Chapter Seven Kiss
The next morning, I woke early. I wasn’t sure what to wear.
I didn’t want to seem like I was making an effort to look attractive, so I wore clothes I would have worn to hang out at home with Bexley or Ben.
Then I called work to take a personal day.
I hadn’t taken a day off since I’d started work a year ago.
While he was in the shower, I made French toast and bacon for breakfast because I didn’t think he’d eaten breakfast yesterday, and I kept remembering feeling his ribs last night.
It had been a long time since I’d had someone to cook breakfast for, and I got out the good syrup, the stuff Bexley’s uncle made from the trees in his back forty.
He came out of the bathroom dressed, with his hair still wet.
“Come and eat,” I said.
He looked hesitant, the same way he had when he’d helped himself to my leftovers last night, like he wasn’t used to accepting things from people.
“You have to eat,” I said.
“They give us lunch at work.”
“Only lunch?”
He shrugged, like skipping meals wasn’t a big deal.
“I don’t want you to go hungry.”
He looked at me and said, “Thanks.”
I decided right then that he’d never miss another meal while he was with me.
I noticed he was wearing his ripped clothes.
“Am I dressed okay?” I asked.
“Sure. They’re not filming you.”
“They don’t mind what you wear?”
“They give me stuff to wear.”
He cleared his plate pretty fast. I asked him if he wanted more, but he said he didn’t, and I didn’t push him.
On our way there, he said, “I’ll warn you: watching people make a film is boring. If you get too bored, you can leave.”
“I don’t think I’ll be bored.”
I didn’t know what I’d expected the set of an indie movie to look like, but I was underwhelmed. When he’d said “low-budget,” I didn’t anticipate how low-budget.
They were filming in a house in a sketchy part of the city.
They were in one big room with a couch that had stuffing coming out of it.
He introduced me to the people there and then went to get me a chair.
Then he went off to get changed. Nobody paid any attention to me.
Except this one guy. And I recognized him.
He’d played the drug dealer in Wanton Town.
Edgar. I could tell from his expression and the way he walked that he thought he was hot shit.
I caught him looking at me appraisingly.
I’d never been checked out by a guy before.
I almost gave him the finger, but I didn’t want to get Eddie in trouble.
Then Eddie came in wearing a brown leather jacket and jeans and a T-shirt without any rips.
Then they started filming. And what they were filming was him and Edgar making out on the couch in front of me.
Watching him do it on TV was one thing. Watching him actually doing it in front of me upset the shit out of me.
I tried to logic myself through it. If Bexley was in a movie, and he was making out with this guy, would it bother me?
Actually, yeah, it would, because that guy was an asshole, and Bexley wasn’t an actor, and he wouldn’t be in that situation to begin with.
But it wouldn’t bother me on the level that this was bothering me, like my guts were tied in granny knots pulling tighter and tighter until it hurt.
I felt like getting up and leaving would be giving up. I’d competed in a dance contest after breaking my toe in the previous round. When I really wanted something, I didn’t quit. And I really wanted him.
What made it bearable was that the director kept cutting and making them reposition.
“Stop what you’re doing with your arm, Eddie,” he said. “It’s blocking your head.”
He and Edgar would stop making out, the energy between them would shut off instantly, and Eddie would pull back from the other guy. Once, Eddie winked at me.
A few times, the director put his hands on Eddie to move him. When he did it to Edgar, he acted super compliant, going soft under his hand and doing whatever the director wanted.
They kept doing more takes. Filming took four hours. Four hours of me watching them make out.
When they were done, he got up off the couch and went up to me.
“Let’s go,” he said.
I’d never wanted to hear those words more. But I was also pissed off. I followed him into this shitty little trailer outside.
“So,” he said.
“So?”
He took off his leather jacket and snatched off the T-shirt he was wearing. Like, without any warning. I looked away.
“Sorry,” he said. I heard him move away, and then a door shut.
When I looked up, he’d gone, presumably into the washroom. He came out a minute later wearing his street clothes.
“That guy you were with is the same guy from your other movie,” I said.
“We get cast together a lot.”
“Are you friends?”
“No.”
“You ever fucked him?”
He hesitated, and those tiny knots in my gut pulled tighter.
“We fooled around once,” he said. “Off the set. We’ve never fucked.”
“Did you shoot when you were fooling around?”
“Yeah.”
“So it’s not all acting with him.”
“It happened a long time ago.”
“Fuck, Eddie. Where’s the line? Off the set, you fuck him for free. Then on the set, you kiss him for money, and you tell me you’re just acting?”
“We’ve never fucked,” he said. “I’ve never kissed him off the set. I’ve never seen him naked. We just fooled around.”
“When you say ‘fooled around,’ what does that mean?”
“He did something for me that I like.”
I wanted to puke.
“I wasn’t turned on today,” he said. “Not from him touching me.”
“Where’s the line, Eddie? What if I’m not here, and you have a scene with him and get yourself all worked up and decide to do some extracurriculars with him afterward? Are you telling me it doesn’t count because you just ‘fooled around’?”
“I wouldn’t do that. I fooled around with him once. I’m never doing it again.”
“Fuck, I don’t know. I need to process this, okay?”
We went back to the apartment. I didn’t say a word the whole way, and he didn’t try to talk to me.
I couldn’t even look at him. When we got home, I went to my bedroom, shut the door, and sat on the bed, holding my head tight.
The pain got worse and worse. Then, it peaked and eased off, and I could think clearly. I wiped my eyes.
I left the bedroom and found him in the kitchen, pinning a note to the fridge.
He looked at me. “I’m leaving. You don’t need to ask.”
“What?”
“This isn’t going to work. I’m not going to push you.”
“What?”
“This is why Trish and I broke up. I don’t want to go through this again. I’m not quitting acting, and I’ll probably get cast with that guy—Edgar—again, and I can’t promise you there won’t be any sex scenes with him or anyone else. If you can’t handle me being an actor, I need to go.”
He put on his backpack and opened the door. He was really leaving.
“Don’t go,” I said.
He didn’t move.
“I want you to stay,” I said. “I’m not asking you to quit acting or to quit acting with him. Just answer one question for me.”
“What?”
“Do you care about me?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m not some experiment for you? Turn the straight guy bi?”
“That’s not why I’m here.”
“Do you even want me that way?” I felt all kinds of weird asking him that. Part of me wanted him to say “no,” and the other part was going to fall apart if he did.
“Yeah,” he said. “So much.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Then why have you been so hands-off with me? Clearly, you don’t have a problem putting your hands on other people.”
“I don’t want to push you into something you’re not ready for.”
“What makes you think you know what I want better than I do?”
“You were drunk two nights ago.”
“I’m sober now.”
“You have to tell me what you want. I can’t read your mind.”
“Put your backpack down and hang up your jacket.”
He did. And I started shaking. Because he’d called my bluff. Only I didn’t know if it was a bluff.
I paced up and down, feeling like I was about to explode, while he watched me.
I stopped pacing. All that pent-up energy was making me shake.
“Come here,” I said.
He took a couple steps closer to me, not close enough to touch me.
He was waiting for me, so I leaned into his space, hesitated a second, then touched my lips to his, gently.
It was the most awkward thing I’d ever done, and that included my first kiss with a girl and every drunken make-out session I’d ever had.
I pulled back immediately and rubbed my forehead.
Then I laughed because I felt stupid. “I kissed you.” Great observation, Porter.
“I noticed,” he said. “You want to do it again?”
“Yeah.” I mean, I’d been called a great kisser by more than one of my girlfriends, and I had to show him I knew what I was doing. So, I kissed him properly this time.
This was not like kissing my girlfriends. This was incredible, wild, intense. He tasted like the air before a thunderstorm, and my mouth was full of sparks. And then suddenly, it was too much. I pulled back fast, and I couldn’t get enough air, and I was hyperventilating and squeezing my eyes shut.
“I can’t,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he said softly.
When I looked at him, he looked more there than he had been, and his pupils were so big they’d pushed the green out, and his irises were gold.
“If you don’t want to do anything else, it’s okay,” he said.
“Yeah. I...feel really strange right now. I don’t know how to deal.”
“Why don’t we have dinner,” he said calmly, “work on your model, then get some sleep?”
“Yeah.”
“Back in a sec.” He went off to the bathroom. He was giving me space, which was exactly what I needed.
I went into the kitchen and had to grab hold of the sink. I felt dizzy. I tried to breathe normally, and I wiped my forearm across my eyes because they were watering.
By the time he came back, I’d calmed down. I made us dinner, and we ate in front of the TV. He was giving me lots of space now, like he knew I needed it.
How could I want him so much and still be afraid of him?