Chapter 8
Offering a Hand
Carly
Not to sound like a fangirl, but I can’t believe he’s actually here.
Once again, what the hell did I do?
Stella pulls me away from Crew, a panicked expression across her face, where all the color is drained.
“Ethan’s not coming,” she blurts out.
My jaw drops slightly. “What happened?” I quickly check my phone for any messages. Sure enough, a text from Ethan is the only thing in my notifications, from fifteen minutes ago. When I’m on set, my phone is silenced to avoid any awkward situations. Fuck, I should have looked beforehand.
Ethan
Hey, babe.
The guy is such a flirt, but it doesn’t bother me. However, the rest of the text sends me spiraling.
Ethan
My throat was hurting yesterday, and I woke up today to a nasty cold. Sorry, but I can’t make it.
I wish you and everyone else the best with filming and I hope you find another talented/hot actor to take my place <3
Though, who can be as hot as me? Lol.
I close my eyes and breathe in through my nose. I can have a panic attack when I’m in the comfort of my apartment or Carson’s room, but I refuse to freak out about the lack of actors in public.
Though when it comes to any negative feelings, I tend to forget that I’m not good at hiding.
Like now.
Walking back to the table, I grab the bag of dried-up mango slices and start munching on them, hoping that my favorite fruit will help calm me down. Crew looks up from mixing the bowl, noticing how I’m squeezing the bag, and frowns. “Are you good over there?”
“Just peachy.”
He shakes his head. “Squeezing a bag of dried-up mangoes? Sure, I’ll believe that.”
“And you’re the mind reader now?”
Holding his bowl with one hand, he carefully walks around the table to grab the bag of dried mangoes out of my grasp and places them back on the table. For some reason, the feeling of Crew’s hand caressing mine as he grabbed my snack caught me off guard.
“Not a mind reader,” he confirms. “Just smart enough to see that something’s stressing you out.”
“And you think I’m stressed?”
“If sarcasm is your way of expressing that stress, then yes. Much more than the average STEM student during midterms, and that’s never good.”
I sigh. “My male actor called in sick, and now I need to find someone else.” You know what? It’s fine. I can ask another friend in the industry about filling in for the time being. Sure, I won’t have enough money to pay them for just five seconds of screen time, but I think I can manage—
“I’ll do it.”
Right now, I don’t know who is more surprised at the words that just came out of Crew Shentu’s mouth: me or him.
I can’t estimate how much time exactly passes before I open my mouth. “Are you sure? I’m not forcing you to do this.”
“Carly,” he says, his deep voice sending chills down my spine. “You’re not forcing me. I’m offering.”
“But you hate acting,” I point out dumbly.
Crew shrugs casually, placing the bowl back on the table. “Exceptions can be made. I can’t spend all of my time making fake blood. You only need so much.”
The words make my heart flutter, because I never thought Crew would do that. He’d act for one scene just for me? Okay, maybe not just for me, but still—this is a big favor to ask, and I didn’t even ask him to do it.
Holy shit.
I take my time looking over Crew. The scene I’m trying to record doesn’t require him to show his face, and Crew’s tall enough to pass as a body double for Ethan, practically towering over my five-foot-seven frame, but not enough to make me feel small.
I appreciate that, and his jet-black hair could be viewed as a trick of lighting by the audience.
Be professional, Carly. You’re on a film set right now. Yes, I’m practically ogling him, but I need to see what’s best for my film. The top professors of the program are going to determine whether or not I will be graduating a term earlier than most of my peers, as I had planned.
“I don’t know what to say,” I mutter to myself before clearing my throat. “I owe you big time, Movie Star.”
He squeezes his eyes shut. “Just don’t call me Movie Star, and we’ll call it even.”
My brows rise to the top of my forehead. “Can you give me a better nickname to use?”
“Can my actual name suffice?” He shoots back. “Nicknames aren’t exactly my favorite thing in the world.”
“Less talking, more acting,” I order teasingly, grabbing onto his arm and dragging him closer to a room where Stella sits, brushing on a light layer of blush.
I step into the mostly vacant room. “Stells, could you come over here for a moment?”
Stella places her makeup down on the chair and makes her way over to us. She already has her black hoodie on and is practically ready for filming, but I have to run a few things by her first.
After explaining to her the situation, the three of us got to practicing, using the space that an old friend of mine graciously lent to me for the evening. We run through the ending a few times before deciding that we’re ready to film.
Crew changes into a crewneck, which he doesn’t seem to mind, especially because it will be covered in fake blood by the end of the shoot.
“Wow, I’m dying again,” Crew jokes.
I drop my jaw in horror; it practically unhinges like a snake’s jaw. “Crew!”
He sees my face, and his brown eyes widen in alarm. “I’m kidding. I’m kidding, Firecracker.”
My jaw immediately closes, and I come to my senses. “That’s fairly new.”
I instruct him to stand on his mark, which is a small neon green X on the ground.
Crew gets into position. “Well, if you won’t stop calling me Movie Star, then I might as well call you something else in return.” My heart flutters and my cheeks heat up at the thought of someone giving me a nickname. “Call it a fair trade.”
That’s more than a fair trade to me. Sure, I’ve had people call me iCarly in the past—because of my name and my love of filming—and other shortened versions of my name, but that’s where it usually ends.
I haven’t hung out with Crew outside of the bowling night and the one time he cornered me outside of the film building. But I didn’t think he could be as playful around me as he is now.
Be still, my beating heart.
After preparing the fake blood into little bags, I move over to my two amateur cameramen—Vinny and Ali—and instruct them on what to do for this. Ali, thankfully, is more familiar with this scene than her boyfriend, so she answers whatever question Vinny asks, which is a lot of them.
I decide that we’re ready after ten more minutes.
I close the clapper in my hand, shouting, “Action!”
Stella starts her Michael Meyers walk—as I have coined it—and Vinny follows behind at a slower pace with the camera, at an over-the-shoulder angle. She attacks Crew from behind, and the fake blood bag I taped to his back bursts.
The clip is good enough to the point where I ask Vinny to get another shot, gripping the clapper tightly in my arms.
Because I’m a perfectionist, I ask for two more takes of this, and we’re finished by nine o’clock, which is fairly good considering that I’ve been here since ten in the morning.
Once we settle down and Stella leaves, Crew and I are in the empty room. I’m looking away while Crew changes out of the crewneck that is now stained with fake blood. Some time passes before I allow myself to look and notice a speck of fake blood on his face.
“You got something right…” I gesture at his face.
He tries to wipe it off. “Did I get it?”
Crew did not get the speck of fake blood off his face.
I step closer to him and use my thumb to wipe the blood off his face. As I’m doing this, I feel a soft inhale of breath as my thumb makes contact with his skin. Whether it’s from him or me, I can’t tell. Maybe both.
“Thanks again for doing this,” I tell him, removing my hand from his face. “I owe you a big one, Movie Star.”
Instead of that gleam of annoyance I’m so used to seeing in those dark eyes of his, he nods, no clear sign of anything. For once, I can’t read his thoughts or predict what he’s thinking.
And it drives me crazy, because I can’t tell if he was as affected by that touch like I was.