at any time. I was ready for the day to be over.
“Yuki is a suck-up. How hard is it to act bereft when your mother dies painfully from radiation exposure?”
I opened my mouth to argue. Yuki Makino was young and eager to please. She was terrified of letting down a big star like Crystobell Edmund. But Kix was jaded, and rightfully so. He’d worked his ass off for years in this business, just to get cast in supporting roles over and over again. I had my own opinions about why that was, but I wasn’t about to say them out loud anymore, especially to Kix himself. Last time I’d tried, I’d gotten a snarky “Gee, thanks, Chip!” for my trouble. So I closed my mouth instead.
Kix resented Yuki for getting such a strong part in the film after only one decent credit to her name. As a result, he immediately put her in the “enemy” basket and treated her like dog shit.
It made me feel very uncomfortable.
“It’s so fucking boring here, I can’t imagine how we’re going to survive four more weeks of this crap.”
I shrugged and reached over to crank the nearest window open. The distant sound of an owl hooting made its way through the screen. “I think it’s relaxing. A nice break from the city. Things are nuts in town this time of year, and, honestly, I don’t love the heat.”
He barked out a laugh. “How can you live in Los Angeles and not like the heat?”
That was easy. The answer was two words. Lola Heller.
“It’s either LA or New York,” I said instead. “At least LA has good climbing nearby.”
“You and your climbing,” he said. “If you lived in New York, you could still climb, you know. I’m sure there are a ton of climbing gyms there.”
“Not the same as Point Dume and Echo Cliffs,” I countered. “And while I don’t love the heat in the summer, I do love being able to climb outside year-round.”
Kix closed his eyes and groaned. “God, even this conversation is boring. Let’s do something.”
“Like what?”
“Anything, Jesus. I’m aging as we sit here.” He lifted his fingers to his eyes and pulled at the edges to smooth out the nonexistent wrinkles. “Let’s find some dick.”
I thought of the sleepy mountain town we were in for the filming. “In this place? Pfft. I opened Grindr last night, and it literally showed me a photo of a cricket.” It wasn’t true. I’d actually opened my Discord Shakespeare chat group, but I was never going to tell him that.
He grinned. “Not true. But most of them seemed like either jailbait or jailbait’s grandpa. No one just right. I’m like motherfucking Goldilocks up in here.”
I stretched and leaned forward. “Maybe we should get some beauty sleep. Today was a long day, and tomorrow could be the same. I don’t want to lose sleep before we’ve even gotten into primary filming.”
It wasn’t true. I wasn’t on the schedule for much tomorrow, but I also didn’t want to go skulking around a sleepy town looking for a hookup like some kind of pathetic loser. Besides, I was here to do a good job. I needed to impress the director. My mother, agent, PR manager, and I were all working hard to transition my reputation from child star to serious adult actor, and being seen in town trolling for a hookup wasn’t the way to sell Nolan Trainor on my professionalism.
“Why do you care so much?” Kix asked.
I blinked at him. “Why do I care about doing a good job on the film?”
“It’s an action movie. You look sexy and blow shit up. Hardly the stuff of legends.”
He wasn’t wrong, but the comment still grated. “I told you why this is important to me.”
He flicked a hand in the air. “Nolan promised you something douchey if you do this. Yeah, I got it.”
“Not something douchey. Lucentio in his big-budget production of Taming of the Shrew.” I waited for a reaction even though he’d already heard me talk about this before.
“Yes, yes. Shakespeare. Guaranteed box office smasher. Oh, wait.”
I sat up in the chair. “Do you have any idea what this kind of historical production could become with Nolan attached to the project?”
“What I know is that Nolan Trainor is crazy. Certifiable. Everyone says so.” Kix shrugged.
“Not everyone. If it were everyone, he wouldn’t be in charge of a big-budget project like this one,” I argued. “Besides, people have said that about lots of great directors. Stanley Kubrick, Kurosawa,