he’d painstakingly accumulated over endless hours of repeating his lines and learning his craft and sailing and sword fighting and chopping and square-dancing?
Which reminded him: If Do-Si-Danger ever ended up on a streaming service, he was going into hiding. Much like his character, an arrogant, high-powered executive and accidental bystander to a gangland murder who assumed a new witness-protection identity and found ill-fated romance among homespun square-dancers.
That movie was fucking awful. Terrible in nearly every respect.
Still, he’d done his job. He’d treated his crew and costars and everyone else on the set like the professionals they were, and behaved like a professional himself. In the end, he’d pocketed a little money and burnished another corner of his reputation as a hardworking, easygoing actor.
But that wasn’t all the movie had done for him.
He’d arrived on that set at the age of twenty-three, eager and excited and half convinced he was an irredeemable fuckup. By the time filming wrapped, he’d still kind of felt like a fuckup. But a fuckup who could be redeemed. Who would be redeemed, through putting in the hard work and getting better at his job in every way so he could land better parts.
Acting had brought him professional respect, yes, but also the beginnings of self-respect. It was his source of accomplishment, of community, of pride. His only source, at least until he’d found fanfiction.
Without his work, without his reputation, he’d be nothing. Have nothing. Again.
A smart, uber-competent woman like April wouldn’t want him then anyway.
“Yeah. I hear what you’re saying.” His eyes stung, and he closed them for a moment. “Thanks.”
“Look . . .” Something rustled down the line. Alex, shifting. “I’m sorry. For what it’s worth, if you decided, Fuck it, I want her more than my career, and told her everything, I’d have your back. You know that.”
Marcus huffed out a breath, unwillingly amused. “It’s the sort of shit you would do.”
“It’s one hundred percent something I would do. Probably on live television, followed by an impromptu reading of the filthiest, most show-averse story I’d ever written.” Alex’s laugh was short-lived. Tinged with bitterness. “There’s a reason Ron and R.J. gave me a fucking nanny. But you’re not me, and I’m trying to help you make better decisions than I usually do.”
After his recent arrest at a bar fight, the showrunners had saddled Alex with a paid minder to keep him out of trouble. A woman related to Ron somehow, which didn’t bode well.
“Speaking of which, how’s it going with”—what was her name?—“Laurel? Laura?”
With that sigh, Alex could have singlehandedly powered a wind farm. “Lauren. My implacable, humorless, improbably short, annoying-as-fuck albatross.”
Marcus kept his voice dry as the desert they’d shot in during the third season of Gates. “It’s going well, then.”
“It’s going. She’s not.” Aggrievement saturated every syllable of every word. “Apparently, she’ll be accompanying me to all public outings until the last season finishes airing. Even though I promised not to drink again. Or end up in another bar brawl, unless absolutely necessary.”
At that addendum, Marcus massaged his temples. “As I pointed out to Ron, she couldn’t actually stop me from brawling unless she was standing on a stepstool of some sort,” Alex said. “Although she’s stronger than you’d think. Maybe she’d just tackle me at the knees and sit on me until I sobered up.”
There was a certain grim relish in Alex’s phrasing, which raised the question: Under what precise circumstances had he discovered Lauren’s strength?
“She’s going to hate all the premieres and awards shows,” his friend crowed. “Haaaaate. I can’t wait.”
With all the evil glee in his tone, Alex might as well have been stroking a hairless Chihuahua and plotting the eruption of a henchman-created supervolcano from his secret lair.
Marcus winced. Better not to think about that ill-fated role in Magma!: The Musical. He could only hope April never learned of its existence, because the science behind the entire—
No. It didn’t matter what April thought anymore, because they wouldn’t be communicating, either in person or online. After this one last time, tonight.
He knew what he needed to do now.
“I’m glad you’re getting some pleasure, however perverse, out of the arrangement. Be nice to Lauren, though. It’s not her fault she got assigned to keep you sober and peaceable.” A quick glance at his laptop revealed a screenful of responses to April’s posts, with more appearing every few seconds. “I’d better go now, but thank you for listening. Again.”
“No problem.” A rustling noise. “Hold on just a second. Let me check