11. Jess #2
I leaned down to whisper in Faye’s ear. “Did you pick this out for him?”
She shook her head. “No, he did.”
I was stunned. “This is in book four.”
“He was up all-night reading,” Faye explained and then shushed me.
I didn’t blame her. The best part was coming up.
“So let us charge into the breach, our hearts true and our fists held high. The forces of shadows know that we will not be denied, that we will not falter. Let the beat of our hearts be our cadence. Let every breath we take push us forward until the Stygian Abyss is nothing but a stain on our boots and erased as a threat to our realm. Together. Together we will prevail. Together we will save Fiona. Together, we will bring forth a new age.”
“Cut!”
The crew went nuts and applauded. Daniel looked over at me and gave me a wink. That zing ripped through me so hard, it made me gasp.
“Fantastic, Danny!” the director shouted. “I’d like to get a few more takes with a couple of different angles. Are you still up for it?”
Daniel smiled and gestured around at the staff congregating around the set. “As long as the crew isn’t sick of me yet.”
“I guess you’re our good luck charm.”
I turned to see Britta smirking at me. “Of course, you started all of this with your review, so I guess that’s fairly ironic,” she said with an edge in her voice.
“You must be Britta,” I said, forcing a grin.
“I am! So glad you remember me. It’s a good thing he’s finally pulling his act together.”
“Oh, stuff it, Britta,” Stella snarled at her. “Leave the girl alone.”
“Screw you, hag,” Britta snarled back.
“Faye, would you like to meet my friends?” I asked, hoping she’d say yes, so I could get away from the squabble.
She didn’t have to say anything; she wanted to get away from Britta as well. We walked towards Bray and Bennet who were standing with twin expressions of amazement on their faces. I smirked at them. “What did you guys think?”
Bennet let out a long sigh of contentment. “Brayonna my wife, I’m sorry, but I’ve fallen in love with another man.”
“No way, doughboy. I saw him first.”
“I think Jess has dibs on him,” Faye snarked.
We all turned to her in surprise.
“What? I’m fourteen, not oblivious,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You’d have to be blind to miss it.”
“Bray? Bennet? This is Daniel’s very observant niece, Faye,” I said, gesturing towards the girl who was embarrassing the hell out of me.
“I’ve seen all of your stuff, but I prefer Jessica’s Patreon,” she said bluntly and then blushed.
I snorted with laughter. “And apparently Faye has exquisite taste.”
“She’s blunt, cool, and smart. Can I have her?” Brayonna asked.
Paige laughed as she came up behind Faye. “Sorry. She’s mine.”
Brayonna turned to her husband. “Bennet, I want kids now.”
Bennet shook his head. “Sorry, I think I still have a chance with Daniel.”
“Action!”
Daniel tore through his monologue, his performance improving on this take.
As he performed, I looked over to Paige. “I hear congratulations are in order.”
Paige let out a small sigh, putting down her phone. “Thanks. I’m still getting used to the idea.”
“I’m sure you’ll be great. I am curious though, why now after thirteen years?”
Faye and Paige shared a look. “Danny didn’t tell you?” Paige asked.
Something in the way she worded that made me feel jumpy. What was Daniel hiding now? “Tell me what?”
Paige gave me a tight-lipped smile, staring daggers at her brother. “Of course he didn’t. That’s just like him.”
She shook her head before gesturing toward my train wreck of an outfit. “Come on. We should probably talk. And find you something to wear. Your costume looks like it lost a fight with a pack of rabid goats.”
I turned back to Bray and Bennet. “Do you guys want to come?”
“I’m sorry, but I’m making plans for my future husband,” Bennet quipped.
Brayonna snorted. “Go on. I want to see Daniel strut.”
Paige and Faye took me back into the studio and down a long hallway.
There were pictures of cast members and posters from As The Minutes Tick By on the wall, some of them going back thirty years.
We reached his dressing room at the end of the hallway, where a cardboard star hung on the door with “Uncle Danny” written on it in almost illegible scrawl.
“Your work?” I asked Faye.
She rolled her eyes, but there was a small upturn at the corners of her lips. “He refuses to take it down. I made it when I was four.”
“Yeah, Danny’s a sentimental sort,” Paige sighed, opening the door and walking inside. When I walked in, I saw exactly what she meant.
Various theatrical posters lined the walls including, of course, a poster of The Scotsman.
The long makeup mirror, however, was covered with personal pictures.
There were a few photos of a smiling, bearded man and a young Danny working on various cars.
There were also some of the cast members and multiple pictures of Danny and Sebastian.
The majority of the pictures were of Faye from every phase of her life until now.
One of those photos stuck out to me. A picture of Danny with a younger Faye, both with wide smiles.
Paige pulled out a sleeveless T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants from a duffel bag and shoved them into my hands. “I didn’t hit the gym today, so they should be clean.”
I took the clothes, but I kept studying the picture of Daniel and Faye. “I’ve seen this picture before.” I squinted, realizing the image was cropped in a strange way.
Paige chuckled. “Good eye. That’s Danny and Faye backstage at the Kismet Sizzle concert.
I let out a gasp. In all the photos I’ve seen online, Faye had been cropped out. I checked again and saw it: Kismet Sizzle’s hand on Danny’s shoulder. “Wait. So that picture in all the tabloids was bogus? That song wasn’t about Danny?”
“Oh, it was about Uncle Danny, all right,” Faye sneered. “She couldn’t keep her hands off him at the concert. He wasn’t interested, and it pissed her off. I didn’t even get an autograph.”
“The one-time Danny cashed in on his fame,” Paige said, shaking her head. “And it backfired on him.”
“Why didn’t he release the real photo?” I asked as I took off my brocade and pulled Paige’s T-shirt over my tank top.
“Because he and Mom made a deal when he took his first important job that he’d never use me in any publicity,” Faye explained.
Thinking back to my research, he always dodged the question, even when I interviewed him at the Con. Not even when he was sitting and having a drink with me and Sebastian. He always kept Faye out of the conversation.
I had to smile. “Sounds like him. So, what’s this thing he hasn’t told me?”
Paige shook her head in amusement. “Danny’s sense of honor shows up in weird ways. I took the new position, because this is the last season of As The Minutes Tick By.”
“What?” My mind thought back through all the notes I made preparing for the interview. Not one of them mentioned the show being cancelled.
“Uncle Danny probably didn’t want you to take that into account if you were going to endorse him,” Faye explained.
“He didn’t want you to feel sorry for him if you thought he was losing his soap opera job here and the Tyrant role.” Paige said with a shrug. “Then again, that’s probably not the only thing on his mind.”
The words “some girl he’s falling in love with” echoed through my head again. I pulled the sweatpants up underneath my skirt, trying to focus on the conversation.
“Danny’s greatest quality and biggest fault is that he’s always putting other people's needs over his own,” Paige replied with a sigh. “That’s why he left Juilliard. To come home and take care of us after our father died.”
I had bent over to pull off my skirt over the sweatpants but stood up straight, turning to Paige. This didn’t add up at all. “Wait. I thought he left school, because he got an acting job.”
I thought back to our discussion on stage, he said that right? I had read multiple articles about him online when I was studying for our interview.
“He called it an ‘opportunity’ to keep us out of the spotlight when he took this job. Really, he came home to take care of a seventeen-year-old single mom and his niece,” Paige explained.
For a brief moment, I could see a flicker of guilt on her face.
“He had a full ride and dropped out, all to take care of us. Never batted an eye, never complained about it.”
My whole perspective of him shifted in a matter of seconds.
Gone was the thought of him in tabloids and being an ambitious actor stuck in a soap opera.
My eyes went over the entire mirror, and I saw all the pictures of Faye and Paige.
They were his world, and in a few months his job and family would be gone.
No wonder he had a meltdown on set. A thought then occurred to me, and I cast a side-eye towards Paige.
“Are you telling me all of this to make Danny look good?”
She chuckled, giving me a sly grin. “Is it working?”
“It must be, because she just called him Danny,” Faye said with a mischievous smile.
My face turned beet red. It worked, but I wasn’t about to give them the satisfaction of an answer, even though the stupid grin on my face gave it away.
“Is there anything else super noble about him that he’s not telling me? Does he put on a cape to save kittens from trees? Or is he teaching orphans to read in the evenings when he’s not performing life-saving surgeries on puppies?”
“No, but there is something we want from you,” Paige countered.
I bit my lip. “Well, I really wanted to see the finished trailer before I-”
“Oh! Not that,” Faye said, pointing to the neatly piled Tyrant books on the dressing room table. Her face flushed, and she began stammering. “I was, um, hoping in a way… if you didn’t mind. If you would… If it is okay with you-”
“Spit it out, nerd,” Paige said, giving Faye a nudge.
“Would you autograph my Tyrant books?” Faye blurted out. She took a moment, trying to regain her composure. “I’ll never get JKC to sign them, but I love your content, and since you’re related-”