Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
JOSH
“No shit, she’s not talking to you,” Stephen said, yanking his luggage from the carousel. “I wouldn’t if I were her, either.”
Josh swiped through the messages coming in after turning off airplane mode. Ping after ping, but nothing from her. Why would that change now? She hadn’t texted him in weeks.He swallowed the hollowness that had taken up residence in his chest and ordered a taxi.
With how everything had been going, he wouldn’t be surprised if the cab was rear-ended on the way to Melanie’s office. That asshole Murphy needed to change his law.
A trailer of props scheduled to return to Vancouver was stuck due to union negotiations. A master hard drive with ten minutes of final footage was gone. Just, gone. Two grips had come down with food poisoning after an incorrectly labelled tray of sandwiches was left out for three days. At least they were merely projectile vomiting and not anaphylactic. The crew had given him a berth wide enough to maneuver a tanker, partially due to the fact that Josh’s preferred communication style had reverted to reaching triple decibels.
None of that mattered.
Cass had been the last to enter a room and the first to leave, head tucked, her lyrical laughter gone silent. He gave her as much space as he could, only asking her questions about the film, and only when he couldn’t ask through someone else. She replied, but nothing more than the barest possible answer with her eyeline somewhere over his shoulder. Once, a fleeting second, she met his eyes, and the hurt painted across her features in bold strokes carved his soul out.
“Cass,” he had pleaded when he finally broke. “It’s been days. Please talk to me.”
She’d kept her eyes on the samples she carefully returned to their racks. “What has changed?” Her voice was a whisper. From a desire to be discreet, or that he’d caused her to lose her voice, he didn’t want to know the answer. He gripped the sleeves of his jacket to keep himself from reaching for her and watched her fade from the room.
Every night he had sat in his rental, watching the calendar flick over to the day he’d leave. Watching his phone for a call or text from Cass that never came.
Now, this.
The retired rail executive’s sprawling corner office Melanie took over the week after she became Mrs. Westwood held the original mid-century modern decor intact. It also held Josh’s favourite view in the entire world. Overlooking Stanley Park, with the viridian tips of the Lion’s Gate Bridge just visible over the towering cedars, and the North Shore Mountains disappearing into the low overcast.
He didn’t see any of it, storming the perimeter of the office and ignoring Brynne and Dawson’s faces on screens.
“How did cameras keep getting on my set?”
A slew of new pap photos flickered across the office’s largest monitor: Cass and Dawson everywhere. Cass and Dawson huddling at craft services, grinning over sandwiches. Cass and Dawson laughing outside his trailer, her hands all over his chest, as usual. Cass and Dawson walking across the set, his hand on the small of her back.
Why the fuck were they by his trailer? Was it just a fitting correction? Josh had barely stomached watching Cass with her hands on Dawson to adjust his costume. Why did Dawson have his hand on her? She hadn’t said if anything had happened between them. She’d said she didn’t think of Dawson that way, in so many words. Or maybe she hadn’t told him everything …
No. It was him who didn’t tell her everything. She’d been honest with him from the start, opening her heart to him from day one. All the while he’d kept himself from her.
He’d fucked up. Now he was paying for it.
Melanie lounged behind her burnished teak desk with her heels kicked up on the unused writing blotter. “Stop being such a diva,” she said blithely, stirring her drink in lazy circles. “You can lock it down as tight as you want, but it always gets out.”
He hoped her paper straw dissolved in whatever fancy coffee she’d ordered.
“So, we’re not going to control leaks?” Brynne asked.
Melanie peered at her calendar. “No, but we can control the story with any new photos that get out.”
Who gave a shit if they controlled leaks now? There was nothing to control. Filming was done. No more chances for opportunistic paps to sneak on set. He was home. Back to his empty condo and list of fuck buddies he had no interest in seeing and an estranged wife he couldn’t convince to end their marriage.
“Might not even be an issue. Reshoots will only take a week, max.”
Wait. Josh stopped pacing. “What the fuck is wrong with my movie that it needs reshoots?”
“We lost a master file with fifteen minutes of footage. We can’t just ask the audience to imagine what that might look like.”
Ten minutes of footage , he thought. Saying that out loud wouldn’t win him any points at the moment. He clamped his lips shut.
“Plus, test audience responded well to your adaptations, but the female d emographic is clamouring for a shirtless scene.” Melanie turned to Dawson, whose face sunk. “You can thank every superhero movie ever for setting that standard.”
“Didn’t know I was signing up for a superhero movie,” he mumbled, but put down the doughnut he was eating with a resigned sigh. Brynne looked a combination of sympathetic and gleeful.
Josh swivelled his head from Melanie to Dawson. “We know this is bullshit, right?”
“Yep. You can dry your tears with all the money we’ll make from this when it’s out.”
Fuck. “My movies don’t need reshoots,” he said stubbornly.
“It’s our movie.” Melanie stared him down. “And our movie needs reshoots.”
A prickle ran over his chest. She was right. He flopped into a nearby chair and glared at the floor. They were going back to Calgary. Because they needed to fix the movie he’d poured everything into. The one that he loved, and the one he’d fucked up.
And he would be close to Cass and not able to touch her.
The phone was going for a trip, whether it was through the window or Melanie’s calculating face. Or better yet, Dawson’s, so Cass wouldn’t have anything to admire. Instead, he said, “I’ll pack a bag.”
“Great.” Melanie clapped her hands. “I want to see those photos you took of Brynne back in October. Second unit wants to see if we can use those for the behind-the-scenes featurette. Terry and Stephen are working on reshoot schedules now.”
His chest squeezed. The roll of film still sat in the camera, undeveloped. Brynne’s few pictures at the start of the roll. And the remaining shots of Cass at the dance studio.
“Yeah,” he said, voice cracking. “I’ll send those over.”
The tight space of his home darkroom held the familiar, sweet acetic reek of developing chemicals, lit only by the single red bulb glowing overhead. Josh poured the developing solution over the roll, sealed the container, and set the timer. He leaned against his bathroom sink and waited.
When the timer dinged, he took the next step. And the next. Each stage a meditation before the anticipation of seeing the final result. To see if the photos he’d taken were blurry or sharp, framed well or trash. He stared at the container like he could see the film developing through the opaque sides.
Cass had glowed in the dance studio that night. The light had cradled her, shading over her in soft waves to roll over her body in a luminescent caress, glinting off her eyes like fireworks.
No wonder she always looked good. He hadn’t known then she’d sewn everything he’d ever seen her wear. How her clothes hugged her thighs, the strip of belly that always showed. Every detail carefully considered. She brought that skill to her work. He’d been mesmerized watching her rip apart samples until each bias was perfect, each cut exact.
The timer dinged. Dump, pour. Every drop cleanly back into the container. Repeat. Wait.
The woman who would roll in ten minutes late, not worried about the rust on her truck. The woman who left her kitchen in a mess. Who wore Portuguese flannel jammies and smeared fancy green goop all over his face just to see him look ridiculous. Who believed in him, who put up with his shit. Who’d shared her secrets with him, her vulnerabilities. A book she’d held open, letting him read every chapter.
The timer dinged. He turned the developer case over. Agitate, dump, wait.
While she’d held her heart out to him, he’d held his own shut. Closed himself off, guarding the ugly parts of himself while she’d let him see every imperfect part of her.
No wonder she didn’t believe he loved her. He hadn’t shown her.
His eyes prickled, and he caught himself from wiping his chemical-covered hand over his wet cheek. He stripped his gloves, cleaned his equipment, and set his timer.
The circles under his eyes had darkened in the weeks since she walked away from him. Since he’d made her walk away. He sagged on his couch and dragged his eyes to the mural. A dark jungle, painted over months, hundreds of hours, a place to lose himself and mediate, to let ideas come to life in the verdant forest. But all he could see was Cass. Pressing her against the wall. Her hair, wild on the pillow beside him. Her sweet cinnamon taste when he slipped his tongue into her mouth. Her laughter floating like treble notes through the air, the sweet vibrations imprinting themselves on his psyche.
The memory of what she felt like crowded against him. Soft and warm, the curves of her body fitting against him. Jasmine and sweet sweat. He tossed an arm over his eyes and let himself wallow in the tightness in his chest.
The timer’s buzz jolted him awake. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, forcing his feet into his make-shift darkroom.
The first set of negatives were perfectly in focus. At least he hadn’t lost his touch with photography. The two of the six photos he’d snapped of Brynne months ago when they were positioning the boom mics could go straight into a magazine. They’d be perfect in the behind-the-scenes featurette Stephen was filming. Melanie would be thrilled.
He moved over to the shots of Cass and had to put down the photos to breathe through the crush of his chest. Gripping the edges of the sink until his fingers turned white, he blew out air through pursed lips. He swallowed and picked up the focus finder again.
She was magic. The blur around her, kinetic and free. Candid shots he’d snapped before she was ready, three shots in succession. In the last one, her gaze seared into the lens like she could see him now. The scarf he’d thrown over the lens muted the light around her, caressing her movements. Her eyes wide, smile open, inviting him to drink deeply of her. How her lips were parting, like a question was ready to spring forth.
Do you want me the same way I want you?
If he’d let himself that day, she would have kissed him. He could have had her all this time. Instead he tried to throw her at other men to convince himself he didn’t want her. Or didn’t need her.
In a lifetime of mistakes, this was the biggest he’d made. And they’d lost all that time together. Time he might never get back.
He unclenched his fist, releasing the negatives so as not to destroy them. He’d destroyed enough in the last months. Mistreating delicate things and leaving scars, visible or not.
He closed the darkroom door and sat on his favourite spot on the floor, a handful of steps back from the mural. The usual dream he could fall into staring into its depths was gone. Now it was just paint on a wall. Random splashes of lime and sage, moss and olive, in shapes that didn’t matter anymore. Nothing else mattered anymore.
Except her.
The screenplay hadn’t been touched since he’d graduated law school. Longer even than Sirius Darker had sat unfinished. Josh pulled out Cass’s fan art, leafing through her portfolio. Vibrant, kinetic colour danced across the pages. He could see it all, through her eyes.
A layer of dust covered his keyboard. A phone number and call me Chloe xoxo scrawled onto the notepad beside it.
Chloe? Oh. Right. The friend of Stephen’s cousin who’d stayed at his condo. He crumpled the paper and tossed it in recycling before booting up his desktop.
He opened the document and began writing.