43. Erika
ERIKA
Stefan’s jaw caught the morning light, and Erika was trying very hard not to notice.
She stood at craft services, her coffee gone cold and untouched in its paper cup and her mark waiting in the sand—a little X of gaffer tape, stage left—and she kept her eyes on the ocean because the ocean didn’t make her chest hurt.
Stefan was thirty feet away, laughing at something one of the grips said, one hand in his hair, and the sound carried across the sand and hit her as it had been doing since Martin’s office.
“Blocking in five!” The AD’s voice carried across the set.
Erika dumped the cold coffee and wiped her palm on her shorts.
Her shoulders ached from holding herself rigid.
She’d need a licensed masseuse and a bottle of wine.
She’d been avoiding the angles that put her in his eye-line, avoiding the setups where they’d have to touch or speak or breathe the same air, and she’d become an expert at strategic bathroom breaks and urgent conversations with the craft services guy about muffin freshness.
Anything to keep ten feet between her body and his.
And underneath all of it, Martin’s voice on a loop: the sooner Cruz understands that, the better for everyone. Especially him.
“Anneliese.” Martin’s voice cut through the noise, and her whole body went rigid.
He walked toward her with his clipboard, and the crew parted around him. He stopped too close. He always did. His cologne hit her first—oud with an antiseptic note underneath—then his hand on her shoulder.
“The camera picks up everything,” he murmured, voice dropping so only she could hear. “Every flicker you’re trying to hide, that’s what I want.” His hand dug into her shoulder, and a bruise formed under the pressure. “The truth beneath the performance. Can you give me that, Anneliese?”
She smiled at him as she’d been smiling at him for three days—dead-eyed, agreeable, the performance of a performance—and said “Of course” and meant I want to break your fingers.
“Places!”
The AD’s call sent everyone scrambling. Erika walked to her mark—stage left of Stefan now, close enough to smell the sandalwood on his skin—and fixed her gaze somewhere over his shoulder because looking at the ocean was easier than looking at him.
The slate clapped. The camera’s red light blinked on.
Erika became Luna. Heartbroken, desperate, reaching for a man who’d already left her behind.
Walk toward him. Stop. Deliver the line.
Hold the silence while he turned away. She’d done it seven times already and each take got harder because Martin kept finding fault—her makeup, her posture, her delivery—and by take seven, the crew had gone quiet.
Everyone knew what was happening and no one would speak up.
“Again.” Martin didn’t even stand up. “And this time, Anneliese, try to remember you’re supposed to be an actress.”
She hit her mark. Walked toward Stefan, stopped, looked up. His eyes met hers and the mask slipped—not Luna’s, hers. Her voice cracked on the last word of “I thought you were different.” And she meant it, all of it, everything she couldn’t say to him pouring through the one line she had.
“Cut.” Martin rose from his chair. “Better. Not good, but better. Moving on.”
The crew exhaled. Erika stood on her mark and waited for her legs to stop trembling. She caught Martin watching from his chair, not smiling. Beyond him, near craft services, Isabelle Vance stood motionless with coffee she hadn’t touched. She wasn’t watching Erika. She was watching Martin.
Stefan came up beside her. “Every take was perfect. He’s fucking with you.”
She knew. She also knew that if she turned to look at him, she was going to crack, and if she cracked on set, Martin would see it and catalog it, and she couldn’t afford to give that man one more thing to use.
“I have to get to wardrobe,” she said, and walked away before she gave herself away.
The wardrobe tent was empty. She slipped inside and pressed her back against a rack of costumes. For a moment she stood there—eyes closed, hands shaking—trying to remember what it felt like to not be performing.
“Four wardrobe checks.” Lily’s voice came from the entrance. “Three bathroom breaks. One deeply suspicious conversation about muffin freshness.” The tent flap fell shut behind her. “You want to tell me what’s going on, or should I keep counting?”
“The blueberry was stale.”
“Chica.” Lily stepped closer. Her voice dropped.
Done playing. “You’ve lost ten pounds. You flinch when he walks past. And you’re running from the one person on this island who would burn it down for you.
” She held Erika’s gaze. “I’ve been on sets for twelve years.
I know the difference between stress and fear, and what I’m looking at right now is not stress. ”
The truth was right there, pressing against her teeth—Martin’s office, the photograph, the private sessions, the deniable threat wrapped in reasonable language—and none of it could come out because Lily was a fixer, and if Lily knew, she would act, and if she acted, Martin would reframe it like he reframed everything, and Erika would become the girl who caused all the trouble and Martin would walk away clean the way he always walks away clean.
“I’m handling it.” The lie came out flat, and Lily heard everything underneath it.
“Okay.” Lily squeezed her arm. Brief, grounding. “But this doesn’t expire. When you’re ready to stop white-knuckling it, I will come find you.” Her grip tightened. “That’s not a threat, chica. That’s a promise.”
She paused at the entrance. “I saw Isabelle during that last round of takes.”
Then she was gone, and Erika stood alone with the costumes and the fragile, terrifying hope that she wasn’t completely alone.
The villa door stuck. She shouldered it open, stumbling through the dark living area and into the bedroom.
She only made it three steps past the foot of the bed before gravity won.
Her back hit the wall and she slid down until the plaster bit into her spine.
The sounds she made were raw and animal-like.
Her tote bag had landed beside her, contents spilling across the tile.
Lipstick. Tissues. Call sheet. She reached out, her fingers hooking the edge of the coffee table to pull the new sketchbook toward her.
It was open to the drawing she’d started in his villa.
Stefan’s profile in soft graphite. She’d been saving it.
She ripped the page out.
The first stroke was a slash across his jaw. The second obliterated his eyes. She ground the charcoal harder and watched the careful lines disappear under black. The rage cracked through her. Not relief, but a fury looking for somewhere to land. The stick snapped.
She grabbed another and tore through two more pages—his hand on the steering wheel, the curve of his shoulder in morning light—before her arm slowed.
She sat there with her hands coated in charcoal, the destroyed pages curling around her on the tile, and looked at what was left in the sketchbook.
The bulk of him. The careful observations she couldn’t finish destroying.
She closed the cover.
She pressed her palms to her face—charcoal grit, tears mixing with dust—and broke. When the sobs stopped, she sat in the wreckage and waited for regret, and what came instead was nothing. Scoured clean.
Annie Banana:
Lily called. You okay?
Annie Banana:
Eri, call me back.
Annie Banana:
I’m not above flying down there. Don’t test me, Bean.
Three messages. Twelve missed calls over the past two days. Anneliese was trying—for the first time in months, her sister was actually trying—and Erika couldn’t type I’m fine without it tasting like one more lie she’d have to maintain.
She locked the screen and reached up, sliding the phone into the nightstand drawer facedown. She couldn’t look at it. If she did, she’d call Stefan.
She pulled herself off the floor and walked a few feet to the bathroom. The mirror showed a stranger. Mascara tracked down her cheeks, charcoal smeared across her forehead. She washed it away and watched the black swirl down the drain.
She lay back on the bed, too drained to even pull back the covers.