Chapter 11
ELEVEN
Andrei
The afternoon of the dreaded buddy day shoot came sooner than I’d expected.
Days came and went in a blur. Hockey practice remained in my memory as a sharp and vivid thing, the space between each one filled with a strange stupor.
The last few days felt like the final moments before an afternoon nap by the fireplace took you into its comforting depths.
I could recall moments in late October when my cheeks burned against the cold air in the rink. I could recall the path that beads of sweat carved down my back after a rough workout. I could feel Griffin’s silence drowning out all the sounds around us.
And worst of all, I could see him coming up with excuses to leave the room when I entered.
For all his joking, cavalier attitude about the flood of edits with exploding hearts and fake blushes on my cheeks or his, the worst happened.
He walked around with his chest thrust out, clapping shoulders and booming with laughter when someone brought up his “boyfriend,” and he handled himself well. He seemed perfectly unbothered.
Up until having to sit next to me.
Or undress near me.
Or have me stand above his head when he did bench press.
“Mind moving your balls an inch back? I can’t see the bar,” he said yesterday.
Heat flushed my face before I could channel anger. “No reason to be a dick.”
Griffin bit his tongue and grabbed the bar anyway, thrusting the heavy weight up and hissing through his teeth as he did it.
He took it out on me. And if that alone didn’t hurt enough, what broke my heart was that he probably didn’t realize he was doing it.
Last night, he had gone to a frat party a few houses from ours and sent me photos of girls he meant to ask out.
Not that he hadn’t clued me into his conquests in the past, but this felt purposeful.
Like he said, “Here. Look at me go. All those reels are bullshit, and you’re welcome to look at all the proof I’ve got. ”
Like I didn’t know well enough those reels were bullshit. Griffin had never licked his lips while looking at me talk. That was a clever edit some TikToker made, so it appeared like the very sound of my voice made Griffin’s mouth water.
I hadn’t heard him return to our room, but I had woken up to the heap of muscles and limbs tangled in a white bedsheet, a shaggy head sinking into the pillow, gentle snores filling my ears as his back rose and fell. The small of his back curved in, and the curve rose steeply over his ass.
I hated myself for looking. I hated myself for quite a while. It was impossible to tear my gaze away from those white boxer briefs, so tight on his sculpted ass that it seemed as though the fabric was stretched so thin it was transparent.
When he stirred, woken up by the poking on his ass my gaze had doubtless done, I shut my eyes and pretended to be asleep.
“Is it today?” he asked, aware that I was wide-awake.
“Uh-huh,” I replied.
And that was the mood with which we dressed to welcome the crew of NextPlay Media inside the house.
Jen and two assistants and two camera crews with two sound guys gathered in the living room for a quick briefing.
We were shooting a Griffdrei episode based on popular demand.
Rather, it was because of the fan expectations.
There had never been any plan or blueprint for me and Griffin to cross storylines.
Mine was about the slow reveal of a heart beneath the bad boy persona, which had been promptly abandoned; Griffin’s was a story of a heartthrob oblivious to being adored by all.
That never changed, although the producers had nothing to do with it.
“As you well know, you two are gaining attention and recognition, but don’t let that get in the way of being yourselves. You see, this is an editor’s medium. You just be who you are, and we’ll capture it. The editors will cut it the way that will make your fans fall head over heels in the end.”
Griffin chuckled. “No heart eyes, I hope.”
Jen laughed. “We’ll leave that to the fans.”
“Great,” I muttered.
“He’s in character already,” Griffin said, making Jen laugh.
“And you’re not?” I hated the note of jealousy in my own voice. Sure, she was ten years older, and there was no indication she’d ever look twice at a guy Griffin’s age, but that didn’t stop him from winking, chuckling, and teasing. No. Because Griffin was a walking, talking swoon.
“Whoa,” he said, his arm landing on my shoulders in the first physical contact in over a week—yes, I fucking counted. “There was a pea under your pillow or something?”
I shrugged off his arm. “Let’s just get the mics on.” I pulled my hoodie over my head and turned to the sound guy and an assistant, who duct-taped the microphone to my solar plexus and hooked up the transmitter on my brown belt.
I got busy dressing while listening to Griffin undress. Great. I’d just rashly given him a chance to flex around Jen and a bunch of other young women on the crew. He basked in the attention. I didn’t even have to look to know.
When I turned around, he was dressing already, his abs tense and defined, making something knot in my stomach.
Jen ran the checks with sound and cameras, had them rolling, and let us move around the house a bit.
These were transition scenes, meant to be inserted between sections of us playing hockey, for example, which they had filmed extensively in the last few days, and the scenes of us “choosing to spend a day together” that we were meant to film today.
I had never in my life spent a day with a friend going over old photos, randomly reminiscing about the good old days, and finishing it off with a walk by the lake and a nightcap, but that was the script.
Jen had offered to create a box of old photographs to make it more immersive for television, but Griffin had outed me. “Andrei’s got all the photos you could want.” That gave way to a whole new plotline for the day.
“Hey,” Griffin said from the top of the stairs, one camera pointed at him, the other catching my reaction. “Look what I just found.”
I fought against rolling my eyes. In his hands was the box I’d packed last night for today’s filming. “What’s that?” I asked.
Griffin skipped down the stairs, passing by the camera and joining me. Two sets of lenses recorded everything we did now. My heart beat a little faster. My palms sweated. “Old photos from under your bed.”
He was supposed to say, “Old photos from our room.”
“What were you doing under my bed?” I asked, thrown off by the improvisation.
Griffin grinned for the camera. “Looking for secret boxes.”
My mouth went dry. I could see the fan fiction stories popping up everywhere in which Griffin found a box that most certainly contained no old photos. “Open it,” I said, voice thin and raspy.
Griffin tossed his head in the direction of the sofa where the light was good, and we moved there. He set the box on the table, cameras moving after us, one to take our close-ups and the other to record the details of the photographs.
“I didn’t realize you had these here,” Griffin said as he opened the box.
That, at least, was genuine and true. That was the line for the episode that Jen had suggested, but Griffin hadn’t seen the photos.
He only knew I had been taking and developing them last year.
We’d never gone through all the photographs I’d brought with me when we moved here. We’d never sat down to look at them.
And for good reason.
It hurt to see the fourteen-year-old Griffin in a wide shot of a snowy field, standing next to a snowman half again as tall as him. He called the snowman Andrei when I’d suggested taking this photo.
I had only been starting to play with film cameras. The composition was all wrong, the exposure burning the shadows away, but I liked the fine grain that came naturally with film. Developing it was hell. I’d botched it four times before getting this one right.
“I remember this,” Griffin said, not laughing. “Me and Andrei.”
“The snowman?” Jen asked.
“Yep,” Griffin said, waving the photo. He thrust it to me, and I took it, our fingers touching for a moment. It was like a zap of electricity, and my hand jerked away with the photo between my fingers.
He dug into the box and took out a bunch of photographs.
Some were black-and-white, others bursting with color.
One was from last year. It was our first semester.
In fact, it was our first week at Northwood.
Griffin lay on his bed, pillow crushed beneath his elbow, a comic book with a broken spine between his hands, skin around his eyes wrinkled in a radiant smile.
He lingered, looking at the picture. “You took two that night.”
I snort laughed and shook my head. “This was the first one.”
“Yeah, you thought you were so sneaky, but you turned on the flash then.”
I laughed. “I thought it was too dark.”
“It was perfect,” Griffin said. “See?” He waved the photo again.
“Do you have the second photo?” Jen asked.
We shared a laugh.
“He developed it,” said Griffin. “And then we ceremonially burned it outside on the lawn. The flash made me jump, and I looked like the meme of the guy waking up.” He looked at me. “Nobody’s ever taken a worse photo of me in my life.”
But not this one. This one was among the best.
Griffin flipped through a handful of photos, all of them spontaneous snapshots of his figure.
Sometimes, he was a lonely figure on the ice.
Other times, he was surrounded by friends.
At times, he didn’t know the lens was watching him.
At other times, he looked right into it, dimples popping and teeth shining.
Griffin narrated the memories surrounding those snapshots, so I didn’t have to talk.
My throat tightened as I looked at the photos.
“Andrei,” Jen said. “You’re not in any of these.”
I shook my head. “Um…I’m behind the camera.”
“In all of these?” she asked.