Page 9 of The Likelihood Of You

I mean, does it matter that I fancy him?

I know I didn’t come to New York to find anyone; I came to get away from two specific people. But Mr twenty-six million followers isn’t just anyone. He’s a somebody, which makes me a nobody in the grand scheme of things. So I guess a harmless little crush on a celebrity I’ll never cross paths with again isn’t the end of the world. And Isuppose it adds some of that hopeless romanticness Nanna told me to add back into my life. Which right now, I don’t hate the idea of.

So I tap the follow button, and bask in the odd sensation of having butterflies take flight in my stomach for the first time in months.

As I finish the remaining morsels of the last slice of pie I’ll be having until it’s the dollar pastry again and down the rest of my now-cold coffee, I grab my coat from the back of the chair and slide it on my arms. I hoped the rain would have died down by now, but if anything, it’s picked up dramatically. I hurry out of Pin’s, holding the door for a couple as I leave, and begin to run towards the subway stairs.

Once I’m seated and settled on the train and on my way to scour the city for a job I don’t want but desperately need, I think to myself about what the hell had happened in the hour that I left, whilst scrolling through the Instagram account of ‘itsjacobemerson’ and getting lost in a myriad of fan edits and only stopping once I realise I’m verbally giggling like a loved up teenager on a packed metro train.

Oh God. Am I a fangirl now?

Chapter four

Jacob Five Months Later

“That’s a wrap for today, folks. Thank you so much. See you bright and early Monday!”

The way Wesley Paige, our director, says that makes him sound like he’s been a ray of sunshine all day, but he’s not; he’s been nothing but a dick. A dick who walks around set like he’s God’s gift to us all,andwith one of those walks where every step he takes, he bounces on his heels.

But has anyone mentioned any of that to him? No. They haven’t.

What’s worse is that he wasn’t even supposed to be on this shoot.

On the firstDefenders of Timemovie, we had a lovely director, a little five-foot-something lady with hair that would make Rapunzel jealous, and she really was a ray of sunshine. She knew that it was my first movie, first time on a set, first everything, and she made theentire process feel like I’d done it a million times before. She walked me through every detail, taught me more than just the basics, and gave me pep talks, as did the cast, and it made everything about this career seem so right.

Unfortunately for us, she wasn’t the first choice to direct the sequel. Top of the list for the production company was Wesley Paige: two-time Oscar winner for best actor, who had recently broken into directing, who also happened to be a raging asshole. But you wouldn’t know it from his golden boy acceptance speeches and twinkling smile.

Fucking actors.

When I walked into the table read nearly two years ago and met him, I was like a child walking up to meet Santa for the first time. I was starstruck. I’d admired his acting for years, and he just seemed like a cool guy. He also had a killer moustache, the kind that looked like the bottom of a thick bristle broom or the ones the men sported in seventies pornos. Which I’m not ashamed to admit I was insanely jealous of.

To be fair to him, his directing skills were solid. He knew how to take things to the next level and knew the right angles and lighting techniques to make the shots magic. But after one too many casual insults directed at the assistant staff slipped from under that tasche, my admiration for him and his visions wore off pretty quickly.

So, take away the cool facial hair and magic camera shots; all you were left with was a human douche-nozzle who could point a camera in the right direction.

I wished someone had the balls to say something to him, myself included, because it was common knowledge by this point that the whole cast and crew were tired of his shit. But we also all liked ourjobs, and had signed contracts, and after months of Wes sucking the life out of everyone around him, there was a slim chance anyone had the energy to jump through all the legal loopholes to free themselves from the shoot.

“Goodbye, Wesley, have a fabulous evening, you dipshit.” I felt Nate’s arm land on my shoulder as he whispered that to me, his head slightly angled and words directed towards Wes. We both released a low chuckle.

“One day, Nathaniel, we’ll scream that at him.” I looked over my shoulder, making sure Wes was out of earshot. “Maybe some other things too.”

Nate scoffs. “You know who you’re talking about, right? That man has been close to tears all day because the set wasn’t looking sad enough. How are those poor set designers supposed to make space look sad anyway?”

I can’t help but roll my head back and squeeze my eyes shut at the fact he’s not making this up. I think at one point I overheard him ask if the craters in the cardboard planet could look like sad eyebrows.

“But if we say anything like that to him, he’ll probably start sobbing, or implode.”

I shake my head at him, but he’s probably right. “My bet's on both.”

“And you know me: I’d rather go skydiving with no parachute than confront him- or anyone. You know that.”

I gave him a soft smile because, again, he was right.

It may come as a shock to the rest of the world, but Nate Patricks, though he’s a multi-award-winning actor with several Golden Globes under his belt and an impressive-looking future on the silver screen, is not all that outgoing in real life. For the cameras, he’ll usually turnup that cheeky charmer persona that the tabloids die for, dishing out sparkling smiles and stellar jokes, but when there’s no camera shoved in his face, he’s a pretty timid guy.

Timid is probably too small of a word to describe Nate, but I won’t go into detail about the extent of him and his anxiety. That’s his story to tell.

Once we get to wardrobe, I hand off the weapons and gadget belt that I’d been wearing all day, grateful for the absence of the seventy-pound extra weight, and hop into one of the pop-up changing cubicles, ridding myself of the rest of the costume, before returning it to one of the textile ladies who was scattered about.

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