Chapter 18 INT. COLE’S TRAILER
Chapter 18
INT. COLE’S TRAILER
One Month Later
Do you need anything else from me?
Cole stared at the last text he’d sent Libby in the encrypted app she liked to use. After Tasha had decided to share everything with her, Libby had been working nonstop on her story about Vincent Minna as filming for season three of Waverley neared its end.
Cole and Libby had done several interviews by phone, but he’d also reached out to PAs he knew who’d worked for Vincent and had shared Libby’s contact information with them. When he’d asked Tasha about her own conversations with Libby, she had given him vague updates like “The snake is in the henhouse” and “The sparrow flies at dawn.” He had no idea if that meant they were about to nail the guy, if it was some kind of spy code, or if Tasha was messing with him.
Probably the last one.
But he hadn’t been able to shake the sense that what he’d said to Maggie was true—he ought to have known about Vincent, and he should’ve done more to protect the people around him. The guilt was sharp enough, heavy enough, that it had obliterated the other issue. The Drew-wouldn’t-like-it issue.
Cole was supposed to keep his hands clean and his public face cheerful and inoffensive. This wasn’t a story in which Cole was directly involved. He hadn’t witnessed the bad behavior, it hadn’t been directed at him, and so it wasn’t any of his business. He didn’t even have to ask; he knew that was what Drew would say.
So . . . he hadn’t asked.
When you messed up, and Cole knew he had messed up, it wasn’t enough to say Oops . And the only way Cole knew to make this better was to get the facts out there, all the facts. The public could hold Vincent accountable, at the very least, and everyone would finally know what a monster he was.
So Cole had gone on the record with Libby, and he’d tried to alert other people Vincent might have hurt, who deserved to have their stories told as much as Tasha did. There simply wasn’t another choice, even if this conflicted with Drew’s code. When Libby’s story broke, Cole hoped it would be clear to Drew why Cole had inserted himself into this mess. But, well, he knew he was right, so he couldn’t worry about anything else.
Cole’s phone chirped with a message from Libby: Nope! You gave me everything I needed. She included a heart eyes smiley face.
He didn’t feel very smiley.
Are you sure? Because I’m still willing to cover a PI.
He’d made this offer earlier, and Libby had patiently explained this was not a divorce case in an old Hollywood movie, and journalists had ethical limitations that PIs didn’t have. She needed to do the reporting herself, her way. That was the only way she could write about it.
These things came as news to him, but he’d also felt strangely deflated that he couldn’t solve this problem with money. What was the point of having dough if he couldn’t buy justice with it?
I am absolutely certain.
Part of the appeal of Drew’s code, Cole was realizing, was that it had given him action items. Career in the toilet? Just follow these five rules to turn things around! Those rules had given him a sense of being able to do something at a time when he’d felt as if he had no capacity to move forward. But maybe they had just been a sugar pill for a hypochondriac. He had plenty to do on set, sure, but it felt a little silly when he set it against what Libby was doing right now. The situation made him feel so foolish.
That sinking fog of dread hadn’t gone away when a knock sounded on his trailer door.
He opened it to find Maggie and an anxious-looking assistant from the art department.
“Hey, so I’m glad you’re around,” Maggie said in a singsong voice. “Do you happen to have any athletic tape? Especially of the peach or beige persuasion?”
He quickly scanned Maggie head to toe, but she seemed fine. “Did someone sprain an ankle? Isn’t there a medic around?”
“No injury, no, but the medic only has black therapeutic tape, and, well, the baby’s head fell off.”
“I sincerely hope you mean the plastic baby doll”—which they were using for shots where the kid was in the background—“and not the real baby,” who appeared in the close-ups. Trevor—he was a very cute kid.
“Yes, Cole, I’m hoping to tape a real baby’s head back on,” Maggie deadpanned.
The assistant held up the two pieces of the doll, and Cole had to bite his lip to stop from laughing. With its eyes rolling to the side like that and its limbs at unnatural angles, it was like something from a horror movie set.
“Oh no, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall,” Cole said.
“I was thinking more guillotine.”
“For Chucky here? Wait, you’re getting me off topic. You thought I’d be able to fix this ... why?”
“Because you know everything .”
Even though Cole realized Maggie was saying it to sweet-talk him, damn if he didn’t want to believe it.
In his defense, she had really pretty eyes.
“I saw you had your shoulder taped the other day,” she explained more seriously. “And you and the baby have similar skin tones.”
Maggie was right. Cole had overdone it during one of the sword-fighting scenes, and an old rotator cuff injury of his had flared up. It was yet another reminder that, well, he wasn’t a kid anymore.
“Let me look around.” He returned a minute later with the tape. “Here you go.”
“Thank you,” the prop guy gushed. “It was this or duct tape.”
Hopefully once the doll was swaddled up, it wouldn’t be too obvious. Cole wanted this show to be good—not campy.
Maggie watched the assistant, his murder baby doll, and Cole’s tape leave. “I dunno, they could’ve stuck with the duct tape. It would’ve been very metal. Very teenage goth.”
“How did you get on the case anyhow?” It wasn’t as if props were her problem.
“Eh, he looked really panicked, so I asked what was up and suggested he could ask the medic. When that failed, I remembered your shoulder.”
Cole had seen her do that several times now, check in with the cast and crew and troubleshoot problems. She was getting comfortable with her job, more confident about the flow and patter of the set.
It was a good look on her.
“There’s probably a chain of command, and it doesn’t involve the intimacy coordinator.”
“I could help, so I did.” She pointed to Cole’s shoulder. “How are you feeling?”
Cole rolled his arm. “A little stiff,” he admitted. “But I’ll make it through.”
“Just a couple weeks to go, and we’ll be done.”
They were in that mad dash to the end, full of small, jumbled scenes and bits. At this point, he had his nose pressed so far up against the glass, he’d entirely lost sight of the bigger picture.
But not of Maggie.
“Yup. Now that we’ve fixed the nightmare doll, I’m glad you stopped by. We’re supposed to make our day at about five p.m.”
“What a relief. These late nights are killing me.”
“The last couple of weeks always feel like that. Do you have anything planned tonight?” This was probably the last night they’d have off until they wrapped, and at that point, he had to get back to Los Angeles. Back to his real life.
The thought was strangely unsatisfying.
She shrugged. “I’d like to say a long soak in the tub, a massive meal from room service, and a book, but honestly, I’ll probably pass out at eight.”
That pretty much described every night of his now. “What about a short detour first? Pick you up at seven thirty–ish?”
“Where are we going?”
“It’s a surprise.”
“If it’s hiking, I’m going to be so pissed.”
But he suspected she wouldn’t be.
EXT. STREET IN FRONT OF THE HOTEL—NIGHT
“Where are we going?” Maggie asked as Cole led her to the waiting car.
“Telling you would ruin the surprise.”
Phil opened the door of Cole’s town car with a smile. “Ms. Niven.”
“It’s good to see you, Phil.” Maggie slid across the back seat. “Are you going to make me wear a blindfold?”
“Would you?” Cole asked, with the kind of smile she could feel in her inner thighs.
Maggie shivered. “Maybe.”
What a rank lie. What absolute evasive bullshit. If Cole asked, she’d do it in a heartbeat.
From the gleam in his eye, he knew it. “No, no blindfold. It’s not as if we know where anything is in Glasgow, anyhow.”
That was conveniently true. All she’d managed to see of the city was the path from the hotel to the studio. It was really a shame that she’d spent nearly four months in the UK and had experienced so little of it.
When Phil pulled away from the curb, with forced casualness Cole said, “So we’re almost done.”
“We’re almost done,” she echoed.
“Have you thought about next steps?”
It felt like that was all she did lately.
Maggie played with one of the buttons on her coat. “Another one of Bernard’s protégés had to drop out of a project, a little indie coming-of-age story about a group of college students falling in and out of love with each other, called The Mid List . I think I’m going to take that. Filming starts in a month, so I have time to find a short-term apartment. It’s a very different kind of production than this. It’s shooting in LA, and it would make sense to spend some time there, to meet some people—oh God, I sound like such an industry cliché, don’t I?”
“The next thing you know, you’ll be complaining about temperatures below seventy degrees and traffic on the 405 and getting juice at Earthbar every day.” Cole grinned, and then he turned his attention out the window. “But yeah, that sounds like a good move for you. I think you’d like LA.”
He didn’t look at her when he said that last part, for which she was grateful. This conversation was, like, 80 percent subtext, and she didn’t think she understood everything that was happening under the surface here.
“After that ... well, they offered me season four of Waverley .” She still hadn’t accepted, but it felt odd that she hadn’t told Cole.
The truth was, she saw him almost every day. She’d catch him at the craft-services table in the morning, and he’d tease her about how much brown sugar she put in her oatmeal. They’d talk about the shoot or whatever she was reading. They’d compare Wordle solutions or what they’d watched on TV the night before. Sometimes, he’d chide her into going to H/MU with him, because those folks had the best music and the smartest jokes. Those hours with him were the best part of her day. The best part of ... everything.
But they’d never talked about the future at all. It had been an endless stretch of present.
“They’re already in preproduction?” Cole asked.
“Yup. It’s such a big commitment, they want to nail people down.”
He considered this. Then very, very carefully, he asked, “What did you say?”
“When I took this job, I was ... desperate is a strong word, but let’s say desperate. And running away from home for four months seemed awesome. I would’ve taken a mission to Mars if it had been on offer. But Bernard doesn’t think I’m going to have trouble getting work after this, and there isn’t much attention on me anymore. I mean, I’ve enjoyed Scotland, but I don’t know if I want to be here for such a long time again.”
In the front seat, Phil cleared his throat.
“Sorry, Phil!” she called out, her cheeks flaming because she’d forgotten that she and Cole had an audience for this conversation. A discreet audience, but even still. “Your country is gorgeous, but it’s not my country. Being here doesn’t feel like real life.”
“That,” Cole said, “is kind of the problem with making movies. Nothing ever feels real.”
“Nothing?”
But before Cole could answer that, Phil parked. Where the heck were they?
Across a large dark lawn stood one of those Victorian greenhouses, all lacy white lead and shimmering glass, looking more like a Jell-O mold than a place where they kept plants.
“Wait, it’s the botanical gardens,” she said.
“Yup. Technically, it’s closed tonight, but I may have pulled a few strings. It turns out the director is a big Waverley fan, and a signed poster is a sufficient bribe. Merrit arranged it for me.”
Maggie was fairly certain Merrit could have successfully negotiated peace on the Korean peninsula.
“ GlasGLOW ,” she read off the sign.
“It’s all lit up. The exhibit’s opening tomorrow, but we have some long days coming up. I wanted to make sure you didn’t miss it.”
Because Cole had remembered some offhand remark she’d made months ago—literally months ago—about how she wanted to come here.
Feeling as if she couldn’t quite catch her breath, Maggie followed him out of the car. “This is ... thank you.”
“It’s no big deal. Let’s go see some plants.”
Whatever Cole might say, it felt like a deal. It felt like a very big deal. It felt like an enormous, glowing deal that the astronauts were probably observing on the ISS.
A woman met them at the door, taking the signed poster gratefully from Cole. “You can go anywhere you’d like.”
“Thanks. We’ll try to be out in an hour.”
“Take all the time you need.” And then she winked.
Maggie wanted to say Hey, nothing is happening here , but it was very clear that something was happening. Something beautiful and life changing and a little scary.
Just inside the door of the plant palace rose a glass dome. Beneath it stood a palm tree at the center of a fishpond. The fronds of the palm were lit a minty green color, and the rest of the dome was awash in pink lights. It was very Miami Heat fabulous.
“Wow.” Maggie craned over the white metal railing to peer into the pond. The scales of the koi flitting around the water caught the light, making them look like something out of a fairy tale.
“Why plants?” Cole asked.
“You mean why was a Victorian glasshouse at the top of my sightseeing list? Well, during the pandemic I got really into houseplants.”
Cole snickered.
“Yeah, I know. I’d always thought you had to be born with a green thumb, but with nothing else to do and all that stress, that was what I turned to. I’ve amassed quite a collection. My best friend back in Eugene is watching them for me while I’m here.”
“LA’s a good place for gardening. You know, if you move there.”
With that, Cole dragged the future back in front of them, exactly like it had been there in the car. It was like a neon elephant in the room.
One with the word if flashing on its forehead.
And the problem was that Maggie’s thoughts were happy to slip down the slide Cole was pointing to: If she took the job on the indie. If she moved to LA. If she told Cole how she’d come to feel about him. If ... then ...
Because when the production ended, there wouldn’t be a reason not to. No reason not to kiss. No reason not to touch. No reason not to be together.
Except for how they had met.
For some things, the statute of limitations never ran out. This was one of them.
Her breath uneven and her palms clammy, Maggie pointed into the water and changed the subject. “Did you ever keep a goldfish?” There, that helped. Nothing was as boring as goldfish. There was nothing tempting about goldfish.
After a beat, Cole went along with it. “Nope, never. My mom’s always loved cats, and so that seemed like a recipe for disaster.”
“I just realized I don’t know much about your childhood.” Maggie felt as if they knew each other very well—she’d spent hours with the man while he was practically naked—but they’d been so focused on the job in front of them. They talked all the time, but maybe those conversations had just been small talk. Verbal rice cakes that didn’t convey much information or have many calories.
“Eh, there’s not much to know,” he said as they left the pond and walked through a curtain of vertical twinkle lights, all purple and white and starry. “I grew up in SoCal, and I had a pretty typical nineties childhood.”
“I’m picturing surfing, skateboarding, burritos, and famous people.”
“That’s not far off—except for the famous people.”
“Your parents aren’t actors?” While she’d read a lot about how Tasha was a nepo baby, she hadn’t seen the same coverage of Cole. Maybe she’d missed something.
“Dad manages a hardware store, and Mom’s a nurse. I sort of accidentally started doing commercials. My parents weren’t pushy about it at all. The truth is I wasn’t a good enough athlete to try for a scholarship, and college wasn’t that interesting to me. But in high school, I got bitten by the acting bug, and the next thing I knew, I was on Central Square .”
“And the rest was history.”
Cole grimaced. “Yeah, well, you know how that worked out.”
They stopped in front of a statue of a woman, probably some mythological goddess. She was kneeling on a pedestal, looking a bit distressed about the tropical foliage surrounding her. The lights in this room were various shades of blue. Like if Picasso had temporarily detoured into garden design.
“You played an iconic role and started a career you’re still rocking?” Maggie asked.
“That is the absolutely nicest possible way to sum up the last two decades of my life.”
“I’m an extremely nice person.”
“That you are. No, the thing is ... I messed up in so many ways, and I feel like I’m still trying to make up for it. People on the set of Central Square got hurt because I was too busy being the life of the party to notice.” Cole walked away from her as he said it, which should’ve given his words some lightness, but months of knowing the man had her familiar with this play.
“What does that look like to you?” Maggie asked, following him down the path. “When are you done atoning for some childish mistakes?”
Cole gave her a sideways look. “Are any of us?”
“Isn’t that existential?”
She’d been half joking, but he was entirely in earnest. “Humans—we hurt each other in lots of ways. Maybe we all need to atone more.”
Maggie shouldn’t push this. Her interest wasn’t about doing her job, and it wasn’t about being his friend. She cared because she was in love with him—and trawling these waters with him, it announced it. But he was in such obvious pain, she couldn’t let it be. And if they were going to have this conversation, she wanted to see Cole’s face.
She stopped and leaned her hip against one of the benches ringing the greenhouse. Because he was polite, he froze and turned toward her. In the indigo light, she couldn’t make out his exact expression, but his posture was tight.
“If you’re always feeling like you have to make amends for what you did in the past, I wonder where you have the space to just ... be. I care about living a life that makes a difference, Cole. I care about how my choices affect other people, so I’m not saying that you’re wrong. I just wonder how you find the balance. When you stop beating yourself up.”
He worked his jaw for a second. “Are you saying I’m too hard on myself?”
“Yes. Maybe.”
Cole scrubbed his hands over his face. When he dropped them and spoke, real passion spiked through his words. “I could tell you the same. You go through this intense thing, losing your job for the dumbest possible reason, and then you turn around and remake yourself into this. And you’re incredible at it. It’s the job you were meant to do. But you still worry if you’re making enough of a difference in the world. What is that ?”
When she said “Well, you got me there,” she expected him to laugh. She expected that it would right this conversation, get them back into the light, slightly flirty space that she and Cole generally occupied.
But whether it was because he was tired or if it was the relative darkness, Cole wouldn’t budge. “I’m serious: What is that, Maggie? Where does that come from?”
Maggie tipped her chin back and watched the lights playing over the glass dome for a minute before she responded. “My parents ... my mom ran a food bank,” she explained. “And then she ran a statewide network of food banks, and now she works at the UNFAO. She’s literally feeding the fucking world. Meanwhile, my dad’s a doctor who’s spent most of his life in field hospitals, real Doctors Without Borders stuff. Whatever you think about me, believe me, they make me look like a corporate raider. Like one of those guys from The Wolf of Wall Street or something. Don’t get me wrong, they supported my interest in theatre. They never missed a dance recital or a play, or—okay, my mom didn’t. Dad did, but ... I know I’m lucky. It’s just I also know they find me a little disappointing.” She looked Cole right in the eye, as if to say Happy?
Obviously he wasn’t. “Nothing about you is—I can’t even say it. You are a miracle, Maggie Niven.”
She wasn’t feeling like a miracle. She was feeling vaguely pissed. She’d wanted to have a night off. She’d wanted to hang out with her friend. She had no idea why he was pushing her like this. “The lawsuit is about the only time they’ve ever been proud of me, and it was also the worst thing I’ve ever been through.”
Cole took a step toward her. Then another. Much more softly, he said, “That sounds terrible.”
“It was. It is. They are not psyched about this job. If I’d moved into, I dunno, some kind of nonprofit, bringing theatre to underserved urban or rural communities, that would’ve been cool. Hollywood intimacy coordinator? Not so much.”
“You realize that everyone else on earth thinks the opposite.”
“But I’m not the child of anyone else on earth. Look, you asked where that comes from, and that’s where it comes from. And the worst part is they’re right . Like, what kind of an ass would I be if I were like, ‘No, I don’t want to make a difference. I don’t want to improve the world’? Of course I should want those things! Of course I should do those things!” She hadn’t realized she’d been shouting until she’d stopped and her petulant words were still bouncing around the space.
Oops.
Cole didn’t seem taken aback, though. He simply mirrored her posture, leaning his hip against the bench across from her. “I’m just an actor, and my work improves no one’s life, so take this with a grain of salt. But maybe it doesn’t have to be one or the other.”
“Huh, I’d find that a little more convincing if you seemed to believe it.”
“I will if you will.”
“You really mean that, don’t you?”
“I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t.”
He was such a good guy.
She closed her eyes and took and released a long breath. “I’ll consider it,” she said primly.
Two of Cole’s fingers settled lightly onto the back of Maggie’s hand. It was the most impersonal of touches, not even a caress. It was simply two tiny points of heat and pressure. A handshake was more intimate. But those fingerprints on her skin were a rabbit hole, pulling Maggie down into the earth. Into some alien world where all the things she’d ever imagined about him were possible. Where she wasn’t the only one who’d imagined them.
Maggie didn’t trust herself to open her eyes. She didn’t want to see him touching her.
That was a lie. She absolutely did.
“Maggie.” Cole’s voice was so soft, he might as well have thought her name.
“Cole.” Her answering whisper made her lips tingle.
Slowly, very slowly, he dragged his fingers down the back of her hand. “I think about you, about this—”
Whatever he was about to say, his voice cracked. And it was a good thing, too, because Maggie needed to catch her breath.
He’d done what ? The surprise was so acute, she almost doubled over.
Her eyes did spring open, and the way he was watching her—the undisguised longing, the hunger—it had her snatching her hand to her chest and stumbling back.
She wanted those things so badly, but she couldn’t have them. “I can’t. Cole, I can’t .”
She couldn’t ... what? She wanted to go back and figure out what precisely he meant, to hear the full description and all the various options. But she couldn’t risk it. She couldn’t stand alone with this man in the semidarkness. That was impossible.
“This job—it’s the only chance I’m ever going to get.”
“Yeah, I understand that.” He said it patiently because he was fucking perfect. “But we’re almost done, and—”
“Almost.” She brandished the word like someone might a weapon. It was unspeakably important that she be seen as having standards. As being a professional. And nothing that could possibly come after “I think about you, about this” was professional.
“Okay. But when Waverley is done, we’re having this conversation. I promise you that.”
Sparks—much brighter, much more twinkly than the lights ringing the greenhouse—went off inside her. So Maggie did the only thing she could: she dumped a bucket of water on them. “I can’t have a relationship with someone I’ve worked with.”
“I’m not going to argue with you.”
It shouldn’t have stung so badly, since it was what she wanted. Her position, while necessary and professional and a dozen other good things, was akin to licking the bottom of one’s shoe in many other ways.
Maggie turned from Cole then, needing the break from his eyes, which saw too much. “Do you like Venus flytraps?” she asked, pointing to the sign that indicated the carnivorous plants were in the next room.
“Do you think they bring in flies for them?”
“Probably.”
As they went to see the insect-eating plants and then the desert plants, they tried to make small talk, actual small talk. It was nice, because being with Cole was always nice, but it was also as frustrating as heck.
Everything Maggie had come to want was there, and she couldn’t take it.
An hour later, when they’d seen the entire garden and said goodbye to the staffer, they walked out into the shadowy night. Against the darkness, the glasshouse glowed pink, like some wild, magical castle in a five-year-old’s drawing.
“I love it so much,” Maggie said. “It’s so over the top.”
“Why don’t they build them like that anymore?”
“It’s such a crime, right? Listen ...” Maggie wanted to touch him. To set her hand on his forearm, hug him, or even press her mouth to his cheek. But she couldn’t. It wouldn’t send the right signal, and if nothing else, it would confuse her own heart, which was still mighty disappointed she’d said no. “This was a lot to arrange, for you and for Merrit, and I’m just so ... flattered and overwhelmed that you remembered I wanted to do this.”
“I remember everything you say to me.”
“Thank you for going to all this trouble, Cole.”
“You’re welcome, Maggie.”
And as they met Phil and drove back to the hotel, Maggie tried to convince herself that the glow of this evening was enough for her.