoping for the best but expecting the worst.

“Hey, little bro,” Danna says.

“Hey, Damian,” Emma says.

“Hey, you two,” I answer and look back and
forth between them. “What’s going on here?”

“I got here a little early,” Emma says. “I
tend to do that. Anyway, Danna was here when I pulled up and we’ve just been
talking.”

“Okay,” I answer and look to Danna for her
explanation, as I assume her need to oppose everything Emma will skew the
report a bit one way or another.

“Yeah,” Danna says, “we’ve just been
talking a bit.”

“Should I be worried?” I ask.

“No,” Danna says. Even Emma seems to be in
a good mood, a rarity for anyone when they’ve spent a few minutes with Danna.
“I’m glad that you’re back though,” Danna says. “There are a couple of things
that I wanted to talk to you about, the both of you.”

“Okay,” I say and sit down in one of the
empty chairs on the porch. “What did you want to talk about?” I ask.

“First off,” she says, “Emma, I know I’ve
already said this, but I want to apologize for the way I’ve behaved toward you.
I think a lot of it was that I didn’t want to see someone taking away my time
with my brother. I think part of it was that I was trying to protect him from
what I saw to be a dangerous situation. I think there’s still another part of
me that just didn’t want to have to take the risk and get attached again—you
know that I was very close with Jamie, right?”

“Yeah,” Emma answers.

“Anyway, I get that I was acting like an
idiot and I’m very sorry,” Danna says.

“You’re forgiven,” Emma says immediately.

Danna looks over to me. “Are we good,
little bro?” she asks.

I narrow my eyes. “You know,” I tell her,
“I think I’ve known you long enough to know when you’re planning something bad,
but I’ve been proven wrong on that one in the past—”

“I’m not planning anything bad,” Danna
laughs. “I don’t even know what you think I would plan. I’d just like it if all
of us could patch things up and get along.”

“What changed your mind?” I ask. “Whatever
it was must have been pretty extreme. I mean, you actually moved out over all
this.”

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘all
this,’” Danna says, “but what changed my mind was Emma.”