Page 46 of Just Like in the Movies
“It’s certainly not what I’d expected. Your grandmother always made it sound dramatic.”
“Well, that was Grandma.”
“But you enjoy it?” I knew he did, but it made him glow when he talked about his work and I was just enjoying getting to see this part of his life.
“I love it,” he said with enthusiasm. “But you don’t have to. Tell me when you get bored and I’ll figure something out.”
“I’ll stay,” I said. “I want to see your fight scenes.”
He laughed. “It’ll look pretty fake from here. Once they’ve done their magic in post-production, it’ll look real.”
I nodded and dug into my potatoes. “It’ll be fun to compare the two.”
Mike kissed my cheek, then turned back to his meal. “Thanks for coming today. It means a lot.”
“Thank you for inviting me.” I leaned my shoulder against his and he smiled. My heart fluttered and a wave of warm happiness rolled over me. We could do this. I’d find a job, something to keep me occupied while he was away. And we’d cobble together a life in times in between. “Your days aren’t always this long, are they? This is just making up for being gone for Maddie’s funeral?”
He nodded. “Sometimes the days are long, but it’s mostly kind of choppy. The schedule is never the same. And sometimes we’re on location somewhere else in the country or in another country.” He looked uncomfortable for a moment. “That’s something we should probably talk about.”
“I don’t need an alpha to do everything for me,” I reminded him. “I’ve had my own job for four years now and paid bills and everything. But I’ll probably miss you when you’re gone for those things.”
“We can see if you can come with me for some of them,” he promised. “Other people do it. Anyway, that’s kind of putting the cart before the horse—I have no idea if I’ll ever have a role that takes me out of the country. What do you think of the food?”
“It’s good. Nice not to have to cook.”
The conversation passed on to other topics, Mike’s friends from the movie coming to join us at the table, and I let the location shooting worry drift softly from my mind. There wasn’t much to be done about it right now, though Mom’s comment about howmalleableactors were sat in my mind like a stone.
Well, I’d tackle that problem tonight. I didn’t expect Mike not to be malleable, but I damn well expected him to be faithful. The question there was how to make that as easy as possible for him, without twisting my life up in the process?
