Page 79 of Stone Promises

I have no idea what will happen when I see Courtney. I haven’t seen her in months, since the pre-production meetings back in April. I’ve purposely avoided her at all costs. Other than being concerned she might not be able to perform up to expectations, I don’t give a rat’s ass what she’s been up to. But I’m not going to put up with any more of her shit. I made it perfectly clear to Paul and Kendra and the whole damn studio that I’m not going to pretend I’m with her. I’m not hiding my relationship with Mallory to sell a few more tickets to a movie. I told them in no uncertain terms if they try to make it look like Courtney and I are still together, I will issue a statement myself. It’s pure bullshit what Paul and the studio wanted me to do. Maybe I was willing to go along with it before, when it seemed my career was riding on it. But now—when I can pretty much pick and choose what I want to do, and producers and directors are fighting over me—I’mgoing to be the one calling the shots, not them.

“We’d better get going,” I say. We walk out to the front and I pick up the call sheets, handing her one. “This is the call sheet. I’ve told the AD to give me two of them so you can have one with you at all times.”

“What’s a call sheet?” she asks, looking over it. “And what’s an AD?”

I laugh. Mallory has become such a big part of my life that I sometimes forget she’s not in the business. “AD stands for Assistant Director,” I tell her. “He prepares the call sheet from the director’s shot list. The cast and crew get one to tell them when and where to report each day. It lists the order in which the scenes will be shot. This one is pretty basic, but when we’re on location in Sedona, it will have additional information about transportation, safety, weather, and what meals are provided each day.”

“So it’s a daily schedule,” she says. “Why not just call it a daily schedule?”

I kiss her on the nose, chuckling. But before I open the door, I tell her what I’ve been dreading. “Mallory, I’m going to have to kiss Courtney in a scene today. And I’ll have to do it several times until they get the shot they want. If you don’t want to watch, I’ll understand. But it would be nice to have you there so you see how it’s all very technical and not nearly as intimate as it looks on screen.”

She nods sadly, looking at the floor. Then she smiles up at me. “I know you have to do this as part of your job, Chad. It’s okay. You just go do what you need to do and then later” —she motions back to the bedroom— “we’ll open that box.”

Shit. She’s going to send me out of the trailer with a hard-on. “You know,” I say. “We’ve been together for a while now, and I’ve been tested more than once. And since you’re on the pill, I was thinking maybe we could go without the box.”

She smiles, looking all sultry and come-hither as she gazes at me through her lashes. “I would love to feel you with nothing between us.”

Definite boner.

There’s another knock on the door and I open it to see one of the ADs. “Mr. Stone, Ms. Benson would like to see you in her trailer before hair and makeup.”

I give Mallory a look of annoyance. Then I turn back to the AD. “Can you please show Mallory the way to makeup, John. I’ll be there in five.” I kiss her on the top of the head. “Wish me luck, babe, I’m goin’ in.”

I walk over to Courtney’s trailer and knock on her door. “Come in!” she yells.

I half expect her to be naked with bells on, but she’s not. In fact, she doesn’t look anything like what I expected. She’s got on jeans and a t-shirt and her hair is in a ponytail. She resembles the Courtney I knew when we first met, the Courtney who hadn’t yet been introduced to the black-hole world of drugs. “Uh . . . hi.”

“Hi, Thad. Thanks for coming,” she says, sitting on her couch. “I wanted to have a minute with you before all the craziness started.”

“Okay, what’s up?”

“Can you sit down for a second, please?”

Please?I’m beginning to wonder what she did with the real Courtney. I walk over and sit on the far end of her couch. “Will this take long? We’re due in makeup.”

“No. I just wanted to apologize to you, and I didn’t want to do it in front of everyone.”

“Apologize for what exactly?” I ask.

She shoots her eyebrows up like it should be blatantly obvious. “For the way I treated you, Thad.” She shakes her head, briefly closing her eyes. “I’ve seen some of the press footage and the pictures. I was a self-centered bitch.”

I stare at her for a minute. “You seem different,” I say.

“Well, I should hope so. I’m clean now. Almost eight weeks.”

My eyes light up. “Really?”

She nods.

“That’s great, Courtney. I’m happy for you. You look well.”

“Thanks. I feel good. I’m excited to get started filming. I was hoping we could start off on the right foot. Give them a performance to remember.”

“I always try to,” I say. “But, yeah, thanks for telling me. I think it will make things a lot easier for everyone.”

“I hope so. Listen, I know you had to do what you did when you found out I was using. I’m not mad at you for breaking up with me. I just wish I would have realized how out of control I was a little sooner. Maybe then . . . well, maybe things could have been different between us. Maybe they still can be.”

I shake my head. “I can hardly blame you for what you did when you were using, Courtney. That would make me a bit of a hypocrite, don’t you think? But I’m not sure how differently things would have turned out. I’m with Mallory now. In some ways, I’ve always been with her. I’m not saying this to make you feel bad, but things would never have worked out between us in the long run. I could never be with anyone but her.”

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