Page 62 of Until the Sea Runs Dry

15

Streets flashed past the window. Their sight usually offered a comforting familiarity, though tonight, nothing could get through his growing sense of unease and the resulting anger that never seemed too far behind.

All day he had had to deal with his co-star — an up-and-coming comedian — throwing it in his face that he was not the main attraction of this movie.

Logan had never been much of a diva, but he was used to the kind of respect afforded him for being the star of each of his last ten movies, so to have been demoted like this — and to a comedian who owed his newfound fame to his father-in-law’s clout in the industry and not, through any talent of his own — burned like a ring of fire.

It was nepotism at its ugliest, something Logan had come across time and again and which never ceased to amaze him how the outdated practice hadn’t only become accepted, but was now the norm.

He was pretty sure the practice had led to the recent decline of the box office and the subsequent spat of terrible reboots. It was probably those same people who greenlit movies about emojis, of all things. And toys.

He missed the days when toys were made of movies, and not the other way around.

Even with the crap Jackson had been dealing, he had been determined to shut up and do the job to the best of his ability when his manager had called, sounding more stressed than he was comfortable with.

He’d been stuck in the middle rehearsing a tense scene, comprised largely of chunks of dialogue, something that would have caused even the most prepared actor concern, but Logan had an additional issue.

Since he was young, he had known that there was something different about him. While friends at school found classes easy and blew past homework like it was nothing, Logan struggled… a lot.

It wasn’t that he wasn’t smart — everyone knew he was — from his school teachers, to the mother who had single-handedly raised him, there was just something about the act of reading and writing that proved problematic.

It didn’t matter how many times he read over a sentence, the words and letters seemed to move around. It wasn’t until he failed several classes in a row that his favorite teacher investigated his situation. Once she had spent one-on-one time with him, she quickly realized what the problem was.

Logan was dyslexic.

Despite learning he had an actual condition that would make it more difficult to read and write, Logan never wanted it to hold him back. Having seen his mom return home day after day, heavy shadows under her eyes, and with all kinds of ailments from the three jobs she held down, he was determined to do right by her.

His mother’s sacrifices would not be in vain.

It took years of constant effort to get a handle on the dyslexia, staying home to do the required work, watching as his best friend — and next-door neighbor — went out on dates and had a good time.

When acting came into his life, one of the unexpected bonuses had been how little physical reading was involved with it, and how there were other ways he could learn the scripts; some that didn’t even require reading.

Many of the most successful movie stars didn’t bother to learn their scripts, preferring to have someone feed them their lines during each scene. This wasn’t something that interested him, however.

Part of the joy of acting was getting into the head of a character, to breathe life into them. How could he do that with someone feeding him lines in the moment? There would be no spontaneity, no playing around and playing off his co-stars.

While that kind of laziness wasn’t for him, Logan discovered he could pay for an assistant to record the script into audio files that he would listen to — much like his favorite audiobooks — and memorize his lines that way.

He’d tried this method on occasion, but preferred to keep it as a last resort: there really wasn’t anything like reading a script organically and letting the words imprint into his head.

Of course, after his string of recent flops, this particular job had become his most difficult to date. And with Jackson egging him on, it was getting harder to stay on his best behavior.

This kind of competition was par for the course: friendly, even not-so-friendly camaraderie, was normal on a film set. He couldn’t get along with everyone. Most times, he didn’t even want to. Sometimes, he just wanted to be left alone to do the work.

Instead of using his time productively today, he had been forced to go out here and bargain with that idiot cop. Technically, he could have sent his manager to handle it, but Jane was his responsibility and for whatever reason, he needed to keep her safe.

He needed to protect her.

And that worried him greatly.

They had only known each other a few days, and much of that time, they hadn’t even spent together. It would be easy to blame it on the memory loss, but seeing her in that fragile state on the beach, with those vivid bruises and cuts that criss-crossed her legs, added with that vulnerable manner of hers, he’d felt the overwhelming need to take care of her.

Worse still, he’d been attracted to her, which in the moment, had felt all kinds of wrong.

A quick glance at the Cartier watch he wore today revealed it was almost five now. He’d been gone from the set for almost three hours.

Three hours that would be billed to him if this downtime wasn’t covered by the movie’s insurance. Three hours where several hundred people would have nothing to do, but wait for his return as they bitched about him.

---