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Every morning started too early. Every night ended too late. The studio became a strange, airless little country you kept entering before your brain had fully assembled itself and leaving after your body had given up trying to pretend it was fine. You learned where the good coffee was. You learned which corridor had the least foot traffic when you needed to reread a page without someone asking whether you were alright. You learned that Kurt hated people hovering near video village without purpose, that Sven could run a set like a military campaign while looking mildly bored, and that Marie saw absolutely everything.

Everything.

Which was inconvenient.

James came back from Paris on the third night.

You were sitting on the floor in front of Hamster Tom’s cage, trying to coax him away from chewing the corner of his wooden bridge, when James walked in with a suitcase, two garment bags, and the glow of a man who had spent three days being admired by people in nice lighting.

“What is it doing?” he asked, stopping in the doorway.

You looked up.

“Living.”

James frowned at the cage while Hamster Tom destroyed the interior with great purpose. He had dragged bedding into one corner, shoved a chew stick into his wheel, and was now attempting to dismantle the little wooden bridge as though it had personally insulted him.

“It’s very loud for something that small.”

Hamster Tom paused mid-chew and stared at him.

You were almost proud.

“He has a big personality.”

“It’s a hamster.”

“So?”

James stepped over one of your scripts on the floor, picked it up with two fingers, and placed it on the coffee table like it had personally offended him.

You kept your face very still.

Hamster Tom began chewing again, louder.

James looked at him.

“I don’t think he likes me.”

“That’s because you called him a rodent.”

“He is a rodent.”

Hamster Tom shoved his nose through the bars.

You gave James your sweetest smile.

“Careful. He understands classism.”

James glanced at you sharply.

He did not laugh.

That was James all week.

Not cruel.

Not exactly.

Just there.

Present in the flat in a way that made the walls feel smaller.

Every night, he asked how work was before you had even taken your shoes off.

At first, you answered.

Sort of.

“Long.”

“Difficult.”

“Fine.”

“Kurt liked a take.”

“I forgot my phone in wardrobe for twenty minutes and thought I’d lost it forever.”

James listened in the way he listened to most things that were not directly about him — politely, for the first thirty seconds, and then with a faint waiting quality, as if he was giving you a reasonable amount of time to finish before returning the conversation to something useful.

Usually wedding venues.

Sometimes his own project.

Often both.

“I spoke to Lucien in Paris,” he said one night, leaning against the counter while you stood at the sink eating cereal from a mug because bowls had become too advanced. “He thinks the funding might move faster if production attaches someone recognisable. I told him that was obvious, but apparently hearing it in French made everyone feel clever.”

“Mm.”

“Are you listening?”

You blinked.

You were not.

You had been thinking about Tom missing a cue in rehearsal and pretending it had been deliberate. The way his mouth tightened afterward. The way his hand had gone to the edge of his script and then stopped, hard, like he had caught himself moving and punished the impulse.

“Yes.”

James’s eyes narrowed slightly.

“What did I say?”

Your spoon paused halfway to your mouth.

“French people are clever.”

He stared at you.

“Never mind.”

You winced.

“Sorry. I’m just tired.”

“You’ve been tired all week.”

“Because I’m working.”

“So am I.”

There it was.

Not a fight.

Not quite.

Just the little correction he liked to place into rooms when you were taking up too much space.

You put the mug down.

“I know.”

His face softened, but only in the way it did when he had decided to be patient with you.

“Maybe you’re letting this get too big in your head.”

You went still.

“What?”

“The film.”

“I know what you meant.”

James sighed.

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“React like I’ve attacked you when I’m trying to help.”

You stared at the cereal going soggy in your mug.

“Right.”

He stepped closer.

“I just wonder if maybe it’s a bit much after all.”

You looked up then.

“The movie?”

“This movie.”

There was a distinction in the way he said it.

This movie.

Kurt’s movie.

Tom’s movie.

The sexually charged indie film full of therapy rooms, bad decisions, and the man James had warned you about with the smug satisfaction of someone who wanted to be proven right.

“It isn’t too much,” you said.

James watched you for a beat.

“You’ve barely said a positive thing about it since you started filming.”

“That doesn’t mean I can’t do it.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You implied it.”

“No, Y/N. I asked whether the film might be too much for you emotionally, not whether you are incapable. There’s a difference.”

There was.

Technically.

Emotionally, not one you cared for.

On that same night, when you made the mistake of admitting Tom was irritating, James looked up from the wedding venue brochure open on his laptop and said, immediately, “Told you.”

You regretted speaking before the words had even finished leaving your mouth.

“Don’t.”

“What?”

“Don’t sound pleased.”

James leaned back in his chair.

“I’m not pleased. I’m unsurprised.”

“That is the same thing in a nicer coat.”

His mouth tightened.

“I warned you about him.”

“Yes, James. You did. Congratulations. Would you like a certificate?”

That became a fight.

Not a large one.

Not dramatic.

Just one of those domestic arguments that began with a sentence about your co-star and somehow ended thirty minutes later with James asking why you had not looked at the three venue options he sent.

You had no answer.

Not a good one.

Not one that would make sense.

Because the truth was not that you had forgotten.

Not entirely.

It was that every time you opened the links, the idea of wedding menus, linen choices, ceremony rooms, guest numbers, and James standing beside you in a tailored suit made something in your chest go strangely quiet.

Not happy quiet.

Not peaceful quiet.

Extinct quiet.

On Friday morning, you had sex with him before work because he reached for you in bed and you had no graceful way of refusing.

It was not terrible in any spectacular way.

That almost made it worse.

It was familiar. Efficient. Soft in the right places. Predictable in a way that should have been comforting and instead made you feel like you were watching yourself from the corner of the room. There was nothing especially wrong with it, which meant there was nothing obvious to point at and say, there, that is why this feels wrong.

James kissed your shoulder afterward and said, “You were somewhere else.”

Your eyes were on the ceiling.

“Sorry.”

“Work?”

“Mm.”

“Or him?”

You went still.

James propped himself on one elbow.

“I meant Kurt. The director.”

You looked at him.

He smiled faintly.

That smile again.

The one that made you feel like you had failed a test he had written in invisible ink.

“You’re very jumpy.”

“I have to be on set in forty minutes.”

“Right.”

He leaned down, kissed you once, then got out of bed and said, as if the two subjects were naturally connected, “Please look at the venues today. I like the second one, but the capacity might be tight.”

You lay there with the sheet pulled to your chest and thought, absurdly, of Tom’s hand at your skirt.

Of how furious you were with him.

Of how your body had reacted to him with humiliating precision.

Then you hated yourself for thinking about it.

Then you hated Tom for existing in your head at all.

Then you were late.

Again.

*********

By Thursday that week, you had also stopped telling Jess much.

Not because she asked nothing.

Because she asked too much.

Jess: how was set?

Jess: did he say anything today?

Jess: was he normal?

Jess: did he mention the coffee girl again?

Jess: sorry ignore me

Jess: don’t ignore me actually was he weird?

You understood it.

That was the horrible part.

You understood every question.

Jess was not trying to make your life harder. She was trying to locate herself in the aftermath of someone else’s casual cruelty. She was trying to know whether she had mattered enough to leave even a dent.

But after the third day of answering carefully, you felt like your whole life had become a hallway full of Tom-shaped doors.

James asked about him.

Jess asked about him.

Maddy asked about him, but at least Maddy did it with knives out and wine nearby.

So you stopped whinging to Jess.

Then, slowly, you stopped whinging to James.

Which left Maddy.

Maddy received the full, unfiltered disaster in a series of increasingly unhinged texts sent from makeup chairs, toilets, corridor corners, Uber back seats, and once from under a costume rack where you had gone to retrieve a dropped earring and stayed for forty seconds because nobody could see you there.

You: he corrected my mark today with his eyes

Maddy: with his eyes?

You: yes

Maddy: jail

You: he does this thing where he says nothing but it sounds like he is footnoting my incompetence

Maddy: hate him

You: he tapped his pen for twelve minutes

Maddy: did you count

You: unfortunately yes

Maddy: for someone who hates her co-star you mention him a lot

You stared at that message for too long.

Then typed back:

You: because he is an asshole and I am collecting evidence

Maddy: sure

You: don’t sure me

Maddy: sure

You nearly threw your phone into a laundry basket.

The days themselves blurred into scenes.

Your solo work remained good.

Infuriatingly good, apparently.

You had a sequence with the actors playing Rose’s parents on Wednesday afternoon, and something about them made the work easier. Maybe because the scene had a structure your body understood. Family tension. Polite cruelty. A mother pretending not to see. A father asking questions like weapons.

You knew how to play that.

You did not have to think.

You just stood there, let your face close by degrees, and said your lines with the contained politeness of a woman who had learned early that rage was more dangerous when swallowed whole.

Kurt barely spoke after the take.

He just watched the monitor, then said, quietly, “That.”

The actress playing your mother squeezed your arm afterward and said, “You’re very good at looking like you’re about to vanish.”

You smiled before you realised that was not necessarily a compliment.

“Thank you?”

“It was a compliment.”

“Good.”

“Mostly.”

You liked her.

The actor playing your father was older, dry, and kept forgetting where he had left his glasses. You found them on top of his head twice. The second time he said, “Don’t tell anyone. I have a reputation.”

You told Maddy immediately.

Tom’s solo scenes were also good.

You knew because everyone kept saying so.

Not to you exactly.

Around you.

Which was worse.

You heard a gaffer say, “Tom nailed that solo scene.”

You heard Sven, headset pressed to one ear, tell Kurt, “Tom’s done in two if you want him released.”

You heard Kurt say, “No, give me one more. He’s got it, but there’s something in the stillness I want.”

Of course there was.

Of course there was something in the stillness.

Tom seemed to be made of stillness when he needed to be.

Until he was not.

Until his thumb started moving against a script corner.

Until he forgot to eat.

Until he smoked too quickly.

Until he paced between setups and then stopped dead the second someone looked at him, as though motion itself had become incriminating.

You noticed that too.

You noticed everything about him, which was becoming a serious professional problem.

And the more you noticed him, the more you realised he noticed you noticing. Not always. Not openly. But sometimes his eyes flicked over at the exact wrong second and caught you looking at his restless hand, his fidgeting with the script, the cigarette he had not lit but kept rolling between his fingers as though the object alone might settle him.

He was good at stillness.

He was not naturally still.

That was the irritating thing.

You had started to suspect his calm was as constructed as yours.

Just better funded.

Then Olivia arrived.

Olivia Wilde came on board on Wednesday afternoon, sweeping into the makeup trailer with a tote bag, wet hair, and the kind of calm presence that made everyone else seem slightly over-lit.

She was in her late thirties, maybe older, maybe younger — one of those women whose face carried intelligence more obviously than age. Dark eyes. Wide mouth. No obvious panic. She wore jeans, a loose white shirt, and a long black coat despite the studio being warm. She introduced herself to everyone by name, remembered yours immediately, and apologised to a runner when she nearly stepped on a cable.

You liked her at once.

Which was annoying, because Olivia was playing Mara.

Jason’s wife.

She was not in many scenes, but all of them mattered. A flashback in the bedroom. A confrontation in Jason’s office. One closed-set intimate scene that, according to the sides you had no business having read, revealed the marriage had not been simply unhappy.

It had been hungry.

Wrong.

Mutually destructive.

The sort of marriage that looked sophisticated from the outside and rotted in private.

Olivia sat beside you in makeup, smiled through the mirror, and said, “First week?”

You blinked.

“Is it that obvious?”

“Only because you still look personally offended by the schedule.”

You laughed.

A little too gratefully.

“I am.”

“Good. Stay that way. The day you stop being offended by call times is the day the industry owns your soul.”

You liked her even more.

Then she met Tom.

And that, unfortunately, went well.

Not flirtatious.

Not openly.

Just easy.

Professional.

Warm.

They hugged. He smiled. Properly. Not the almost-smile he kept using around you like a weapon. A real one. You knew by now that they had worked together before, twice. Olivia teased him about something he had said in a Q&A years ago, something about suffering being more interesting than happiness on camera, and Tom looked briefly embarrassed.

“I was twenty-eight and insufferable,” he said.

Olivia laughed.

“You’re still insufferable. You’re just quieter about it.”

He laughed too.

Actually laughed.

You hated everyone.

Their first scene together was done by the end of the afternoon.

Three takes.

Three.

You were not present for the closed-set material, obviously. Marie cleared the room properly, and only essential crew remained. You were on another set doing pickups with Rose’s mother, which should have kept your mind occupied.

It did not.

Because forty minutes later, Sven walked past and said into his headset, “Jason and Mara bedroom scene wrapped. Three takes. Kurt’s happy.”

Three takes.

You nearly missed your cue.

The actress playing your mother looked at you.

“You alright?”

“Yep.”

You were not.

Because now there was Olivia too.

Lovely Olivia.

Calm Olivia.

Professional Olivia.

Olivia who could apparently walk into a sexually loaded scene with Tom and wrap it inside three takes while you had frozen over a therapy-room silence and turned an implied kiss into a scheduling hazard.

You texted Maddy from the bathroom.

You: olivia did an intimate scene with him in 3 takes

Maddy: hate her

You: no she is lovely

Maddy: worse

You: i know

Maddy: did he annoy her

You: apparently not

Maddy: interesting

You: don’t

Maddy: sure

**********

The scenes with Tom remained the problem.

Not all of them.

That was what made it worse.

Sometimes a take worked in pieces.

A look.

A line.

A silence that almost became something.

For a moment, the whole room would lean forward, sensing the beginning of the thing Kurt wanted.

Then one of you would kill it.

Usually you.

Sometimes him.

Often both of you with the terrible efficiency of people destroying evidence.

He would hold the silence too tightly, and you would fill it too fast.

You would look nervous, and he would start looking annoyed.

He would soften half an inch, and your body would brace like you were about to be criticised.

You would finally settle into a beat, and his frustration would flicker across his face for just long enough to make the take unusable.

There were other things too.

Tiny things.

Your things, though nobody called them that out loud.

You lost your pencil, found it in your hair, put it down, lost it again, then got distracted by a prop file because one corner of the fake medical form had been folded incorrectly. Tom watched you notice it. You watched him watch you. Then he noticed the same corner and smoothed it with one finger when nobody was looking.

You hated that.

You forgot a cue because someone behind camera unwrapped a mint too loudly. Tom missed his next line because a light flickered above the office door and his eyes kept dragging toward it, irritation flashing in the muscle near his jaw.

You hated that too.

Not because it annoyed you.

Because you recognised it.

The body betraying the brain in small, stupid ways.

The attention catching on the wrong thing.

The effort of pretending focus was effortless.

By Friday afternoon, the pattern had become visible.

Not only to you.

To everyone.

Kurt stood behind the monitor, jaw tight, while Sven stood beside him with his arms folded and Marie hovered just far enough away not to make it look like she was hovering.

On screen, you and Tom were sitting opposite each other in Jason’s office, speaking lines that should have been loaded with implication.

They landed flat.

Not because the acting was bad.

That would have been easier to solve.

It was worse than bad.

It was guarded.

Every interesting thing between you seemed to happen in the half-second after Kurt said cut, when you looked away too fast or Tom’s jaw tightened or the air snapped with something nobody could put on camera because both of you kept burying it under irritation.

Kurt watched playback.

Tom stood on one side of the room, one hand in his pocket, the other worrying the folded edge of his sides.

You stood near the bookshelf, one foot hooked behind the other, thumbnail pressed into your palm to stop yourself picking at it.

Sven glanced from Tom to you.

Then to the monitor.

Then back again.

You saw it.

He was clocking something.

You did not like that.

Kurt exhaled through his nose.

“Again.”

Again.

Again.

Again.

By the fifth take, Tom’s frustration was no longer subtle.

Neither was yours.

“Can we reset from the second line?” Tom asked, too controlled.

You turned your head.

“Why?”

His eyes came to yours.

“Because that’s where the beat is being missed.”

“By me, you mean.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

Kurt lifted one hand.

“Enough. Reset.”

Sven’s mouth twitched very slightly.

Not amusement.

Not quite.

Concern, maybe.

Later, when you passed video village on your way to wardrobe, you heard voices you were clearly not meant to hear.

Kurt first.

Low.

Irritated.

“Tom’s solo work is great. Olivia’s stuff is great. Y/N with the parents, excellent. Her solo scenes, very strong.”

A pause.

Then Sven.

“Together?”

Kurt made a sound.

“Together, I’ve got nothing I can use.”

Your stomach dropped.

You stopped moving.

Just for a second.

Marie’s voice came next, quieter.

“It isn’t nothing.”

Sven said, “No. It’s not no chemistry.”

Kurt exhaled.

“Then where is it?”

Sven did not answer immediately.

When he did, his voice was thoughtful.

“Under a lot of concrete.”

Marie said, “They’re bracing.”

“They’re fighting the scene,” Kurt muttered.

“They’re fighting each other,” Sven said.

Another pause.

Then, softer, almost to himself:

“Not the same thing.”

You moved before anyone could see you standing there.

Your face burned all the way to wardrobe.

By Friday evening, Anita, the actress playing Jason’s secretary, had gone home sick, one of the corridor scenes had been pushed, and the schedule had become the kind of mess that made assistant directors look like they might start killing people with clipboards.

You had just finished your last scene of the day — a short, miserable exchange with Rose’s father that went well enough for Kurt to say “fine, moving on” with obvious relief — when Tom appeared near the edge of the set.

You saw him before he saw you.

Or maybe he had already seen you.

It was impossible to tell with him.

He stood half in shadow near the fake office corridor, shoulders slightly hunched, one hand in his pocket, the other holding a folded call sheet. His hair was messier than it had been that morning. His face looked tired. Irritated. Too sharp at the edges.

You immediately turned the other way.

“Nope.”

Tom’s brows lifted.

“Sorry?”

“No. Don’t start.”

He stepped closer.

“I haven’t said anything.”

“You have the face.”

“What face?”

“The face where you’re about to make something my fault.”

His jaw tightened.

“That’s not why I’m here.”

“Wonderful.”

“Due to a scheduling issue and Anita being sick, Kurt wants to reshoot the office kiss tonight.”

You stopped.

The whole day seemed to tilt slightly.

“Tonight?”

“Yes.”

“It got pushed.”

“And now it’s been unpushed.”

“That’s not a word.”

“I’m aware.”

You stared at him.

“Why are you telling me?”

His expression flickered.

Something almost like restraint.

“Because we’d be running until nine, and Marie needs to do the practical reset before we shoot.”

“Again. Why are you telling me?”

Tom inhaled through his nose.

His thumb moved once over the folded call sheet.

Stopped.

“Because I need to know whether you’re okay with that before we put everyone through it.”

There it was.

Reasonable.

Professional.

Almost considerate.

Which somehow made you angrier.

“Before we put everyone through it?”

His eyes sharpened.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“No, of course not.”

“Y/N.”

“You mean before I freeze again and ruin the evening?”

His jaw flexed.

“I didn’t say that.”

“You never do. You just orbit it.”

For a second, he looked genuinely tired.

Then the tiredness hardened into irritation.

“Fine. You want blunt? This scene cannot take another three hours.”

Heat flashed through you.

“There he is.”

“I’m not attacking you.”

“You’re just being professionally disappointed in my existence.”

“For God’s sake.”

“No, seriously, Tom, say it. You don’t think I can do it.”

“I think you can do it if you stop deciding I’m the enemy every time I come within three feet of you.”

You laughed once.

Sharp.

“That’s rich.”

“Is it?”

“Yes.”

“You look at me like I’m about to hurt you.”

The words landed strangely.

Not because they were cruel.

Because they were not.

Because they were too close to something Marie had said with her eyes all week and too close to something Kurt was beginning to say with his silences.

Your mouth opened.

Nothing came out.

Tom saw that too.

Of course he did.

His expression shifted.

Only slightly.

But enough.

“I’m not,” he said, quieter. “I won’t.”

The room seemed to narrow.

You were aware suddenly of how close he was. Not touching. Not even really near enough for anyone else to notice. But close enough that your body registered the heat of him before your brain could issue its usual warnings.

“You have,” you said.

His eyes flickered.

“What?”

You should not have said it.

You definitely should not have said it.

But the week had scraped you too thin, and the words slipped through before pride could stop them.

“You have hurt me by behaving like a dick.”

Silence.

Tom’s face changed.

Not dramatically.

Not in a way anyone else would catch from across the room.

But you saw it.

The irritation cracked. Something else moved underneath it. Guilt, maybe. Or recognition. Or the horrible awareness that the two of you had spent five days pretending the damage was professional when it had never been only that.

His gaze dropped to your mouth.

Just once.

There and gone.

Your breath caught.

His did too.

Barely.

The air between you changed so quickly it was almost embarrassing.

One second, fight.

The next, the dangerous softening underneath it.

The place the film wanted.

The place both of you avoided every time there was a camera in the room.

Tom’s voice was low when he spoke.

“This is impossible.”

He then snapped and you stepped back.

Too fast.

“Don’t.”

He blinked.

The moment shut.

Both of you seemed to hate that it had existed.

Sven’s voice cut across the set.

“Tom, Y/N — makeup and wardrobe need you both now.”

You looked away first.

“Great.”

Tom dragged a hand over his mouth.

“Yeah.”

Neither of you moved for half a second.

Then you went in opposite directions, which was ridiculous because wardrobe was the same place.

*********

Marie did the practical reset fifteen minutes later in the office set.

The approach.

Jason’s hands.

No improvisation.

No surprise that had not been discussed.

You said yes to everything.

Tom said yes to everything.

Marie watched both of you like she was reading a document with half the words blacked out.

The first take failed before the kiss.

You crossed the space too quickly, as if Rose wanted to get the mistake over with. Tom responded too late because he was watching your face instead of listening to the beat. Kurt cut immediately.

The second take failed because you stopped short.

The third because Tom’s hand came up a fraction too early and you flinched.

Not much.

Enough.

“Cut.”

The word cracked through the room.

Tom stepped back at once.

Hands down.

Jaw tight.

Marie’s eyes moved to you.

You nodded before she could ask.

“I’m fine.”

Nobody believed you.

Fourth take.

Fifth.

Sixth.

The problem kept changing shape and remaining the same.

Too fast.

Too stiff.

Too careful.

Too annoyed.

Too aware.

Too much body and somehow no heat on camera.

By the seventh take, Tom’s frustration was visible.

Actually visible.

And the guilt which had appeared on his face just hours earlier had vanished again completely now.

Which meant it must have been worse underneath.

“Cut.”

Kurt lowered his head for a second.

Tom turned away, then turned back.

“This scene isn’t going to happen if she keeps freezing.”

The set went still.

Not completely.

Film sets never went completely still.

But enough.

You felt the words hit your face before you had time to arrange it.

Marie said, immediately, “Break.”

Kurt’s jaw worked once.

Then he lifted a hand.

“Ten minutes.”

People moved.

Not quickly.

Carefully.

As if the air itself had become breakable.

You stepped away from the door and folded your arms so tightly your fingers pressed into your ribs.

Tom looked at you.

You did not look back.

Marie came to you near the hallway set.

Not too close.

Never too close.

That was why she was good.

“Can we talk for a second?”

You stared at the floor.

“I’m fine.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

You looked up.

Marie’s expression was calm.

Too calm.

“Did something happen between you and Tom?”

Your heart lurched.

“What?”

“Not on set. Before. Or today. Or during this week. I’m not asking for gossip. I’m asking because Kurt, Sven, and I can all see you brace when he gets close and you look clearly uncomfortable when he touches you.”

Your mouth went dry.

“No.”

Marie waited.

You hated that.

“No,” you repeated. “Nothing happened.”

It was technically true.

If you defined happened very narrowly.

If you ignored New York.

If you ignored rehearsal room three.

If you ignored the almost-kiss ten minutes ago which you still weren’t sure was a thing, because what even was that?

If you ignored every ugly sentence and every stupid look and every bit of heat your body kept producing in the least useful possible context.

Marie watched you.

“Alright.”

She did not believe you.

But she did not call you a liar either.

“Then I’m going to say this as plainly as I can. Your body is saying no before your mouth gets a chance to say yes. If that no is real, we stop. If it’s nerves, we adjust. But I need you to know the difference.”

You swallowed.

“It’s nerves.”

“All of it?”

You looked away.

A beat too long.

Marie’s voice softened slightly.

“Y/N.”

“It’s nerves,” you said again, because any other answer was impossible.

The break ended.

The set came back.

This time Kurt did not crouch.

He stood in front of both of you with his arms folded, visibly tired and no longer interested in pretending otherwise.

Sven stood near the monitor, expression unreadable.

Marie remained just off to the side.

Kurt looked from Tom to you.

“Alright. I’m going to be frank because subtlety is wasting time.”

Your stomach tightened.

Tom’s jaw shifted.

“We’ve had some excellent scenes this week and some bad ones. Your solo work is strong. Both of you. Tom, your scenes with Olivia are excellent. Y/N, your scenes with the parents are excellent.”

That should have felt good.

It did not.

“Together,” Kurt continued, “I’m seeing very little usable chemistry. Even in the takes that technically work, it’s not landing. And if that doesn’t change, this film becomes much harder than it needs to be.”

The words sat there.

Brutal.

Clean.

Tom looked at the floor.

You looked at the door.

Kurt turned to Tom first.

“Your expressions are good in isolation, but the second she misses a beat, they turn into annoyance. I can see you judging the take while you’re in it.”

Tom’s mouth tightened.

“Because she misses the scene beats.”

Kurt’s eyes sharpened.

“Yes. And if you look annoyed, I can’t use any of it.”

A pause.

Tom inhaled.

“Okay. Noted.”

Then Kurt looked at you.

“And you — look less scared.”

Your face burned.

“I’m not scared.”

“The camera disagrees.”

You hated him for that.

Not a lot.

Just briefly.

Kurt pointed toward Tom without looking at him.

“Tom isn’t going to bite you.”

A beat.

Then he glanced at Tom.

“Will you, Tom?”

Tom’s eyes flicked to yours.

For one insane second, something almost alive moved there.

Then he looked back at Kurt.

“No.”

Sven, traitorously, coughed into his hand.

Kurt ignored him.

“Good. Different approach.”

He turned toward Marie.

“We’ve got enough of the room. I don’t need a close-up on lips. I don’t need to watch them negotiate the entire thing. We imply the first kiss from behind. Rose crosses to him. We see enough to know she initiates. Then Jason reacts too strongly, turns her back against the door, kisses her for five seconds, then she pushes him off and leaves. Abrupt. Messy. They both feel it’s a mistake. But the implied kiss takes long enough to make it real. That’s the scene.”

Marie nodded, already recalculating.

“Then we reset the physical beats.”

“Yes.” Kurt looked at you both. “And for the love of God, stop trying to prove you feel nothing. The entire film depends on the opposite.”

Neither of you spoke.

Sven’s eyes moved from Tom to you.

There it was again.

That look.

As if he did not believe the problem was absence.

As if he could see the exact shape of what both of you were trying to strangle.

Marie stepped in.

Professional.

Precise.

She rebuilt the choreography.

Your approach.

Your hand at Jason’s sleeve.

Your head angle hidden from camera.

Tom’s pause.

His turn.

His hand placed flat on the door beside your shoulder, not on your body until the agreed beat.

Your palm to his chest.

Your push.

His release.

Your exit.

Repeatable.

Safe.

Boring in prep.

Dangerous on camera.

The first take was awkward.

The second had something.

The third was good enough.

Not magic.

Not what Kurt wanted, probably.

But usable.

You knew it from the way he watched the monitor in silence for a long moment, then rubbed both hands over his face.

“Fine.”

Fine.

Not good.

Not yes.

Fine.

At that point, fine felt like an award.

You stepped away from Tom as soon as Marie cleared the take.

He stepped away from you too.

Too quickly.

Both of you pretending it was professional distance and not self-preservation.

Kurt looked between you.

Then, suddenly, seemed to make a decision.

“Right. Homework.”

You blinked.

Tom looked up.

“What?”

“Homework.”

“For the film?” you asked.

“No, for my emotional wellbeing.”

Sven made a noise that might have been a laugh.

Kurt pulled two tickets from the back pocket of his jeans and handed one to you, one to Tom.

You looked down.

An indie cinema.

Sunday afternoon.

A French film.

Black-and-white still on the ticket, some devastating-looking woman smoking by a window, a man standing behind her as if he had ruined both their lives and was considering doing it again.

Of course.

“What is this?” Tom asked.

Kurt’s patience finally gave out in the quietest possible way.

“A bonding exercise.”

You stared at him.

“Absolutely not.”

Tom said, at the exact same time, “No.”

Kurt looked pleased for the first time all evening.

“Good. Unison. Build from there.”

You glared.

Tom looked murderous.

Kurt continued.

“That film is close to the emotional grammar I want in this. Desire without comfort. Distance that makes intimacy worse. Faces doing one thing, bodies doing another. You are both going together, then spending one hour afterward discussing it in a quiet room somewhere without killing each other, ideally.”

“Kurt,” Tom said.

“No.”

“I have my daughter this weekend.”

You looked at Tom before you could stop yourself.

His daughter.

You knew, vaguely.

Or maybe you had read it once and shoved it into the messy drawer of information labelled Tom Sturridge: do not open.

But hearing him say it aloud changed something.

Not softened.

Just complicated.

Tom’s jaw was tight.

“I already have less time with her than I’d like.”

Kurt’s face did not move.

“It is a two-hour film and a one-hour conversation. You’ll survive.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

You looked down at the ticket again.

“And if we don’t reach some grand artistic conclusion?”

“You will.”

“You seem very confident.”

“No,” Kurt said. “I’m desperate.”

Sven did laugh then.

Quietly.

Kurt pointed at both of you.

“And when we resume shooting in two days, I want one shared conclusion about what the film does with tension. One. Shared. Conclusion. If you come back with separate essays, I will know you failed.”

Tom looked at the ticket like it had personally insulted his family.

You folded yours once.

Then unfolded it because you did not know what else to do with your hands.

Kurt noticed.

Of course.

His eyes dropped briefly to the ticket in your hands, then lifted back to your face.

“And maybe,” he added, “spend one hour speaking to each other like colleagues instead of enemies.”

Neither of you said anything.

Tom’s silence was practically architectural.

Kurt looked between you both.

“Because next week we are filming the first sex proper scene, and right now I would rather set myself on fire than have him bend you over a desk.”

Your face went hot.

Tom looked away.

Sven coughed into his fist.

Marie did not react, which somehow made it worse.

Kurt continued, entirely unmoved.

“I am not asking you to like each other. I don’t care if you like each other. Some of the best screen chemistry in history has come from people who wanted to throw furniture at one another. But I do need you to trust each other enough to do the work.”

His gaze moved to Tom.

“That means you stop punishing missed beats while you’re still in the take.”

Then to you.

“And you stop bracing like proximity is an accusation.”

Your throat tightened.

Tom’s jaw flexed.

Kurt pointed at the tickets again.

“Film. Conversation. One conclusion. Come back with something useful.”

Tom looked down at his ticket.

“And if the conclusion is that we still don’t work?”

Kurt smiled without warmth.

“Then lie better.”

You smiled tightly.

“Lovely.”

Tom said nothing.

But his silence was several paragraphs long.

More like your nervous system had been held too taut for too many hours and was now twanging angrily under your skin. Your shoulders hurt. Your jaw hurt. Even your hands felt strange, because every few minutes you realised you were doing something with them without meaning to — picking at the edge of your thumbnail, worrying the seam of your sleeve, unlocking your phone and staring at the screen only to forget entirely why you had picked it up in the first place.

Luckily, there were no more scenes with Tom.

Which was probably for the best.

The office kiss had been pushed.

Not cancelled.

Not mercifully removed from your future.

Just pushed back for about a week, give or take, allowing you and Tom to get to know each other through other scenes first.

After the failed kiss scene, you had two short solo bits— one in the corridor set and one in the dingy little on-call room they had dressed to look overused and faintly miserable — and somehow you got through both on instinct alone. The almost insulting part was that the second Tom was no longer standing in front of you, your body seemed to remember how to function.

Your lines came easily.

Your marks were clean.

Kurt gave almost no notes at all beyond a small timing adjustment and one quiet, approving, “Good.”

It should have made you feel better than it did because one of these scenes was quite complex, showing Rose having a total meltdown.

Instead, you carried the earlier scene around inside you like something hot and splintered.

The stiffness in your shoulders.

The way your body had betrayed you.

The look on Tom’s face when Kurt pulled the scene.

The clipped edge in his voice afterward.

I don’t know what you can handle.

It stayed under everything. Under your next line. Under every reset. Under the endless stop-start rhythm of the set, the brush of makeup touch-ups, the lighting tweaks, the crew conversations happening around you as though you were not internally reliving your own humiliation on a loop.

Even when people spoke to you normally and you answered normally, part of you still felt as though something ugly and obvious had been exposed in front of everyone and they were all simply too polite to name it.

By late afternoon the studio had taken on that worn, stale energy film sets sometimes got, where everybody was still working but nobody was moving quite as sharply as they had in the morning. Cables were still being dragged. Coffees were still being carried around half-drunk and gone cold. Headsets still crackled. But the first-day edge had dulled.

You were standing near a folding table between setups, peeling off part of your costume jacket with one hand and tapping your phone against your thigh with the other, when Kurt appeared beside you.

“Come have a cigarette with me.”

You looked up so fast you nearly dropped the phone.

For one stupid second your stomach dipped.

A cigarette with Kurt sounded suspiciously like a private conversation, and a private conversation after the day you had just had felt dangerously close to some calm, professional discussion about concerns.

You tried to keep your face neutral.

Failed.

“Am I in trouble?”

Kurt let out a short laugh and reached into his jacket pocket.

“Jesus, no.”

He nodded toward the side exit.

“Come on.”

You followed him anyway, though your chest still felt tight and over-alert, your foot catching once on the threshold because apparently even walking had become too much to ask of your body.

The air outside was cooler than inside the studio. Evening was starting to gather at the edges of everything. The smoking area was deeply unglamorous — just a concrete patch beside the building, a metal bin, a couple of old crates doing their best to pass as seats, and a view over the parking lot full of crew cars, vans, and equipment trucks.

The sky beyond it had gone pale gold in that flat industrial way that never looked romantic.

Only tired.

Kurt leaned back against the wall, lit his cigarette, then held the lighter out to you.

You took it, even though you were not sure you actually wanted the cigarette. Your fingers fidgeted with the lighter first, flipping the lid open and shut twice before you caught yourself and stilled.

He noticed.

Said nothing.

For a moment he just smoked and looked out over the lot, as though the two of you were standing there companionably rather than having any sort of meaningful exchange at all.

Oddly, that helped.

You took a drag, mostly to give yourself something to do with your hands.

Kurt exhaled slowly.

“You look like you think I’m about to fire you.”

You gave a brief, humourless laugh.

“Maybe not fire me, but possibly suggest that I should reconsider my career choices.”

That made him look at you properly.

Not sharply.

Just properly.

“Have I given you any reason to think that?”

You looked down at the cigarette between your fingers.

“No.”

“Right.” He took another drag. “Then don’t invent it.”

You let out a breath through your nose.

It was such a Kurt thing to say. Mildly blunt. Not cruel. Not padded either. He never seemed interested in turning something into a drama when simple honesty would do.

For a second neither of you spoke.

Then he said, quieter this time, “It’s the first week.”

You looked at him.

He shrugged one shoulder.

“Sometimes the first week is ugly. People are finding rhythm. Finding tone. Finding each other. Figuring out where nerves live in their bodies. None of that is unusual.”

You stared out at the parking lot.

“That bad, was it?”

Kurt snorted softly.

“I’ve seen much worse.”

That surprised a real laugh out of you.

Small, but real.

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “I once had two actors who couldn’t make eye contact for three full days because they’d been sleeping together for months and neglected to inform anyone in production.”

You glanced at him, then started biting your nail before you could stop yourself.

You caught it.

Too late.

Kurt’s eyes moved to your hand.

Then away again.

“That sounds horrific,” you said shyly, lowering your hand and wondering whether Kurt knew something, whether he was being pointed, or whether you had simply become so paranoid that every sentence now sounded like a threat.

“It was very annoying.” He tapped ash into the bin. “Today wasn’t catastrophic. It was just early.”

Early.

That sat easier than disaster.

Easier than failure.

Easier than the horrible certainty that maybe you simply could not do this.

Kurt glanced at you again.

“Your solo scenes are fabulous, by the way.”

You blinked.

“Really?”

“Yes, really.” He gave you a look. “You’ve got instinct. The camera likes you. You listen well. You don’t overdo things. That’s half the battle.”

Something in your chest loosened a little.

Only a little.

But enough for you to feel it.

“Didn’t exactly help in there with the stupid kissing scene.”

“No.” He stayed matter-of-fact. “Because that wasn’t about talent.”

You went still.

He glanced at the cigarette in your hand, then back at your face.

“That was nerves. Awareness. Too much thinking. You’re young, and young actors often overthink scenes like this.”

You looked away before he could read too much in your face.

Because the awful thing was that he was being kinder than Tom had been, and somehow that nearly undid you more.

Kurt, mercifully, did not linger there.

He just kept speaking in the same calm tone.

“You and Tom will get used to working with each other and once you trust each other a bit more, I think these scenes will come easier for you.”

Your mouth twitched.

“You think?”

“Yes.”

He sounded irritatingly certain.

“He’s a very talented actor. Annoyingly talented, sometimes. I cast him because he doesn’t push when a scene asks him to stay still. He doesn’t overcompensate. He doesn’t act the emotion twice just to make sure the audience saw it.”

You looked down at your cigarette.

“You like him.”

“I like what he does on camera.”

“That sounds like a distinction.”

“It is. Because I don’t really know him personally.”

That almost made you smile.

Kurt took another drag, then added, “I was impressed by his latest film. There’s a stillness in him now. He used to be more restless on camera, more interesting than disciplined. Now he’s both. You’ll learn a lot from him if you let yourself.”

You gave him a sideways look.

“That sounds suspiciously like you’re telling me to be less dramatic.”

Kurt smiled.

“I’m telling you not to decide on day one that the sky is falling.”

You exhaled, smoke catching briefly in your throat.

“Very different.”

“Completely.”

Then his expression shifted slightly.

Not softer exactly.

More deliberate.

“And I want you to know something else.”

Your stomach tightened again.

“Okay.”

“I didn’t cast you because your father suggested it.”

You went very still.

Kurt looked out across the car park, as if that made it less awkward.

“Your father and I don’t always work well together. We respect each other, usually. We annoy each other, often. If anything, him wanting something makes me immediately suspicious of it.”

Despite yourself, you laughed.

“That sounds like him.”

“It sounds like me too.”

You looked down at your shoes.

Kurt continued.

“I cast you because you auditioned well. Because I could see you opposite Tom. Because you have the right kind of contradiction for Rose — sharp and exposed at the same time. Defensive, but not empty. Young, but not simple. And, from what I’ve seen in your other work, you can act out emotionally charged scenes rather well.”

Your throat tightened.

You did not know what to do with that.

Praise was sometimes harder to hold than criticism. Criticism at least gave you something to fight. Praise just sat there, warm and uncomfortable, asking to be believed.

Kurt flicked ash into the bin.

“You just need to have a bit of faith in your abilities.”

You gave a small, brittle smile.

“That sounds horrible.”

“It is.”

“Any alternatives?”

“Plenty. Most of them involve ruining the film.”

You laughed again.

Quieter this time.

More real.

Kurt pushed off the wall.

“Go home. Eat something. Sleep.”

You rolled your eyes, but something inside you had settled.

Not fixed.

Not healed.

Not remotely ready for tomorrow.

But slightly less convinced that you had destroyed everything by existing incorrectly.

You finished the cigarette and followed him back inside.

By the time you were wrapped properly, the sky had darkened.

You changed out of costume, scrubbed Rose off your face, collected your things from three separate places because apparently you had spent the day shedding belongings like emotional debris, and ordered an Uber while standing near the studio doors.

*********

The drive home felt thin around the edges.

Not awful.

Just strange.

Your knee bounced at red lights and, every time you stopped thinking about Tom, your brain handed you another image anyway.

By the time the Uber stopped outside your building, your shoulders ached.

Inside, the flat looked exactly the same as you had left it, which somehow made the whole day feel even more surreal.

Shoes by the door.

Mug in the sink.

Cardigan over the arm of the couch.

Script pages sticking out of your bag.

No James.

You stood in the hallway for three full seconds before you remembered why.

Paris.

He was in Paris for three nights.

A work thing. A shoot for a minor role. And networking apparently. Something he had explained while you were reading sides and trying not to throw up with nerves. You had nodded at the time and immediately filed it into the part of your brain where information went to die.

“Right,” you muttered to the empty flat. “Alone. Forgot that.”

From the corner of the room, Hamster Tom made a furious rustling sound.

You turned slowly.

Two dark little eyes stared at you from the cage with an expression that somehow managed to convey betrayal despite being located on a rodent the size of a tennis ball.

“Don’t start.”

Hamster Tom immediately started chewing the bars.

“I said don’t start.”

Chew.

Chew.

Chew.

You dropped your bag onto the couch, kicked off one shoe, missed with the other, nearly tripped, and crouched beside the cage.

“I had a difficult day.”

Hamster Tom shoved his nose through the bars.

“Yes, I know you’re hungry. Everyone is hungry. Emotionally. Spiritually. For pellets.”

You opened the cage with the weary focus of a woman diffusing a bomb.

He climbed halfway onto your hand before you could stop him.

“No. No, Tom. Actual Tom has been enough Tom for one day. You cannot also be difficult.”

Hamster Tom ignored this and attempted to explore your sleeve.

“Fantastic. Boundary issues from both of you.”

From somewhere inside your bag, a tiny electronic chirp of outrage sounded.

You froze.

Then groaned.

Your Tamagotchi.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

You transferred Hamster Tom back into his cage with more dignity than either of you deserved, then dug through script pages, lip balm, receipts, two pens you had apparently stolen from set, and an empty protein-bar wrapper before finding the Tamagotchi wedged at the bottom, blinking its little needy pixel face at you with righteous fury.

“Oh my God, alright, I know. I am sorry, Fred.”

You stood in the middle of the living room in your socks, feeding a tiny digital creature with the kind of weary concentration usually reserved for surgery.

“You’ve had a terrible day? Imagine mine.”

It beeped again.

“That’s very unsympathetic.”

Then, your phone buzzed in your other hand.

Maddy.

Just the sight of her name made something in you soften.

Maddy: how was first day on set

You typed back immediately.

You: shit

The typing bubble appeared at once.

Maddy: excellent. jess and i are coming over with takeaway and wine

You stared at the message.

Then remembered, again, that James was in Paris.

Which was apparently something everyone else had retained better than you had. Because neither of them would have volunteered to come over if James was at home also.

You: how do you know he’s not here

Maddy: because you told me twice last week and then forgot every time

You: that sounds fake

Maddy: find the wine glasses, disaster girl

A laugh escaped you before you could stop it.

By the time they arrived, you had managed to change into a jumper, feed Hamster Tom properly, keep Fred alive, and pick three scripts off the floor before deciding that was enough domestic achievement for one evening.

Maddy let herself in first because she had keys and almost no respect for doors.

Jess followed behind with takeaway bags held against her chest, her smile already a little careful.

Maddy looked you up and down.

“Yeah, alright. You do look like you’ve been through something.”

You took the wine from under her arm.

“You say the sweetest things.”

“I know.” She glanced toward the cage. “Hi, Tom.”

Hamster Tom emerged from his little wooden house as if summoned by praise.

Jess smiled faintly.

“He’s getting fat.”

“Don’t body-shame my son.”

Maddy snorted and moved into your kitchen like she lived there, pulling open drawers, finding glasses, opening cartons, making the flat feel less empty by sheer force of personality.

Something about her being in your kitchen, opening takeaway, moving around the flat like she belonged there, helped.

Not enough to erase the day.

But enough to take the edge off the humiliation of it.

You all ended up on the rug with takeaway and wine, because none of you ever bothered pretending to be proper adults when it was just the three of you. Maddy sat opposite you, one leg tucked under herself. Jess sat beside the couch, quieter than usual, picking coriander off her noodles and pretending that was not a full-time occupation.

Your own foot jiggled nonstop under the coffee table until Maddy glanced down at it once and you deliberately sat on it to make it stop.

She took one sip of wine and fixed you with a look.

“So.”

You already hated that tone.

“So?”

“How was working with your one-night night man who also happened to be Jess’s two-time asshole?”

Jess went very still.

Just slightly.

You noticed.

Of course you noticed.

You stabbed at your noodles.

“Horrible.”

Maddy blinked once.

“That bad?”

You laughed without humour.

“I think he might actually hate me.”

Jess looked down at her food.

Maddy, unfortunately, looked delighted in the worst possible way.

“Excellent. Much worse than I thought. Start at the beginning.”

So you did.

Not elegantly.

Not in order.

Just in tired, irritated clumps.

You told them about seeing Tom properly again. The handshake in front of your father. The private confrontation. The fact that he had very obviously not enjoyed discovering you were the producer’s daughter. The way he kept saying it like an insult wrapped in a job title.

Maddy’s brows climbed steadily higher.

Jess kept picking coriander off her noodles.

You kept going.

You told them about the agreement to keep the one-night stand quiet because if it came out now it would complicate everything — production, your father, the film, the optics. You told them about the age thing too, because apparently your mouth had decided the evening was a confession booth and your brain was too tired to supervise it.

“And you know he made this enormous deal out of it when he found out I wasn’t twenty-eight, because obviously, by now, he knows.”

Maddy paused with her fork halfway to her mouth.

Jess looked up.

You kept going, because stopping now would have meant thinking.

“Which, fine, I know I shouldn’t have lied. I know that. But he was acting like I’d personally lured him into some moral catastrophe. He kept saying how bad it would look if it was to come out because he was nearly forty and I was only twenty-two, like I’d been wearing a school uniform in the hotel bar or something. I don’t know.”

Jess opened her mouth.

You barely noticed.

The words were coming too quickly now.

“And then—”

You stopped.

Because the next part arrived with full force.

The coffee shop.

The 22-year old.

The hypocrisy of it.

Maddy leaned forward.

“And then what?”

You let out a sharp laugh.

“And then he goes out and shags the twenty-two-year-old barista after work.”

Silence.

Not huge.

Not dramatic.

But immediate.

Jess’s hand stopped moving over the carton.

Maddy’s expression shifted at once.

You realised what you had said a second too late.

“Shit. Jess. I am sorry.”

She looked up.

Her face was carefully blank.

Too carefully.

“So he’s seeing someone?”

Your stomach dropped.

“Casually. Apparently. I don’t know. But I heard rumours.”

Jess nodded once.

“Right.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“It’s okay.”

It obviously was not.

Maddy gave you a look that said stop talking without actually saying it.

Unfortunately, your brain had never been especially obedient.

“There’s also a model maybe. The wardrobe girls know everything, which is really fucking weird if you ask me. So really, he might be sleeping with half of London by that point.”

Jess’s mouth twitched without humour.

“Sounds like him.”

That landed worse than you expected.

Maddy set her wine down.

“Okay. He’s a hypocrite. Continue.”

You rubbed both hands over your face.

“He thinks I’m a nepo baby.”

Maddy’s expression hardened.

“Of course he does.”

“He basically said he doesn’t understand how someone with no intimate screen experience gets cast in a film this sexual unless everyone is pretending my surname has nothing to do with it.”

Jess looked up sharply then.

Even through whatever hurt had just crossed her face, that got her.

“He said that?”

“More or less.”

“What an asshole,” Maddy said.

“Yes. Thank you.”

You took a gulp of wine, then immediately regretted it because you had barely eaten.

“And the worst thing is I did fuck up the scene.”

Maddy frowned.

“What do you mean?”

“We had to film an office kiss scene. I kept coming in too early. Missed a cue. Locked up. Froze. All that.”

Jess’s eyes softened a little despite herself.

“That happens.”

“Yes, well, it happened repeatedly.”

“First day,” Maddy said.

“Kurt said that too.”

“Because Kurt is right.”

You made a face.

Maddy ignored it and then asked -

“What did Tom do?”

You picked at the label on the wine bottle.

“He asked what that was and said I am out of my depth.”

Maddy stared at you.

“Sorry?”

“Quietly. Like a prick.”

Jess’s mouth tightened.

“That sounds like him too.”

You glanced at her.

Careful now.

Too late, but careful.

“He was mostly just… sharp. We were mostly angry with each other.”

Jess’s fingers tightened around her fork.

Then, quietly, “Did he talk about me at all?”

Your chest tightened.

You looked at Maddy.

Maddy looked at you.

No help there.

You turned back to Jess.

“Briefly.”

Jess swallowed.

“And?”

You hated this.

You hated him, suddenly, for making you sit here with one of your closest friends and navigate the wreckage of something he had apparently considered so casual it barely required follow-up.

“Nothing much. We were arguing. It wasn’t exactly a calm conversation.”

Jess nodded.

“But he mentioned me.”

“I mentioned you first.”

Her eyes flicked up.

“Why?”

“Because he was being sanctimonious about the age thing and I said it was rich, considering you’re my age.”

Maddy closed her eyes briefly, as though receiving pain from the universe.

Jess went still.

“Oh.”

“I didn’t mean it like—”

“No. I know.”

But her voice had changed.

You could hear it.

The hurt.

The embarrassment.

The reminder that she had liked him, and he had not called, and now he was on set with you, counting intimacy pages and apparently sleeping with baristas and models and whoever else crossed his path.

“He said it was casual,” you said, then immediately wished you had not.

Jess laughed once.

Small.

Awful.

“Of course he did.”

You looked down at your wine.

“Jess, I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not.”

“No,” she said, after a second. “It isn’t. But it’s also not your fault.”

Maddy pointed at her with the neck of the wine bottle.

“That is the first sensible thing anyone has said tonight.”

Jess looked at you.

“I told you it would be weird.”

There it was.

Quiet.

Not accusing.

Still sharp.

“I told you not to take the movie.”

Your stomach tightened.

“Jess.”

Maddy cut in immediately.

“That’s not helpful.”

Jess looked away.

“I know.”

“She can’t make career decisions around him being emotionally lazy.”

“I said I know.”

The room went quiet.

Hamster Tom chose that exact moment to begin running furiously on his wheel.

All three of you looked over.

Round and round.

Tiny feet.

Maximum drama.

Maddy lifted her glass.

“At least one Tom in this story is productive.”

Despite everything, you laughed.

Jess did too, though hers was softer.

The tension loosened.

Not gone.

Just less dangerous.

You leaned back against the couch and closed your eyes.

“He’s such a dick.”

“Yes,” Maddy said.

Jess said nothing.

You opened one eye.

“Sorry.”

She shook her head.

“No. He is.”

Maddy gave a solemn nod.

“Growth.”

Jess threw a napkin at her.

***********

Later, when the wine bottle was almost empty and your food cartons were half-abandoned on the coffee table, and after Jess and Maddy left and the flat returned to quiet, your phone buzzed while you were brushing your teeth.

James.

James: sorry, long day on set? paris is so nice though. you’d love this hotel. how was your day?

You stared at it with toothpaste in your mouth.

The truth sat there, enormous and impossible.

Horrible.

Humiliating.

Complicated.

You spat into the sink.

Then typed.

You: okay. tired. going to bed. love you

A moment later:

James: love you too. don’t forget to look at wedding venues please. i sent you three options. you need to pick one soon or we need to push the date again.

You stared at the message.

Wedding venues.

After Tom.

After Kurt.

After Jess’s face.

After twenty-three pages of intimacy and a coffee shop girl and a hamster named Tom chewing at the bars like he had a grievance against the world.

You typed:

You: sure

Then you put the phone face down on the counter.

In the living room, Fred beeped.

Hamster Tom chewed something he absolutely should not have been chewing.

Your script sat on the coffee table, open to tomorrow’s scenes.

You stood there in the bathroom doorway, exhausted, barefoot, half-lit by the sink light, and thought of Paris.

James.

Wedding venues.

Tom’s lips.

Nope. No absolutely not.

Kurt saying, You just need to have a bit of faith in your abilities.

You laughed once.

Quiet.

Humourless.

Then you went to bed without looking at the venues.

**********

Across town, Tom was trying very hard not to think about the day either.

He was better at that than you were.

Usually.

Tonight, not so much.

Layla’s flat was small, warm, and too bright, with plants on the windowsill and an unmade bed pushed against the wall beneath a crooked framed print. The room smelled faintly of vanilla, clean laundry, and the coffee she always seemed to carry home on her clothes no matter how long she had been away from the café.

Tom moved through it quietly, gathering himself back into pieces.

Condom into the bin.

Shirt from the floor.

Boxers.

Trousers.

Socks, somehow, from opposite sides of the bed.

Layla lay on her stomach with the sheet pulled lazily over her hips, chin resting on her folded arms, watching him with the sort of amused openness that had been pleasant, uncomplicated, and exactly why he had kept coming back.

At least, that was what he told himself.

“You want a cigarette before you go?” she asked.

Tom looked over his shoulder.

Her hair was loose over one cheek. She looked young in the soft light. Younger than she did behind the counter. Younger than she did when she was teasing him in public, all glossy confidence and quick hands around coffee cups.

Something in him tightened.

Not guilt.

Not exactly.

He hated that the distinction mattered.

“Yes,” he said.

Layla smiled.

“Thought so.”

He leaned down and kissed her once.

Briefly.

Enough to be affectionate.

Not enough to become a conversation.

Then he pulled his T-shirt over his head, found his cigarettes on the little table beside the bed, and followed her through the narrow door onto the balcony.

It was not really a balcony.

More of a metal ledge with ambitions.

It overlooked a small courtyard boxed in by brick walls, bins, fire escapes, and one stubborn tree growing out of a square of soil someone had probably forgotten existed. A few windows glowed across the way. Someone was cooking garlic. Somewhere below, a door slammed and a man laughed too loudly into his phone.

Tom lit his cigarette and leaned his elbows against the railing.

Layla came out behind him in a dressing gown, bare feet silent on the cold metal.

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

That was the part he liked.

The part after, when nobody required anything from him yet.

When the body had been given something to do and the mind had a few brief seconds of quiet.

Except tonight the quiet did not hold.

It filled, almost immediately, with the set.

With Kurt’s voice.

With your face when he had said producer’s daughter.

With the little blank moment after he had asked whether you remembered your lines.

With your hand at the hem of your skirt.

With the way your eyes had lifted in the final take.

I don’t usually tell people this.

He took a drag too sharply.

Layla watched him from the side.

“You weren’t all there today.”

Tom exhaled.

“Was I not?”

“No.”

“You seemed to still have a great time.”

She laughed at that, low and easy.

“I always have a great time with you.”

His mouth twitched despite himself.

“Good.”

“But that wasn’t what I said.”

Tom looked down into the courtyard.

“Long day.”

“Has filming been difficult?”

He tapped ash over the railing.

“You could say that.”

Layla leaned one hip against the wall, studying him with more attention than he particularly wanted.

“Your co-star came in today. Twice.”

Tom’s hand stilled for half a second.

Then moved again.

“Did she?”

“Mm-hm.”

“The studio café is very popular.”

“She seemed lovely.”

He gave a short laugh.

Not warm.

Not quite mocking.

“Did she?”

Layla’s smile tilted.

“And very pretty.”

Tom looked at her then.

Properly.

“Where are you going with this?”

Layla lifted both hands, innocent.

Too innocent.

“Nowhere.”

“Layla.”

She laughed.

“Fine. I’ve heard rumours about that film.”

His jaw tightened.

There were several answers available to him.

Most of them bad.

He chose the flattest one.

“It’s work.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Because you sound jealous.’

Layla looked amused now, not wounded.

That was another thing he liked about her. She rarely mistook him for less difficult than he was.

“I’m not jealous.”

“Good.”

“I’m observant.”

“Dangerous trait.”

“You would know.”

That landed more accurately than he liked.

He took another drag and looked away.

Layla stepped closer, folding her arms loosely over her chest.

“So?”

“So what?”

“Is she nice?”

Tom laughed once under his breath.

This time there was no humour in it.

“No.”

Layla’s eyebrows lifted.

“No?”

“Irritating.”

“That was fast.”

“Some people are efficient.”

She watched him.

He could feel it.

The cigarette burned between his fingers.

The courtyard below stayed indifferent.

“And for what it’s worth,” he said, more sharply than he intended, “jealousy doesn’t suit you.”

Layla did not flinch.

She only smiled a little.

“Good thing I’m not jealous, then.”

Tom looked at her.

She shrugged.

“We said casual.”

“We did.”

“But casual doesn’t mean blind.”

He said nothing.

The problem was, she was right.

Casual had always suited him because it came with rules simple enough not to become accusations. No promises. No explanations. No emotional audits at midnight. No one asking whether he was alright in a voice that suggested they already knew he was not.

Layla had been good at casual.

Better than Jess.

At least so he thought.

And that thought made his stomach twist.

He looked down, jaw tight, and flicked ash too hard.

Jess.

Of course Jess was in this too.

Because apparently every stupid thing he had done in the last year had been patiently waiting for the same call sheet.

Layla was still looking at him.

“I’m not asking you for a declaration,” she said. “I was teasing.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

He rubbed a hand over his mouth.

Suddenly tired.

Properly tired.

Not the useful kind.

“I should go.”

Layla studied him for a moment.

Then nodded.

“Okay.”

He stubbed the cigarette out in the little ashtray balanced on the railing.

They went back inside. He picked up his jacket, checked his pockets for his wallet, phone, lighter. The habitual inventory. Things he could control.

Layla sat on the edge of the bed, tying her dressing gown tighter.

“See you Friday night?”

Tom paused.

Friday.

He had plans Friday.

A catch up with someone from another life of his not many people knew about.

“I can’t Friday.”

Layla tilted her head.

“Filming late?”

“No. Catching up with a friend.”

“Ah.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

He almost smiled.

Apparently everyone said nothing like it meant several paragraphs.

“Next Monday?” he asked.

Layla looked at him for a second longer.

Then smiled.

“Yeah. That works.”

He nodded.

“Good.”

She stood, crossed the room, and kissed him by the door.

This one was softer.

A little slower.

A little too much like a question he had no intention of answering.

When she pulled back, she looked at him with that same amused, observant expression.

“Try sleeping before then.”

That actually made him smile.

Small, but real.

“Goodnight, Layla.”

“Goodnight, Tom.”

He left with the taste of her on his mouth and smoke still in his lungs.

Outside, the night had cooled properly.

Tom walked down the stairs and out into the street, jacket collar turned up, phone heavy in his pocket, mind refusing the neat blankness he had been trying to force on it all evening.

He thought of Layla’s smile.

Jess’s texts he had never answered properly.

Anya’s name in some gossip column he had pretended not to see.

Your face in rehearsal room three.

Your hand at your skirt.

Your voice through your teeth.

Go to hell.

He lit another cigarette before he reached the corner.

He told himself it was because he wanted one.

Not because the day had followed him.

Not because the film already felt less like work than it should.

In reality, it felt like being reassembled for public failure.

Natalia tilted your face toward the light and frowned at your mouth.

“You’ve been biting your lip.”

You immediately stopped biting your lip.

Which, naturally, proved her point.

“Have I?”

She gave you a look in the mirror.

“Yes.”

“Maybe Rose bites her lip.”

“Not unless Kurt tells me she does.”

You tried to smile.

It came out terrible.

Natalia dabbed at the corner of your mouth with a cotton bud.

“Relax your jaw.”

You relaxed it too hard.

She paused.

“Not like you’re dead.”

“Right. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologise. Just unclench.”

Across the room, Tom was standing near the door with Sven, half in conversation, half elsewhere. He had changed back into the office-scene costume now. Sleeves rolled. Collar open. Hair slightly adjusted back into Jason’s tidy ruin. He held his script in one hand and a cigarette packet in the other, thumb moving over the cardboard edge.

Not opening it.

Just touching it.

Stopping.

Touching it again.

Sven said something low that made him look away and give one short almost-laugh.

Then Tom’s eyes lifted to the mirror.

Caught yours.

Only for a second.

You looked down immediately.

Natalia noticed.

Of course she noticed.

Everyone on this set had eyes like hunting dogs.

“Still alive?” she asked.

“Unfortunately.”

Her mouth twitched.

“Good. Hold still.”

By the time she finished, your mouth had been restored to Rose’s mouth, which seemed unfair, because Rose was about to be kissed and you were the one having the nervous system event.

A runner came to the doorway.

“Marie’s ready for you both on the office set.”

Your stomach dropped.

There it was.

No warning trumpet.

No dramatic music.

Just a runner with a headset and a clipboard, casually announcing your execution.

Tom pushed away from the wall.

You stood too quickly and nearly knocked your knee against the makeup station.

Natalia caught the brush pot before it tipped.

You both looked at it.

Then at each other.

“Very smooth,” she said.

“Thank you. I trained.”

She smiled, but softer now.

“Breathe before you go in.”

You did.

It did not help.

Marie pulled the two of you aside just before the final scene of the day, like she had promised.

It was on the office set, late afternoon in the story, the first real break in the therapist-patient line. Not dramatic. Not messy. Not some wild, impulsive thing that could hide behind chaos.

This one was worse in its own way.

Quieter.

More intimate.

More exposed.

A pause at the door. Rose upset, raw, halfway out of the room. Jason saying her name. Rose stopping. Turning. He crossed the distance. He held on to her, gently but abruptly and then she kissed him. Once. Then he kissed her back. A mistake neither of them corrected quickly enough.

Simple on paper.

Everything awful was simple on paper.

Marie stood between the two of you with her notebook and that calm, grounded energy that seemed impossible to shake.

“Alright. We keep this precise.”

She pointed lightly as she spoke.

“He says your name. You stop. Turn. One step back in. He closes the space. Hand to upper arm first.”

She looked at Tom.

“Not waist. Not neck. Upper arm.”

Tom nodded once.

“Understood.”

Then she looked at you.

“You receive that contact. You don’t have to lean into it yet. Just don’t pre-emptively pull away. Then, on the kiss itself, if you’re still comfortable with it, his other hand comes to your jaw.”

Your throat tightened.

Not because of the words.

Because of the word jaw.

Because your body, completely unhelpfully, remembered his hand there.

New York. Balcony light. His thumb at your chin. The soft pressure that had made you lift your face without thinking.

You nodded too fast.

“Yes.”

Marie watched you for half a beat.

“Say it properly.”

Your face warmed.

Tom looked down at his pages.

Not at you.

That was somehow worse.

You swallowed.

“Upper arm first. Then jaw. First kiss about three seconds. Then the second kiss. He kisses back, then he starts to pull away. Then I close the second beat.”

Marie nodded.

“Exactly.”

Kurt stood just off to the side, coffee in hand, watching closely.

“I want it restrained,” he said. “It needs to feel like neither of them meant to do it, but neither of them can quite stop it either.”

Marie nodded.

“Restrained is fine. But it still has to live.”

That line sat in your chest more heavily than it should have.

She walked you through the choreography once without cameras.

It should have been manageable.

It should have felt technical.

You hit your mark. Turned when you were meant to turn. Stopped where you were meant to stop.

Tom stepped toward you.

His hand came to your upper arm.

Careful.

Deliberate.

Almost overly neutral, if anything, as though he was making absolutely certain no one in the room could accuse him of anything uncontrolled.

His fingers barely tightened.

His other hand lifted to your jaw, stopping just before contact.

“Here?” he asked Marie.

Not you.

Marie checked the angle.

“Slightly lower. More along the jawline than cheek. Don’t cover her face from the camera.”

He adjusted.

His fingers touched you properly then.

Lightly.

Professionally.

And somehow that made it worse.

Because there was no mess to react to. No spontaneity to blame. Just the awful, neat reality of him standing close enough for you to feel the heat of him, touching your face like it was blocking, when your body still knew too much about him for it to feel like work at all.

Your breath caught.

Small.

Barely anything.

Tom felt it.

You knew he felt it because his hand went still.

Not tighter.

Not softer.

Still.

Marie noticed before anyone else did.

“Take a breath.”

You did.

Badly.

Marie’s voice stayed even.

“Again.”

You did.

Tom stepped back on her cue.

The absence of his hand was almost as bad as the contact.

“Good,” Marie said. “Again from the top, no kiss yet.”

You ran it again.

And again.

Blocking went fine.

Technically.

That was the insult of it.

Technically, you could do everything.

You could stop at the door. You could turn. You could let him close the space. You could keep your hands where they needed to be. You could breathe through the contact.

Technically, you were not failing.

Your body, however, was making private arrangements to betray you later.

Then they brought camera in.

Closed set was called. Even for just a kiss.

Somehow, that made everything worse.

Not better.

Not safer.

Worse.

Because once the room had been cleared of the non-essential people, all that remained were the people who mattered. The people who would absolutely notice if you got this wrong.

Kurt by the monitor.

Marie near frame.

Sven.

Camera.

Sound.

Script supervisor.

Focus puller.

A handful of bodies trying very hard to be professional and invisible while preparing to watch you kiss a man you had already kissed before, a man whose mouth you remembered too well for this to feel remotely neutral.

You stood at the office door with your bag over your shoulder, waiting for the cue.

Tom was by the desk, sleeves rolled, already in position.

Still.

Composed.

Not looking at you.

That should have made it easier.

It didn’t.

Because the problem was not that he was making a thing of it.

The problem was that he wasn’t.

He looked so calm. So contained. As though this was only work. As though he had not once had you under him in a dark room in New York, had not once kissed you like he already knew exactly how you sounded when you stopped thinking.

Your mouth went dry.

“Rolling.”

“Speed.”

“Marker.”

The clap snapped through the set.

“Action.”

You hit your line.

A little too sharp, but usable.

You turned toward the door. Reached for the handle.

Behind you, Tom said your character’s name.

“Rose.”

You stopped.

Turned.

And there it was already.

That horrible, immediate awareness.

Not romance.

Not chemistry.

Awareness.

Your whole body seemed to understand before your brain did that he was about to come close, and there would be nowhere to hide from it because the scene required you to stay exactly where you were and let him.

He crossed to you.

His hand came to your arm exactly where Marie had placed it in rehearsal. High on the upper arm. Careful. Controlled. Not intimate enough to protest. Not impersonal enough to ignore.

And even that was difficult.

Because it was not just a hand on your arm.

It was his hand.

Warm through the fabric. Steady. Deliberate.

All at once, you were conscious of everything at the same time — the weight of your bag strap on your shoulder, your own pulse in your throat, the heat in your face, the lights, the camera, the fact that if you looked down you would see his fingers holding you in place.

Your shoulders tightened before you could stop them.

You knew it.

You hated that you knew it.

And the worst part was that he knew it too.

You saw the smallest pause pass through him.

Barely anything.

A split-second hesitation.

The actor in him adjusting. The man in him realising you had already gone stiff.

Then you leaned in, just as scripted, because the scene required it.

The kiss landed lightly.

And it was awful.

Not because it was rough.

Not because he did anything wrong.

Because he didn’t.

He was careful. Almost maddeningly careful. His mouth only just there, as choreographed, giving you exactly the shape of the beat and no more once your lips met his.

It should have made it easy for you.

It should have let you act out the kiss.

Instead, it made the whole thing feel even more exposing.

Because there was no chaos to disappear into. No suddenness. No mess. No excuse.

Just the neat, unbearable fact of his mouth on yours while half a dozen people waited for you to look as though you wanted it.

And you couldn’t.

Your hands stayed useless at your sides. Your mouth barely softened. Instead of kissing him, you endured it as he tried to lead, trying to safe the scene. That was the horrible truth of it. You endured it for the length of the count, every second dragging because you were conscious of the texture of his lower lip, the faint warmth of his breath, the controlled pressure of him not pressing harder because he could feel you weren’t there.

“Cut.”

Silence.

Not dramatic.

Not sharp.

Just flat in a way that was somehow more embarrassing.

Kurt leaned slightly closer to the monitor.

Marie stepped in at once.

“Okay. Reset.”

She looked at you properly.

“How are you?”

Your face was burning.

“Fine.”

You said it too quickly.

You knew you did.

Marie knew you did.

Everyone probably knew you did.

Across from you, Tom had already stepped back to his mark. He did not say a word. But there was tension in him now, visible despite how hard he tried to keep it tucked away — in the set of his shoulders, in the line of his mouth, in the way he flattened the pages in his hand and then flattened them again, as if irritation needed somewhere small to go.

Marie’s voice stayed calm.

“Again. Drop your shoulders. Don’t brace before he touches you.”

You nodded.

“Yep.”

Second take.

This time, you tried to prepare for it.

Which turned out to be its own disaster.

Because now you knew exactly what was coming.

You knew the line. The turn. The step. The hand at your arm. The look. The kiss.

And that knowledge made your body anticipate it too early. By the time he said your name, your nerves were already stretched too tight. By the time you turned, your breath was too shallow. By the time his hand touched your arm, you were practically waiting for impact.

Then his other hand came up to your jaw.

And that was worse.

So much worse.

His fingers were gentle. His palm only just touching. But the hold of it — light, guiding, intimate in a way that upper-arm contact was not — made something in your chest seize.

It was suddenly impossible not to remember other versions of this.

Not to remember him touching your face when there had been no camera, no crew, no marks taped to the floor.

Not to remember the simple private ease of kissing him when nobody expected a performance out of it.

That was the problem.

Kissing him was not the problem.

Kissing him like this was.

Kissing him while pretending there was no history in your body.

Kissing him while people observed.

Kissing him while he stayed maddeningly professional and you had to meet that professionalism with something that read as desire instead of panic.

You kissed him anyway.

He kissed you back as scripted and you froze so badly this time that you could feel it happening from the inside.

Your lips went still. Your chin locked under his hand. Even your stomach seemed to pull tight, as if your entire body had mistaken the moment for something it needed to survive rather than act.

Tom pulled back exactly on cue, but the second he did, he stepped away a fraction too quickly.

Not enough for anyone to call it out.

Enough that you felt it.

Enough that you knew he had felt how absent you were.

“Cut.”

Kurt sat back.

“No. There’s nothing under it except panic.”

The humiliation of that was instant and physical.

A drop straight through your middle.

Not because he was wrong.

Because he was right.

Marie stepped in again.

“Let’s strip it back. Forget about her initiating. Let’s have you both meet in the middle. Three seconds. It can look messy, so long as it feels safe.”

Tom nodded once, clipped now.

“Fine.”

You glanced at him.

He still was not looking at you, but his thumb rubbed once against the side of his finger in that restless way he had when he was irritated, then went still again, like even that tiny tell annoyed him.

Kurt called from the monitor, “I need conflict, yes, but I also need want. Right now it looks like she’s trying to survive him.”

Your stomach dropped so hard it almost hurt.

Because that was exactly what it felt like.

Not that Tom himself was frightening.

Not that you thought he would do anything wrong.

But the moment felt impossible to get through cleanly. Every second of it split between too many realities at once — the scripted one, the private one, the professional one, the humiliatingly personal one.

You were trying to remember the line between actress and woman and body and pride, and by the time his mouth touched yours, there was nothing left in you except sheer, rigid self-consciousness.

Marie repositioned you both.

“Look at him before he touches you,” she said gently. “Don’t wait to be startled by it.”

You swallowed.

“Okay.”

Third take.

You looked at him.

That was a mistake.

Because then it was his face.

His actual face, close enough now that you could see how hard he was trying to keep everything neutral. The contained patience. The jaw held a little too tight. The effort of someone who did not want to embarrass you but also clearly did not want to stand there failing through take after take while a whole set watched.

And suddenly it became impossible not to think about what he must be thinking.

That you were inexperienced.

That you were out of your depth.

That the nepo-girl casting disaster rumours, if anyone had them, would write themselves.

That he was having to compensate for you.

That he regretted ever touching you in New York.

That he could feel every ounce of your stiffness and was now trapped managing it in front of other people.

His hand came to your arm.

His other hand rose to your face.

He leaned in.

And before the kiss had even properly landed, your body betrayed you again.

A tiny recoil.

You did not mean it.

Not enough to step back.

Not enough to break the choreography.

But enough.

Enough that he felt it.

Enough that he hesitated.

He stopped before the beat had fully happened.

Not dramatically.

Not in a way that broke the scene wide open.

Just a split-second withdrawal, instinctive and controlled, the reflex of someone who had felt you go rigid for the third time and was not going to press forward into a kiss your body was refusing.

Marie moved immediately.

“Cut it.”

The room went quiet.

Tom stepped back properly now and looked away, one hand on his hip, jaw tight. He still did not say anything. But the frustration was there all over him now, restrained so hard it was almost worse than anger.

You folded your arms around yourself before you could stop them.

“Sorry.”

Tom’s head shifted slightly at that, but he did not look at you.

Marie came to stand in front of you.

“You do not need to apologise.”

Then, to both of you:

“We’re not getting anything useful if she’s bracing this hard.”

Tom finally spoke, voice clipped.

“Can we just reset it and go again?”

Marie turned to him at once.

“No.”

Not cold.

Just absolute.

Tom looked at the floor for a second, then nodded once, jaw flexing.

Accepting it.

Not liking it.

Kurt came off monitor, thinking fast.

You said too quickly, “I can do it.”

Even to your own ears it sounded awful.

Defensive.

Thin.

Desperate.

Tom let out a short breath at that.

Not a laugh.

Not quite.

Just a very obvious exhale that made it painfully clear he did not think forcing another take right now was going to save anyone.

You looked at him immediately.

He still was not looking at you.

Which was somehow the worst part of all.

Kurt caught the whole thing.

He glanced between the two of you, then said, calm but decisive, “No. We’re not doing this now.”

Your stomach dropped.

“Kurt—”

He shook his head.

“Listen. I think the issue is that this scene is too early for where you two are at. Not in the story. On the floor. Because this entire movie relies on chemistry and, right now, you don’t have it.”

Tom finally looked up.

Kurt gestured between you both.

“There’s too much awareness, too much tension, not enough ease yet. That’s not a failure. It just means I’m not getting what I need today.”

Marie nodded beside him.

“Agreed.”

Tom looked away again, dragging a hand through his hair, visibly frustrated now, though still directing it at the situation rather than at you.

The scene had collapsed.

Everyone knew it.

No one was saying it cruelly, which somehow made it feel worse.

Kurt checked the pages in his hand.

“We’ll postpone the kiss. Move in some other office scenes first. More dialogue, more proximity, more time working opposite each other before we come back to this.”

Tom said nothing.

You said nothing either, because humiliation and relief had hit you at exactly the same time and left you feeling strangely hollow, like your body had gone through something far more exhausting than one failed kiss on a set had any right to be.

Then Tom finally said, still looking at the floor rather than at you, “Fine.”

Only one word.

But edged enough that it lodged under your skin anyway.

Not cruel.

Not blaming.

Just strained.

Kurt softened a fraction.

“This is day one. I’m not worried.”

Tom gave a short nod that suggested he was not nearly as convinced.

Marie touched your arm lightly.

“Take five.”

You shook your head too fast.

“No, I’m alright.”

That was when Tom finally looked at you properly.

And the expression on his face — tense, controlled, unconvinced, and maybe, buried under all that irritation, faintly wary of pushing you harder — made your chest tighten again.

Marie noticed.

“Take five anyway,” she said.

You gave one short laugh with no humour in it.

“Right.”

Then you turned and got out of the room before anyone could see how badly your hands were shaking.

********

The corridor outside the set felt colder than it had a minute ago.

Not properly cold.

Studio cold.

Artificial cold.

Air-conditioning and concrete and that strange stale stillness film sets always had once you stepped just far enough away from the lights.

You stopped beside the wall and folded your arms across yourself so tightly it almost hurt.

Your face was burning.

Your mouth still felt wrong.

Not kissed.

Not wanted.

Not even embarrassed in a simple, clean way.

It felt raw, over-aware, humiliated. Like the shape of the failed scene was still sitting on your skin. His hand on your arm. His mouth on yours for barely a second. The awful instant your whole body had betrayed you and gone rigid while everyone watched.

You closed your eyes.

God.

A kiss.

It had only been a kiss.

Not even one of the difficult scenes. Not one of the scenes you had been dreading since the second you read the script.

Just a kiss in an office doorway, and you had managed to make it look like you were being held hostage.

The door opened behind you.

You did not turn at first.

You knew it was him.

Of course it was him.

You heard the door shut harder than it needed to, then his footsteps coming towards you, quick and irritated and with none of the careful neutrality he had been forcing on set.

When you finally looked around, Tom was already there, jaw tight, one hand shoved into his pocket, the other going briefly through his hair before dropping again.

He looked annoyed in a way that made your stomach immediately twist.

Not lightly annoyed.

Not amused.

Genuinely frustrated.

He looked at you for half a beat and then said, flatly, “What was that?”

You stared at him.

“Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously.” His expression did not shift. “What was that?”

Heat climbed even higher into your face.

“I know it was bad.”

He gave a short, sharp breath through his nose.

“Yeah. It was.”

The words landed like a slap.

Because of how plainly he said them. Because there was no softening around them. No attempt to rescue your pride before he stepped on it.

Your chest tightened.

“You don’t have to talk to me like that.”

“How am I meant to talk to you?” His voice was clipped now, frustration sharpening it. “Tell you it was fine? It wasn’t fine.”

He took a step away, then back again, too wound up to stay still.

“Listen, Y/N, I can work with nerves,” he said. “I can work with awkwardness. I can work with Marie adjusting choreography, Kurt moving scenes around, all of that. What I can’t work with is not knowing whether this is first-day panic or whether you genuinely cannot do this.”

The words hit harder than they should have.

Not because he raised his voice.

Not because he was trying to humiliate you.

Because he sounded serious.

Professional.

Like he was no longer talking about one bad kiss but about the shape of a much bigger problem, and whether you were one.

Your arms tightened across yourself.

“I can do my job.”

Tom dragged a hand through his hair, already frustrated enough that he could not quite stay still.

“Can you?”

The question landed like a slap.

You stared at him.

He kept going before you could answer, too wound up now to stop himself.

“Because I’m trying to be realistic here. That was the easiest intimacy beat we have. It was a kiss. That’s it. No body positioning, no half-naked choreography, no fake urgency, no desk, no shower, no scene where we’re meant to look like we’re seconds away from ripping each other’s clothes off.”

Every word made your skin burn hotter.

“Tom—”

“No, because I’m in this too.” His jaw flexed. “I care if it works. Kurt cares if it works. The film depends on it working. And if you can’t even act a simple kiss without freezing, then what the hell are we meant to do when we get to the scenes where we’re pretending to fuck?”

The words hit like a physical thing.

Not because they were loud.

Because they were precise.

Practical.

Because he was not speaking like a man trying to wound you. He was speaking like an actor looking at a problem and trying to work out how disastrous it might become.

And somehow that made it worse.

You stared at him.

Your face felt hot enough to hurt. Your chest tight, breath stuck too high.

He was still talking.

Of course he was.

Still too wound up to see what every sentence was doing.

“I’m being serious, Y/N. That was the easy version. That was the stripped-back, nothing beat. We’re not even near the difficult stuff yet.”

You could feel your throat tightening.

Because all you could hear underneath it now was the same thing, over and over.

You can’t do it.

You’re not up to it.

You’re going to fuck this up for everyone.

Tom raked a hand through his hair again, restless and annoyed and far too invested to soften any of it.

“There are whole scenes hanging off this. Big ones. Story-wise, emotionally, structurally. If the intimacy doesn’t work, the film doesn’t work. It starts looking ridiculous.”

That one landed so hard you almost flinched.

Because there it was.

Not just that you had a bad day.

Not just that you had messed up a kiss.

That you might be the weak point in something bigger.

That you might be the one who made it all look stupid.

You folded your arms tighter across yourself, fingers digging into your sleeves.

“Right.”

He frowned at your tone.

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“That thing where you act like I’m attacking you for fun.”

A laugh almost came out of you, but it would have sounded too close to crying, so it died somewhere under your ribs instead.

“You think I’m not good enough.”

The words slipped out before you could stop them.

Tom’s expression shifted.

Not softer.

Not kind.

Just briefly thrown.

“That is not what I said.”

“You didn’t have to.”

He stared at you.

You could see him trying to recalibrate, trying to pull the conversation back toward whatever version of honesty he thought he had been offering. But it was too late now. The damage had already been done. Every careful, rational thing he had said had landed in exactly the worst place.

His voice came out lower.

“I’m saying right now I don’t know if you can handle this.”

That did it.

Whatever had still been holding in your chest just gave way.

Because that was worse, somehow, than if he had been cruel. Worse than if he had been mocking. Worse than if he had called you spoiled or amateur or a nepo hire.

I don’t know if you can handle this.

You looked away fast before he could see too much on your face.

Too late, probably.

Your eyes were already burning.

Tom saw the shift and stopped for half a second, like he had only just realised how hard he had hit. But then the frustration got there first again.

“I’m trying to be honest with you.”

“Why?” you said, too quickly. “So I can thank you for it?”

His jaw tightened.

“No. So this doesn’t turn into a disaster later.”

Disaster.

There it was again.

Film.

Problem.

Disaster.

Every word making you smaller.

You looked at him and suddenly all you could see was exactly how this must look from his side: the producer’s daughter cast in an R-rated film with pages and pages of intimacy she had clearly never been ready for, freezing on day one while everyone else had to rearrange around her.

Humiliation curdled into anger so fast it made you dizzy.

“You know what? Fuck off.”

Tom blinked.

Actually blinked, like that had caught him off guard.

“What?”

“Fuck off.” Your voice shook on it, which only made you angrier. “Seriously, Tom. Fuck off.”

He stared at you.

The irritation in his face cracked then, just slightly, letting something else through. Realisation, maybe. Regret arriving a beat too late. The dawning awareness that he had come out here worried about the film and somehow managed to make you feel like a casting mistake.

“That’s not what I meant.”

You laughed once, sharp and miserable.

“Of course it is.”

Silence sat between you for one ugly second.

Tom opened his mouth again, like maybe he was finally about to say the right thing.

Or maybe just a less awful one.

Before he could, a voice cut down the corridor.

“Tom! Two minutes!”

Both of you turned instinctively.

One of the ADs was halfway out of a side door, headset on, clipboard tucked under one arm.

“We’re set on the office insert. Kurt wants you now.”

The timing of it was so absurd it almost felt deliberate. Like the universe refusing to let either of you finish the conversation properly.

Tom looked back at the AD, then at you.

For one second, he seemed torn between the set and the fact that you were standing in front of him looking like you might either slap him or fall apart.

The AD called again.

“Tom.”

His jaw tightened.

“Yeah. Coming.”

But he did not move immediately.

His eyes came back to yours, the frustration still there, but muddied now by something far less certain. Like he could feel the whole conversation hanging wrong between you and had no idea how to fix it in the three seconds production was about to allow him.

“Y/N—”

You shook your head once.

Hard.

Not trusting yourself to speak.

Because if you opened your mouth right now, you were either going to start crying in front of him or say something vicious enough to make it all worse.

Tom saw that too.

Saw the way your face had gone still in the dangerous way people’s faces did right before they lost control of them.

The AD again, sharper this time:

“Tom, now.”

He glanced back over his shoulder, swore quietly under his breath, then looked at you one last time.

“We will talk later.”

That should have sounded angry.

It mostly sounded frustrated.

Uneasy.

Like he already regretted half of what he had said and did not know what to do with the other half.

You found your voice just long enough to answer.

“Go.”

One word.

Flat.

Cold.

Much steadier than you felt.

Tom hesitated for one beat more, then turned and walked back toward set, shoulders tight, one hand dragging through his hair as he went.

You watched him until he disappeared through the door.

Then the corridor went quiet again.

Too quiet.

And without him there to stay angry at, all that was left was the humiliation.

The awful, suffocating certainty that he had looked at you after one failed kiss and seen exactly what you feared most.

Someone not ready.

Not capable.

Not enough.

Your eyes burned properly now.

You pressed your lips together hard and started walking the other way before the first tear could fall where anyone might see it.

Not together.

Of course not together.

That would have required the universe to show mercy, and apparently the universe had taken one look at your first day on set and decided to start drinking before noon.

You walked ahead of him down the corridor with the assistant between you like a traumatised buffer, your script held against your ribs and your hip still throbbing from where you had clipped the crate in rehearsal room three.

Tom followed behind.

Not close.

Not far enough.

You could feel him there with that same irritating awareness your body seemed determined to maintain against your better judgment. Footsteps steady. Slightly longer stride. Quiet in a way that still managed to feel loud.

The assistant glanced back once.

Then immediately looked forward again.

Excellent.

Wonderful.

So she had absolutely heard enough to know something had happened.

Wardrobe was chaos in miniature. Racks of clothes. Steamers hissing. Shoes lined under tables. Half-labelled garment bags. Someone swearing softly at a missing belt. Someone else with pins in their mouth and a pencil behind their ear. Nadine, one of the wardrobe women, looked up when you came in and immediately narrowed her eyes at your skirt.

“There you are. Rose first.”

You lifted a hand.

“I am Rose.”

“I know, darling. That’s why I’m looking at you like that.”

You glanced down at yourself.

“Like what?”

“Like I’ve got to undo whatever you did before you arrived.”

Behind you, Tom made a sound.

Not quite a laugh.

Not even really audible.

You heard it anyway.

You turned your head just enough to glare.

He looked past you at a rack of jackets, expression almost saintly.

Nadine caught your chin lightly between two fingers and turned your face back.

“Don’t move. Makeup will do the face, but costume needs the silhouette.”

“Right.”

“And breathe. You’re standing like a hostage.”

“First day.”

“Mmm.” Nadine’s eyes flicked past your shoulder to Tom. “That explains one of you.”

Your face warmed.

Tom’s jaw shifted, but he said nothing.

They took you behind a curtain and began the strange, intimate, impersonal business of making sure every part of you looked like someone else. Your skirt was tugged flatter. Your blouse loosened at the throat. A cardigan was considered, rejected, then reconsidered. Someone adjusted the seam at your waist and asked whether the shoes pinched.

You answered too quickly.

“No. They’re fine. Great. Very shoe-like.”

Nadine paused with a pin between her fingers.

“Very shoe-like?”

“I don’t know why I said that.”

“Nerves?”

“Probably brain damage.”

She smiled around the pin.

“Hold still.”

You tried.

You failed.

Your fingers went to the hem of the skirt. Then the side seam. Then the call sheet folded in your hand. Then the hem again. Nadine gently caught your wrist and lowered it.

“Not yet. Save the fidgeting for the camera if Kurt wants it.”

You gave her a tight smile.

“Right. Sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for. Half this industry is held together by anxious women and men pretending they’re talented.”

From the other side of the curtain, someone said, “Tom, arms out.”

You did not look.

You absolutely did not look.

Unfortunately, the curtain gap existed.

And your eyes, which were traitorous, found it at once.

Tom stood near the mirror while another wardrobe assistant adjusted his cuffs. His jacket had been swapped for a darker one, more severe, more clinical. His shirt sat open at the throat in a way that was probably deliberate for the character and personally offensive to you as a person trying to have a normal nervous breakdown.

He looked tired.

Not visibly.

Not to anyone sensible.

But there was a faint tension around his eyes, a hard set to his mouth that had not been there when you first saw him that morning. His thumb kept finding the edge of the script tucked under his arm, worrying the paper, stopping, starting again.

Then his gaze lifted in the mirror.

Caught yours through the gap.

For half a second, neither of you moved.

Then Nadine stepped into your line of sight and snapped the curtain shut.

“No distracting yourself.”

You looked at her.

“I wasn’t.”

“Sure.”

By the time wardrobe released you both, you looked more like Rose and less like a woman who had spent the morning lying to her fiancé, insulting her co-star, being insulted by him, and shaking hands with a man who had once had his mouth on her intimate parts.

Progress, apparently.

Tom emerged a moment later.

He looked like Jason.

That was the first problem.

Not fully.

Not yet.

But enough.

The clothes had shifted him. Made him cleaner. More contained. The softness of his own clothes had been replaced by something deliberate and controlled. A therapist with expensive restraint and a history in his eyes.

Annoyingly good casting.

You hated that too.

The assistant reappeared at the end of the corridor.

“Marie’s ready for you both now.”

Of course she was.

The intimacy meeting happened in a smaller room off production, one of those rooms that looked temporary even if it had been standing for twenty years. Mismatched chairs. A folding table. A whiteboard with half-erased blocking notes. Bad instant coffee. A bowl of mints nobody had touched because the entire room seemed to know mints were about to become a loaded subject.

Kurt was already there, leaning against the table with his arms crossed, talking quietly to Marie.

Marie looked exactly like the kind of person you wanted in charge of an uncomfortable conversation.

Calm. Alert. Warm without being soft.

She had a notebook open in front of her, glasses low on her nose, and the slightly terrifying composure of a woman who had seen every possible version of actors pretending they were fine.

She smiled when you came in.

“Good. Come in. Sit wherever feels least weird.”

That was, unfortunately, a trap.

Everywhere felt weird.

You took the chair nearest the door.

Tom took the one opposite you.

Naturally.

Marie noticed.

Of course she noticed.

She looked between you both once, then did not make a thing of it, which somehow made you trust her more.

“Alright,” she said. “This is an initial run-through. We’ll do separate practical check-ins before each intimate scene, but I like everyone to understand how I work before we start putting bodies under lights and pretending that adrenaline is professionalism.”

Kurt lifted his coffee.

“One of my least favourite kinds of professionalism.”

Marie pointed her pen at him.

“And yet your industry runs on it.”

“Tragically.”

You almost smiled.

Tom did not.

His pen rolled once between his fingers, then vanished into his fist when he caught himself doing it.

Marie saw that too.

Her gaze moved briefly to your hands, which were folded too neatly in your lap.

Then back to her notes.

“My job is not to tell either of you how to act. My job is to make sure the intimate material is safe, clear, repeatable, and agreed before a camera is on it. Kissing, sexual contact, implied contact, partial undress, restraint, body weight, breath proximity, anything where vulnerability is being told through someone else’s body — that comes through me.”

You nodded.

Tom nodded.

Too quickly, both of you.

Marie’s mouth twitched.

“That was a very convincing pair of nods from two people who absolutely did not process all of that.”

Kurt made a quiet sound of amusement.

Your face warmed.

“I did process it.”

“Good,” Marie said. “Then process this bit too. Boundaries are not a one-time document you sign and then suffer through. They can change. People get tired. People get sore. Someone’s nervous system does something inconvenient at five p.m. that it did not do at ten a.m. Someone has had an argument. Someone is masking too hard. Someone says they’re fine because they think that’s the easiest way out of the room.”

Her eyes moved between you and Tom.

There was no accusation in it.

That was somehow worse.

“There is no prize for being chill,” Marie said. “Chill is usually useless information.”

Your foot started bouncing.

You stopped it.

Tom noticed.

You saw him notice.

Marie continued, calmly ruthless.

“If you hate mint, say so. If stubble is a problem, say so. If neck touch is fine in theory but awful on the day, say so. If you need a reset because your brain has gone loud, say so.”

You looked down.

Tom’s pen moved once against the side of his thumb.

Neither of you spoke.

Marie let the silence sit for exactly long enough to prove she was good at her job.

Then she moved on.

“Across the film, we have seven kissing scenes and five sex scenes. They escalate in emotional complexity more than explicitness. Today is only the first kiss. It is not mechanically complicated, but it matters because it sets the grammar for everything after it.”

Kurt nodded.

“It needs to feel like a mistake they both want to repeat.”

That landed in the room.

You looked at the table.

Tom looked at Marie.

Neither of you looked at each other.

Marie made a note.

“Right. So later today I’ll set approach, eyeline, hand placement, duration, breath spacing, and the separation. Nothing gets improvised. If the scene needs surprise, we choreograph the surprise. Understood?”

“Yes,” Tom said.

His voice was controlled.

Too controlled.

Marie glanced at him, one eyebrow lifting slightly.

“I know you do, Tom. We’ve worked together before.”

Something about that landed strangely.

Not badly.

Just sharply.

Of course they had worked together before.

Of course he had sat in rooms like this, calm and professional, discussing hand placement and breath spacing and camera-safe contact as if it were weather. Of course this was not new to him. Of course he knew how to make the awkward parts look easy.

Your fingers found the corner of your script.

Pressed.

Released.

Pressed again.

Marie’s gaze shifted to you.

Not missing it.

Not making a spectacle of it either.

“How about you, Y/N? Understood?”

You looked up too quickly.

“Yes. Understood.”

Too fast.

You heard it yourself.

Marie waited half a beat.

Tom’s eyes flicked to your hand on the script, then away.

You forced your fingers still.

Marie’s voice stayed gentle but firm.

“Say it back to me.”

Your face warmed.

“What?”

“Not because I think you weren’t listening,” she said. “Because sometimes the brain nods before the body has caught up. Especially on a first day.”

Kurt took a sip of coffee and wisely said nothing.

You swallowed.

“Right. Um. Nothing improvised. You set the approach, eyeline, hands, how long it lasts, breath spacing, and how we separate. If it’s meant to feel surprising, we still choreograph it.”

Marie nodded.

“Exactly.”

Tom leaned back slightly in his chair.

Not smug.

Not quite.

But composed enough that it annoyed you anyway.

Marie noticed that too.

“And both of you,” she added, looking between you, “are allowed to ask for a reset. You do not push through confusion because the room is busy. You do not change something because the take feels good. You do not decide mid-kiss that instinct is more interesting than consent.”

Tom’s jaw shifted.

“Understood.”

You nodded.

“Understood.”

This time, slower.

Then, Marie turned to you.

“Now, Y/N, my understanding is that you’ve not filmed scenes like this before?”

Your throat tightened.

You hated the question.

Not because it was unfair.

Because Tom was there.

“No.”

You felt rather than saw his attention sharpen.

Marie nodded once, not making it a confession.

“That’s fine. First time is not the same as incapable. It just means we build it more deliberately from the start. You do not need to be impressive in prep. You need to be honest.”

You nodded.

“Okay.”

“Also,” Marie said, glancing between you both again, “no one has to answer personal questions in this room. I don’t care who has or has not done what privately unless it affects safety or choreography. We are talking about the characters and the agreed action.”

The irony sat between you like a lit match.

Tom’s face did not move.

Yours did not either.

Heroic, really.

Marie flipped a page.

“The office kiss today: Rose initiates proximity without fully admitting she’s initiating it. Jason lets the line blur before he catches himself. That means both of you need to know where the line physically is. If the audience feels loss of control, lovely. If the actors lose control, useless.”

Kurt smiled faintly.

“Put that on a T-shirt.”

“I’ll invoice you.”

For the first time, Tom almost smiled.

Almost.

You saw it and hated that it made his face look briefly less unbearable.

Marie closed the notebook halfway.

“Any obvious concerns right now?”

You said, too fast, “No.”

Tom said, at almost the same time, “No.”

Marie looked at you both.

Then at Kurt.

“Fantastic. Two totally relaxed people.”

Kurt’s eyes flicked between you and Tom with faint amusement.

“My favourite.”

You pressed your lips together.

Tom leaned back in his chair, pen still in his hand. He looked composed enough to be carved out of stone, except the pen was upside down now and he had not noticed.

You noticed.

He caught you noticing.

His jaw tightened.

Marie stood.

“We’ll do another check in before the scene this afternoon. For now, wardrobe has you both cleared, makeup next, then therapy office for your scenes before lunch. And remember — come to me early if something changes or if you have any concerns. Especially if either of you starts performing ease instead of feeling it.”

You gathered your script.

Tom did the same.

Kurt started talking to Marie about the closed-set call sheet for the afternoon, which left you and Tom momentarily side by side near the door.

Not alone.

Not private.

Still too close.

He glanced at you.

“Well,” he said quietly, “that won’t be awkward at all.”

You looked straight ahead.

“It won’t be unless you make it so.”

His eyes sharpened.

“That’s rich coming from you.”

You turned your head.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He looked as if he considered saying several things, all of them inadvisable.

Then his gaze dropped briefly to the script in your hand.

“Nothing.”

“No, go on.”

His mouth tightened.

“Tell me again, Y/N. How many scenes like that have you filmed?”

You stared at him.

A second passed.

Then you said, quietly, “None.”

He gave one short breath through his nose.

Not kind.

Not quite cruel either.

Worse, somehow.

Unimpressed.

“Exactly.”

Your spine stiffened.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You do realise you say nothing in a way that means several paragraphs.”

His eyes came back to yours.

“I counted twenty-three pages of intimacy after I found out you were attached.”

Heat rushed into your face.

“You counted them?”

“Yes.”

“That’s incredibly normal of you.”

His jaw tightened.

“I was trying to work out how concerned I should be.”

“About what?”

“About spending the next few months pretending to make out with the producer’s daughter in front of a camera while everyone congratulates themselves for taking a risk.”

For a second, you only stared at him.

There it was again.

The same little blade.

Producer’s daughter.

Not actress.

Not co-star.

Never just you.

“Taking a risk?” you repeated.

Tom’s expression stayed flat.

Controlled.

Cruel in the way people were cruel when they thought calm made them right.

“It is a risk.”

“Because I haven’t filmed intimacy before?”

“Because this film is built around it.”

Your fingers tightened around the script.

“It’s built around two characters.”

“It’s built around obsession, desire, transference, sex, shame, and about twenty-three pages of physical escalation.”

He said it too evenly.

Like he had made a list.

Like he had sat somewhere after learning your name was on the call sheet and counted every kiss, every hand, every implied undressing, every scene that required you to stand close enough to remember New York.

Your throat felt tight.

“And you don’t think I can handle that.”

His eyes flicked over your face.

Briefly.

Too briefly to be gentle.

“I don’t know what you can handle.”

That was worse.

Somehow, that was worse than if he had simply said no.

You smiled, but it came out sharp.

“Right. Because I’m a child, obviously.”

His jaw flexed.

“I didn’t say that.”

“No, you just keep finding more sophisticated ways to imply it.”

“You have no on-screen experience with this kind of material.”

“I have experience acting.”

“On stage.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, does that not count?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“It’s what you meant.”

Tom looked away for half a second, dragging his thumb over the edge of his pages.

When he looked back, his voice had dropped.

“What I mean is that I don’t understand how someone with no intimate screen work gets cast in a film this sexually charged unless someone in the room is pretending her surname has nothing to do with it.”

The words hit cleanly.

Too cleanly.

For a second, you forgot every clever thing you had ever said in your life.

Then your face went hot.

“God, you’re annoying.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“No, it’s me being polite.”

He opened his mouth.

You walked out before he could improve on it.

*********

Then came makeup.

Makeup was worse.

Not emotionally.

Logistically.

Emotionally, everything had already been terrible, so at least there was consistency.

You sat in a chair in front of a mirror rimmed with lights while Natalia from makeup tilted your face left, then right, then sighed at your real makeup as if you had personally insulted her craft.

“You put foundation on this morning?”

“I panicked.”

“With a brush?”

“With fear.”

Natalia paused.

Then laughed.

“I like you.”

“Give it time.”

She started removing almost everything you had done before rebuilding you as Rose: less polished, more tired around the eyes, softer mouth, skin that looked like skin, not armour. Your own face slowly disappeared and came back wrong.

Better.

Worse.

Useful.

Across the room, Tom sat in another chair while someone worked on his hair. He had a book open in his lap now.

Of course he had a book.

Of course he could do that. Drop into a book like the world had not just tried to chew through both of you.

His knee moved once.

Stopped.

His fingers tapped once against the spine.

Stopped.

The makeup artist said something to him and he looked up a fraction too late, as if dragged out of somewhere else.

You looked away.

Natalia caught it in the mirror.

Her eyes flicked from you to Tom, then back to your face.

Interesting.

You immediately disliked that she had eyes.

“Don’t move,” she said.

“I didn’t.”

“Your face did.”

“That seems unavoidable.”

She smiled and dabbed under your eye.

“Not in this job.”

By the time makeup finished, you were keyed so tightly that every small delay felt like someone plucking a nerve. You read the same three lines six times. Forgot them. Remembered them. Forgot whether forgetting them was normal. Checked the page again. Lost your pen. Found it behind your ear. Had no memory of putting it there.

Tom passed behind your chair once, close enough that you caught the scent of him.

Coffee.

Cigarettes.

Clean shirt.

Something else underneath that your body recognised with humiliating enthusiasm.

You went very still.

He did not look at you.

Which was somehow worse.

Your first scene was without him.

Thank God.

Or, at least, thank God in theory.

It was Rose arriving at Jason’s office for the first time and speaking to his secretary. On paper, it was barely three pages. Rose came in too early, lied about not being nervous, made a brittle little joke, then sat in the waiting area pretending not to look at the closed door.

Simple.

Which meant, naturally, you nearly tripped over your mark on the first take.

Not badly.

Not dramatically.

Just enough that your foot landed slightly outside the tape and the camera operator made a tiny adjustment that everyone pretended not to notice.

You noticed.

Of course you noticed.

The second take was better until you picked up the wrong magazine from the side table.

The third take, you got the magazine right but cut off the actress playing the secretary.

The fourth, you overcorrected so hard that the pause between her line and yours became long enough to qualify as experimental theatre.

Kurt watched from behind the monitor, not irritated exactly.

Just intent.

That was somehow worse.

“Good,” he said after the fourth take, which did not feel true. “Now stop showing me that Rose is uncomfortable and just be uncomfortable.”

You nodded.

“Right.”

“You’re playing the result. I want the effort. She’s trying to seem fine. That means sometimes she almost manages it.”

“Okay.”

Sven, Kurt’s first assistant director, stepped in with his clipboard and a headset pressed to one ear.

“Tom’s ready on the other set.”

Kurt did not even look away from the monitor.

“Run him.”

That was how efficient Kurt worked.

No wasted minutes. No indulgent first-day cushioning. While you were pretending not to panic in the waiting room, Tom was across the lot shooting a solo scene with the other unit — Jason alone in his office, reading Rose’s file before meeting her. Kurt had Sven bouncing between the two set-ups like a human metronome, keeping both scenes moving with terrifying calm.

You hated how impressive it was.

You hated more that it meant there was no time to fall apart properly.

By take five, something clicked.

Not beautifully.

Not perfectly.

But enough.

You came in, missed the secretary’s eye by a fraction, smiled too late, sat down too carefully, and picked at the edge of your sleeve while pretending you were not. The secretary asked whether you wanted water. You said no too quickly. Then yes. Then no again.

Kurt let it run.

For the first time all morning, the silence did not feel empty.

It felt usable.

“Cut.”

You froze.

Kurt leaned back from the monitor.

“Good. That one.”

Your lungs remembered they existed.

“Really?”

He gave you a look.

“Don’t sound so surprised. It makes me question my judgment.”

You almost smiled.

Almost.

Then Sven appeared again.

“Tom’s wrapped the solo. We’re turning around for the next scene.”

Your stomach dropped.

Of course.

There it was.

The mercy was over.

By the time the two of you were called for the shared scene, the atmosphere had changed again.

Not softer.

Never that.

Just sharpened.

The scene was simple on its face.

First therapy session.

Your character in the chair opposite his. You talking, haltingly, about a piece of childhood trauma in a way that made it clear you were testing him more than confessing anything. His character listening, professional but interested. The beginning of trust. The beginning of curiosity. The faint beginning of something neither character would name.

Simple, which in film language usually meant impossible.

You were placed in the chair first.

Wardrobe tugged your skirt flatter over your knees. Makeup blotted the shine off your nose. Someone adjusted a strand of your hair and apologised, though they were not remotely sorry. A runner moved the box of tissues half an inch to the left. Then back again. Then Kurt decided he hated the lamp and the lamp disappeared.

You sat there through all of it, hands folded in your lap, trying not to fidget.

Which meant you fidgeted internally instead.

A much worse system.

Tom stepped into frame a moment later, now fully in costume again, notes in hand.

He did not look at you while the camera was being set.

You did not look at him either.

He looked different after his solo scene.

More settled, maybe. More inside the character. The restless irritation from earlier had not vanished, but it had gone quieter, tucked behind Jason’s professional stillness. He moved into the chair opposite you with that awful ease experienced actors had when they knew how to make waiting look like thought.

You hated him for that too.

Kurt walked over with that intent, hyper-focused energy directors got when they could see the shape of a scene but not quite make the actors give it to them yet.

“Okay,” he said, crouching slightly between you both. “Text is fine. I’m not worried about text. What I need is the thing under the text.”

He pointed lightly between you and Tom.

“This is their first proper session. She doesn’t trust him. He knows she doesn’t trust him. She’s still here. He notices everything. She notices that he notices. That’s the scene.”

You nodded.

Tom nodded too.

Kurt looked at you.

“Play with the hem of the skirt a bit at the top of the scene.”

Then at Tom.

“And you clock it. Don’t underline it. Just see it.”

Tom’s gaze moved, briefly, to your hands.

Not yours.

Rose’s.

Supposedly.

Your skin still reacted.

Kurt stood.

“There should be intrigue before there’s disclosure. Right now you’re both trying to survive until the first line. Don’t. Let the air happen first.”

“Okay,” you said.

Tom gave a brief, “Yeah.”

Kurt stepped back.

Everyone reset.

You sat in the chair, hands folded too neatly in your lap, then let one move to the edge of your skirt as instructed. The fabric was soft and a little too thin. You rubbed the hem between your fingers once, then again, looking anywhere but at him.

Across from you, Tom settled into the chair.

One ankle over his knee.

Notebook open.

Pen in hand.

The room quieted.

“Rolling.”

“Sound speed.”

“Marker.”

The clap.

Then—

“Action.”

And because nerves were treacherous and Tom had spent the morning being unbearable, the second he looked at you — really looked at you, calmly, professionally, in character but not quite enough — you started too fast.

“I don’t really sleep much, so—”

“Cut.”

Kurt held up a hand.

Not annoyed.

Not pleased either.

“Don’t rush the first beat.”

You nodded once.

“Yep.”

Reset.

Again.

This time you waited.

Technically.

Your fingers worried the skirt hem. You looked at the carpet. You felt Tom watching. Felt the camera. Felt every person in the room waiting for you to do the thing you had apparently been hired to do.

Then your eyes lifted to his and your brain fired the line out like a distress flare.

“I used to think it was normal, the—”

“Cut.”

A pause.

Then Kurt, patient but more pointed now:

“You’re feeding it too early. Let him watch. You don’t have to rescue the silence.”

You let out a breath.

“Sorry.”

Tom said nothing.

He only leaned back slightly in his chair, pen tapping once against the notebook before he caught himself and stilled it again.

That was somehow worse than if he had sighed.

Third take.

You decided not to look at him.

A brilliant plan, except the scene required you to look at him.

You fixed your eyes on your own fingers, rubbed the hem of the skirt once, twice, waited, felt him looking, felt the whole room waiting with him—

And then missed your cue entirely.

The silence stretched.

Too far.

You could feel the exact second it stopped being charged and became awkward.

Kurt let it go another beat, probably because he was cruel or brilliant or both.

Then Tom, still in character, prompted gently, “Rose?”

It was the line from later in the scene.

The wrong place.

Still useful.

Still humiliating.

Your head snapped up.

“Sorry, I—”

“Cut.”

Your face went hot.

“Sorry.”

Kurt stepped in.

“Don’t apologise in the take.”

“Right. Sorry.”

A few people smiled.

Not unkindly.

You wanted to die anyway.

Tom looked down at his notebook, mouth unreadable.

Fourth take.

This time you came in at the right moment but shifted too far forward in the chair and landed half off your mark. The focus puller caught it. Barely. You saw the camera operator’s shoulder adjust. That was enough to ruin you.

“It wasn’t always bad, I just—”

“Cut.”

Kurt exhaled through his nose.

Not impatient.

Not yet.

“Stay on your mark.”

“Yep.”

“And stop checking whether you’re on your mark. That’s not the character’s problem.”

“Yep.”

Tom’s pen moved once.

Stopped.

You saw it.

He saw you see it.

Fantastic.

Fifth take.

You got the mark.

You got the silence.

You got the first line.

Then you looked at Tom’s hand as he made a note and forgot the second line entirely.

Not because you did not know it.

You knew it.

You had known it in the car, in makeup, in the bathroom, in the tiny panic spiral by the coffee machine.

But now his hand moved across the page, and some traitorous part of your memory supplied New York instead of dialogue.

His fingers around a cigarette.

His hand on your waist.

His thumb at your jaw.

Gone.

Blank.

The whole line wiped clean.

Tom looked up.

In character.

Maybe not entirely.

“Take your time.”

That was Jason’s line.

It was also Tom’s voice.

Low.

Measured.

Too close to kind.

You hated that most of all.

“Cut.”

The room went still.

Not terrible.

But enough.

Kurt looked between the two of you, thinking.

You could feel your pulse in your throat.

Tom looked down at his notebook.

Then at you.

Then finally, in a voice pitched low enough that only you and maybe the script supervisor closest to frame could hear it, he said, “You remember your lines, yeah?”

Your head turned so fast it was a wonder no one noticed.

He was still looking down when he said it, as if it were nothing.

As if he had not said something pointed at all.

You stared at him.

“Yes,” you said through your teeth.

His eyes lifted then, cool and unreadable.

“Just checking.”

Heat flashed straight through you.

You smiled at him with no warmth whatsoever.

“Worried I’m out of my depth?”

One of his brows moved the slightest fraction.

“Worried you’re in your head.”

That would have landed better if he were not so clearly enjoying irritating you.

Kurt, mercifully or perhaps unmercifully, clapped his hands once.

“Alright. Tiny reset.”

He stepped closer again, attention on you this time.

“Stop performing the discomfort. Just sit in it. You don’t need to earn the scene in the first three seconds.”

Then his gaze flicked to Tom.

“And you — less waiting for her to get it right like a schoolmaster. You’re not irritated with her. You’re intrigued.”

That one landed.

You saw it in the brief hardening of Tom’s jaw.

“Got it,” he said.

Kurt looked between you both again, then backed away.

“One more.”

You inhaled slowly and let it out.

Reset.

Chair.

Skirt hem.

Breath.

Silence.

Across from you, Tom settled again, but this time the energy coming off him was different.

Not softer exactly.

Just less sharp-edged.

The annoyance tucked away. His focus cleaner. More dangerous for being quieter.

“Action.”

You looked at your hands.

Touched the hem once.

Twice.

Waited.

He saw it.

You knew he saw it because the slightest thing changed in his face — not concern, not yet, but attention narrowing. Noting. Wondering. The therapist seeing the tell.

The man behind the therapist, for one split second, interested in the nervous habit because it was yours.

You let the silence sit.

It stretched.

This time, you did not rescue it.

This time, you let it make you uncomfortable.

Let Rose hate being seen.

Let yourself hate that he was the one seeing.

Then, finally, without forcing it, you looked up.

“I don’t usually tell people this.”

Tom’s gaze held yours for half a beat too long.

Then he said, quiet, careful, exactly right, “That’s alright.”

Something in the room shifted.

Not loudly.

Not dramatically.

Just enough.

You felt it.

Kurt felt it too.

The rest of the scene went almost unnervingly smoothly after that. You talked about fear in the clipped, detached way the script required. Tom asked the questions as though he already knew more than he should. You glanced at his hands once when he made a note.

He noticed.

Of course he noticed.

But this time it stayed in the scene.

Rose noticing Jason noticing.

Jason pretending not to notice that she had noticed.

Your voice thinned on the line about doors being locked.

Tom’s face changed by almost nothing.

A smaller breath.

A stiller hand.

It was infuriatingly good.

The scene ended on him watching you leave and you not looking back.

“Cut.”

Silence.

Then Kurt stood up straighter and pointed at both of you.

“Yes. That.”

A crew member relaxed audibly.

Someone behind the monitor murmured, “There it is.”

You looked away immediately, pretending to smooth your skirt as if your pulse was not suddenly much too fast.

Tom closed the notebook, stood, and handed it absently to props.

You could feel him not looking at you, which was somehow worse than if he had.

Kurt was already talking.

“That’s what I mean. It’s tiny, but it’s there. The interest. Keep it disciplined, but keep it.”

“Got it,” Tom said.

“Yep,” you said.

Then, because apparently he could not resist having the last small dig, Tom moved past you toward his mark for the next set-up and said under his breath, without looking at you, “So, you do know them. Good.”

You turned your head just enough to look at him.

“Go to hell.”

He almost smiled.

Almost.

Which was honestly more irritating than if he had done it properly.

**********

By the time lunch was called, you felt wrung out and wired at the same time.

Too tired to speak.

Too restless to sit.

Too hungry to eat.

A devastating combination.

You followed Nadine and another wardrobe woman, Tessa, to a small café just outside the studio lot because the canteen smelled too aggressively of hot oil and despair. The café was narrow and bright, with blackboard menus, chipped wooden tables, and a glass cabinet full of pastries that looked better than they probably were.

You ordered a coffee you did not need and a sandwich you knew you would not finish.

Then you saw him.

Tom was at the far side near the window.

Of course he was.

Because apparently the day had committed to coincidence as a genre.

He sat alone at a small table with a book open beside his plate, picking at a salad with the absent concentration of someone eating because a human body required maintenance. Tea instead of coffee. One knee angled out beneath the table. Hemingway on the cover, battered paperback, corners softened.

You almost turned around.

You should have turned around.

You wanted, very badly, to mind your own business.

For once.

Just once.

But before you could move, a young woman stepped out from behind the counter carrying a takeaway coffee and a paper bag.

She was pretty in a way that looked effortless until you noticed every effort. Glossy hair. Tiny waist. Oversized jumper slipping off one shoulder. No visible nerves whatsoever.

She placed the coffee and bag beside Tom’s salad.

He looked up.

His expression changed.

Not hugely.

Just enough.

Recognition. Familiarity. A quick softening around the mouth before he tucked it away.

Your stomach did something stupid.

The woman leaned slightly closer, lowering her voice.

Not enough.

“I put one of those almond things in there for you.”

Tom looked into the bag and smiled faintly.

“Thank you.”

“You’ll actually eat it?”

“Probably not.”

She rolled her eyes.

“You’re impossible.”

“I’ve been told.”

You hated that.

You hated that you had told him something very similar a little over a year ago.

The woman glanced toward the counter, then back to him.

Quieter now.

Still audible.

“See you tonight at mine?”

Tom did not look around.

He did not seem embarrassed.

He just folded the top of the paper bag once, carefully.

“Yeah. Might be late.”

“That’s fine.”

Her smile changed.

Small.

Private.

Annoying.

Then she walked back toward the counter.

You looked away so fast your neck nearly hurt.

Nadine, unfortunately, had also seen.

Of course she had.

Her eyes were already bright with information.

She leaned closer to you and whispered, “He’s been hanging out with her for a few months now.”

You stared at your untouched sandwich.

“Has he?”

“Mmm. He had another movie with the studio before this one. That’s when it started, apparently.”

You told yourself not to ask.

You were an adult.

You were mature.

You had self-respect.

Then your mouth opened.

“How old is she?”

Nadine gave you a sideways look.

“Twenty-two, I think.”

Twenty-two.

For a moment, everything in you went very still.

Not because you cared.

You did not care.

You absolutely did not care.

You had no claim on him. You did not want one. You barely wanted to be in the same room as him without committing a crime. He could spend his evenings with whichever pretty café girl he liked.

But twenty-two.

Twenty-two, after that sanctimonious little courtroom speech in rehearsal room three.

Twenty-two, after I was nearly forty.

Twenty-two, after do you know what this looks like from the outside?

Hypocrite.

The word arrived so cleanly it almost calmed you.

Nadine kept going, because gossip women had a survival instinct for weakness.

“Not exclusive though, from what I heard.”

You should have stopped her.

You did not.

Tessa looked up from her soup.

“Nadine.”

Nadine ignored her.

“What? He’s been seen with that model too. Anya something. The Danish one. Pretty and tall. I can’t remember her surname, but she is in that swimsuit advert.”

Tessa sighed.

“That describes every model in London.”

You looked toward the counter before you could stop yourself.

The coffee shop girl was laughing with one of the baristas now, head tipped back, completely unaware that she had just become evidence in your private case against a man who had insulted you for lying about being twenty-eight.

Your voice came out too casual.

“What’s her name?”

Nadine blinked.

“Whose?”

“The coffee shop girl’s.”

“No idea.”

You looked at her.

“So, you know he’s apparently sleeping with her, how long it’s been going on, where it started, and possibly her age, but not her name?”

Nadine shrugged.

“Everyone calls her Tom’s coffee shop girl.”

Something about that made you feel briefly, unexpectedly sorry for her.

Then irritated again.

With him.

With everyone.

With yourself.

“Wonderful. And why does everyone know so much about my co-star’s private life?”

Tessa gave you a look over her soup.

“Because everyone knows everything.”

Nadine nodded solemnly.

“Especially on a studio lot.”

“That sounds deeply unhealthy.”

“It is.”

Tessa added, “Also Natalia from makeup has a crush on him, so she’s extra observant.”

You remembered Natalia’s eyes flicking in the mirror.

Wonderful.

So not only was the set full of gossip, it was organised gossip. Departmental gossip. Gossip with infrastructure.

“Wow,” you said.

A chair scraped beside you.

Sven, Kurt’s assistant director, dropped into the spare seat with a tray and the unimpressed expression of a man who had walked into exactly the conversation he expected.

His eyes moved from Nadine, to Tessa, to you.

Then, without even pretending to guess, he said, “Gossiping about Tom again?”

Nadine put a hand to her chest.

“We are not gossiping.”

Sven looked at her.

“Nadine.”

She lasted half a second.

“Fine. Slightly.”

“You do realise he can hear more than you think.”

“He’s all the way over there.”

Sven looked at Nadine.

“And?”

Tessa snorted into her soup.

Nadine leaned back, entirely unrepentant.

“He’s an easy target.”

Sven’s face arranged itself into grave, exaggerated disappointment.

“God. I am so disappointed in you people.”

Nadine rolled her eyes.

“So disappointed in us, why don’t you go and sit with your friend over there?”

Sven looked across the café to where Tom was sitting alone with his book, tea, and mostly untouched salad.

Then he picked up his coffee.

“Excellent idea.”

“Traitor,” Tessa said.

“I am morally superior,” Sven corrected, already standing.

Nadine waved him off.

“Tell him we were saying lovely things.”

Sven gave her a look over his shoulder.

“I’m not lying so you can appear to be more professional than you are.”

Then he stood with his tray and crossed the café.

You tried not to watch.

You failed.

Tom looked up when Sven reached him. Whatever Sven said made Tom’s mouth twitch, not quite a smile, but close enough to be irritating. He closed the Hemingway around one finger to keep his place, leaned back slightly, and answered.

They seemed familiar.

Not close exactly.

But easy.

There was a shorthand there. The kind people got from long days on a previous set. Shared exhaustion. Shared jokes. Shared knowledge of who was difficult, who was late, who needed too many takes, who smoked when they were annoyed.

Sven sat opposite him for a few minutes, talking quietly while Tom picked at the salad and ignored the pastry bag. Then Tom pushed his chair back, took his cigarettes from his jacket pocket, and Sven followed him outside.

Of course.

A smoke.

Naturally.

Apparently every difficult man in film exited scenes by poisoning himself elegantly.

The door swung shut behind them.

Nadine waited precisely three seconds.

Then Tessa pointed her spoon at her.

“Less gossip with Sven around.”

Nadine rolled her eyes.

“He’s dramatic.”

“He’s right.”

“He’s always right. It’s one of his most annoying traits. But he is also invested.”

You looked toward the glass door.

Through it, you could see Tom and Sven standing just outside the café, not close enough to hear, but close enough to see the easy angle of their bodies. Tom lit his cigarette first, then held the lighter out for Sven without looking. Sven leaned in, said something, and Tom gave him that almost-smile again.

You looked away.

Too late.

Tessa noticed.

“They’re friends?” you asked, aiming for casual and landing somewhere near invasive.

Nadine shrugged.

“No. Maybe. I don’t know.”

Tessa said, “Sven worked with him last year. On that film with Rami Malek.”

You looked at her.

“Tom did a movie with Rami Malek?”

Tessa blinked.

“Yes. So did you, didn’t you?”

For a second, your brain stalled.

Then caught up.

“Oh. Yes.”

Nadine stared at you.

“You forgot?”

You heard how defensive that sounded and immediately made it worse.

“I just didn’t know Tom and Rami had worked together. Not that it matters. Obviously it doesn’t matter. People work together. That’s literally the job. I just meant I didn’t connect those two facts in my head, and now I have, and apparently my mouth decided everyone needed to be informed of the process.”

Tessa watched you for a beat.

Nadine’s mouth twitched.

“Right.”

You picked at the corner of your napkin.

“Great. Good. Glad we all experienced that.”

Tessa stirred her soup, amused.

“Small world in this industry.”

You looked down at your untouched sandwich.

Then toward the window again, where Tom was smoking with Sven, head tilted slightly as he listened, one hand tucked into his pocket, the other holding the cigarette near his mouth.

Small world.

Too small.

Horribly small.

A world in which your fiancé hated Tom because of a BAFTAs argument. Jess had slept with him and cried about it. You had slept with him without knowing his name. He had slept with a coffee shop girl on another studio lot. Sven had worked with him before. He had worked with Rami. You had worked with Rami. Natalia had a crush on him. Nadine knew everyone’s business except the actual names of the women involved.

And now you were supposed to spend the afternoon kissing him in front of a camera.

You stood.

“Often too small.”

Tessa looked up.

“You going?”

“Yeah.”

Nadine frowned at your plate.

“You’ve barely eaten.”

“Not hungry.”

“Take the sandwich.”

“I won’t eat it.”

“Take it anyway. Actors fainting in front of the cameras creates paperwork.”

You took it because arguing required energy you no longer possessed.

As you turned for the door, Tom looked through the glass.

Just briefly.

Smoke in one hand. Sven beside him. Hemingway abandoned inside beside his cold tea.

His eyes met yours.

For one second, neither of you moved.

Then his gaze dropped to the sandwich in your hand.

Back to your face.

A small crease appeared between his brows.

Not concern.

No.

You refused to call it that.

Attention, maybe.

Annoying attention.

You looked away first.

“See you on set,” you said to no one in particular.

Then you walked out, your untouched sandwich in one hand and your script in the other, your appetite somewhere back in rehearsal room three with the bent pages, the fake lamp, and every ugly thing Tom had said before proving, over lunch, that the industry was not only too small.

It was incestuous.

And apparently determined to eat you alive.