Now Wilhelmina
Now WILHELMINA
O ur first day starts with a dance lesson.
Which isn’t something completely new to us. Marnie had a signature dance we were forced to learn together. Not to mention there were musical numbers for Marnie herself all the time, so when I wasn’t doing press or appearances at the mall, I was usually in a vocal rehearsal or a dance studio. Dax, on the other hand, completely lucked out because it was rare that his character got called on to do any of the singing or dancing.
And, honestly, that was for the best, because Daxon is uncoordinated as fuck.
We have a scene coming up in a little over two weeks where Lila and Nick waltz at a function her family is throwing. He’s good enough to fool the guests into believing he’s a real gentleman, and Lila is hopeful that maybe, finally, he’ll be accepted by her classist parents.
So when I show up to the local studio and find him already there, wearing slim-fitting joggers and a T-shirt, looking like a total pro, I’m shocked. He’s chatting animatedly with the dance teacher, an older woman who has clearly fallen in love with him in the minutes they’ve been talking.
Join the freaking club.
Except, when I come in, he stops. Looks. Smiles. His hand lifts in a greeting and I’m hit in the face by what happened the night before. How that same hand curled so confidently around the back of my thigh, fingers digging in like he was holding on for dear life. How the other splayed large and sure against my back.
I run my hand across my forehead like an eraser across a whiteboard. If this pact is going to stick, I can’t think about things like his lips or the heat off his chest. The sound that slipped from his throat when my hands dipped beneath his shirt.
Or his abs.
His abs .
No. I’ve gotta keep it lowkey and professional. This is my job , my life on the line. From now on, it’s focus, perform, and earn back the place I once had in Hollywood.
I wave back to Dax and set my things down. Friends. We are friends. Completely normal friends.
Who do not fantasize about each other at all.
“Alright, we can get started,” says our instructor. “Let’s have you both over here on the floor and we’ll do some warm-up stretches.”
Dax’s eyes hit mine and I instantly want to laugh. He always had that power. No matter where we were, but especially in a situation that was traditionally unfunny, one look from him would send me keeling over with delirious giggles.
It was like we used to speak a language together that I couldn’t speak with other people, at least never the way I knew it with Daxon. A glance. A shrug. Flaring his nostrils from across the room. A sideways grimace. I was always done for. I’ve missed it so much.
And now, laughter starts deep in my gut and spills out before I can contain it.
“Are you alright, Wil?” the instructor asks me, her eyebrows low and concerned. I bite down hard on my lip and nod.
“All good. Sorry.”
For ten minutes, we stretch. When I dare to look Daxon’s way, he crosses his eyes at me or sticks his tongue out. I return the favor. God, it’s nice. The vibes between us are right where they were when we were kids and all we had was each other in a room full of adults and with an ocean liner of responsibilities no child should know. This is light and sweet and fun in a way the vibes could never be with anyone else.
“Alright, let’s get up and I’ll walk you through the steps. It’s simple. We call it a box step. Daxon, you’ll be leading.”
“I accept the nomination,” says Dax with a salute.
From where I’m standing beside him, I gently jab my elbow into his side. “Shhh.” But the grin on my face is impossible to get rid of.
Our instructor clears her throat softly and Dax and I straighten. Shit. That’s right. We’re working. I take in a breath and let it out. It’s time to focus.
“We’ll start left foot forward, and step to the side with the right,” says the instructor, walking through the steps at half-speed. “Bring the left foot together with the right. And shift your weight here to the left leg, because now the right is going to step backward, and the left will step out to the side. Then right comes in together with the left. So, you can really see how we’ve made a box here, yeah?”
“Yes,” I say.
“Uh.” Dax lets out a laugh. “Sorry. No. Could you do it again?”
“Of course. Once more. A box, just like this.”
She moves through the steps again and again until we can mimic her without totally fucking it up, and then the instructor comes behind me and, with one arm on my shoulder, the other at my back, pushes me around to face Dax.
“Now we’ll try together. These hands go up and hold.” She lifts my elbow into the air and Dax reaches up for my hand. Before she can place our other hands, his lands warm and wide against my waist.
The goosebumps are instantaneous. Everything inside my body rises, but it’s not nausea, it’s this floating feeling, like glowing lanterns swelling towards the stars.
Our eyes meet. His are so sweetly brown. Melting milk chocolate. They’re safe, they’re home, they’re exactly where I want to look until my eyeballs turn to dust. Daxon’s Adam’s apple bobs as I watch his gaze dip to my mouth and back up again.
“Not at the waist, Daxon, but up here at the top of her back, please.” The instructor takes Dax’s hand and pulls it off my waist to land between my shoulder blades, and I wrestle with a sudden urge to let out a feral, dissenting shriek that would shatter the mirrors along all four walls in here.
But I don’t. Because we’re friends . Normal, ordinary, neutral friends. Except, where his hand used to be, my skin is sizzling.
“Wil, you’ll place your hand just below the top of the shoulder, like this,” she says, and moves my spare hand to the place on Daxon’s arm where muscle definition blossoms just enough for me to feel it beneath my fingertips. “Are you alright?” she asks me, suddenly concerned. “You’re flushed. Do you need a break?”
“No.” I say it too fast. Too loud.
Dax pulls a weirded-out face at me. “You good, Chase?”
“Totally,” I lie. “I’m fine. Let’s keep going.”
For half an hour, we box-step around the room, clunky at first. So clunky and baby-deer-ish that we have to stop and laugh at each other several times until the stern sound of a throat clearing brings us back to ourselves.
“And again, please. One, two...”
“Come on, Bambi, keep it together,” I say.
Dax fixes me with an animated doe-eyed look, blinking rapidly for effect, and I almost lose it again. But I can’t. I have to find some kind of balance between the wailing, flaming way I need him and want him and must have him, and the reality of this situation, which is that, if I don’t nail this performance, there won’t be another chance.
That’s the thing about chances—they’re numbered just so.
My first chance was bright as the North Star until it was extinguished. And the boy steering me around the room in big, bobbing circles chose another path and didn’t look back. Now he’s brought me this second chance. Held it out like a fine glass sculpture of something perfect that could shatter at any moment.
I can’t let it.
Then something weird happens. Daxon leading me around the dance studio doesn’t feel messy and awkward; it becomes fluid and clean. We box-step quicker now, turning and moving together, and it’s not anything I’m doing. Actually, I’m pretty sure I’m holding him back. This is all him.
And it is so needlessly hot.
By the time the instructor dismisses us, I’m glad. I don’t think I could stand another second in there, sweat at my hairline, my hand clutching Dax’s, our heartbeats so close together that I could feel the magnet pull starting.
“You’re weirdly good at that,” I tell him as we fill cups at the water fountain.
Daxon pulls a face at me, full of mock incredulity. “I’m not weirdly good at it, I’m extremely good at it.”
“Okay, let’s not blow the roof off the place,” I say with an eye roll.
“I’m kinda thinkin’ Dancing with the Stars for my next project. How ’bout you?”
“I would pay money.”
He grins and downs the rest of his water, wiping excess from his bottom lip with the back of his hand. I bite down on my own lip. Stop. Fantasizing.
“It’s not bad,” he says.
“What?”
“This. Real dancing.”
“No?” I say. Dax looks around the empty studio, our instructor having left us at the end of the lesson. There’s some local ballet class here in a few minutes, but I’m not in a hurry to leave, even if we’re shooting all night tonight.
“You ever think it was weird that we never had a prom?” asks Dax.
I nod. “I guess.” There are so many childhood things we never got. Because the moment we stepped on that set, we were treated like tiny adults with enormous responsibilities and never-ending pressure towards perfection. There wasn’t time to be children.
“We deserved that.”
“A prom?”
“Yeah,” says Dax. “Rental tuxes, those flower wrist things, you in some great dress.”
“Corsage,” I say.
“Bless you?” says Daxon.
I push his shoulder. “The wrist thing. With the flowers. It’s called a corsage.”
“I’d have gotten you one,” he says, really reflecting on it.
“Oh, so we’re prom dates in this imaginary scenario?”
He grins, eyes swooping across my face and then back to the studio. Dax puts a fist to his hip. He nods around the room like he’s decorating it in his mind. “You think I’m gonna let Garrison Boyle beat me to asking you? No. No way.”
My mouth drops open, aghast and playing along. “Garry B? You would deny me a chance to be escorted around a smelly gymnasium with such a stud?”
Garrison was not a stud. He was an asshole. An entitled actor kid who played a featured extra on Marnie all six seasons.
“I would lie down in traffic to avoid it,” says Dax seriously. He sweeps a hand across the air in front of our faces. “Ah, yeah, I can really see it. Streamers, of course. Balloons. Disco ball.”
“Terrible DJ,” I add.
“Wilhelmina, this is my vision,” Dax sighs, playing exasperated, “and in my vision, the DJ is once-in-a-lifetime awesome. Nothing but hits. Straight bangers all night.”
“Even the slow songs?”
He nods, stoic. “Especially the slow songs.”
“And we’d waltz underneath the disco ball, is that right?” Iask, grinning.
I can see it, too. A dark room full of satin and silk and flowers and hairspray. Bright, anxious smiles, the flash of a photographer’s camera lighting up the darkened bleachers in the background. Not the kind of camera flash I’m used to running from, but the kind that’s warm and full of promise that the picture coming from it will be sweet and treasured.
Not agonized over.
Not mocked in a tabloid.
Not pasted permanently in the back of anyone’s mind, taunting.
“No,” he says with a scoffing laugh. “No, no. No waltzing. But we’d dance.”
“To what?”
Daxon’s body pivots towards me. We’re both leaning against one of the ballet barres attached to the long, mirrored wall. The sleeve of his T-shirt tickles my arm as he moves to look down into my face.
“Huh. Well.” He exhales a measured, thoughtful breath. “We’re going back, what? Seven-ish years? So, that’s... EdSheeran? ‘Perfect’?”
The second he says it, I can tell he regrets it. It’s all in the way his eyebrows fall and his lips part and the quick, recovering smile he slaps on his face. “Actually, I take it back,” Dax says, and the uncomfortable moment of reality has scurried away to its dark corner. “It’s ‘The Middle.’ Zedd. That is the song right there.”
“With Maren Morris?”
“Yes, indeed.” Daxon extends his hand to me, palm up. “Baby, why don’t you just meet me in the middle?” he says, deadpan. “Can I have this dance?”
My knees give and I slump over laughing. “One... hundred... percent no,” I splutter, heaving for air.
“Aw, come on, Chase. I’m light on my feet,” says Dax.
When I straighten up, his smile is gentle and familiar and warm like the sand on a sun-drenched beach. His eyes are so many things—amused, smart, silly, but also truthful and hoping. I flop my hand into his.
“ One dance,” I say, and Dax leads me out into the middle of the room. Which is such a blatant mistake for me to make given last night, and the pact, and the fact that we are co-workers, friends, nothing more. But as his soft hand tugs me along, I go without complaint.
I go like a bee to a blossom, starving.
Here, without an instructor to move them into proper position, Daxon’s hands come to rest low on my waist near my hips. I reach up and lock my arms around his neck and we sway a little, side to side, around in a circle.
It’s so sublimely ridiculous. I know that. But there is a niceness to it that I’ve never known, that I— we —deserved to know as kids getting tossed around the sea of young Hollywood. Daxon’s eyes are on mine and we leave it like that, spinning delicately across the floor to music only we can hear.
I tighten my grip on him. He does the same to me. Our gazes shift to something wanting and heated, and Dax leans down to press his forehead against mine.
“I’m sorry I never asked you to prom.”
I shut my eyes hard. “Daxon...” It’s barely a sound. I’m surprised it can be heard at all over the way my heart is fucking running for its life like a girl in a horror movie headed up the stairs.
“Yeah?”
There’s a nuclear wave of anxiety that starts somersaulting around my stomach. Because it would be so nice to let myself give in. To kick the pact under the nearest shelf and forget about it. But I can’t. I lift my head away and take back my arms. “I gotta get back,” I lie. “Prepare for tonight.”
Dax straightens up, nodding and blinking around the room like the streamers and balloons have been ripped from the walls of his imagination. “Yeah. That’s... yeah. Good plan.”
The door to the studio opens. A flood of little ballerinas spills in, tutus and satin slippers bringing both of us back to the present moment. To where we are. To who we are. Celebrities in a tiny town.
“Oh my,” says a young instructor in dance attire from the doorway. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize y’all were in here. They said the private session was finished.”
“Hey, no, don’t worry about it,” says Dax with a lazy wave. “I was just heading out.”
He throws me a half-smile that’s friendly and pure Daxon and so pretty I want to keep it in a jar in my room. But I know that smile. There’s weight underneath it.
Maybe even disappointment.
TO THE STARS – OFFICIAL SCRIPT
EXT. THE PIER – DUSK
A glittering boardwalk. Game booths and prizes. Cotton candy. A balloon loose and drifting towards the stars. We can smell the warm summer air. It’s 1939 and NICK—seventeen, handsome, with a wise-beyond-his-years charisma—rearranges the pins at a ring-toss game.
NICK
Let’s see you do that again. I’ll bet you can’t.
His mark is an overgrown frat-boy type, 1930s edition. Built, wealthy and unimpressed.
FRAT BOY
(slapping change on the counter)
You’re on.
NICK hands FRAT BOY the first of three rings. FRAT BOY cocks an arm back, ready to throw. We’re tight enough on his face that we suddenly see his eyes drift from the game and we pan left to see...
LILA, seventeen, beautiful, and disgusted as she takes in the boardwalk. She’s dressed in a way that drips wealth, clutching a handbag close to her as she passes between the booths with another well-dressed girl, AMY, sixteen, blonde, flushed and grinning ear-to-ear.
FRAT BOY
(lowering the ring and staring after AMY)
Holy hell.
We catch NICK’s eyes as they hit LILA’s regal frame. His entire face, smudged with a little dirt against his cheek, softens. FRAT BOY turns away from the booth in pursuit of the girls. NICK’s eyes flick down to the forgotten change on the counter. He considers giving it back. Abeat. He pockets it.
FRAT BOY
(stepping into sync with the girls)
You two look hungry. Dinner’s on me.
FRAT BOY pulls a wad of cash from his pocket and begins to count it out. AMY laughs. He winks at her.
FRAT BOY
Anywhere you wanna go.
LILA comes to a stop in the middle of the busy boardwalk. We’re tight on her face, sizing this kid up. We know from a twitch at her mouth that she’s decided he’s an asshole, and she’s about to have some fun.
LILA
(faux-sincerely)
Aren’t you charming. Dinner? On you? Anywhere we wanna go?
FRAT BOY
That’s right.
LILA
(almost to herself)
Where do we wanna go? Hmm...
AMY
I’m starving. Anywhere is f—
LILA
(cutting across her, protective and final)
Somewhere you won’t be.
AMY
(aghast)
Lila.
LILA
We’re leaving.
LILA loops her arm through AMY’s bent elbow and tugs her roughly away.
FRAT BOY
Hold on a second! You can’t just run off.
LILA
Watch us.
FRAT BOY hurries forward and skids to a stop in front of them.
FRAT BOY
I believe this young lady said she was starving. We can’t have that.
LILA
She’ll live.
AMY
(staring moonily at FRAT BOY)
I am starving.
LILA
(off AMY’s lovestruck, googly eyes)
You’ll live.
LILA gives AMY’s arm a significant tug, beginning to walk away. She’s always been AMY’s guidepost, her trailblazer, her anchor to reality. It’s a role she hates but does well, and would never entrust to anyone else. As if anyone else could fill LILA’s shoes.
FRAT BOY
(taking hold of AMY’s other arm to stop her)
We’ll try everything they got. You and me, up and down the boardwalk all night. You like crab legs? They got crab legs. Hot dogs, too.
LILA
(sharp, suddenly poisonous)
Take your hand off her.
AMY
Li, it’s fine.
FRAT BOY
Cotton candy? Saltwater taffy? How ’bout a ride on the Ferris wheel?
LILA
We’re not interested. Your hand. Take it off her.
AMY yanks free of LILA’s grip to clutch FRAT BOY’S arm.
AMY
I’m interested.
If her sister would allow it, AMY would be a spontaneous, free-willed person, striking every opportunity like lightning. LILA is Lila. Smart and exceptional and always right. But AMY is Amy. Full of stardust, chasing happily ever after in a blindfold.
FRAT BOY
You see? She’s interested.
LILA stands alone now, staring in disbelief after FRAT BOY and AMY as they make their way towards the Ferris wheel. There’s no way she’s leaving this asshole alone with her baby sister. FRAT BOY and AMY climb into one of the swinging loveseats and lower the safety bar down, AMY giggling. LILA charges forward towards a gruff TICKET-TAKER.
TICKET-TAKER
That’s three tickets for a ride, ma’am.
LILA
I don’t have any tickets. Listen, my sister—
TICKET-TAKER
Three tickets, or you don’t ride.
NICK
Three tickets.
NICK extends the tickets out towards the TICKET-TAKER, appearing like magic at LILA’s side.
NICK
You can keep an eye on your sister there. On me.
LILA
(warily)
No, thank you.
The Ferris wheel has begun to spin, AMY and FRAT BOY rising into the night air. AMY’s laughter trickles down as FRAT BOY’s arm slips around her shoulders.
LILA
(muttering)
And once again, it’s all up to me. God, what an impressively terrible choice.
The TICKET-TAKER slips the tickets into a pouch at his waist.
TICKET-TAKER
Go ahead, son.
It’s not a bad idea. Two pairs of eyes are far better than one. She folds her arms across her chest and stares bitterly up at AMY like all the hard work she’s put in with that girl, pushing her towards a shimmering reputation, never letting one curl on her head fall out of place, is all about to come to nothing. The truth is that AMY has a spirit free as a summer storm, and LILA’s is sitting quietly in a fragile, corked bottle.
LILA
As a matter of fact, I will ride. With you.
She appraises NICK. Doesn’t let herself linger on his good looks or threadbare clothes.
NICK
You sure about that? You’re looking at me like I’m something squashed on your windshield.
LILA
Yes. I’m sure. I’m plenty sure.
NICK
You don’t know me. I could be anyone.
LILA
(bitingly)
Could you be a dear and help me watch my stupid sister?
NICK
(squinting up the wheel at AMY and FRAT BOY)
It’d be my pleasure. Only thing is, we don’t know each other. And I’m nothing if not a stickler for manners, so that’s not gonna cut it. I’m Nick. Nicholas Greene. And you are?
LILA rolls her eyes then straightens her posture, giving him her best well-bred debutante’s introduction handshake.
LILA
Eliza Patterson. Pleasure.
NICK
(recognition sparks)
Eliza Patterson .
LILA
That’s what I said.
NICK
Patterson. Like PATTERSON STEEL, Patterson?
LILA
(uninterested)
Uh-huh.
TICKET-TAKER
Come on, girl. In or out?
NICK
She’ll ride. With me. Sounds like she wants to. Damsel in distress asks for your help, you help. Ain’t that right?
LILA
I am not a damsel in distress. And I don’t want to ride with you, it’s just that—
NICK
You look like you do.
LILA
Then you need to get your eyes checked, because I don’t.
Couples on the Ferris wheel jeer down at them, catcalling LILA to shut up and get on already. She squints up at them, highly offended.
NICK
I’ve got exceptional vision.
Oh shit. He’s funny. And the short-sleeved shirt beneath his suspenders is a little too tight in the arms, favoring what is clearly a physical laborer’s physique. It sends her stomach plummeting to her feet.
LILA steps towards the Ferris wheel car and sits down on the farther seat.
LILA
Okay.
NICK
Really?
LILA
I said okay. Would you sit down, please?
NICK can’t believe his luck. He does a terrible job hiding his victorious smile as he quickly lowers himself into the seat beside her, pulls the safety bar down around them, and catches her eyes as they lift off into the air.
“Cut!”
Greg’s voice slices through the night, magnified tenfold by a megaphone. He’s sitting just behind the cameras where crewmembers whisper into walkie-talkies and hair and makeup stand ready.
It’s two in the morning. The humidity is clinging to us, and in this wig, my head is one giant bead of sweat. But inside my chest, my heart is bouncing on a tiny trampoline, my stomach right up there with it. Because it’s happening . I’m back .
I’m a working actor again.
“Back to one!” Greg says. The car lowers back down to the ground. Dax and I step off. We’re re-powdered and fussed over. Our costumes are smoothed and tugged into place. I go back to my first mark and Daxon goes back to his and I catch his eye.
“Hi,” I mouth, fuzzy with lack of sleep, but high on the feeling of being back on a set. Of being wanted . Dax shows me his tongue. I wrinkle my nose at him.
I’m glad it can be normal tonight. Or as close to normal as Dax and I get.
What isn’t normal is the re-run of last night skipping gleefully through my brain. Kissing Daxon Avery is one of those limited-edition things that should cost, like, twenty-five thousand dollars and come with a Rolex.
Across from me on his mark, he worries a loose strand of his brown hair away from his dark eyes. Something in the lower part of my stomach stirs.
I love the color of Dax’s hair. It’s an ordinary brown when you first look at it. But when you run your fingers through it while he lays his head in your lap, you can see pieces that are lighter. Like a toasted almond. Like tea before the milk. Little bits where the glimmering Los Angeles sun has pressed light to this strand and that one.
He gives up fixing the unruly piece with a laugh, and the hair and makeup team descends to help.
For one impulsive second, I want to rip our proverbial “no hook-ups” pact apart like a mountain lion to tissue paper. Iwant to charge across this set and grab him by the costume collar. Send everyone home. Shut down the whole fucking thing. And give into the volcanic way I want him.
But I’ve never been good at wanting something and also letting myself have it. So many years ago, I wanted Marnie so badly, but never felt worthy of it when I got it. Even when she was my primary identity, when I thought I was on top of the world, I still felt like I was holding on to that purple wig for dear life.
So, here’s how it’s going to be, I decide. Because if I don’t decide, my brain is going to continue to feel like a washing machine set eternally to spin.
It’s one thing at a time. First, this movie. Performing CPR on my suffocating career, my public image. And not only that but falling back in love with acting. Performing. Stepping carefully into the skin of someone else and lifting them off the page.
Maybe somewhere else, another time, another life, Dax and I could be something. Not something fleeting, but something permanent.
He left, remember? An old, nagging voice whispers to me from the back of my mind. He left you. And that was when you were actually friends—best friends—so in love you could snap. You don’t think he’d do it again now? Now that you’re nothing?
Stop , I tell myself firmly, my fingers forming a tight fist at my side. He left because it was the right thing for him. He wanted something and he let himself have it.
Seven years have shone a light on that reality for me, brighter with each passing year.
Does that mean I’ve completely accepted it?
No. It’s still biting at me. It’s just that its teeth aren’t as sharp as they once were.
Aside from pacts, and kissing or not kissing, and torturing myself by meeting his eye for a second time and receiving a genuinely happy smile from him in return, here’s what I know for sure: Daxon Avery is the best friend I’ve ever had in my life. Breakup or no breakup. And bringing me in for this project after I spent eons being shooed out like a freaking rodent means a lot. Especially after shouting that I hated him for leaving so many years ago, and worse—believing it.
We do twelve more takes, and at four in the morning, we wrap. Dax and I are golf-carted back to our trailers, which sit opposite each other. Like they used to do. At the top step of mine, I turn.
Dax does the same thing from his.
I don’t know what exactly I want to say to him, but this is the first moment we’ve been truly alone since last night and something needs to be said. My stomach lurches as I try to at least cough up some snarky little comment.
“Hey,” he says, beating me to the punch for once in his life, “wanna come over? Run lines?”