COSTARS
By Claire Adams
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 Claire Adams
Chapter One
The Loose Bet
Emma
This is it. Today’s the day.
I’ve been waiting for this moment all my life and now that it’s here, I wish I were somewhere else. I wish I were someone else.
It’s not that I lack gratitude or an understanding of just what a big deal this moment is for me personally as well as professionally. I’m nothing but gratitude right now.
No, what’s bothering me is that I can’t remember any of my lines and I’m going to be working with quite possibly the greatest actor of my generation: Damian Jones.
The problem with reaching the top is that there are other people, people who have been there for a while. I’ve been rather clever so far, working in near anonymity and only ever being recognized as that chick from that tampon commercial.
It’s not the best kind of notoriety I could have hoped for, but it paid the rent.
Now, though, all eyes are going to be on me, and I know exactly what everyone’s thinking. They’re all just sitting back, waiting and hoping that they’ll have a front row seat when I inevitably prove just how unqualified I am to be here.
Or maybe that’s just my own personal insecurity.
Regardless, I think it’s time that I start betting against myself here. My cheeks have been red for the last ten minutes, and I’ve been having a hell of a time breathing at what anyone might consider a natural pace.
“Emma,” Lane, my on-set assistant, says, poking his head through the door of my trailer, “they’re ready for you.”
I take a breath.
Here we go.
Ten minutes later and I’m back in my trailer, waiting for them to get the lighting set up for the next scene.
I’ve been in movies before, just nothing you would have seen. There were a few low-budget, sci-fi flicks where I was either the lusty heroine, or more likely, damsel in distress who is rescued by the superpower-wielding hero, or I was the space vixen who’s basically just walking cleavage that completely fails as a character.
My biggest moment before landing this film was in Mega Leopard vs. Megalodon IV: Rise of the Phoenixes, where I had a 30-second monologue in which I’m trying to reassure the rest of the captives—all buxom women like myself, each character with a different reason why the front of her shirt is torn open, exposing everything but areola—they’re going to survive the machinations of the Cult of Megalodon culminating in the glorious words, “We are not fodder for monsters; no! We are women and women fight!”
Sure, it’s a nice thought from a feminist standpoint, but the writing left a lot to be desired.
Now, though, I’m on the set of a motion picture that doesn’t only have one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, but it actually has financial backing and a decent script.
It should be a lot harder to be cynical, but I’m starting to find myself longing for the days where the director didn’t care if the lighting was right or whether the sun was two hours higher in the sky in one shot than it is in the next. At least then, I could put in a day’s work and be done.
Now, all I have is time to sit here and freak out because of where ‘here’ is.
Lane opens the door to my trailer to ask me if I need anything. I ask him what he means by anything.
“I don’t know,” he says. “Are you hungry, thirsty? Is there anything I could bring you that would help to pass the time? I could read lines with you, whatever you need.”
“If I were to ask you to do something to help me pass the time, you’d probably do it?” I ask.
“Sure,” he answers.