JOSH
It was the wrap party for the second movie, Beyond the Forest. Back then, neither of us had to dash off to another project and could enjoy the party with the rest of the crew.
Tommy and Max and I stood at the edge of the dance floor, sipping the one single illicit beer we thought we could get away with unnoticed by our chaperones.
Emily was dancing unselfconsciously, limbs flailing, huge smile on her face, finally out of her shell after how nervous she’d been on the first movie.
She was dancing with Carrie and Maria, the second assistant director, and she looked, somehow, just right.
Not cool, not edgy, not like a new blockbuster movie star, but just herself.
I knew that was something I hadn’t quite mastered myself, always messing around, trying to get attention to deflect from the fact that I didn’t really know what I was doing, trying to show Emily up so she wasn’t always the Wonderwick golden child.
But Emily knew who she was and stuck to it, and goddamn if I didn’t envy her for it in ways I wasn’t mature enough to articulate then.
‘Right, lads, time to crack into my private reserve,’ Tommy said as we tossed our cans into a nearby recycling bin. He then produced another two cans of beer from pockets on either side of his cargo pants. He waved one at me. ‘All right, Hollywood boy, bet you can’t chug this in ten seconds.’
‘Bet I can,’ I replied without a moment’s thought.
‘Ha, no way.’ Max shook his head.
‘Oh, bitch, you know I can,’ I laughed, reaching out for the can.
Tommy yanked it back out of my reach. ‘Why don’t we make this more interesting?’
‘Go on,’ I said, cautiously as Max and Tommy looked at each other, clearly coming up with some horrible plan. They turned back to me with a huge grin on both of their dumb handsome faces.
‘Whoever can chug their beer the fastest wins.’
‘OK . . .’ I said, waiting for the catch.
‘Don’t you want to know what happens to the loser?’ Tommy’s eyes were glinting with mischief.
Before I could answer, Max excitedly burst out, ‘Loser has to kiss Emily!’
‘You in?’ Tommy was fizzing with merriment.
‘Uh, sure . . . I mean, as long as you’re OK with kissing Emily because I’m definitely not gonna lose,’ I said, nonchalantly.
‘Ha! Did you hear that, Max?’ Tommy scoffed. ‘This one thinks he can challenge us in a chugging contest. Do they teach you that at Beverly Hills School for Boys?’
‘It’s called Beverly Hills High School, actually,’ I mumbled as he handed me a can. The two of them argued amongst themselves about who would be the one to take me on, since there were only two cans, and finally it was decided I would go up against Max and Tommy would adjudicate.
The second I had that can in my hand, I knew I had made a mistake.
Why had I agreed to it? I agreed to it because .
. . well, who knows why. If you asked me I’d say it was because I absolutely could not turn down a dare from Max and Tommy, or because I thought it would be funny, a prank, a joke, whatever, or because I wanted to wind up Emily.
But there was, I hate to admit, more to it than that.
As soon as Max suggested it and Tommy seconded the idea, I felt this ping of curiosity, like a weird desire for something I knew I shouldn’t want.
‘Three . . . two . . . one . . . go!’ Tommy called once we had popped the seal on our cans.
Like a maniac, I threw the can back against my lips and started to inhale the beer, swallowing as often as I physically could, trying to resist the urge to take a breath.
I couldn’t lose. I didn’t want to find out what would happen if I did.
I was guzzling the beer down at a rate of knots, sure that I was going to beat Max, when—
‘HELL YEAH!’ Max roared, turning his beer can upside down to show it was empty. I knew there was still some left in mine. I had lost. Shit.
‘You know what that means.’ Tommy leered at me, his face the picture of absolute glee.
‘Step on it, Sacco,’ Max urged me. ‘You’ve got some smooching to do.’
I glared at them as they both made kissy faces at me and pointed in the direction of Emily, who was blissfully unaware, twirling away on the dance floor.
‘Don’t rush me, Christ. If I have to do this, lemme do it in my own time,’ I said, my head spinning. ‘You don’t want her to get suspicious, right?’ I needed to wait for a moment when Emily was on her own.
‘You can’t just say you did it and not do it, mate,’ Tommy chided me.
‘I won’t! I promise, I’ll do it. But you can’t expect me to walk up to her right there and do it, can you?’
‘I mean, we’d rather you did.’ Max shrugged.
‘Nope, nuh-uh. Lemme handle this my own way,’ I said, as sharply as I could manage as an insecure seventeen-year-old.
We stood for a moment watching the dance floor, and then Emily said something to Carrie before walking off on her own.
‘Now’s your chance!’ Tommy elbowed me in the ribs.
I sighed, just to really underline how much I didn’t want to kiss Emily, and headed off after her, catching up with her just outside the pub.
‘Hey, Emily,’ I said, wanting to get this over and done with as soon as humanly possible and with no witnesses.
She fiddled with the little metal bit on her dungarees. ‘Hi, Josh.’
‘Uh, I just wanted to, uh—’ I said, before leaning forward and kissing her. She jumped a little but didn’t pull away, which, frankly, surprised me. I wouldn’t tell Max and Tommy that, I would report that I’d given her a quick peck on the lips and the deed was done and we would say no more about it.
But no such luck. The door burst open behind us and their hysterical cackles filled the night air. At the sound of the hyena-like laughing she jerked away from me, her face the picture of bewilderment. And then she realised. It was all a joke. The kiss was a joke. She was a joke. She was the joke.
She covered her mouth with her hand, eyes wide with total horror, then ran off around the back of the pub as the boys slapped me on the back and congratulated me on being true to my word.
I felt sick with guilt. I’d never intended on them bursting in like that, never wanted her to find out that it was a dare.
I don’t know what I wanted her to think of it, I hadn’t thought that far ahead, but I never, ever wanted to make her feel the way I knew I had made her feel.
‘Don’t fucking tell anyone about this, all right?’ I looked between them, trying to get them to understand how deadly serious I was.
‘Ha, all right, Joshy,’ Tommy said, laughing.
I took a deep breath and did something I’d never done before and haven’t done since. ‘If you tell anyone about this, you will never work again, do you understand me?’
Tommy and Max looked genuinely scared. ‘Er, yeah, sure, man.’ Max forced out a laugh, clapping me on the shoulder.
‘Don’t worry about it. This will stay between us, yeah?
’ He turned to his friend who just nodded, eyes wide in fear.
They didn’t deserve me to go that hard, I’ll admit, but having seen the look on Emily’s face when she realised it was a joke I knew that it couldn’t get out.
‘Christ, she’s not that bad,’ Tommy chuckled.
‘That’s not what I fucking mean, you freckle-faced shithead. Don’t ever tell anyone I embarrassed her like that, you hear me?’
They both nodded, and my strongly worded message must have got through to them because I never heard anyone mention it ever again after that night, no nudges or winks or gossip on the press tour.
If she ever told anyone, it never got back to me.
I always try to tell myself that it was no big deal for her, that she just took it as a joke and moved on, but if there’s one thing I know about Emily, it’s that she has many talents but ‘taking it as a joke and moving on’ is not one of them.