Filthy Beast(4)

I look at her for a second and decide just to be honest. “You need to sleep,” I say.

She frowns at me. “That bad?”

“Maybe,” I say. “I haven’t read it.”

“Damn.” She stretches and yawns again before shutting the laptop lid. “I probably should sleep. The aliens only appeared in the third act, which I started writing around three in the morning.”

I can’t help but laugh. Laney is always doing stuff like this, staying up too late and writing crazy scripts. Most of the time, I can convince her to make them a little more conventional, but every once in a while she writes a masterpiece and shops it around. Those don’t usually sell, but she has sold a few other movies.

Brutally Dishonest is her biggest though, and it’s looking like the budget is going to be huge.

I head into the kitchen and pour myself some coffee. At least she was nice enough to make some for me, too. I sip my mug and pause when I catch sight of the magazine on the kitchen table.

“Laney,” I call out, walking over to it and slowly picking it up. “What’s this doing here?”

“You’ll have to be more specific,” she answers from the other room.

I stare at his face, his handsome, familiar face, and I want to vomit. I hate seeing him around town. I hate how popular he is, how everyone knows his name. Women want to throw themselves at him, men want to be him. He’s a real action star and people love him.

But they don’t know Jackson like I do. He’s a liar, a filthy asshole, and a bastard. I don’t want to ever see him again, and yet now I can’t seem to freaking get away from his face.

I walk out into the living room, holding up the magazine. Laney looks up and grins at me. “Oh,” she says. “That.”

“Yes, this. Since when do you read this stuff?” It’s a gossip rag that basically writes about upcoming and in-production projects.

“Did you read that front cover?”

“No,” I admit. “You know this thing is wrong more often than it’s right.”

“It’s not wrong this time. Read it.”

I look down at the cover, and I think I have a heart attack.

“No,” I whisper.

“Oh yeah,” Laney says, sounding so excited. “I couldn’t believe it either when I first heard, but it’s true. I got the email last night. He signed the papers a couple days ago, and it’s official.”

“Shit,” I whisper to myself, and I feel like my whole life is crashing down.

In big, bold letters, the headline read, “Big Jackson Hendricks to star in Brutally Dishonest.”

“Isn’t he so hot?” Laney says to me. “I’m a little jealous. You’ll get to see him every day. You’ll be working pretty close with him. I’d give anything to get close to that guy.”

I drop the magazine and shake my head. “No, no, hell no, Laney,” I say. “I won’t work with that asshole, absolutely not.”

I storm away, back into my bedroom. I slam the door behind me and climb back into bed. I wrap the sheets around my head, but I know that won’t make a difference.

Jackson is going to star in Brutally Dishonest, and I’m going to have to see him every single day for the whole shoot. That could last months.

Laney doesn’t know. Nobody knows what he did to me. Nobody knows how we lived next to each other for years, grew up together, made promises to each other.

Nobody knows how he disappeared one day, leaving me brokenhearted, and never once answered a single letter I sent him.

I moved away, moved on, and thought I was over him. But now that he’s back, and in the freaking business no less, I can’t escape my feelings. I can’t escape the hurt, the anger, and yes, the desire that still lingers inside of me.

Having to work with him is like my biggest nightmare. He was the boy next door. He was the man I wanted to give myself to. He said I was too young, since he was older than me, but I just had to wait.

I was patient. I was waiting. We kissed, held hands, talked all day long about what we wanted to do when we got older.

And then he turned eighteen and he vanished.

Now I’m stuck with him. I can’t back out of this movie, despite my little meltdown. Laney has been really good to me and she’s helped me through some tough times over the years. I can’t turn my back on her now and not work on this. She’s my closet friend. Heck, she’s probably my only friend.

I can’t let her down. So I’m going to do this movie. I’m going to work with Jackson Hendricks. I’m going to relive that pain every single day during this shoot, all for a movie with a totally lame title.

This is going to be a lot harder than I could possibly have imagined.