Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
SHAW
Luna
I guess this is your way of convincing me you’re a gentleman?
Silas
I don’t know about all that. I just know you’re supposed to walk your date to the door, so here I am.
Luna
Bites her lip. She’s giddy from the time they had on the impromptu date but doesn’t want to seem too eager.
So you’re not a gentleman. Go it.
Silas
I didn’t say that either.
Luna
You’re not saying much of anything—it’s making me feel like maybe you didn’t have a good time.
Silas
I didn’t say that ? —
Luna
(laughs)
You make me sick.
Silas
Why?
Luna
’Cause, I’m trying to get a read on you, but you’re all stoic and shit. Can’t tell anything from your face, and you won’t use your words…
Silas
Smirks. He looks at her for a bit, studying her face, thinking about if he can say what he wants without pissing her off.
You want me to just come right out with it?
Luna
Absolutely.
Silas
The things I’m trying to say to you…can’t be communicated with words.
This was it.
We’d reached the point in the script I hadn’t been sure if I was dreading or looking forward to—now that we were here…I still didn’t know.
It felt ridiculous to be so nervous about doing a love scene with a woman I’d not only been in a relationship with but had done scenes like this with before.
Everything was as it should be on set—not that I’d expected anything less.
The staff was at bare minimum for the privacy and comfort of the actors. A team of intimacy coordinators had already been going over everything with us, checking in on our mental state, making sure the right undergarments were in place, etc., because Charlotte Fox didn’t play any games when it came to that.
The script was tight, and we knew it front to back as well as possible, no room for any of the “letting nature take its course,” “going with the flow” shit some actors talked about, which never sat right with me. Yes, there should be chemistry between the actors, and attraction wasn’t some abnormal thing, but leaning into that kind of language around these scenes often left some actors feeling uncomfortable.
Myself included.
This wasn’t supposed to be real—it was supposed to look real.
There was a difference.
But again, Charlotte ran things above board. All the i’s were dotted, all the t’s were crossed, no worries.
Everything was going to be great.
So…why did I still feel anxious?
It wasn’t uncommon for there to be a bit of uncertainty with this, but for me at least, it was usually when the actor on the other side of the scene was mostly a stranger.
Shit.
Maybe that was exactly the problem—Ellie was about as far from a stranger as a person could be. She was my friend, yes, but also my ex, who I still very much had intimate feelings for.
Real ones.
Feelings it would be incredibly unprofessional of me to allow to cross over.
I had to figure out how to keep my shit together so I wouldn’t make her uncomfortable—or embarrass my damn self.
Always so much easier said than done.
Thank goodness for a team that was committed to not just putting on a great show but maintaining a great work environment as well. Everybody was on the same wavelength, committed to bringing in the right energy and making sure it was maintained.
It wasn’t sexy on set.
That wasn’t the vibe—we were working.
We talked with the intimacy coordinators and Charlotte, going through what we’d been over and loosely rehearsed the night before one more time, just to make sure everything was understood.
And then…we stepped outside of ourselves.
Not Elodie and Shaw.
Luna and Silas, passionately kissing and unable to keep their hands off each other, stripping clothes off, making love, all perfectly choreographed. We shot it all several times—close-ups, wide angles, different directions, everything the editors would need to take it from a bunch of raw footage to a real scene.
It was… difficult.
I was grateful for every break built into the day—I needed them to recenter myself.
It was a stressful line to ride—staying disconnected enough to not be a fucking creep, while infusing the acting with the real intimacy, vulnerability, and passion the scene required…
It was a relief to be done.
Finally.
We’d both gone straight to our private spaces in our trailers as soon as the scene was wrapped. I didn’t know what she went to do, but I went directly to a shower to release everything that had built up over the day.
Thank God we wouldn’t have another scene like that for several weeks. We were both done for the day now, actually—Charlotte and Nolan had agreed, after coming in hot this week.
No pun intended.
After the incident with Ellie at the restaurant, they made her take two days off, and then we went immediately into catch-up mode, blazing through scenes as fast as we could while maintaining the quality. Because of that, now that we were a week removed from that whole mess, we were back on schedule with everyone else.
And now that we’d finished that pivotal scene, we could take off early today.
Once I was dressed though, I went to the little kitchenette to attack the early dinner someone had dropped off—I was ravenous. We’d been at it all day, with little more than a snack here and there—not that food hadn’t been provided, but neither of us apparently had the stomach for it.
I was making up for it now.
“Come in,” I answered, mouth full, when I heard a knock at the door. I looked up as it swung open to see Ellie’s face peeking in.
“So…that was intense.”
“I was kinda thinking a different word,” I admitted with a cringe, and she laughed.
“Awkward? Yeah, that too. You don’t think it’ll come across on screen, do you?”
I shook my head. “Nah. Nolan is an asshole—he would have said something.”
She nodded. “You’re probably right.”
I didn’t mind Nolan Brooks that much personally, and I didn’t get the feeling Ellie did either.
Charlotte, though?
Charlotte hated his ass.
He was the showrunner brought on by the network, put in place to keep the budget in line and make sure the network values were ever-present in the show. He had a talent for making a good show for sure, but, per his reputation, he wanted the most out of everybody, for the least possible—while still paying everyone fairly—expense.
An energy was antithetical to Charlotte’s way of doing things.
She was not a fan of his.
They’d been clashing the whole way through so far, but I had to say—I’d never seen a bad project from either of them. So the way I saw it, between the two of them?
We should end up with something special.
“Hey,” Ellie spoke again. “You are really fucking that sandwich up.” She laughed. “Why does it feel like you’re settling in here instead of getting ready to take off? You know they pushed our ‘morning after’ two days out, right?”
“Yeah, I know—but…I am settling in here,” I said, grabbing a booklet from the tabletop in front of me and holding it up. “I’ve got a heavy load tomorrow, some monologues and shit, so I’m going to run through all my lines for that before I head home. What are you about to get into?”
“Family dinner, and then my bed,” she said. “I’m actually already a little late, but they know I’m coming.”
“Nice. Tell the fam I said hello.”
“I will,” she agreed. “But uh, you should know, you were actually invited. I was coming to tell you, but I know how serious you are when it comes to getting those lines in. I’ll let them know you’ll catch the next one?”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “For sure.”
Was I a little confused by the invite?
Yes.
But I wasn’t about to argue.
The Perrys had warmly welcomed me into their fold when Ellie and I started dating, and they’d been great about helping us keep it all on the low. I didn’t know what Ellie told them about the breakup, but whatever it was, I’d never gotten any kind of negative energy from her aunt, brother, or sister-in-law, all of whom I had interacted with at some level since the split.
As far as I knew, she’d relayed to them that we were on good terms.
But being invited to a family dinner?
That felt like something more.
“I’m going to let you get to it, okay?” she said. “See you tomorrow—I don’t think we have anything together, but I’ve got some reshoots in the afternoon.”
“Yeah, I’m sure I’ll see you around here somewhere.”
I…didn’t want her to leave.
I wanted to ask her to hang around, to run lines with me or something—and if she hadn’t relayed the plans with her family, I would have. Even though it had been awkward with us since the award show, being cast together on this project had given us a nice twist in a different direction.
And after the shit with the “fan,” we were even closer.
Getting back to how it was before.
“ Shit ,” I muttered to myself, shaking my head.
If I let my brain go down that path, I’d be stuck there for the rest of the night instead of getting through these lines like I wanted. So I forced myself to switch mental gears, getting back to going through the scenes I had on my schedule for tomorrow.
I hadn’t been at it long enough to make much progress before there was another knock at my door. “Come in,” I called, half expecting it to be Alec now, since he had a similar practice about going through lines on set.
We definitely did readthroughs and other studying at home as well, but there was a certain productivity that came with doing it while still in work. I already knew that once I got home I was crashing, after the mental strain of not embarrassing myself with a hard dick in front of a room full of people all day.
It wasn’t Alec though.
It was…
“Stella, hey,” I greeted, confused by her presence at the door.
“Hey yourself,” she said as she stepped in, closing the door behind her. “Figured I’d find you here when you weren’t at home.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Here I was thinking I was being ghosted,” I said, sitting back in my chair as I made the full spin to face her.
Instead of responding, she crossed her arms. “You’re not even going to get up to greet me? No hug or anything?”
I chuckled. “Do you think that’s the energy I should be on?”
“Why not?”
I scoffed.
She had to be playing.
“Did you not get any of my texts over the last couple of days?” I asked—not that I didn’t already know the answers.
The texts had read-receipts attached.
So I knew she’d received them, but what was unclear was the reason behind her lack of response—which, honestly, made my conclusion surrounding any connection to her even easier.
“I did,” she admitted. “But they said we needed to talk, and I didn’t think I was going to like what I heard.”
She shrugged.
“I…appreciate the honesty, I guess,” I said, shaking my head. “But avoiding it doesn’t eliminate the need for us to talk.”
“Am I going to like this talk?”
“Probably not.”
“Then I’m not trying to hear this shit,” she said, making a dramatic point of putting her fingers in her ears, another antic I couldn’t help laughing about.
“Let’s not do this.”
“Oooh,” she groaned. “You hear that? How you didn’t put a pet name on it to soften it up or anything?”
I sucked my teeth. “We were never on any ‘pet names’ energy.”
“I definitely used to get a ‘baby’ here and there.”
“Yes, in a very specific context,” I countered with a shrug. “Context that…I don’t think it’s good for us to share anymore.”
She scoffed. “And, there it is. I knew it was coming. Let me guess—this has something to do with Elodie Perry running to you to be her hero last week?”
Immediately, I frowned. “What? What does Ellie have to do with anything?”
“ Ellie ?” she asked, eyes big. “Oh. It’s definitely that. The rumors are true, then.”
“Stella, what the fuck are you talking about?”
She rolled her eyes. “Since you’re acting clueless—it was all over the blogs that her car was spotted coming out of your neighborhood the day after her supposed ‘attack.’ The same night you told me you were too busy running through lines for me to come over.”
“I’ve known Elodie for years—the show I was on with her, her brother’s show, was a pivotal moment in my career,” I said. “So yeah, when I saw what happened, I told her she should come to my house—not that it’s your business.”
“Right, because we were only ever just fucking,” she snapped, in a tone that made me frown.
“Am I missing something here?” I asked. “’Cause I could swear you were the main one reminding me left and right every time we stepped out that it was ‘just for the blogs.’ And any time it was just me and you, yes fucking is all you were interested in—you got your nut and bounced.”
“Which you never complained about!”
My face twisted into a frown, confused. “Did you want me to complain about it?!”
“Maybe!” she shouted. “I wanted you to, I don’t know, pretend you gave a damn?”
“We were cool ,” I countered. “Or so I thought? We got what we needed and kept it pushing, and you have never made it seem like you were into more than that, or that it wasn’t enough. So why are you switching up on me right now?!”
She shook her head. “If you don’t see it, I can’t explain that shit. Fuck you.”
And with that, she stormed out, slamming the door behind her.
Leaving me exponentially more confused and exhausted than I’d been ten minutes ago.
I’d called myself doing the right thing when I realized I wasn’t actually interested in the dynamic with me and Stella anymore—letting her know instead of stringing it along. And…yeah, maybe subconsciously my recently increased connection to Ellie had something to do with it, but I was never planning to be on the “fuck buddies” wave with anybody very long.
Especially not when it was being used for publicity stunting.
I wasn’t sure why Stella had bugged out so intensely about me trying to make a clean break, but…whatever.
I had lines to run through.