Chapter 5 Sadie
FIVE
SADIE
They had been filming for three weeks now, which meant Sadie had perfected the art of pretending she did not care.
She hovered at the edge of the set with her arms crossed, doing her best impression of someone who was absolutely not emotionally compromised by what was happening twelve feet in front of her.
Quentin and Tessa were mid emotional showdown, voices low, restrained, the kind of intensity that made the entire soundstage hold its breath.
The tension was thick enough to slice with a craft services butter knife, dull edge and all.
Even the boom operator looked glassy eyed, like he was one trembling confession away from texting his ex.
This was not even the first time they had shot this scene.
It was take three. Sadie knew the lines.
She knew where Tessa’s voice would crack.
She knew the exact beat where Quentin would inhale like the air physically hurt.
She had watched them build this dynamic for weeks now, watched the slow burn of resentment and longing layer itself into something almost unbearable.
She hated that she knew that. She hated that she anticipated it. She especially hated that when Quentin stepped closer, jaw tight, eyes bright with unshed emotion, her stomach dipped on cue like she was the one being confronted.
Get it together, she told herself. It is acting. He is acting. Unfortunately, he was very good at it.
Tessa whispered her line, soft and wrecked, and Quentin’s face shifted in that subtle way he did, the micro expression that said everything before he even spoke. Sadie felt it like a physical impact.
Across the set, someone sniffed. Sadie rolled her eyes at absolutely no one.
This was ridiculous. They had been living inside this fictional angst for weeks.
She had heard Quentin complain about early call times and bad coffee.
She had watched him trip over a cable and swear creatively at a lighting rig. He was not some tortured romantic hero.
When he reached for Tessa’s hand, hesitated, then let it fall instead, Sadie’s chest tightened in open betrayal of her pride.
She shifted her weight and pretended to study the lighting grid overhead. She was not invested. She was observing professionally. Objectively. For work.
Quentin’s voice dropped, rough and controlled. “You don’t get to walk away and pretend this didn’t matter.”
Oh, come on. Sadie’s fingers dug into her own arms. This was manipulative. That line delivery was manipulative. He knew exactly what he was doing with that slight break at the end. He had been refining it for days.
Tessa’s eyes shimmered. “Maybe it mattered too much.”
Somewhere behind Sadie, a production assistant exhaled like he had just completed a marathon. Sadie stared straight ahead, jaw locked, heart pounding against her will.
And when Quentin finally looked up, gaze cutting past Tessa and landing accidentally, impossibly, directly on her for half a second, Sadie’s stomach flipped so hard she almost lost her balance.
Next to her, Devi screwed the cap back onto a bottle of setting spray and leaned over. “You’re staring.”
Sadie’s head snapped up like someone had just set off an air horn behind her. “I’m not staring,” she said quickly. “I’m… monitoring.”
“Mmm,” Devi said. “Monitoring Tessa’s legs. This is take three and your eyes haven’t moved.”
Sadie let out a quiet, relieved sigh—thank God Devi hadn’t noticed she was basically orbiting Quentin with her eyeballs. “They’re not even legs at this point, Devi. They’re a public works project. Someone should be filing permits.”
Tessa Beaumont wasn’t just a great actress.
She was the kind of stunning that made people stop mid-sentence.
Her hair fell perfectly down her back like it had never known struggle.
Her waist was tiny, her legs were endless, and somehow she managed to look elegant instead of threatening, which honestly felt rude.
Sadie could practically hear the distant swell of violins and imagine a dramatic wind effect every time Tessa so much as turned her head.
“It’s not jealousy,” Sadie said, as if defending herself from an imaginary jury. “It’s irritation. Pure biological injustice.”
“Mm,” Devi said, noncommittal. “Also, she called you ‘Shadie’ the other day.”
“Exactly,” Sadie said. “She is French and vaguely rude. It is not even real rudeness. It is chic disdain.”
“She told me my contour looked ‘very... American.’”
Sadie frowned. “What does that even mean?”
“I don’t know,” Devi said. “But I haven’t slept since.”
Sadie sighed. “If she were outright mean, I could hate her properly. But she is not. She just says ‘hmm’ and looks at your shoes like they disappointed her.”
Devi snickered. “At least you don’t have to do her makeup.”
“Yet,” Sadie said grimly, “one day karma’s going to hand me her face and whisper, ‘Bonne chance, potato.’”
Devi snorted. “You’re not a potato. You’re more like… a spiced yam.”
“I’ll take it,” Sadie said, trying to sound casual, even though her throat had already started pulling tight.
It had been a long time since anyone had called her a potato.
Rebecca, her best friend, had been the only person who ever could.
They’d joke about it all the time. Sadie would catch her reflection bare-faced in bad lighting, no makeup, no lashes, no illusions, and mutter, I look like a spud.
Rebecca would never let her get away with feeling sorry for herself.
“Potatoes are comforting,” she’d say immediately. “They’re dependable. They’re the backbone of society. No one ever shows up to a meal and thinks, Ugh, potatoes again.”
She said it like gospel. Once, she ate hash browns for dinner four nights in a row and called it “personal alignment.”
Sadie swallowed and refocused on the set, but the memory hit like a sucker punch. Rebecca wasn’t here anymore. She had died years ago. And now Sadie carried these little echoes of her, like whispered nicknames and stupid jokes, through every day.
Rebecca would have loved this whole mess. The chaos, the people, the low-level drama. She would have been glued to Sadie’s side, whispering nicknames and quietly rating everyone’s jawline like it was Olympic-level judging.
And she definitely would have had opinions about Quentin.
Not because he was sweet or decent, because he wasn’t, but because he was the kind of hot that made people forget what they were doing and walk into furniture.
Tall, broad-shouldered, tan like he slept on a surfboard, Quentin Ramos had that effortless, smirking attractiveness that didn’t even try, which somehow made it worse.
His ego somehow managed to be bigger than his biceps.
The way he had mocked her party planning had cemented him in her mind as an insufferable, man-shaped problem.
She had busted her ass to throw that party, MacGyvering decorations out of whatever scraps she could find on short notice.
And what did he do? Discredit her work faster than she could say ‘yeehaw’ and offend poor Avery in the process.
“I swear he glows,” Sadie muttered. “Like he runs on premium testosterone and an unregulated amount of confidence.”
Devi squinted in Quentin’s direction. “Wow. Yeah. That beard is really committing today. It showed up early. It trained for this.”
“It’s not a beard,” Sadie snapped. “It’s branding. Scruffy in a ‘luxury cologne commercial’ way, not a ‘lost his wallet and now lives at the bus station’ way.”
“Important distinction,” Devi said solemnly. “And you have to touch it. The beard. The face. The whole cursed situation.”
“With my hands,” Sadie added. “My innocent, union-protected hands.”
Devi shook her head. “Unbelievable. People would pay obscene amounts of money for that jawline and you’re over here acting like it bit you.”
“People also pay to walk on hot coals. Doesn’t make it pleasant.”
Devi glanced at her. “You hate him an impressive amount. Why?”
Sadie didn’t hesitate. “Because he’s an A-list asshole.”
“That’s vague,” Devi said. “That’s, like, a job requirement.”
“He knows he’s hot,” Sadie said. “He knows the camera loves him. And he walks around like gravity personally signed a contract for him.”
“So… vibes.”
“Weaponized vibes,” Sadie corrected.
Devi laughed. “I still cannot believe you’re furious about working with Quentin Ramos. He’s basically America’s emotional support movie star.”
“I am mad,” Sadie said. “I have to fix a jawline that could cut glass while pretending I don’t want to slap it on principle.”
“In twenty minutes,” Devi added cheerfully.
Sadie closed her eyes. “Fantastic. I’ll start my breathing exercises now.”
“You sound ecstatic.”
“I am one minor inconvenience away from launching a makeup sponge like a throwing star.”
Devi patted her arm, solemn. “You girlbossed too close to the sun.”
“I soared on winged liner, caffeine, and spite,” Sadie said. “Now I must pay the price.”
Devi sniffed dramatically. “A cautionary tale.”
The real problem was not just Quentin’s face. She could survive that. What she could not survive was proximity.
Every time she worked on him, her fingers brushed his skin, warm in a way that felt unfair. Not regular human warm, but solar-powered, charging-station warm. Like he had his own climate system and she had wandered directly into it.
His beard was rough beneath her fingertips, his scent maddeningly good, something smoky and clean and deeply unnecessary. Not cologne exactly. More like heat and firewood and the concept of a man who had never once struggled to open a jar. Sadie hated all of it.
“Cut!” Otto Wachtel, the director, snapped, his accent faint but unmistakable, the kind that sharpened certain consonants and made criticism feel like a formal proceeding.
“Quentin. The line is, ‘Regina, a man is determined by his forbearance and the grit of his own two hands.’ Not… whatever you just delivered like a man arguing with a goose.”