farmhouse, the breeze hits us—a glorious burst of cool, apple-scented air. “It’s only two. Trey and I are going swimming down at the lake,” she says. “Wanna come?”
An entire afternoon here, free? Normally on set I’d head back to my local apartment or, when we were shooting Evil Darlings, home. But here the location changes from set to camp as soon as Gwen dismisses us for the day. The idea makes me giddy.
“Can we bring some beer and bad decisions?” I ask her.
Charlie’s eyes light up. She looks back over her shoulder. “Nick! Lake! Swim!”
The lake is small but deep, with a beautiful crystalline-sapphire surface that reflects the trees to almost a mirror image. It’s in the middle of a circle of forest, far enough away from the farmhouse clearing that we’re unable to hear anything on set and, more important, they’re unable to hear anything from us, either. The four of us hike out to the far end of the lake, where there’s a large, smooth, sloped boulder, just big enough for all of us to lay down our towels and bask in the sun.
Nick and Trey wear board shorts slung low on hips, and I envy the obvious, shirtless ease in the male body. In my simple black one-piece, I’m slathering on sunscreen like I’m actually going to be traveling to the surface of the sun, but Charlie stretches out beside me in a minuscule bikini, her golden skin shiny with oil.
“Are you trying to catch cancer?” I ask her.
She opens one eye just wide enough to let me see that she’s rolling it. “Shh.”
From behind us, higher on the rock, Nick jogs down and takes a running leap over our prone bodies, cannonballing into the water. When he comes up gasping, yelling that the water is cold as hell, Trey holds up both hands, giving a score of eight.
“Eight?” Nick protests. “Eight? I jumped over two people!”
“Point deduction for form.” Trey lifts his beer, sips it delicately.
“I went in so clean!”
“I think a cannonball is about the splash,” Charlie explains, without opening her eyes.
“Man, that’s some bullshit.” Nick scrambles out of the water and lies, stomach down, body dripping on the warm rock. He lets out a long, happy groan. “Oh my God. This is the best rock on the planet.”
We all hum in agreement.
“That was good,” Nick murmurs, and then catches my eye, squinting from the brilliant sun. “Today, I mean. That was good, Tate. Today was good. We were great.”
I cup my hand over my eyes and look down the rock at him. “We were.”
“Can you imagine?” he says, grinning. Hopeful.
“Don’t go there,” I say with deep warning. Buying into the hype before the movie is even shot is a dangerous path.
Nick waves me off. “I know, I know.”
I prop my weight up on an elbow. “What made you want to do this role?”
Nick adjusts his weight on his forearms. “Is that a serious question?”
“I know it’s a great role, duh,” I say. “I guess I’m asking specifically what drew you to it.”
“Richard is a black dude who saves a white woman in the 1960s, goes on to run for city council with her, wins over an entire community on the strength of his character alone. How could I turn that down?”
“You think Richard saves Ellen?”
“Without question, I do.”
It’s funny. I always thought the script was less about either of them being saved and more about each of them finding their person. I thought it was about the bravery of two people fighting bigotry and racism and becoming leaders in their community.
But I think I see what he means. “You mean that she would have been alone for the rest of her life if he hadn’t come along,” I say.
Nick nods. “Exactly. Ellen was so ready to be old when she was so young. Richard wouldn’t let her.”
For some reason, this hits me right in the chest, a direct shot. Whether Nick realizes it or not, he’s just found my Achilles Heel: the sense that I stopped being young the second I left London.
Oblivious to my internal brain freeze, Nick rolls on. “So. Let’s recap. We’re a week in. Tate was right about Devon the walking alarm clock and our unpleasant, occasionally non-smoking production secretary. Who wants to dish on Tate and the writer?”
Charlie and I say “No” in unison.
With a little growling laugh, Nick seems to let it rest. I tilt my face to the sun and feel its heat soak into my skin.