but the echo of it unknots the anxiety in my stomach.
“Hey, Nick.”
“Hey, Tate.”
I turn my face up to him, and he does a double take. Charlie has effectively camouflaged my flaws, but added no color. I look like one of the Precogs from Minority Report.
“Damn, girl.” But he grins, leaning in to kiss my cheek. “It’s weird seeing you all plain.”
“I’m creating my canvas,” Charlie says.
Nick stares at me for a lingering beat and then smiles again, as if he likes what he sees.
Maybe Charlie was onto something after all.
“Devon told me to come over,” Nick says, and then looks up at Trey.
Valiantly combatting his nerves, Trey motions for Nick to follow him to the other station and sits him down, drifting a drape over his shoulders to protect his shirt.
“Saw your dad,” Nick says to me, and then immediately adds, “Wait. Should I call him your dad or Ian?”
Charlie laughs, but I turn, wearing a bewildered grin. “Seriously? Why is everyone asking me that?”
“Maybe because you’ve been acting forever and never did a movie together?” he says.
“Maybe it just wasn’t ever the right time?”
Nick mm-hmmms and grins at me. I haven’t seen him since we did a chemistry test with Gwen and the studio heads, and we had to read one of the moments leading up to a love scene, and kiss at the end. They made us do it about seven times, and—let me be clear—I was not complaining.
Nick is a star on the rise, winning Best Actor at the BET Awards last year and Best Hero at MTV. Not just handsome, he has that special something that makes it hard to look away. His eyes are wide set and hypnotic, dark and glimmering with a constant hint of mischief. His skin is a warm, chestnut brown, luminous under Charlie’s bright makeup lights. His hair, once cut close to his scalp, has grown out a little for the role. But he’s still built like the DC action movie star he is: his Mon-El feature just wrapped a couple weeks ago—it has summer blockbuster written all over it.
There’s something about Nick’s eye-crinkling smile that reminds me a little of my ex-boyfriend and former co-star on Evil Darlings, Chris—but Nick has a calmness about him that Chris never quite managed. Chris and I were only actually together for about seven months, but we agreed to continue the ruse of our relationship for another three years because the more enthusiastic viewers were so fanatical about Violet and Lucas being together “in real life” that our off-screen reality became an intense focus of promotion.
Unlike Chris, though, Nick has that intense kind of focus, the tendency to maintain prolonged eye contact, the slow-growing smile. Whenever he catches my gaze and holds it, I feel like he’s carefully translating my thoughts directly from my brain.
“You two have such great chemistry,” Charlie says, glancing between us as she works. “Going to look great on-screen.” I feel heat push to the surface of my cheeks.
“That’s what Gwen said,” Nick tells her, finally breaking eye contact. “Though I feel like now is the time to tell you: I’ve never done a love scene before.”
“Not even in Mon El?” I ask.
“Nah, that was just some kissing.”
I bite my lip and grin at him. As he knows, there are two love scenes in Milkweed, and both of them are pretty intense. “You’ll be fine.”
“You ever do one like this?” he asks. “I should’ve asked you this that day they made us read it.”
“A few. Nothing like this, though. They’re awkward, but they don’t have to be too bad.”
“Maybe they could even be good,” Charlie says, low enough that only I can hear.
“Okay,” Nick says, “so if this is the trouble trailer, who’s going to give me the dirt on the crew? I’ve only worked with Deb Cohen before—everyone else is new to me.”
I’ve never worked with most of them, either, but have heard enough stories from Dad over the years to have a general sense of their eccentricities. “Liz is the 1st AD, and she’s amazing. Cool and organized. I’ve been warned not to hit snooze because Devon will come in and wake us up himself. The production secretary has decided this shoot is the best time to quit smoking so, seriously, avoid him at all costs. And from what I’ve heard, Gwen can be intense and a bit of a perfectionist.”
“Yeah,” Nick says, nodding, “I’ve heard that too.”
“But whatever, it’s Gwen Tippett.”
“Right?”
“Honestly,” I tell him, “I think this