Falling Into You (22 page)

“I’ll make you a deal. 50/50 split. Half the day, we can work on the goddamn script,” I growl impatiently, because
the script is
becoming a serious obstacle
. “And half the day, we can do what I want to do.”

I plan on using every trick in my repertoire, including pulling out lame New York trivia, to keep us from doing what I actually want to do, which is to ravage her body. Right decision, I tell myself, over and over.
Sex was easy. It had always been easy
. I want more than that
.

My phone buzzes on the nightstand and
since it’s a welcome distraction,
I pick it up.

“Tell me you’re ready for your goddamn audition.”

“Marcus. It’s early.”

“No
,
it is fucking not.”

Marcus never sleeps. He’s always running on adrenaline and espresso and some combination of legal, half-legal and totally illegal drugs.
Emphasis on the illegal. He’s also one of the best agents in town.

“
Someone leaked the fact that the James Ross remakes are finally getting pulled out of the fucking development drawer. It’s already in the
Reporter
, which means it’s about to be everywhere
.
The producers think it’s a fucking brilliant plan to
get this thing cast so they can take advantage of the press
, and while I would normally agree, it means that you’re going to have to be ready sooner than we anticipated
. They’re trying to move the auditions up. 1:00?
Today?
”

Hallie
’s lookin
g at me from the bathroom door and
nodding her head vigorously, so
I glance at the clock on the wall
and groan
. It’s 9:00 now
, which means out whole day has been blasted into pieces
. “Yeah. Text me the address.”

His breath hisses out of his lips. “Thank fucking god.”

Hallie
emerges from the bathroom. H
er hair
is
wrapped in a towel and her
fac
e is entirely devoid of makeup. She is so breathtakingly beautiful that it
makes me want to
grab her and
crawl back into bed
to waste the day away
.

“Auditions got moved up,” I confirm, even though the neighbors probably heard Marcus. To say his voice is booming is a gigantic understatement.

“
1:00 today?
” Her head is tilted a bit to the side.
“You’re ready. You’ve got this.”

I stand up and pull her to me for a long kiss. “But it means our day is spoiled.”

She can’t quite hide the crestfallen look
in her face but she recovers pretty quickly
. “
The fact that you are going to be James Ross just made my day.
Can I make coffee or something before you’re on your way? Would that help?”

She’s misunderstood.
I’m not going to the audition without her. Charles in the lobby downstairs could just be waiting for his time to make his move.
“I was hoping that you’d come with me. It’ll be boring, and you’ll have to wait in another room, I’m sure, but…”

“Really?” Her eyes are all lit up.

“Really.” I pull her in for another kiss.

***

I’ve been in the
audition
for almost two hours and they just keep asking me to read more and more scenes. I’m not sure if it’s a good sign or not. I’m not sure if I want it to be a good sign or not.

There are three
rows
of people watching me,
and I recognize some of the faces but not others
. The director is
sitting in the middle of the front row, and he’s
one of the biggest names in
Hollywood
,
Alan Peterson. He’s a
no-nonsense type who made his name
making truly terrible films about aliens falling in love with humans
.
The characters all had names like Chinook-Chinook-Mak-Hail. They all ended the same way, too—the humans betrayed the aliens and blew them up
to save
the world.

I have to give him credit, though—
the explosions were top-notch. No one competed with Alan in the mass destruction business.

He was
also
one of my father’s drinking buddies back in the day.
Like all the rest of them, he had disappeared after the comic book flop. Not that I blame him. I would have disappeared, too, if I could have.

A co
uple of the producers are there
too, which surprises me. I figured
this would be the pre-audition. Marcus had told me that Alan was going to be there, and I figured
the casting director
would show up with
a couple of flunki
es to run lines and grab coffee.
Instead, the entire cavalry is here and all eyes are on me.
Every fifteen minutes or so, someone announces a “break,”
but
no one moves
from their chairs
. Instead, dozens of pairs of hands whip out their phones and fingers punch furiously at keys for a few minutes and then the someone announces, “Break over!” and the phones disappear and I
’m expected to
start performing again.

I’ve just finished the scene with Boudreaux
. One of the producers is reading the lines, and I have to keep from laughing because the very bad accent is not unlike
Hallie
’s from the night before. Just as I think I’m about to totally lose it,
I hear “Break
.
” I’m waiting for the phones to come back out, but everyone’s just staring at me instead.

Maybe
they’ve finally noticed my apparent lack of hygiene.
I’m still
wearing my clothes from the day before.
Hallie
had tried to get me to change but we had been delayed because the sight of her making coffee with wet hair and bare feet called fo
r another round of long kisses.

“
Chris,
”
she’d exclaimed as we rolled in a tangle on the couch.
“
You’re going to miss your audition.
”

I had asked,
“
Who cares?
”

Then, I started
running my hands under her shirt and over her smooth skin. She’d eventually managed to extract herself from me,
hissing that there was no way that she was going to be the reason that I missed the audition. I had thrown some of my best
pick-up
lines at her,
tossing one after another, but they did nothing but make her laugh. S
he had
eventually
barricaded herself in the kitchen, refusing to come out until I promised I would stop attacking her. I
t had been too late to grab a change of clothes or to shower
, but s
he had insisted on going through each of the scenes in the car ride over.

When we got to the place for a three-way conversation between James, Nick, and James’s former partner, she’d convinced the driver to pull over and bewitched him into playing one of the parts. He had some potential, I’d thought.

I’m laughing
at the memory
of
the smile on Hallie’s face
when the driver
jumped
over the seat to
mimic his character’s
movemen
t in the scene
when
Alan shouts from out of nowhere.

“Wait!” Alan shouts. He jumps
to his feet and
crosses
the room so that he’s
standing face-to-face with me
. “Put that look back on your face.”

I try to remember
the last scene and what my character had said. A
dark
frown crosses his face. “No, Chris. The look you just had on your face.”

I really have no idea what he’s talking about.
I think about
Hallie
instead
,
since that’s been my default pattern in between scenes.

Alan nods.
Apparently,
I
finally
did something right. He
circles me like I’m a caged tiger, inspecting every ounce of my flesh. He’s known for being a total tyrant, for demanding
absolute
perfection
from his actors. It’s kind of ironic
given that the last ten films he made were basically stinking piles of shit
except for the explosions
.

“All ri
ght,” he calls back to his team. T
hey immediately straighten
their spines
and start taking furious notes.

“We
’ll be in touch,” he says to me, looking at me
carelessly
over his shoulder.

I’m dismissed.
I
must have blown it totally, because I know that t
he next scene up had been my best shot at winning them over. It hadn’t been one of the original three, but
it was
the most powerful scene from the screenplay
.
Alan had sent someone running for more copies of the script after we’d gone
through
the first three
.

The only thing I could figure was that they
wanted to see whether or not
I could muste
r the emotional range to make James’s
deathbed promise to
his
mother
, and I had been waiting to pull out all the stops. Now I wouldn’t even get the chance to do that
.

N
o one says anything else to me
as I grab my bag and walk out of the room
. For a while there, I thought I’d been making a real connection wit
h some of the people
in the room
.
I even caught one of the women in the back row wiping away tears.
I felt like James Ross deep in my bones
in there
. But the dismissive tone
of Alan’s voice indicated that I
wasn’t
what they wanted
.

Marcus would be pissed.
I’d have to break it to him gently.
But i
f James Ross wasn’t meant to be, he wasn’t meant to be. I still had options. College, maybe. My mom had gone to NYU, so I’d be a legacy there, and both my parents gave
ridiculous
sums of money to Columbia, so that was probably also a possibility.
However,
Greenview College
had an excellent academic program, and there were other temptations that were pushing it to the top of my list..
.

I open the doors
to the waiting room, and
Hallie
is kneeling
next to the
receptionist
’s desk
. She glances up at me,
eyes are wide on mine as
I come through the door. I shake my head almost imperceptibly
and her face falls
.
She turns to the
woma
n behind the desk.

“
Sarah,
l
et’s do lunch sometime
, please,”
Hallie
suggests, and
the receptionist
nods
eagerly
in response
. “
I near to hear that story about Miles throwing the computer in all of its glorious detail again.
”

“You actually need to see the pictures. They’re worth more than a thousand words.” They collapse into giggles like old friends.

I can tell that
Hallie
wants to get me out of the building, to ask about the audition, but her innate politeness demands that she finish her conversation.
Just as I’m about to make a very hasty excuse and grab her away, o
ne of the wome
n
from the audition
comes
barreling
out of the room that I h
ad just vacated
with her phone to her ear. She puts it down momentarily and
says something in low tones to
Sarah
, who
glance
s back and forth between me and her before
she exits
back through the doors.

Sarah
whispers something to
Hallie
and she nods and gives her a quick hug before gathering her stuff and crossing the room to me.