XIV Jack
XIV
Jack
As I stand over the remnants of three long trays of deli sandwiches, I feel eyes on me. I’m late to set, and this is what I get—the punishment of trying to make a meal of the bits of crust and odds and ends that no one wanted.
I wave at Brianna as she hustles by, and she gives me a sly smirk back. It’s enough to make me check that my fly is zipped. Why is everyone looking at me like they’ve read my diary?
I grab a PA—Manny—and ask something I never do. “Hey, I’m sorry to be a bother, but would you be able to get me a cup of tea?”
Manny nods, head bobbing like he can’t stop it. “I’ll have that for you right away.”
“And, can I ask you a question?” Am I really going to unleash my paranoia on this poor guy?
Manny nods again.
“Is there... something going on today?”
Manny looks at me quizzically. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
I’m underslept and overtired. I don’t have the energy to give this conversation a practiced British obtuseness. “I know I probably sound like a silly actor... but I get this sense that everyone is looking at me.”
Manny glances to his left, then his right. I can tell he’s running over what to say in his head. After about thirty seconds of this, I realize I’ve put him in the uncomfortable position of having to tell an actor the very thing an actor never wants to hear: the truth.
Manny reaches into his pocket, pulls out his phone, taps a few buttons, and hands it to me.
“Hot Stuff! Actor Jack Felgate Cozies Up to Star Girlfriend Ginny Friedrich.” An Us Weekly headline. Underneath, a zoomed-in, pixelated picture of Ginny next to me, and me still in my Nick Carraway costume like, well, a fucking wanker. I’d been too antsy about asking CJ for a drink to change out of it after we shot, then too disappointed and distracted to take it off after.
“You hadn’t seen this yet?” Manny asks, skepticism crossing his face.
“No, I haven’t... but everyone else has?”
Manny nods, smaller this time, looking fearful that I might take this news out on him. I hand him his phone back.
“Uh, thank you.”
“Right back with that cup of tea.”
Add this to the growing list of the ways I fucked up over the last twelve hours. I didn’t mean to upset CJ, I didn’t mean to compound my own agony by going to a party I knew would only make things worse, and I didn’t mean to disrespect Wardrobe, which needs that costume back for washing and pressing. That costume that is currently crumpled up in a ball next to the shower in the house I’m renting. I have to go to them and apologize profusely and arrange for a messenger when what I want to do is hide out in my trailer.
Then, I see CJ, clipboard in hand, in a ribbed T-shirt and a pair of jeans, an outfit too much like the one she wore the first time I met her for me to bear in my state. My heart soars at the sight of her, then nosedives when her eyes brush right over me as she continues on her path toward Brianna.
If everyone saw the picture of me with Ginny, CJ saw. Well, fuck. What I told her about Ginny last night is all true, but it’s the easy version, and I want CJ to have the full picture of me. So that if she chooses to write me off, at least I’ve fully earned it.
CJ and Brianna have their heads together when I approach. “CJ, a word?”
“Yes, Jack?” Her brows are lowered, and Brianna looks surprised by her tone. CJ sighs and blinks her eyes a few times.
“May I borrow you for a minute?”
She passes the clipboard to Brianna and starts off toward her office. I follow in silence. At the door, she spins on me, like she’s waited exactly as long as she can.
“What is it, Jack?”
I rush to close the distance between us. I reach around her to open the door, knowing she’ll regret even the chance that someone could have witnessed this conversation. My head goes light at our proximity: her back against the door; my arm inches from her waist. We step inside, and CJ shuts us in, but we don’t move to sit.
“I’m so sorry about last night,” I say, instantly regretting my vagueness.
“Clearly you got what you were looking for.”
It takes me a second to understand what she means. What was it that I was looking for?
Then it dawns on me. “You think all of this has been—you think I was chasing after a shag or something?”
CJ throws her hands in the air. “What else am I supposed to think?”
I take a deep breath. Tell her. “I thought it was obvious because I’m not good at hiding these things—and before you mock me, ‘you’re an actor,’ all that, believe me, I know. But I’m going to be direct. I fancy you. I did when I met you, which I know also sounds silly, but I really do now. Even more. And I can’t help that we both happen to be working on this movie, which I know makes it seem both complicated and like a bad idea, but I’m really glad we are because otherwise I don’t know if we would have ever found each other again. And the more we work together, the more I get to know you, the more interested in you I am.”
CJ looks at me stone-faced, only her eyes moving, scanning me. As though she’s performing some sort of analysis to determine my intentions.
“Sorry, it’s kind of hard to take you seriously when you say words like ‘fancy,’” she says, and I realize I have been holding my breath.
She leans against her desk, her arms crossed; I rest my hand against a storage tower.
“I assume you saw the picture. Of me with Ginny last night.”
She crosses her arms tighter. Don’t be bumbling , I tell myself.
“On-screen, Ginny and I have amazing chemistry.”
She cringes, and I hold up a hand.
“Off-screen, there’s nothing. No spark. We tried—really tried—to make a go of it, both because we do enjoy each other’s company and because we knew it would be good for our careers. I’m embarrassed to say that I really considered just accepting that—a sort of long-term platonic, performative relationship that might have helped get me other things I’ve been working so hard for. And I know other people in this industry do it.” God, I’m rambling. “But I realized that’s the line for me: that I’ll show up for all the parties and be spotted reading a popular novel so I can get cast in the adaptation. That I’ll work back-to-back projects and live out of a suitcase. But I won’t settle for a ‘marriage of convenience,’ or whatever kind of thing you would read about in Jane Austen. And Ginny and I—we’ve talked about this. She has a great childhood love, and I don’t know what she’ll ever do about that. But she also knows what it’s supposed to feel like and that we don’t have it, is the point.”
CJ drops her arms to her sides, and I take that as a sign to continue.
“At the risk of sounding drippy, I’ll say one more thing: That night with you at Swan Dive... something clicked for me. It was perhaps the start of me realizing that I was unwilling to just settle into a nice, cozy PR relationship. Even with a person I consider a close friend.”
CJ squares her shoulders and inhales a deep breath. “You know, for you, who you date is basically part of the job, but it’s not for me. I’ve seen some pretty nasty stuff on sets before when crew members have gotten mixed up with actors. The actors bragging about it and making women on the crew out to be easy targets.”
I shake my head. “Awful,” I say and then pause, giving CJ the chance to continue, forgetting she’s not as long-winded as me.
“Look,” I say, taking a step toward her. “Whatever happens between us, I need you to know, I would never, ever let it affect you professionally. I swear on my life, my mum’s life, my dad’s life, my brother’s life, the lives of both Liam and Noel Gallagher, who as an Englishman, I assure you, are very important to me.”
At this, CJ fights a smile.
Without saying a word, she closes the space between us, grabs the back of my neck, and kisses me. Like she needs me. Like she won or lost a battle with herself. I can’t tell. She pulls away just as quickly, but she keeps her hand on me, and I rest mine on the small of her back, feeling the material of her shirt against my fingertips, her skin underneath it.
“We still work together. It’s not really up to you if it affects me professionally...” CJ trails off, and I watch her, unaccustomed to her not knowing exactly what she’s going to say. She rests her forehead on my cheek. “I like you, Jack, I really do. I sort of hate how much I do. But I can’t be part of your world.”
“Aren’t we part of the same world?”
“My life is quiet. I don’t want to be referred to as a ‘Mystery Blond’ on DeuxMoi because you and I went to dinner at Horses. And I can’t risk Agnes’s privacy.”
I can picture the headline as she says it, the angry comments insinuating I “betrayed” Ginny or that CJ “stole” me. I can’t blame her for not wanting to thrust herself—or her kid—into the spotlight.
“The thing is”—I look at her, pleading—“it’s not as hard to avoid the cameras as Ben Affleck would have you believe. Listen, after the movie wraps, will you give me a chance? A date somewhere not on the TMZ bus tour route?”
She nods and smiles sheepishly, and as she begins to turn away, my hand goes to her wrist, pulling her into my chest. She tilts her face upward toward mine. “ Jack ,” she whispers. “Fourteen days.”
“It’s nothing, practically nothing,” I reply, doing some of the worst acting of my entire life.