Writers Tennis Part 12

(Nagi)

Angela sank down on the small sofa. After Kenneth hovered in the doorway for a few moments, Angela gestured to one of the smaller chairs opposite her.

“You can sit, you know.”

“Are you sure? I mean, Eddie’s been grumbling about us being behind schedule anyway,” Kenneth said, but he closed the trailer door and sat down anyway.

“I’m sure.” Angela reached up to massage her temples. Global war and domestic terrorism were the last things she needed on her plate. She wasn’t sure if this day could get any worse, but she wasn’t holding off on her bets yet.

“So...did you get tomorrow’s call sheet?” Kenneth asked.

Angela opened her eyes. “Pardon? Tomorrow’s call sheet? No. I’ll get it tomorrow.” She laughed, keeping her tone light, and let her hand drop to her side to check that she still had Thomas’s sidearm. She had to find a way to arm up, and she had to do it alone. “What makes you ask?”

“Well, I’ve got my AD to keep a day ahead on the schedule for me,” Kenneth said, and he dropped his gaze down and to the right. So this wasn’t a lie, this was...more of that inscrutable guilt.

“That’s nice of your AD,” Angela said. She sat back and studied him more closely this time, for an entirely different reason. In their three weeks on the set she’d become utterly familiar with his every gesture, smile, expression, but this was the first time she noticed how very frail he was. Thin. He’d been a model before he’d been an actor, or so the government dossier said, and those dossiers were rarely wrong. If things went south with Johnny - and she had to get a handle on him in the next twelve hours - the Kenneth would be a risk. She couldn’t protect him and herself, and she couldn’t trust him to protect himself, could she? Still, the boy was unerringly beautiful. She thrust that thought aside and focused on his current mood once more. “You nervous about tomorrow? What’s tomorrow?”

“My, er, first screen kiss,” he said.

Angela felt her world tilt on its axis. Hers, too. But she couldn’t let him know that.

“Oh. Just - go with it. It won’t be that big a deal.”

Kenneth lifted his gaze. “It’s with you.”

Angela blinked. “What?” Then she scooped up her copy of the screenplay. “Where?”