Hot as Heller (Aster Valley 3)

The bedroom was my favorite, with its colorful rug that my bare feet had sunk into late last night when I’d been practically sleepwalking after a long day of driving. The crisp, cool sheets had been heavenly, and the fresh, mountain air flowing in gently from an open window had put me right to sleep. I’d come to this project after months… years… of churning, working as much as I could, as hard as I could to change my image from Chip Clover, the sitcom boy next door, to a dynamic adult actor who could take on nuanced, dramatic roles. But no matter how many degrees I’d earned, people wanted to keep me in a Chip-shaped pigeonhole.

I was so damned tired.

“I like it here,” I said, kicking off my shoes and stretching out my legs on the small ottoman in front of my chair. The nearby stone fireplace made me almost wish it were wintertime. A night dozing in front of the fire in a cozy mountain chalet sounded just about right for my current mood.

“You would,” he muttered under his breath.

I tried not to take his comment personally. First of all, he was right. I would and I did. Secondly, I knew how boring I was. It had been a problem for me my entire life so far. My mother had worked her ass off to make me more fun and engaging, and she’d be annoyed to see me chilling in front of a fire when I should be out socializing with the other cast and crew. “Finn, you have to take advantage of every moment you have while on location. There’s no better place to deepen those bonds than on the road.”

I glanced over at Kix. “Crys was pretty cool on set today, didn’t you think?”

He rolled his eyes. “If by cool, you mean an ice queen, then yeah. Cool.”

“Did you see her helping Yuki with the scene where her mother dies?”

Kix flipped the corner of the quilt again and bounced his leg in a way I recognized as pure, restless boredom. He wasn’t going to stick around here shooting the shit for very long, which was fine by me. He was welcome to go back to his room in the lodge 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.”