Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Peter barely slept.
None of his usual tricks worked. Not listening to an audiobook, not cognitive shuffling, not visualizing the ocean coming into the shore to take his worries out to sea while he took deep breaths. Progressive muscle relaxation did nothing but make him hyperfixate on an ache in his left hip. He made himself a cup of chamomile tea from the little coffee station in his room and began to work on his script, hoping that trying to pick up a task he was supposed to do would make him sleepy out of spite.
With half his brain he highlighted his lines and things relevant to his character, making notes in the margins of the script on arc and motivation, while the other half of his brain replayed his interaction with Sybil over and over and over again.
Compared to the last two times he’d seen her, that had gone swimmingly. She hadn’t pretended he wasn’t in the room, and she’d talked to him instead of at him. But he’d dropped the ball. The setup couldn’t have been more romantic: alone in the glow from the streetlights, the rain pelting the pavement outside, and they hadn’t seen each other in months. He should have started by telling her how much he missed her, how he thought about her all the time, how he didn’t understand what had gone wrong between them but whatever it was he wanted a chance to fix it because they’d been so good together it had ruined him for anyone else. He should have told her that he had never stopped loving her.
It had always been like this with her. If they were in the same room, his brain became absolutely useless. He was hanging on for dear life from one sentence to the next. Sometimes it worked out in his favor, but most of the time he forgot to do and say important things.
At least he’d remembered to talk to her about the coffee cart.
Sleep had barely settled over him before it was cruelly ripped away by the shrill ring of the phone in his room. His script hit the floor with a thud when he rolled over to answer the phone.
“What?” he grumbled and put the clock face down because he didn’t want to know how many hours of sleep he hadn’t gotten.
The voice on the other end was so chipper it was like he’d woken up in a cartoon. “Good morning, Mr. Green. This is the wake-up call you requested.”
Peter groaned. He’d requested the wake-up call after he’d seen Sybil the night before, back when he was optimistic about getting a good night’s sleep. He’d get up early and sit in the lobby with his script, waiting for her to show up. If he gave her the chance, she’d drop the estimate off at the front desk and bolt.
“Mr. Green?”
“I’m awake. I’m awake,” he groaned, and pushed himself into a sitting position.
“Do you want me to call you back in twenty minutes?”
He sighed. “Yes, please.”
Peter did almost his entire morning routine with his eyes closed, too tired to care if he put the shampoo or conditioner in his hair first. Maybe he could take a nap in one of the big chairs by the fire in the lobby while he waited for Sybil to show up.
The phone rang again twenty minutes later.
“Hello?”
“Rise and shine, pumpkin pie!” a different but still cheery voice chimed in his ear.
“Who is this?”
“It’s Kiki, you dolt. Hurry up and come downstairs and say hi before I leave for the day.”
“Do you have coffee?”
“I could be persuaded to find you a cup if you talked me up to any cute single ladies you happen to know on the movie.”
Peter rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand and grinned. “Don’t you think Graham will have a problem with you fraternizing with the guests?”
“Considering I have enough dirt on Graham to bury him, I think he’ll keep his mouth shut,” Kiki said. He could hear the self-satisfied smirk on her face.
“I’ll be down in a couple of minutes. Coffee with cream, unless it’s the powder stuff, and then I’ll choke it down black.”
Kiki, bless her dark, creepy soul, had a steaming mug of coffee waiting for him on the front desk when he came downstairs.
“Graham got Crane Hotel-branded mugs?” he asked, taking a cautious sip.
“He did for the staff so we would stop walking off with the ones for the guests,” Kiki said. She picked up her own unbranded mug.
Over the last three years Kiki had metamorphosed from regular goth to corporate goth chic. Black jacket, black silk shirt, black wide-leg trousers, burgundy lipstick, and a wing liner sharp enough to cut someone. Chillingly professional.
“How’s it been going with the movie here?” Peter asked.
“Charlotte is your mom, right?” Kiki asked, and he nodded. “Yeah, I’d let her hit me with her car and thank her for it. I found some of her old movies, and not to be weird, but your mom was a stone-cold fox.”
Peter shuddered dramatically. “That was not something I needed to hear before breakfast.”
“Your dad is cute in a goofy, British grandpa way, but you definitely got the bulk of your looks from your mom.”
“I will be sure to thank her if I ever win Sexiest Man Alive,” he assured Kiki. “What other gossip do you have?”
“Garden-variety noise complaints, questions about weird sounds—per Eloise’s request, I have not told anyone it’s a ghost even though we both know…” She gave him a meaningful look. Kiki believed in ghosts the way kids believed in Santa Claus.
“I hope Eloise enjoys her one week of peace and quiet before ghost tour season starts.”
“That’s what I told Graham, and then I had to talk him out of canceling them entirely this year. He’s trying to keep Eloise’s stress to a minimum.”
Peter raised an eyebrow. “But those two run on stress. Trying to minimize Eloise’s stress is like trying to mop up a flood with a…mop. Or a sponge.”
“Exactly. So if you find out what’s happening there, report back.” She tapped her long, black fingernails against the side of her rebellion mug. “What else…what else…Oh, Madelyn Penn asked me what time the grocery store opened and then puked in one of the potted plants by the elevators.”
His other eyebrow shot up in surprise. “She puked? Is she okay?”
“I think so,” Kiki said. “She went back to her room. The plant is living outside until someone either puts it out of its misery or changes the soil.”
The adrenaline spike pushed the lingering sleepiness from Peter’s mind. Madelyn was an old friend and a fellow nepo baby. She was a slightly reformed party girl, and there was no doubt that wasn’t the first potted plant she’d thrown up in, but where in Crane Cove could she have located a party? And why did she need the grocery store?
“What’s her room number?” Peter asked. “I’ll go check on her.”
Kiki wrote down Madelyn’s room number on a sticky note for him. “If Graham or Eloise ask, you didn’t get that from me.”
Madelyn’s room was on the same floor as his and only five doors down. He knocked gently.
“Mads,” he said through the door, “it’s Peter. Are you okay?”
A toilet flushed, and then the door opened. Madelyn’s signature red hair was gathered on top of her head in a droopy messy bun, and her fair complexion was ghostly with a hint of green.
“You look like crap.” The words fell out of his mouth without ever having stopped at the decision-making part of his brain.
Tears filled Madelyn’s eyes. “I think I’m in trouble.”
That was how Peter ended up buying three pregnancy tests at the grocery store shortly after it opened because when he got to the pregnancy tests, awkwardly situated between the condoms, lube, yeast infection medication, and the menstrual products, he didn’t know which one he was supposed to buy and panicked and grabbed one of each kind Hudson’s Grocery stocked.
When he got back to Madelyn’s room, her eyes were red and puffy from crying and the acrid smell of vomit hung in the air.
“Can you stay?” she asked, taking the grocery bag from him. Her arm drooped at the unexpected weight, and she frowned at the bag. “Why is this so heavy?”
“I grabbed you some ginger ale and Pedialyte while I was there. Oh, and some crackers.”
She stared at him. “How the hell are you still single?”
“A real mystery,” Peter answered and steered Madelyn toward her bathroom.
When she came out of the bathroom, he was sitting in the desk chair, leafing through her script to look at her notes.
“I’m scared to look,” she said, pacing the length of the room.
“From what I read on the box it takes a few minutes to process.” Peter closed her script. “Why did you say you’re in trouble?”
“How am I not in trouble? I can’t be pregnant right now. I’m shooting this movie, and then I’m supposed to start a brand campaign, and then I’m supposed to do a guest arc on Dr. Philadelphia. ” Madelyn wrung her hands to the point where Peter worried she was going to twist off one of her fingers. “And Mac and I had a huge fight. I don’t even know if we’re still together.”
“Do you want advice, or do you want sympathy?”
She sniffled. “Sympathy.”
“If you are pregnant, this sounds like super shitty timing.”
Her chin wobbled. “Where’s the ‘but’?”
Peter gave her a soft, reassuring smile. “But if you don’t want to be pregnant, you don’t have to be. And if you do want to be pregnant, all of the things you listed can be worked around. Plus, you’ve got two more minutes before you can officially panic.”
“Can you go look?” she asked and sat down on her bed. “I’m too scared to look.”
“I think it’s too soon,” Peter warned her, going into the bathroom. “I don’t think I’m going to see any— Oh shit.”
Two pink lines on one very positive pregnancy test.
“Peter, what does ‘oh shit’ mean?”
“It’s, um, positive.”
“Are you sure?”
He looked at the test again. There was no mistaking that result for anything but positive. “Very sure.”
“I think I’m going to be sick.”
Madelyn was sick again, and when she came out of the bathroom, Peter handed her a cup of Pedialyte.
“Anything I can do?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Your mom is going to fire me when I tell her. I’m already so sick. I’m a liability to the schedule.”
Peter sat her down on the bed and put an arm around her shoulders. “My mom isn’t going to fire you for being pregnant. Does this mean you’ve decided to keep the baby?”
Madelyn shrugged. “I don’t know yet. It doesn’t really feel real.”
“When are you going to tell Kitty?”
Peter had introduced Madelyn to her boyfriend, Los Angeles Phantoms lineman MacKenzie Kitten. Most people called him Mac or Big Mac because he was huge. With a name like MacKenzie Kitten, he really didn’t have any choice but to grow up to be a 6’6” professional football player. But Peter called him Kitty. It had just rolled off his tongue one day, and his brain refused to think of him as anything else.
“I don’t know. I’m not ready to tell him yet. I think I want to have a better idea of what I want to do before I drop this on him.” She swiped at her eyes with her hands. “I don’t think there’s enough ice in the world to de-puff me today.”
Peter squeezed her shoulders. “Don’t worry about being puffy. That’s what post-production is for.”
That got a laugh that ended in a hiccup.
“Will you come with me to tell your mom? I’d rather get fired sooner rather than later.”
It took some searching, but Peter and Madelyn found Charlotte in her makeshift office. She’d taken over a small conference room and was surrounded by stacks of binders and papers, and was flanked by two rolling whiteboards covered in a rainbow of dry-erase marker. On the walls she’d hung storyboards, location scouting photos, and enough sticky notes to keep the local office supply stores in business for the next year.
Charlotte looked at them over the tops of her glasses balancing precariously on the end of her nose. Her other set of glasses were on top of her head, but Peter didn’t think it was a good time to ask her why she had both sets on.
“What’s wrong?” she asked without any attempt at pleasantries.
Peter waited for Madelyn to say something, but she was petrified. He put a reassuring hand on her back. She took a deep breath.
“I’m pregnant.”
Charlotte stared at them, then fixed a fiery glare on Peter. “Peter Alan Parker-Green, what did you do?”
Peter put his hands up and took a big step away from Madelyn. “It’s not mine.”
“It’s not his,” Madelyn quickly agreed. “He’s just being a good friend.”
Charlotte took off the glasses on her face and rubbed her forehead. “How pregnant are you?”
“I don’t know. I just took the test.”
“Did you just miss your period, or have you not had one for a while?” Charlotte asked.
“It’s a week late,” Madelyn said. “I’m so sorry.”
Charlotte frowned and then softened. “No, no, no. Don’t be sorry. I’m just trying to figure out if we need to adjust anything. Sit down. Please.” She gestured to one of the chairs. “How are you feeling?”
“Like shit,” Madelyn answered frankly as she sat. “I puked in one of the lobby plants this morning.”
Charlotte winced sympathetically. “I was sick as a dog with Peter. Arthur couldn’t breathe in my general direction without me getting nauseous.”
“Are you going to fire me?”
“Jesus Christ, of course not. Do you want to keep working?”
Madelyn nodded vigorously.
“Then we’ll figure it out,” Charlotte assured her. “You’re not going to feel this bad every day. It might not even be an issue. Go back to your room and rest until you feel better.”
Madelyn gave her a weak smile and left the room. Charlotte waited twenty whole seconds after the door shut to groan loudly.
“This fucking movie,” she complained. “If it’s not one thing, it’s another.”
Peter took the chair Madelyn had vacated. “It’ll make for a great story when the press tour rolls around.”
That got a small smile from his mother, then she fixed him with a hard stare.
“You’re really not the father?”
Most men his age would’ve thought their mothers were angling for grandchildren, but his mother’s tone was downright accusatory.
“I am definitely not the father.” Peter crossed his heart.
Charlotte sighed and pushed her hair back with her hands, and he had to bite his tongue to keep from laughing when her expression shifted from glum resignation to befuddled surprise when she found the glasses on top of her head.
“Maybe we’re getting all the bad stuff out of the way early and the rest of the project will be smooth sailing,” he said.
“You sound like your father. Always a bright side.”
“Keeps our blood pressure low.” Peter glanced at the clock and hopped up from the chair. He’d lost track of time and didn’t want to miss Sybil. “Well, got to run. I’ll be in the lobby if you need me.”
“No,” Charlotte corrected, leafing through some papers until she found one and held it out. “You have meetings with hair, makeup, and wardrobe, plus I want you to run your script notes past Michelle so we’re all on the same page about your performance.”
“I didn’t know Michelle was your assistant director on this. Michelle Yost, right?”
“Yes. You’re meeting with her at four. Don’t be late.”
“But what if I had plan—” Peter’s protest was cut off by a withering glare. He looked at the packed schedule and sighed. “I will see Michelle at four with my script notes.”