Chapter Six
The dining room of Noir & Nectar breathes pretension like a waiter’s judging eyes after he asks, “Still or sparkling?” and you respond with “Tap is fine.”
Low lighting catches the edges of crystal glasses while conversations amongst the diners buzz with the careful modulation that begs look at me, but don’t really see me.
In the center of it all, Petra Montgomery sits across from Gavin Bradford at a table positioned like a stage which, she’s beginning to realize, is exactly what it is.
Her sleek black dress feels like armor tonight. Wrong kind of armor. The kind that draws attention rather than deflects it. She reaches for bread, her fingers brushing wine glass stems while phones flash not-so-discreetly from neighboring tables.
This is Gavin’s ecosystem. He feeds off it, grows stronger in its dim, artificial light.
“This place is great, isn’t it?” Gavin says as he leans back. “Tough to get a reservation, but you know me. I find a way.”
Petra forces a smile. “You do.”
Her truffle-dusted pappardelle sits untouched, growing cold while the room’s collective gaze grows heavier. She can feel it pressing against her shoulders like an unwelcome coat.
“You know, babe, I’m not really about this kind of thing though,” Gavin gestures vaguely toward the bustling theater around them. “All the flash, the attention. It’s not me.”
Petra’s eyebrow arches. “You’re not about the attention, but yet you always seem to find it.”
His smile could sell toothpaste. Hell, it’s probably sold worse things.
“Strictly business. It’s about my brand.
Visibility.” He spreads his hands as he indulges himself.
“When the new James Bond eats at the hottest restaurant in New York, people talk. They post, and the algorithms get to work. Free publicity. That’s how the game is played. ”
Before Petra can untangle the contradiction between not being about attention and playing the visibility game, a young woman approaches their table, phone clutched like a lifeline.
“Excuse me, but…I’m such a huge fan. Would it be okay if we took a picture?”
His face lights up with the brightness that makes people believe in magic, in goodness, in the possibility that celebrities are just like us but better.
“Of course.” Gavin rises, places a hand on the girl’s shoulder. The iPhone camera flashes.
“Thank you so much!” The girl practically levitates with joy. “You’re amazing! I can’t wait for the Bond movie to come out!”
She scurries back to her table. Gavin settles into his chair, wine glass resuming its position in his hand like he’s picking up a conversation that was never interrupted.
“See?” Ruby liquid swirls lazily. “She’ll post that on Instagram or TikTok or whatever. Now the James Bond buzz is alive on her feed. More visibility, more hype for the film.”
Petra forces another smile as she takes a sip of her wine. “It’s convenient, isn’t it? How visibility just finds you.”
“Convenience has nothing to do with it. It’s strategy. You have to create opportunities, Petra. Visibility doesn’t come to people who hide in the shadows.” The comment finds its target. Not a direct hit—more like a paper cut that stings worse than it should. But Petra doesn’t bite.
Petra takes a sip of her wine, suppressing her bubbling frustration.
Sometimes, when Gavin is at his most unbearable, Petra forces herself to remember the person he used to be. Not Bond. Not “Hollywood’s next great hope.” Just Gavin.
She remembers the nights in their cramped walk-up when they lived off pad thai cartons and ambition, both of them rehearsing their respective disciplines for each other, offering enthusiasm and hope.
He used to sit on the floor running lines while she sewed ribbons onto her pointe shoes, watching her like she was the most fascinating thing in the world.
Back then he asked questions and waited for answers.
He was kind in small, ordinary ways: warming her hands between his when the radiators gave out, staying up late to rub her feet after performances, reminding her, sincerely, that someday all the bruises, all the pain, would be worth it.
Before the premieres, before the flashing cameras and the free designer suits, he’d been the one person who seemed to understand what it meant to keep getting up after every rejection. An actor, an artist, struggling alongside her. Empathetic and attentive.
But that version of Gavin has been swallowed whole. She tries to spot him sometimes in the man adjusting his smile for the paparazzi or rehearsing anecdotes in the mirror, but the empathy’s gone, siphoned off and replaced with artificial polish.
And maybe that’s what hurts the most: it’s not that he’s become unbearable, but that once, he wasn’t.
She puts her glass of wine back down on the table as Gavin scrolls through his phone while chewing on a piece of bread.
“The opportunities are coming in like crazy, babe. You wouldn’t believe these endorsement proposals my agent keeps sending to me,” he says, eyes glued to his phone.
“Speaking of opportunities,” she says. “I’m still hoping mine will come with the company.”
Gavin’s brow furrows. “Your promotion?”
“It’s frustrating.” The words tumble out.
“I’ve done everything right—paid my dues, taken every role they’ve given me, smiled through it all.
And yet, somehow, I keep getting leapfrogged by people who know how to play politics.
” She pauses. “The last soloist who was promoted to principal…it’s rumored she slept with the artistic director. It’s just…it’s demoralizing.”
Gavin leans forward and sets his glass down. “Petra, that’s how the world works. You want to get ahead? You play the game. It’s not pretty, but it’s reality.”
The restaurant suddenly feels smaller. Not in a good way. “You’re saying I should sleep my way to the top?”
“Petra, jeez. Don’t be so literal.” His hands rise in surrender, but his eyes don’t retreat.
“But you have to be willing to do what it takes. That’s what I did.
I was an out-of-work actor living in a van, and now look at me.
Some of that success, actually most of it, was because I knew when to leverage my connections.
I got here because I wasn’t afraid to make tough decisions.
Sure, my looks helped too. But at the end of the day, it’s about survival, babe, and whoever’s willing to do the most to survive will thrive. ”
Petra stares at him across the small distance of their table—a distance that suddenly feels vast. Her chest tightens. “So, you think I should compromise everything I believe in to get ahead?”
“I think you need to ask yourself how much you want it. The rest is up to you.”
Before she can process his words, another fan materializes, a young woman, late teens, phone shaking in her hands. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry to interrupt, but are you Gavin Bradford? Could I get a picture? You’re, like, my favorite actor ever.”
She watches the transformation again. Instant. Complete. Gavin’s smile slides into place with mechanical precision, and he stands, smoothing his jacket like he’s preparing for a red-carpet moment.
“Of course. Happy to.”
Petra settles back in her chair, wine glass becoming a prop in a play she’s no longer sure she wants to be in.
“Thank you so much. I can’t believe this. Could you maybe…sign something for me? I don’t have anything except…” The girl grabs Petra’s napkin as Gavin removes a pen from an inside jacket pocket.
“A napkin it is.” His signature flows across the napkin in a flourish. “There you go.”
The girl stares at him like his face contains the secrets of the universe. “You’re amazing. Seriously. Thank you so much.”
“Always happy to meet a fan,” his voice as smooth and harmful as triple distilled moonshine.
Petra finishes her wine. The glass empties, but her discomfort overflows. As the girl floats away, Gavin leans back into his chair, demeanor relaxed as ever.
The meal drags on in a haze of perfectly twirled pasta and even more perfectly rehearsed small talk. Petra smiles when she’s supposed to, lifts her glass at the right moments, lets her nods fall into the polite rhythm of someone hitting their cues.
From the outside, she must look like the picture of contentment, an elegant woman having dinner with a man who graced this month’s cover of Vanity Fair.
But inside, her thoughts keep swirling, restless. Each of Gavin’s lines lands with the same practiced gleam, polished and empty, like decorative silverware that’s never actually been used.
And slowly, with a kind of sick clarity, Petra realizes: this is who Gavin is now.
There is no hidden chamber of tenderness tucked beneath the surface, no vulnerability waiting to be unearthed.
The man across from her is exactly who he appears to be.
Some people are Russian dolls, complex, possessing layers within layers.
Others are mannequins, like Gavin—all surface and empty inside.
Uptown, Liam LeClerc sits at his too-small kitchen table, prodding at a carton of lo mein like it personally wronged him. A single limp noodle dangles from his chopsticks, mocking him with its refusal to be eaten.
The TV drones in the background, some sitcom re-run he’s already forgotten the plot of. The laugh track erupts at all the wrong moments, the sound of strangers finding joy in punchlines that don’t land.
Liam’s thoughts start ping-ponging around, loud and unhelpful. The kind of thoughts that don’t even have the decency to be profound, just petty and circular.
Instagram becomes the escape hatch. He picks up his phone and surrenders to the scroll: vacation photos with suspiciously well-lit sunsets, engagement rings held up like trophies, college roommates who now make sourdough look like a personality trait.
Other people’s curated happiness sliding past while he sits with takeout lo mein that tastes like cardboard.
Then he sees it. A post from the Sentinels’ beat reporter, bold text shouting louder than the laugh track in his apartment: Rumors picking up around potential trade for nineteen-year-old goal-scoring phenom.
The photo above the caption is practically designed to ruin his night: The kid grinning like he invented hockey, eyes bright with arrogance that only comes from not yet having been broken in half by it.
Liam knows him. Met him at a youth hockey camp years ago, even signed a stick for him.
At the time, Liam had been the rising star, the name all the little kids wanted scrawled in Sharpie on their jerseys.
Now the Sentinels are talking about trading for this kid. Nineteen. Fresh legs, intact tendons, cartilage still under warranty.
Meanwhile Liam is twenty-eight. He’s still supposed to be in his prime. Supposed to be carrying the team, not a truckload of ever-accumulating scar tissue.
The circle of professional athletics, merciless and efficient, turning wonder kids into cautionary tales on a schedule no one tells you about until you’re already on it.
So Liam does what sports psychologists have taught him: Feel the emotion. Acknowledge it. Let it exist without letting it control. Deep breaths. Inhale, hold. Exhale, hold. Eyes closed. The only thing in his control is himself—getting healthy and back on ice. Everything else is just noise.
But the anger lingers. Simmers. Refuses to be breathed away completely.
He picks up his phone again, thumb swiping through the Explore page for distraction.
Then he freezes. Gavin Bradford’s face fills his screen, not one photo but a collage of them.
The actor posing with fans at some trendy restaurant, his smile so perfect it looks computer-generated.
Noir & Nectar with Bond…James Bond, the caption reads, followed by a constellation of heart-eye emojis and fire icons.
The algorithm has developed a sense of humor. A twisted sense of humor. Here’s the man who seems to have everything Liam lacks: confidence, success, a future that doesn’t depend on whether his body decides to cooperate. And yes, Petra Montgomery too.
“Christ.” The word escapes like steam from a pressure valve.
He runs both hands down his face, feels the stubble that’s becoming a beard by default rather than design. This isn’t how he planned to spend his night. Then again, nothing about his life recently has gone according to plan.
His eyes drift to the takeout bag on the table, where a fortune cookie has tumbled out. He grabs it more from habit than hope and cracks it open.
The thin slip of paper inside offers its wisdom: “A new challenge will bring new opportunities.”