Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 123873 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 619(@200wpm)___ 495(@250wpm)___ 413(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 123873 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 619(@200wpm)___ 495(@250wpm)___ 413(@300wpm)
While the entire time, Newcomb stared at him with his lips pinched together in disapproval.
Brendan nudged his knee against his thigh under the table. “Hey.”
“Don’t look at me,” Cillian mumbled subvocally. “I am a large and oozing puddle of shame. Don’t even look in my direction.”
Resting his elbow on the table, Brendan leaned in closer. “What’s going on? Ignore the staring. He’s just trying to intimidate you.”
“It’s not him.” Cillian hunched his shoulders. “It’s you. And her. And everyone here. I can’t even measure up to an extra, let alone—”
“Stop that,” Brendan said, touching Cillian’s arm. “We all do our own thing. You do yours. There’s no comparing.”
“But—”
“Excuse me, everyone.” Newcomb pitched his voice over the room. “Lunch break. Don’t go far. We pick up again in an hour. Let’s see if a break can get everyone back on track.”
Nasty. Snide.
Cillian moaned, and thudded his head against the table with only the script for a buffer.
Sophie blinked at Brendan over Cillian’s bowed back. “What’s wrong?”
“A little stage fright,” Brendan answered, then sighed, leaning down to angle and try to peer at Cillian past the shag of brown hair spilling over the script. “Hey. I’m going to go talk to Drake. Eat something. Take a deep breath. One flubbed reading is not the end of the world.”
“It’s just the end of my career,” Cillian moaned.
“It is not.” Brendan clapped his shoulder. “Save the melodrama for filming. I’ll be right back.”
He stood, then, Sophie’s curious voice drifting after him as she peeked at Cillian, then poked his side. “Have you ever seen Howl’s Moving Castle? Because you look like Howl right now when he drama queened himself into a slime.”
…yeah.
Cillian would be fine with Sophie.
Brendan snagged two water bottles as he passed the cooler, and offered one to Drake as he settled to lean against the wall at his side. “I’m behaving myself,” he said before Drake could even give him the usual needling look. “Haven’t said boo to our dear director. Or threatened him in any other ways.”
“It amazes me how well you can control yourself when you want to.” Snorting, Drake twisted the cap off his water and took a deep drink, then exhaled. “Contract shit’s sorted. What’s going on with the kid? He’s reading like he’s half asleep. Newcomb freaking him out?”
“He’s intimidated by the rest of the cast. It happens. The first time I landed a breakout role, I almost threw up in a certain someone’s lap.”
“I heard that story before I even met you. You’re lucky she thought it was funny, or you’d have been dead in the water from that point out.” Drake’s gaze drifted over the room. “So why’s the kid in full make-up already?”
Frowning, Brendan looked down at his water bottle, tapping his fingers against the unopened plastic and making the water droplets beading on it bounce. “He got in a scuffle at a bar,” he said. The rest wasn’t Drake’s business to know. Cillian might be a stranger to Brendan, mostly, but knowing something that intimate about someone…you didn’t tell that kind of thing about other people. “He didn’t want anyone to know about it. Bad impressions and that kind of shit. Candace fixed him up. By tomorrow or the day after we’ll be doing dry runs anyway, so no one will think it’s odd he’s in makeup.”
“I guess that’s fair,” Drake said, and took another drink. “But here’s the real question: why’s he over there talking to Oliver Newcomb?”
Brendan jerked his head up.
Across the room, Newcomb had backed Cillian into a wall—and no one was coming to his rescue, even though Cillian cringed back and looked intensely unhappy, his face contorted into a mask of discomfort. Newcomb wasn’t touching him, no.
But that didn’t mean he wasn’t too fucking close for Brendan’s comfort.
Brendan curled his upper lip and thrust the water bottle at Drake, momentum surging through him until his legs were moving, fueled by a white heat of anger, before he could stop them.
“Give me a moment,” he bit off. “I’m about to go end this man’s whole fucking career.”
CHAPTER SIX
CILLIAN HAD LOST SOPHIE SOMEWHERE.
She’d kind of appointed herself his fairy godmother, shepherding him through meet-and-greets at breakneck speed, buffering him from the confusing whirlwind of introductions to more people than he’d ever worked with on a single production. She was a bit of a whirlwind herself, a little overwhelming, but with an easiness about her that relaxed him and let him breathe, laugh, get over the mortifying fumbles as he’d stumbled his way through the script for hours, then shut up to let wiser and more experienced heads do the talking.
Was he really not ready for prime time?
Too inexperienced to handle what the professionals breezed through every day like it was nothing?
He’d tried not to get too hung up on those thoughts during lunch. She shoved food at him, asked him about his last film, chattered at him about wanting to direct one day, until he didn’t really have to talk; just make affirmative noises while he ate. But somehow in branching off into conversation with someone else, Sophie had wandered off, leaving Cillian against the wall, finishing a small plate of finger food and toying with a can of some natural-branded energy drink.