3. Maya
3
MAYA
I stood at the entrance to set, glancing around. It was total chaos here—set dressers running back and forth, PAs chattering into Bluetooth headphones, producers pinned to their cells. Conversation was filling the air, the sense of frantic energy almost overwhelming.
Before I could stop myself, a huge smile cracked over my face. I’m home.
I still couldn’t believe I had actually managed to find my way back to a movie set, after what felt like a lifetime out in the cold. It had been way, way too long since I had set foot anywhere like this, and even though some of the technology looked a little different, the excitement and the anticipation was the same. I didn’t even know what damn movie I was going to be working on, but it didn’t matter. I was just glad to be back, glad to finally be where I belonged once more.
They had been in such a rush to sign a new makeup artist that I was pretty sure, as long as I hadn’t given anyone any major disfigurements over the course of my career, they would have taken me regardless. It had all been such a rush—the NDAs sent over, the contracts signed, the stipend paid up. My rent was covered for the next couple of months, but more than that, I could actually work again. I could hardly wait.
I’d worried that Matty wouldn’t take the news well, but when I had assured him that he’d get to spend some evenings with his favorite sitter and that our movie nights weren’t going anywhere, he seemed to take it pretty well. In fact, he loved the idea of me working on a movie—since we had started watching them together, he’d grown an interest in the industry, as much of an interest as a boy his age could, at least. He had made me promise, in deadly seriousness, that I would give him all the stories I could from set. Well, I was pretty sure the NDA didn’t apply to my son, right?
Strolling past the set of trailers where the stars of the movie were going to be hanging out, I made my way straight to the makeup trailer, where I would be working for most of my time here. On the door was the working title of the film we were on— T3 Team-Up. It didn’t mean much to me, but then, I wasn’t exactly keeping up with the comings and goings of the movie world while I was taking care of Matty.
Inside the trailer, a handful of makeup artists had already clustered. I could always tell who the makeup artists were, because either they had scrubbed-clean faces without a dot of color on them, or they were wearing the most extravagant looks imaginable. Two ends of a spectrum, I supposed. A woman who was on the first side of that spectrum, with perfect skin and gorgeous brows, turned to me with a smile on her face.
“Maya, right?”
“That’s me,” I replied, extending my hand to her awkwardly. Were we meant to shake hands? I couldn’t exactly remember, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt.
She took my hand, giving it a firm shake, and nodded at me in greeting.
“I’m Paula, I’m the head makeup artist on set,” she replied. “Have you worked for the studio before?”
“I haven’t…”
“Let me run you through some of our protocol, then,” she replied, steering me toward a large makeup table at the far end of the trailer. There were several pictures pinned up around the edge of the mirror, most of them guides for applying and contouring for the various characters we would be working on for this movie. One in particular caught my eye. It was a man, a man with a shaved head and brown eyes who looked familiar.
“Who’s that?” I asked, pointing toward the image before I could think better of it. Paula turned to me, her eyebrow cocked.
“You kidding?”
My heart skipped a beat. Crap. Had I already managed to make a fool of myself? I shook my head.
“N—no. Sorry, I came on to this movie last minute, I don’t know much about it…”
“Yeah, but even still, you must know who Taylor King is, right?” she replied. “One of the Trio?”
“Oh, shit, yeah!” I exclaimed as it all fell into place. I had watched one of his movies with Matty not that long ago—how cool that I was going to be working on a film with him in it. Matty would be so excited when I told him.
“I didn’t realize he was going to be working on this film,” I remarked. “I really like his work.”
Paula gave me another strange look out of the corner of her eye. I could tell something was bothering her, and I got the feeling that I was putting my foot in it.
“You really don’t know what film this is,” she asked again, incredulous.
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, they didn’t give me much more than the contracts and the NDAs to sign before I came here.” I let out a slightly nervous laugh. “Why? What is it?”
“It’s the Trio team-up feature,” she replied. “You know, the one where all three of them join up and star in a movie together?”
I blinked at her for a second. A ringing rose in my ears, and I tried to ignore it. Because I must have heard her wrong. There was no way, no way in hell this could be what I thought it was…
“So all three of them are going to be in it?” I asked. “Taylor King, Lee Kennedy, and…”
“Devon Hart, yeah.”
Oh, fuck.
Everything stopped around me. I could vaguely make out the other makeup artists in conversation a few feet away, but I couldn’t take in a damn thing they were saying. My knees were buckling, and I gripped the edge of the makeup table in front of me.
“I know, it’s a big deal,” Paula remarked, mistaking my reaction for surprise at working on such a huge movie. “But trust me, it’ll be just like anything else you’ve worked on, once you get down to it. So, the protocols for this set…”
She started to go over everything I would need to know, and I did my best to stay tuned in and wrap my mind around all of it, even as my head felt like it might explode. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it. After so long avoiding him, so long working to build my life up again—I was going to be working with the asshole? How did I not know this?
Lana couldn’t have known, of course—well, she couldn’t have known that it mattered, at least. She had no idea that Devon was really my son’s father, because I had never told her, because I had assumed it would never come up. I had never intended to come back to work, and if I did, I never pictured it being on a set like this, where I might actually run into him again.
“So, that’s about it,” Paula finished up, clapping her hands together. “Any questions?”
Shit. I hadn’t taken any of that in. I would have to hope that my muscle memory served me well enough to get through it without making a total ass of myself.
“No, I’m all good,” I replied, quickly pasting a smile on my face. “Thanks. I’m just going to grab a coffee…”
I slipped out of the trailer before she could say another word to me and sucked in a deep lungful of air the second I was outside, tilting my head back and trying not to let the freak-out turn into a full-blown panic attack. I felt like I should have known about this. Some mystic sense should have started tingling the minute he came within a ten-mile radius of me. But it hadn’t, and now I was standing here on set, with no idea where he was, wondering how long it would be before I ran into him…
Wait, had I passed his trailer on the way in today? The thought made my stomach churn. Being that close to him, after so long…being so near to him after I’d imagined I would never see him again, I couldn’t cope with it.
I couldn’t do this. The snap decision was made in my head before I had a chance to think any more about it. I needed to get out of here, before I exposed something that I had worked so hard to keep to myself for so long. I couldn’t just get to work here like nothing was wrong—I couldn’t be around him, I couldn’t risk it. Even the thought of running into him now was a terrifying prospect, and I darted around the back of the trailer, seeking a bit of quiet so I could figure out what to do next.
I pulled out my phone and started scrolling through all the digital copies of the contracts they had sent me. There had to be a way out, right? A panic button I could slam if something came up at the last minute. Of course, I doubted they had planned for accidentally got pregnant by one of the leading men before he dumped her with no warning, but a girl could dream…
I frantically looked over the contracts, but they were ironclad. There wasn’t a single way I could squeeze out of this without having to pay a hefty fee—and it wasn’t like I had the damn money for that. No, I was stuck seeing this through, and that meant…
And that meant that I was going to have to work with the father of my child, the father who had no idea his son existed. No idea that his son was a huge fan of his work. Oh, and Matty, of course, would be clamoring every day to hear what I’d been getting up to at work, and I had no idea how long I could keep a straight face in the midst of all of this.
I put my head in my hands and drew in a deep, shuddering breath. Come on. I had dealt with harder shit than this before. Yes, it was far from ideal, but I could find a way through it—I was going to have to, wasn’t I?
Steeling myself, I drew myself up to my full height—not much more than five-three, but still—and swore to myself that I wasn’t going to let Devon Hart cause any more trouble in my life. No, that asshole had done plenty of that as it stood.
And I was not in the habit of letting the same man get under my skin twice.