Now Wilhelmina
Now WILHELMINA
I have four auditions this week. Four more next week. I’m on the cover of this month’s Cosmopolitan , Teen Vogue and People Magazine . There’s a billboard three blocks from my house that’s just Daxon and I smoldering at passersby as Nick and Lila.
I don’t know who my fairy godmother is but she’s been bibbidi-bobbidi-boo-ing the shit out of my life lately.
Everything is how I dreamed it.
But there is a cavernous hole in my chest. No matter how many morning-show interviews I do, how many photographers take my picture, I can’t fucking fill it. Because of course that’s how it is. I take one tiny stand and try to do this shit on my own and look at me. I’m a mess .
Riding around the layers of my brain, circling like he’s riding a fucking monorail, is Daxon. Daxon in that elevator, telling me he’s in love with me. The look on his face. The hope in his eyes. Nope . My self-control is going to win. I’m determined.
Between auditions and photoshoots, talk shows and events, Dax and I are side-by-side, elbow-to-elbow, for hours at a time all week. We answer the same questions. Over and over. Sometimes even in the same order. It’s horrific. But Daxon makes it fun, because he makes everything in this life fun.
Tonight, we’re doing a late-night show appearance together and we take bets backstage on what question’s going to be first.
We agree that the loser has to stuff eleven Red Vines from the craft services table into their mouth at the same time and try to eat them without puking. I bet that first up is the question about us having worked together before and what that was like. Daxon says it’ll be the one about why we wanted to do this movie, what attracted us to the project.
We’re both wrong.
Our names are announced. A cool, jazz-style band plays us in. The audience lights up with applause and whistles. Benjy Preston, a Saturday Night Live vet turned talk show host, waves us down into the two seats beside his fake desk. Motions with his hands for the crowd to quiet. The drums hit, the symbols crash, and then it’s quiet.
Benjy does this bit where he doesn’t say anything at first. There’s this huge, hilarious silence as Dax and I stare blankly at him and the audience giggles. Benjy’s glaring calculatingly at us, looking from me to Dax, Dax to me, before he says, “You two, it’s real, isn’t it?”
The room explodes. Cheers and applause. Somebody catcalls. People are on their feet.
The anxiety monster inside of me wants to laugh and blush and hide my face. Maybe slip off this chair and huddle up under Benjy’s desk like a small, terrified woodland creature. But press, especially late-night shows, is all about the bits. Commit. Say yes.
Next to me, Dax’s shoulders are getting tight with discomfort. But he’s playing it off like a pro. He pulls a face and looks at me like I’m a slug. I do the same thing, sticking my tongue out and pretending to vomit. The crowd loves it. Benjy can barely get them back, they’re screaming so excitedly with laughter.
“Come on,” he whines, drawing the word out and pressing his palms together, “tell me you love each other.”
“I’ve never met this woman in my life,” Daxon says, completely straight-faced. And I burst out in ugly laughter, the crowd joining me.
“Actually, yeah, I was wondering who this is?” I say to Benjy, pointing at Dax. “Jack Something?”
We play like that a while until Benjy goes into a bit about introducing us to each other with less-than-flattering facts like Wilhelmina Chase has a lot of great skills, I think you’ll really like her, for instance she’s extremely neat , while a paparazzi photo of me stabbing trash on the side of the road, looking miserable, pops up on the monitors to another round of raucous laughter and applause.
I go to bed that night, grinning in the dark like a freak. No idea why. Just smiling. Silly, weirdo smiling. My chest feels light and fluffy and pink. Like I’m human cotton candy.
Over and over, I replay that interview. How Benjy introduced Daxon to me by showing a still from To the Stars where Dax as Nick is shirtless, dirty, bloody and dying in the medical tent, and saying Daxon Avery is really just the picture of health. Total health nut .
Every minute twitch of Daxon’s face from my vantage point beside him in that interview is funnier and funnier as I play it on loop in my memories. He’s so good. Hilarious. Smart. Kind to everyone. And so pretty. Prettier than I’ll ever be.
You two, it’s real, isn’t it?
I’m up most of the night with the idea of it.
You know when something hits you going a hundred miles an hour and you know you’re a goner? That’s me all day. Through a breakfast I can’t remember eating, to a workout I’m not even sure I went to. And all the way through getting my hair and makeup done for the MTV Movie Awards.
It’s real, isn’t it?
Getting dressed, I’m a zombie. Which is wild to me, because this outfit is an outfit . It’s a look -look. It needs grounded confidence and attitude and sexuality and I am currently in outer space, orbiting another sun.
All press tour, I’ve been in dresses. Sparkling, gorgeous dresses. Long for the premieres, with old Hollywood glamour for effect. Short romantic dresses for interviews, talk shows, appearances, whatevers.
This is not a dress.
This is trousers. High-waisted, black, velvet, relaxed down the leg. On top is a lot of nothing. If you called it a bikini, you wouldn’t technically be wrong. But it’s a fashion bikini. Beautiful, supple black velvet kissing each end of a thin golden bar in the center of my chest to keep itself together. It frames my shoulders like a vest might, with thicker straps.
This look is not glamorous or romantic. Standing in the mirror, looking at myself, at my hair blown out around my shoulders, at my cleavage showing up for once, I feel sexy.
Until I get there, and I feel small. Extremely alone. Overwhelmed to the point of having to convince myself not to climb back into the limo and tell them to gun it and take me to In-N-Out instead.
This is my first red carpet without Dax next to me. He’s running late tonight, shooting a commercial on the other side of town. He might not even make the carpet. The crowd behind the photographers, fans with posters and phones in the air, scream as the cameras flash. My stomach is tangled inside me, wishing I had Daxon’s familiar height beside me. His shoulder occasionally brushing my arm. Posing with him is easy.
Everything with him is easy.
It’s real, isn’t it?
My hands clammy, I turn away from the shouts and the flashes once I’ve made myself stand still before them for a good five minutes.
When I went to bed last night, I thought I had my mind made up. But when I woke up this morning, something else had taken over. I was feverish with it. Stomach-plunging, hair-on-arms-prickling, might-vomit excited about it.
I turn and head for the theater.
“Wil!”
It’s Dax, jogging away from the cameras towards me, photographers calling at him as he skips them altogether.
My free-falling stomach catches itself, mid-air. “Jesus, Avery, buy a watch,” I say, rolling my eyes at him. But my lips tug into a smile I can’t push away.
“Doesn’t go with this outfit,” he explains. He’s in light-colored, high-waisted, wide-legged trousers, a vintage, short-sleeved collared shirt with a wild pattern tucked into them. The whole aesthetic is grandpa chic—and it’s working for him.
The tangled anxiety knot that my organs formed on the red carpet loosens.
“You’ve really sold out,” I tell him.
What I don’t tell him is how good he looks. Sharp. Grown-up. Confident. A book flipped to the first page, full of promise.
“That’s Hollywood, doll,” says Dax in a transatlantic, movie-star accent. I give him a shove. He laughs. “Is it weird if I tell you that you look amazing? I don’t wanna be weird. But, Chase...” Dax doesn’t have words. He just gapes in a goofy way where I feel all the blood in my body racing to my face.
I think my heart is going to explode.
“Mister Avery, you forget yourself,” I say in an over-the-top old-timey movie-star accent of my own.
Emotionally, I have never been so sweaty in my life. Literally, I think it’s fair to say that I have never been so sweaty in my entire fucking life. Which is insane, really, because I don’t get like this. Not with anyone else.
We laugh and shoot off phrases like, “You see here,” and “Well, I for one,” in our silly, affected accents the entire way inside the theater, looking for our seats.
Conveniently, at least for what I’m planning, they’re right next to each other.
Award shows are a lot of sit and wait. Somebody wins something, then you sit and wait some more. And between all that sitting and waiting, I keep looking at Dax. Not obviously. Not like I’m trying to get his attention. I’m full-on side-eyeing him. Pretending to scratch my cheek. Turning my head a fraction of an inch so that I can sneak a look, my heart pounding. It’s so high school.
But I don’t want him to catch me. I don’t want him to have an idea of what’s going to happen if everything goes according to plan.
It’s just that, with us, it’s real. Like Benjy said. Like you can see plain as day in To the Stars . Maybe we’re good actors, but we aren’t that good.
And I’ve been fooling myself thinking I could plunge myself into work and put blinders on like a fucking racehorse so as not to distract myself from the prize. But work isn’t life. It isn’t what’s real. I can see that now.
We sit through a handful of awards for Best Duo, Best Sidekick, Best Action Star. And then the screens behind the presenters shift to five different kisses. Dax and I as Nick and Lila are second from the right. Production teases little clips of each nominated kiss and my heart is rising like a kite in a hurricane.
I was a dramatic little monster child who turned into a dramatic adult, and if I ever do anything half-assed, kindly kick me. I’m going all-in on this.
Please let us win. Please. Please.
“And... Best Kiss goes to...” The envelope is opened. The presenter grins excitedly at the result then looks into camera. “Daxon Avery and Wilhelmina Chase, To the Stars .”
The crowd erupts. Music is playing, but I can barely hear it. Dax and I laugh as the cameras push in on us, and before he can stand up, I whisper in his ear, “Let’s give them a show. Go stand stage left by the wings.”
Daxon gets up, his face confused, but I mime for him to get moving and he does. Jogs amiably for the stage steps. Then, doing exactly what I’ve said, he parks it all the way across one side of the stage.
If he knows what I’m about to do, you can’t tell.
He’s making a show of it, shrugging at the audience as I make my way casually, slowly, like it’s no big deal, towards the opposite end of the stage.
From the stage steps, I stop and I point at him. Then I turn my hand around and motion with my finger for him to come here . I’m close enough that I can see the shift in his face. The jovial, game-for-a-joke expression he’s been wearing for the cameras drops, and underneath it is exhilarated hope.
He starts walking.
I start walking.
The audience is thundering now. Screaming. Wild. Up out of their seats. The music is louder on stage, sweeping and propulsive. As Dax approaches center-stage, I start to run.
Six feet apart.
Four.
Two.
His arms extend and we crash together, me flinging myself up into his embrace. My legs lock around his waist. Daxon holds my weight comfortably, hungrily, against him. The music crescendos.
And then we kiss.