the best choice for my film,” Dimitri said. “There is a reason you were cast, Curt. I don't want to lose you. I can admit that.”
“And you are an asset to my agency, of course,” Jacob said.
Asset was underselling it, Curt thought. This agency probably wouldn’t even exist today if it hadn’t been for his success.
But I probably wouldn’t be where I am without Jacob either. He had stuck with his agent for a reason.
Maybe his agent would stick with him through his current dilemma. Maybe they could go forward together.
But there was only one way to be sure. And suddenly, the questions Curt had been pondering, the choice between his career and his child, seemed crystal clear. If he could only have one…
“The reason I left Costa Rica,” he said, his voice level, “is that my girlfriend is pregnant.”
Jacob and Dimitri stared at him as if he had announced there was a land mine underneath them all, about to go off.
Chapter 16
The room was completely silent. You could have heard a pin drop.
Curt realized he was holding his breath. He let it out slowly. He wasn’t going to let them make him feel as though he had said or done something to be ashamed of. The truth was, he had plenty of things to feel badly about—he knew Annalise was still out there somewhere feeling rejected by him. But his agent and his director didn’t know about that.
It was something else entirely that was making them look at him like he was a delinquent teenager.
“You’re not supposed to have a girlfriend,” Jacob said. “It was in the contract you signed with the film studio.”
“I think it actually says I’m not supposed to have a public girlfriend,” Curt countered. “Which I don’t, for the record. Nobody knows about her. I haven’t violated the terms of the contract.”
“You violated the terms when you left the shoot to be with her,” Dimitri barked. “You knew that you would have to explain your absence. Your behavior was too conspicuous to be ignored.”
“I don’t owe anyone an explanation besides to the two of you,” Curt said. “For everyone else, it’ll be enough to say that I had a family emergency. They don’t need to know what the emergency is.”
“This is why you rented a bungalow at a resort on the island,” Dimitri said. “You flew her out to be with you, didn’t you?”
“That’s personal,” Curt said.
“No it isn’t,” Dimitri said. “Everyone’s talking about the nights you spent at a five-star resort, away from the rest of the cast and crew. Everyone knows something happened. They just believed it wasn’t anything meaningful.”
“We can continue to let them believe that,” Jacob interjected. “That’s a perfectly fine explanation. I don’t believe random hookups put my client in breach of contract, do they?”
“Not technically,” Dimitri said. “But this is all about the marketing of the film. We want him to be able to attend premiers with his costar. We’re relying on the gossip that always builds around two romantic leads in a movie like this. And there won’t be any rumors that the two of them are involved if people know that he’s sleeping around.”
“I’m not sleeping around,” Curt said, nettled.
“How would anyone find out about it?” Jacob asked, as if Curt hadn’t spoken.
“Any member of my cast or crew might talk,” Dimitri said. “His erratic behavior is more than enough to create suspicion. And now that we know there’s a pregnant girlfriend to find… if the paparazzi go digging and uncover her, our entire marketing strategy will be down the drain.”
Is that really all they care about? Curt wondered. Their marketing strategy? This film has some of the biggest names in Hollywood attached to it, and they don’t think it can survive me having a child?
Suddenly, it all seemed so absurd.
He was an actor. Everyone knew that what they saw on screen was pretend. No one actually believed that he was falling in love with his costar in every single movie he appeared in.
There was no reason the movie needed to be promoted that way. There was no reason he had to sacrifice his whole life to this. Audiences weren’t that stupid.
And we don’t do this to actors in any other genre, he thought. Actors in science-fiction franchises don’t actually have to go to space. Actors who play superheroes don’t have to walk around pretending they have real superpowers. Everyone understands that it’s only pretend.
In a way, it was actually insulting. It felt as if they were