Page 33 of He's The Reason Why

Hearing those words said like that, one after the other, set guilty heat prickling up the back of his neck. “Yes.”

Marshall stared at him.

“What?” But he knew what, and Marshall knew he knew.

Marshall held his gaze. “Let me ask you this. When we finallystart shootingConnedand we’re deep in one of the pivotal scenes, and we’ve been at it all day, and we’ve done the scene oh, five or six times, and one of the guys tells you it’s good enough, but you know it isn’t. What are you going to say?”

“You know what I’d say.” Blake sucked in a deep breath and tried to let go of the irritation that had joined the guilt bubbling under his skin. “It’s not a fair comparison. Our high-budget, mainstream blockbuster movie is a hell of a lot more involved than her animated fairy tale.”

“Oh really?” Marshall nodded to himself. “Because last I saw the budget on an animated feature was three times higher than ours. More people involved, more tech, more money.”

“Whose side are you on?”

“Yours. Always,” Marshall said instantly.

Blake glared at the TV, but he was really seeing Piper’s face when she’d said start over. “Piper’s version of good is everyone else’s version of outstanding. Her standards are way too high.”

Marshall’s phone dinged again. “Ten minutes. Which means another hour because we have to do makeup and hair all over.”

Blake paced to the back of the trailer and turned around. “Nobody’s expecting Broadway or solid gold. If they were, they wouldn’t have cast me as the lead. It’s not like I’m known for singing. That’s Dad, not me.”

Marshall frowned. “You know I’m just kidding about your singing, right?”

Blake shrugged. He knew Marshall was joking, but a secret part of him had always wondered if he was right. “Sure.”

“Come on. You know you’re better than good. You’re frustratingly talented. You’re a better singer than a lot of so-called professionals and you don’t have to sweat for it, while the rest of us poor slobs have to work our asses off to sound even half as good as you do in the damn shower.”

Marshall’s compliment felt like an unintentional echo ofPiper’s disappointed “is this the best you can do.” It made him shift uncomfortably. “That’s not the point.”

“So what is?”

He couldn’t quite explain the difference between his singing and Piper’s, but he knew that there was one. “I can hear the difference between where she is and where she wants me to be, but I don’t know how to get there. So we just keep doing it over and over, and I get louder and louder. Then she gets that look on her face.”

“What look?”

Blake tilted his head, raised his eyebrows, and pressed his lips together to mimic Piper’s why-are-you-breathing-my-oxygen-you-painful-disappointment expression. “This look.”

“Oh. Yeah I’ve seen that look before.” Marshall’s lips twitched. “You make a version of that face a lot.”

“I do not.” He stopped pacing to glare at his friend. “I’m nothing like her. She’s an uptight, impossible-to-please perfectionist.”

“And you aren’t?” Marshall supplied. “Please. Remember how you made all five of us onBack to Worktake real office jobs for a month so we could experience what it feels like to be one of those nine-to-five slugs?”

“Hey, we had a great time in that office. We ended up with some good dialogue too, and the box on that was over two hundred million.”

“I’m not saying it didn’t work. I’m just saying it might be considered—” Marshall paused as if hunting for the right word.

“Professional?” Blake offered.

“Obsessive.” Marshall snapped his fingers. “That’s the word. Obsessive. Oh, or like inGet Hairy, when you had the wolf gang stay in full makeup and hang out with a bunch of dogs for hours so they could experience what it felt like to be part of a pack.”

“We spent thirty minutes, not hours, with two dogs. Not a bunch.” He held up two fingers. “Two.”

“Whatever.” Marshall’s phone dinged again. “Five minutes.”

“I’ll walk you out.”

They left the trailer and head down the lot toward the soundstage.

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