Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
CASS
The scuffed two-top table parked in the middle of the crowded diner had enough real estate to let the two women spread out purses and phones and still have room for their meals. Cass edged to the front of her seat, her toes just reaching the stool’s crossbar.
“I can’t believe I didn’t make the connection. I think I saw Stephen’s name on the list and I just …” Libby mimed the words flitting out of her brain. She stabbed a sausage link rolling across her plate. “Sexy Dimples shows up on your film set and gets to just walk around and look gorgeous in front of you?”
“We can’t call him that anymore.” Not now that she had to see him all the time. It’d be just like her to drop that nickname in the middle of a meeting. “And, technically, it’s his film set.”
“Aren’t you worried about proximity effects?” asked Libby. “All that untapped sexual tension building up?”
It hadn’t been all that bad. They’d met so much over the last month in pre-production, respectfully disagreed on a hundred things, but everything was hammered out. Josh stayed in his narrow, professional lane, never once making a comment about their time together in front of anyone. It was like their night together, the weeks of flirty texts that followed, had never happened at all.
“That sexual tension is tapped,” Cass muttered, “and no fears about proximity. I work with good-looking people all day long.”
“So, hotness isn’t a factor. Then, what’s the problem?”
“I mean …” Cass sighed. “I hadn’t hit it off with anyone in so long. Since Nick, anyway. And Josh and I had a really good time. It was all safe and everything because he was out of town, and I could just be myself and we had this amazing night that I could fantasize about and let it be perfect.”
“And now it’s going to get messy and real.”
Cass nodded miserably. And fine, maybe she was a little worried about proximity. Libby had been right. Men like Josh were more than her type. They were her weakness. All chemistry, then after some time, empty promises.
That was one of the reasons the out-of-town thing had worked so well. There was no chance to get to the point of empty promises.
She’d never been fastidious about keeping work and personal life separate, dating a few people she’d met on set. But never during production. And it’s not like she and Josh had dated. They’d known each other for nine hours, which was spent silent in movies, arguing about the movies, then rolling around in bed. Or him pinning her against the wall. Or on the floor on the way to the bed.
Cass dropped her head into her hands. “He’d made it clear he had no interest in being anything other than being strictly professional. Plus, that was months ago. If he can forget about it, so can I.”
“Can you though?”
“It’s different this time.”
There was no her and Josh to forget about. She could ignore him leaning over her sketches, the warmth radiating off his body and the scent of sandalwood and citrus wrapping around her. Watching his lithe fingers trace the storyboards, like they had traced the curve of her hip as they lay in bed in a post-sex-frenzied haze.
Cass shook herself. “Why are we talking about me and my nonexistent issues? I’m not the only one who needs to worry about proximity. Aren’t you worried about working with Stephen?”
Libby sucked in her cheeks and stirred her coffee, the ice cubes clinking in the tall glass. “That was a long time ago. We were kids.”
They’d been more like new adults than kids, but still, as far as amicable breakups went, Libby and Stephen hadn’t spoken since he’d moved to Vancouver. From the way they’d been stealing glances at each other over lighting rigs, Cass figured she might not be the only one with sparks flying.
“Have you two talked yet?”
Libby shrugged, face blank. “What’s there to talk about? He lives there. I live here. He’s happy there, and I’m not leaving.”
If Libby could see through Cass’s inability to put a romantic encounter in the past, Cass knew Stephen leaving Libby was a wound that never healed.
“Let’s make a pact,” Cass said briskly. “We’ll keep each other from getting into trouble until this thing wraps, then we’ll grab Jill and try to convince Raina to go on another vacation.”
“Okay. No trouble,” Libby agreed. “Unless we really want it.”
The mass email invite said the engagement party would be casual. Showing up two hours late wasn’t the coolest move, but Cass had told Jill she and Libby might be late if their meetings ran long again. One week until filming, and Josh had been growing increasingly twitchy. He hadn’t gone on any of the sociopathic rants Karl had warned her of yet, but from the sounds of it, those might be coming .
Voices and music poured through the front door of Jill and Alex’s bungalow as they let themselves into the party already in full swing. Libby dropped a couple bottles of wine on the kitchen counter, walking past people Cass vaguely recognized as players from Jill’s softball team and a mix of guys from Alex’s rugby team. A few people from Jill’s work lounged around the dining room table with drinks in hand. Libby joined a group of kids running dizzy circles around the coffee table. After a hug with Rachel and Omar, Cass continued through the house until she found her friends on the back deck, cuddled on a single chair.
“Congratulations!” Cass said for the seventeenth time. She leaned in for a hug and kissed them both on the cheek, already wishing she had worn a lighter top for the early summer evening. “Any dates planned yet?”
“Tried to convince her we should do it this afternoon before everyone came over,” Alex said, an easy grin on his face.
Jill landed an affectionate punch on his shoulder. “I want to plan something perfect for us.”
“Whatever makes you happy,” Alex said, beaming at her. “You becoming my wife is all I need.”
They just looked so … at peace. A prickle worked its way up Cass’s throat. To be a priority, to know her happiness was important to someone? That was the dream. “Whatever you two decide will be perfect.”
Jill and Alex turned to greet another friend as Libby sauntered out with a grubby toddler perched on her hip, chubby fingers pulling at her hair.
“I just heard Dan and Marta have number two on the way. Poor woman is upstairs puking. Little Olivia is going to be a big sister already,” she said, shifting the little girl to her other hip. She gave Cass a careful look. “That’s exciting, right?”
So, Dan was having another baby. She was happy for him. Really. She and Dan only dated a while, and they hadn’t been exclusive. Not like he’d wanted to be. He had never introduced her to his family, or any of his friends. Honestly, she’d met more of his friends since meeting Jill and coming along to parties where Alex and Dan played on the same rugby team.
That first meeting was weird, with Jill innocently introducing Cass to Marta and her squirming daughter, Dan coughing awkwardly beside her like he hadn’t told Cass he didn’t want anything serious for a long time. By Cass’s admittedly lax math skills, that long time translated into a month before the things he wanted had changed.
Now, he had a beautiful girlfriend he was devoted to and a daughter he was wild for, with a second baby on the way.
Good for him.
It wasn’t envy—she didn’t want to be with someone who didn’t want to be with her, and lord knew she didn’t want to be saddled with two kids—but what was it about her that made men pull hard U-turns when it came to commitment?
Right. Her superpower.
Cass covered her wince with a tight smile. “Yeah, so exciting.”
“I told you. Tyrant.”
Karl tucked a boom mic under his arm, the crew shuffling around as Josh bellowed yet another set of conflicting instructions at the grips. Rehearsals that morning hadn’t been enough, and Dawson James, the film’s lead actor, was trying—and failing—to soak up the crossfire.
It was weird to see Josh like this. However briefly she’d known Josh the hookup, Josh the director was a completely different person. Then he had been charismatic, argumentative, and demanding; Josh the director was still argumentative and demanding, but the charisma was absent. And he was alienating his team before they’d even shot a minute of film .
She’d joked he liked it when she told him what she thought. No time like the present to test that theory.
“I’ll talk to him.”
Karl raised his brows. “Good luck.”
Cass crept up, staying in Josh’s sightline.
“So, how’s it going?” she asked carefully.
He glared as he looked up from the sheets in front of him, but a look of recognition softened his face when he saw her. “Fine.”
She crossed her arms. “Doesn’t seem ‘fine’.”
“It is.”
This was going great. She shifted back into his eyeline and tried again. “It’s going so fine that people are calling you a tyrant.”
“I’m not a tyrant,” he said, affronted. “I’m particular.”
“Two of the grips are having panic attacks in the back, and an extra just quit.”
A flicker of guilt crossed under his scowl. “They’re not giving me what I need.”
“That’s because they don’t know what you need.”
“But I said?—”
“Three different things. In three different ways.” She tried a smile to soften the blow. “You’re blowing up at people for not keeping up with changes they don’t know are coming, and you kept them three hours late last night.”
The crew edged around the set, throwing nervous glances between her and Josh’s thunderous expression. He eyed the crew and huffed through his nostrils.
“Are they really having panic attacks?”
“No, but they are freaking out that they’re getting fired.”
Josh ground his teeth. “No one is getting fired.”
“You should tell them that. And maybe apologize?”
“I’ll apologize,” he said, like he was offering to donate a kidney to his high school bully.
“Maybe wait until you aren’t scowling,” Cass said, and when he narrowed his eyes at her, the hint of a dimple appeared in his cheek. Good. The snit was over. She pressed her lips together and smiled. “Everyone wants this to succeed. We’re all behind you. We just need you to work with us on this.”
“Alright. Work with everyone,” he grumbled, turned and shouted at the crew, “Everyone, take ten.”
An audible sigh went up from the people around them, and Cass grinned as he gave her a look of begrudging acknowledgement. Not so much of a tyrant, after all. She checked the time on her phone. Shooting would wrap in two hours. She and the girls would head out after wrap to poetry night. The line up was strong. Maybe he would come. Not as a date. Only if he didn’t have plans.
A not entirely unexpected flutter stirred her stomach. Cass shifted over, and hesitantly said, “I was thinking?—”
A crash across the set snapped his head up. Josh tore his eyes away from her and the scowl took up residence on his face again. “Hold that thought,” he said, and strode over to where Stephen and Karl argued in hushed tones.
Of course. He was the most in-demand person on set. She’d monopolized hours—days, really—of his time over the past months. Cass could have written a paper after all the research she did leading up to the design meetings. It had been time well spent. After everything, Melanie had agreed to dial back the outlandish vision they’d had for costuming Brynne as the harried-but-glamorous astrophysicist and Dawson as her longtime collaborator and sometimes lover. Josh had jumped to agree with Cass’s designs.
Now that costume designs were signed off and in production, he wouldn’t need to spend as much time with her. Other people on the crew needed him more. Priorities and all.
Cass backed away until she drew level to where Dawson and his dialect coach were running lines. With the way he’d stepped between Josh and the grips earlier, she was surprised he wasn’t covered in scorch marks .
“What fire’s burning his butt?” Dawson asked, running a hand over his sandy hair.
“ Fire , not far ,” his coach enunciated. “And you’re dropping your ings again.”
“C’mon, you know I’m not method. I only need to talk like that when the cameras are on,” he replied with a dimpled grin, and the dialect coach tittered. “But here. What fire’s burning his butt?” he repeated, this time with all traces of his Tennessee drawl obscured behind a bland, mid-American accent, and the dialect coach hummed her approval.
“No fire. He’s just a bit tense.” Cass pasted on a smile and turned to the giant sweetheart towering over her. “I reminded him his crew wasn’t comprised exclusively of mind readers.”
“Cassidy, your voice is music enough to tame the savage beast,” Dawson said, bending the quote. “He’s lucky to have you here.”
That’s me. Making life easier for everyone . Cass shrugged. “I still don’t know why they made you lose the accent,” she said, straightening Dawson’s rumpled lab coat.
Dawson code-switched seamlessly into his character’s voice, posture changing from his easy lean against the props into a rigid stance. “Because Dr. Donovan Rykoff, NASA physicist, is from Washington state.”
Cass shook her head. Early in theatre in high school and college, she had learned she’d never be a triple threat. Singing? A joy. Dancing? Her one true love.
Acting? Her inability to hide her emotions precluded her from ever having more than bit parts. In a high school production, she’d been relegated to the role of Tree Number Two and still managed to sob loud enough to drown out the lead actor’s lines. Admittedly, he couldn’t project his voice to the second row. But still.
“They could have moved the character to Tennessee,” she pressed. “It’s so charming. ”
Dawson relaxed back into himself and scuffed his shoe on the set’s concrete floor. “Aw, shucks.”
No one had ever aw-shucked her before. Bex melted into a puddle of starry-eyed goo as she walked by, and Cass grinned at her. The accent was charming, and no doubt Dawson was a good-looking man. In a cute kind of way.
Not in a captivating way, with glacial eyes and a wicked smile. Not in a way that snared her attention whenever they were close enough to share oxygen. She turned to find Josh across the room, eyes locked on her even as he nodded to a grip, and the flutter under her skin surged back.
Maybe they didn’t even need to be sharing oxygen.
“Mrs. Westwood said it was distracting,” he continued, breaking her out of her dangerous train of thought. “Besides, don’t we all put on a face when we go out into the world?”
“Nope,” Cass said, rubbing her hands over the goosebumps that flashed across her arms. “I’m an open book. If I started hiding things, I’d forget who knew what and get in trouble.”
“That’s awfully refreshing. I never really got used to how fake this industry is, you know? It’s nice to meet someone who’s honest.”
“That’s me. Refreshing and honest as a bar of soap.” She shrugged sheepishly. “My mom used to wash my mouth out with soap if I ever cursed or lied. I still feel a little guilty when I see a bar of Irish Spring.”
The corner of Dawson’s mouth curled as he let out a gentle chuckle. “I promise I won’t tell anyone if you let a cuss slip out.”
Stephen beckoned Dawson to join a huddle, and Cass tore her gaze away from Josh, who was absorbed in a new conversation with Brynne. Both focused on the monitor in front of them, neither of them smiling, but it was just a matter of time until he turned those dimples on someone else. He’d given off player vibes the night they met in that theatre’s lobby.
Who knew how many women were currently on the receiving end of those dimples .
“I’m going to start calling you the bomb squad,” Libby said, brushing her hands on her jeans as she walked up. “Stephen said Josh was a little temperamental, but you diffused that whole thing before anyone died.”
“Dawson said I tamed the savage beast,” she said, trying to force a laugh. She doubted anyone could tame Josh. “Did you check out the lineup for the poetry reading tonight?”
“Oh, about that.” Libby’s face etched with a mixture of guilt and anticipation. “An old band Stephen and I used to see is playing downtown. I asked him if he wanted to check it out. For old times’ sake.”
Cass narrowed her eyes at her best friend. “What happened to staying away?”
“It’s no big deal,” she stammered, watching Stephen huddled with Dawson. “You should come.”
Poetry night had been a standing tradition for years. Cass’s shoulders dropped.
No, she shouldn’t come. She’d be in the way. Maybe Raina would show up this time. She was the one who’d started the poetry night tradition, after all.
“No. You two have a good time.”
A group of girlfriends giggled their way past Cass out of the bookstore’s narrow door into the crowded parking lot. She stepped aside to let a cozy couple bump by.
The entire audience at the poetry reading hadn’t been couples and friend groups. It just felt like that.
She could be in a pitiful mood, but she wasn’t. Definitely not. So, what if yet one more ex-boyfriend transformed into Mr. Commitment seconds after they’d ended things. Or if her oldest friend was lining herself up for another heartbreak and ditching her on the path to said heartbreak. Or that she couldn’t even muster the courage to ask a man who was just a friend to spend time with her.
No pity here.
Cass climbed into her truck and pulled out her phone to reread Raina’s text.
Don’t hate me but I have to bail
The kids are exploding from both ends and I will spare you the gory details
Won’t miss next time, promise!
Yes, she would. Cass sighed. Time to go home. There was a comedy special she’d been meaning to watch on streaming. Or she could wallow in a dark comedy. Or maybe Pride and Prejudice again. She was about to turn the ignition when a text banner flashed across her phone’s screen.
Her heart jumped into her throat and a breathy huff escaped her lips, and she glanced around as if the text was projected on her truck’s windshield.
After a year and a half of radio silence? Immediate delete. Don’t even bother reading it. You know what will happen.
Cass bit her lip as she opened the note.
hey cass its been a while
Oh, absolutely not. No way. Even if he did make her toes curl and heart race whenever they were together. Or when she thought about him. Like now.
Too late. She’d opened the message, and he’d seen the read receipt. Maybe it was good he had. She could leave him on read. That would show him. He deserved it for ghosting her, and whatever mysterious falling out he’d had with Alex. Jill never gave details, and Cass never pressed her.
And why now? Maybe he wanted to pick things up. She’d sent him a couple texts, but he’d ignored them .
She had promised herself she was done with him. He’d strung her along like a glittery charm on a cheap bracelet for years. That road led to a wild orgasm and a lonely morning after, to showing up to dates with another girl there and not getting what she needed. She moved to flip her phone upside down when it buzzed again.
just got back in town
Be strong. Even if he had been out of town, he couldn’t have sent a note to let her know he was leaving?
But he thought of her first? Cass felt her resolve shiver at the edges.
ive missed you
Something fizzed hot in her stomach. It wasn’t like anyone else wanted her time. She rubbed a hand over her throat and squeezed.
Dammit.