20. Luke
LUKE
The studio gives me a parking spot with my name on it before I've shot a single frame.
That's how I know it's real.
The machine starts the next morning.
A publicist named Grant. A schedule with my name broken into fifteen-minute blocks. An actual document about who Luke Wolfe is now. Reformed. Focused.
They want photos. A sit-down. A controlled rollout. Everything controlled. Everything a rollout.
For once in my life I do what they ask.
The table read is in a windowless room with great coffee, snacks no actor would dare touch, and forty chairs.
Danny Rivera is there when I walk in. He booked the part of my best friend. He dies in act three. I have to cry over his dead body.
"Luke." He grins. "How's it going?"
He stands and shakes my hand like we're old friends.
"Good to be working with you."
Rebecca comes in.
She crosses the room and I feel it before I see it — the way the air shifts when someone that magnetic moves through a space. She looks at me for just a second longer than necessary. Something assessing in it. Then she's past it, hand extended, professional smile in place.
"Luke. Good to have you."
I go straight to her and thank her for having me on the project.
Max talks for ten minutes. Welcomes everyone. Rebecca and me especially, the leads. Walks us through his vision like he's already seeing it twenty feet high. Says he's excited. Hopes we are too.
We read it around the table.
I push in the first few pages. Too hard. I can hear it — the performance creeping in. I pull back. Find the thing underneath.
Danny's good. Annoyingly good. He doesn't perform the way most actors do at a read, pushing, showing off for the room. He talks. Like the words are his.
I push a little.
He doesn't push back. He meets it. Easy. Like my intensity is weather, and he brought a jacket.
The studio loves him. Max keeps looking at Danny the way you look at something you don't have to worry about.
At the break he's in the corner on his phone, smiling at it.
"Sorry," he says to the room. "My kid lost a tooth."
He FaceTimes her right there. Forty industry people in the room and Danny Rivera is looking at the gap in a six-year-old's smile going, "Let me see it. Let me see it."
I look over. Cute kid. His wife's in the frame behind her, laughing at something off camera.
We finish the read. Before anyone can leave, the studio grabs Rebecca and me.
A photographer. A backdrop with the title on it. Grant arranging us like furniture.
"Closer," he says. "Luke, hand on her back. There. Hold it."
Rebecca leans in. Easy smile, no effort to it.
"They'll run these everywhere," she says, barely moving her mouth. "Brace yourself."
"For what?"
"The internet."
"Are you seeing anyone?" she asks.
"Yeah," I say. "I am."
She raises an eyebrow. Smiles. "Prepare her."
The shutter goes. Grant beams.
"That's the one," he says.
Outside Danny and I watch Rebecca get into a black SUV. It pulls away smooth and quiet.
"Damn," Danny says. "She's something, isn't she?"
"She sure is."
He nods like that settles it. We walk back in.
Ronny shows up the next day. Ex-military builds fighters for the movies. something about him reminds me of my father. Three hours, my gym, every morning before the heat turns mean.
I introduce Anna as my girlfriend. She shakes his hand and then just looks at him for a second.
"I love you in Mission Impossible."
Danny grins. "You caught that?"
"Twice. You were the best thing in it."
“You saw that?” I say.
"Thank you. That means a lot," Danny says.
Danny looks at me. Back at her.
"Luke," he says. "I love her.”
She says something else that makes him laugh on the way in and I follow them both inside.
Anna takes Zeke for a walk.
One afternoon I come in between sessions and she's got Chloe over. They're in the living room running a scene. I stand in the doorway long enough to watch. They're both good. I don't interrupt.
Danny and Ronny come over for a sparring session.
He's faster than he looks. I'm stronger. Ronny runs us until our shirts are soaked through and Danny's still talking.
He catches me in something I can't get out of and pats my head while I tap.
"That's one," Danny says.
"That's luck."
"Write it down." He's already grinning.
I get him twice before lunch. He keeps score out loud and somehow it's still in his favor in the story he tells.
By Thursday he's a fixture. Trains, showers, eats whatever Nina puts in front of him.
"There's no bread in this house," he says, like he's been wronged.
"No bread," Nina says, not turning around.
"How do you live?"
"He doesn't," she says. "He just looks like it."
Danny laughs so hard he has to sit down.
One morning between rounds he nods at the walls. There's nothing on them.
"My wife wants you guys over for dinner."
"When?"
"Friday." He pauses.
“Let’s do that.”
He's back on the phone at the water cooler before I can say anything else. Carpool. A recital. "Come by sometime," he says. "Kids would lose it. I've still got an astronaut suit in the closet from Halloween."
"I'm not the astronaut."
"They don't know that."
Nina makes lunch for all of us.
When we're done, Ronny takes off. Danny stays. We talk. Get to know each other a little.
Anna comes back from the walk. I can tell something's off before she's through the door. She gives Zeke his water, says she's wiped, heads upstairs.
Danny watches her go.
He grabs his bag. "I'm out. See you tomorrow."
We do this every day. Some days we run lines.
Danny lives like the cameras don't exist. I used to know how to do that. I'm not sure when I forgot.
I get home late from a costume fitting. The house is dark except for one light.
Anna's on the couch. Not reading. Sitting there with Zeke's head in her lap, looking at the city.
"You're up," I say.
"How'd it go?"
"Good. Long."
I tell her about working with a director this good. The training. Danny — I thought I'd hate him. He's like a brother already.
"I'm nervous," I say.
"My acting teacher would say you're excited. That's good."
I sit down next to her. She doesn't say anything for a minute.
"You okay?"
"They sent the schedule today."
"Yeah?"
"The scene's next week." She looks at her hands. "The one I told you about."
I don't say anything.
"I keep telling everybody it's no big deal. Priya did it. Jade did it. There's an intimacy coordinator and a closed set and it's fine, it's the job." Her voice is even. Until it isn't. "And I'm so scared I can't breathe."
"Anna."
"My mother thinks I'm a lawyer who lost her mind. Maybe she's right. I'm thirty years old taking my clothes off on camera so strangers will decide I'm interesting enough to?—"
She stops.
Her face goes, all at once, the way a thing goes when you've been holding it up too long.
I pull her into me.
She cries into my shirt. Not the pretty kind. The real kind, her whole body in it.
I don't tell her it's going to be okay. I don't tell her she doesn't have to do it. I don't say any of the things people say to make crying stop faster.
I hold on.
Zeke presses against her other side.
She cries until she's done. She goes quiet. She falls asleep against my chest with her hand still gripping my shirt.
I don't move.
After a while I say, "Danny's wife wants us over for dinner Friday night."
“He’s married?”
"He's married with two kids."
"Danny?"
"Yeah, too bad for you.”
"I was actually thinking for Chloe." She looks at me. "Wait. Is Luke Wolfe jealous? Oh my God. That's my dream."
"Your dream is to make me jealous?"
"It is. And you are." She gives me a long kiss. "I love it."