2. Aster
— ? —
Aster
The studio lot is chaos and I love it.
There’s crew everywhere and equipment rolling past me and that particular hum a massive production makes when it’s spinning up, and this is my world, stages and studios and the constant motion of people making things happen. This is where I belong.
The soundtrack is going to be the best thing I’ve ever done.
I’ve been saying that about everything for about six years now, but this time I actually believe it, because the director wants the score and the songs to be one continuous thing instead of two separate departments that hate each other, and nobody has ever let me build something at that scale before.
I’ve got four tracks mixed and the rest cut.
Two of them are good. One of them is the best song I’ve written since the second album, and I woke up at three in the morning last week with the bridge already finished in my head, which hasn’t happened to me in years.
Except I didn’t sleep last night. I sat in my studio until four in the morning staring at my phone, typing and deleting messages to Flora, trying to figure out what to say and coming up empty every time, and when I finally crawled into our bed I lay there next to her not sleeping until I did.
She was already gone by the time I opened my eyes.
No note, no text, just cold coffee in the pot and the lingering scent of her shampoo in the bathroom.
“Focus, man.” Dylan snaps his fingers in front of my face. “You’ve got press in twenty minutes and you look like absolute roadkill.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“I’m serious. Whatever’s happening with Flora, you need to box it up and deal with it later. You can’t afford to be distracted right now.”
Box it up, like my marriage is just another item on a to-do list, which is apparently what I’ve been doing with it for a year.
I’m still trying to figure out how to fix things when the door to the soundstage opens and Flora walks in.
My heart stutters the way it always does when I see her, this involuntary response I’ve never been able to control. Even after everything, even after last night, the sight of her still stops me dead.
She’s carrying a massive basket of baked goods, her famous cookies and brownies and those little lemon cakes that every crew fights over.
It’s her thing, and it has been since we first started dating.
Every new project I work on, she shows up with food and wins over everyone in sight.
She started doing it because I can get controlling about my work, she told me once, and this was her way of balancing it out, making sure the people around me actually liked being there.
She’s so fucking good at it. Within ten minutes she’s chatting with the lighting guys like they’re old friends, making the director’s assistant laugh so hard he almost spills his coffee, getting the caterer to blush with a compliment about the coffee setup.
She remembers names. That’s the thing that gets me every time, because I’ve been doing this for six years with a full-time assistant whose entire job is to whisper names in my ear, and my wife met these people once, at a table read she came to for forty minutes, and she’s greeting the boom operator by his first name and asking about his kid’s surgery.
I watch her move through the room in a simple sundress that shows off her shoulders, her hair down today, those light brown curls falling around her face, and I can see the freckles on her nose from all the way across the soundstage.
Every man in this building has clocked her and none of them are going to do anything about it, because she’s got a ring on and a husband somewhere in the room, and I have never once in three years gotten tired of that arrangement.
I can’t look away from her, and I’ve been leaving her alone in our house waiting for phone calls I don’t make while I chase lights she never asked me to turn off.
I need to make this tour up to her. Maybe I can fly her out for one of the stops, book a nice hotel, actually spend some time together instead of texting her from the back of a car.
Or maybe when I get back I can clear my schedule for a whole week and take her somewhere she’s always wanted to go.
I’ll figure it out. I’ll make it happen.
She hasn’t looked at me once since she walked in.
“Aster.” A hand lands on my shoulder and I turn to find Cecilia Winsley smiling up at me. “I was hoping I’d run into you today. Have you had a chance to listen to my notes on track three yet?”
Cecilia is the female lead of the movie, a rising actress with an aggressive PR strategy and a habit of standing too close. She’s talented, I’ll give her that, and she knows exactly how to angle her body to make every interaction feel more intimate than it needs to be.
“Haven’t gotten to it yet,” I say, stepping back from her. “Been busy.”
“Of course you have.” She doesn’t move with me. Her eyes slide across the room to where Flora is laughing with a camera operator. “She seems nice, your wife. Very wholesome.”
There’s an edge in her tone I don’t like, something sharp hiding under all that sweetness.
“She is nice,” I say, meeting Cecilia’s eyes directly. “And she’s my wife.”
“I know that.” Cecilia’s smile doesn’t waver. “I just meant it must be hard for her, all of this. The traveling, the attention, all the women who throw themselves at you constantly. I’ve seen it happen before, you know. Wives who just can’t keep up with any of it.”
Before I can respond, Flora appears beside us.
“Cecilia, right?” She extends her hand with a warm smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “I’m Flora. I don’t think we’ve been officially introduced yet.”
Cecilia takes the offered hand like she’s touching something distasteful. “Flora. Of course. Aster talks about you so much.”
The lie hangs in the air between the three of us. I haven’t mentioned Flora to Cecilia once, because there’s never been any reason to.
“Does he?” Flora’s smile stays perfectly pleasant but I can see the steel underneath it. “That’s funny. He hasn’t mentioned you at all.”
An ugly look flickers across Cecilia’s face, surprise maybe, or anger, before the mask comes back down.
“Well.” She releases Flora’s hand. “I’m sure he’s been very busy.
The tour prep is just so intense, we’ve been spending hours and hours together in rehearsals.
” She looks at me, then back at Flora. “But I’m sure he’s told you all about that already.
The late nights, the chemistry tests, all those one-on-one sessions we’ve been having. ”
Flora’s spine goes stiff. I can see it happen, the tension running up her back, and I want to reach for her and explain that there haven’t been any one-on-one sessions and that Cecilia is exaggerating every single part of that, but before I can get a word out Flora is already turning away.
“I should finish making the rounds.” Her voice is bright and brittle. “Lovely to meet you, Cecilia. You should try the lemon cakes. Everyone says they’re to die for.”
She walks away without looking at me, and Cecilia watches her go with a satisfied expression that makes my stomach turn.
“She seems exhausted,” Cecilia says, fake sympathy dripping off every word. “It must be so hard for her, being left alone all the time like that. Some women just aren’t built for this life, you know?”
“That’s enough.” My voice comes out sharper than I mean it to. “Flora is worth ten of anyone in this building.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean anything by it.” Cecilia puts her hand on my arm, her fingers curling around my bicep. “I’m just saying, if you ever need to talk to someone who actually understands this world we live in.” She squeezes gently. “I’m right here for you.”
I step back and remove her hand from my arm. “I don’t need to talk. And I definitely don’t need it from you.”
Her expression flickers with surprise and then a flash of anger before she smooths it away.
“Of course.” She backs off gracefully. “See you at rehearsal tonight, Aster. Try not to stay too late. Wouldn’t want to keep your wife waiting.”
She disappears into the crowd and I look around for Flora, but she’s already gone.
Dylan appears at my elbow. “What the hell was all that about?”
“Nothing.” It wasn’t nothing, though. I didn’t like the way she talked about my wife, didn’t like the implication underneath it that Flora somehow doesn’t measure up to the rest of them.
“That woman is trouble,” Dylan says, watching Cecilia’s retreating back. “I’ve seen her type a hundred times. She wants something from you, and she thinks you’re going to be the one to give it to her.”
I shrug it off, because Cecilia’s just handsy the way a lot of actresses are handsy.
Everyone in this industry stands too close and touches too much and calls each other darling.
It doesn’t mean anything at all, and Dylan has been reading hidden threats into perfectly ordinary people since he was twenty-four years old and got me out of a bad management contract by being the most paranoid person in the room.
It’s a useful quality in a manager and an exhausting one in a friend.
“You’re doing the thing,” he says.
“What thing.”
“The thing where you decide I’m being dramatic so you don’t have to think about it.”
That’s the second time in two days somebody’s put that word in the air, and I don’t love it either time.
“I need to find Flora,” I say, already scanning the room.
I make my way through the soundstage, nodding at crew members who wave at me, dodging equipment being rolled across the floor while somebody runs a sound check that fills the whole building with bass.
I finally spot Flora near the exit, saying goodbye to the catering manager, and she’s laughing at something he said so I just stand there watching her for a second.
The way she tilts her head when she listens.
The way she touches people’s arms when she talks to them, that easy physical affection that makes everyone in a fifty-foot radius feel like they’re her best friend.
She’s holding the empty basket against her hip and there’s powdered sugar on the strap of her dress and she has no idea it’s there, and I want to walk over and brush it off with my thumb and then keep my hand there, and I want to do it in front of everybody.
I catch up with her in the parking lot, but she’s already in her car with the engine running.
“Flora, wait.”
“I need to get home,” she says through the cracked window. Her voice is flat and tired. “I have to take Biscuit to the foster coordinator. He’s getting adopted tomorrow.”
“I didn’t realize it was tomorrow.”
“I know you didn’t.” She puts the car in reverse. “I’ll see you tonight. Or tomorrow. Or whenever you decide to come home.”
She pulls out of the parking space before I can respond, leaving me standing in the lot watching her taillights disappear around the corner.
There’s a dog living in my house. I’ve seen him sleeping at the foot of our bed on the nights I’m actually there, I’ve heard my wife talking to him in the mornings while she makes coffee, and he’s been with us for three weeks.
Until she said it out loud just now, I could not have told anyone his name.