Page 47 of Home Grown Talent
Fine, use this instead.
A picture appeared a second later. Mason must have taken it at the coffee shop where they’d met for that quick lunch date while Owen was zooming between jobs.
Owen studied the picture. He had to admit he looked good in it, his smile wide and natural, eyes bright with happiness, the coffee shop bustle in the background. He couldn’t even remember Mason taking it.
I don’t look ‘nervous and excited’, he messaged.
You look fucking hot, though. Use it.
Owen stared at the screen and those words: You look fucking hot… He still wasn’t quite used to the idea that Mason actually liked him in that way. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe Mason, but somehow, it was easier to accept when they were together. When he actually saw the lust and appreciation in Mason’s green eyes for himself.
When they were apart, he would sometimes think about Lewis saying it was his fame that had been the main attraction for Mason, or that, not so long ago, Mason had been dating Jay Warren. And then he’d think, Why is he interested in a nobody like me?
That wasn’t fair, though. The Mason he’d got to know over these last weeks wasn’t the shallow celebrity wannabe Lewis had accused him of being. He was obsessed with Instagram, that was true, but in fairness, it was an important career tool for him.
Pulling up the app, Owen dutifully added the photo and pasted in the text and hashtags Mason had provided. Then he waited.
Mason quickly commented on the post, as though he’d just seen it—“OMG, me too! Can’t wait!”—followed by an excited stream of emojis: a grinning face, a sunflower, some kind of vegetable, and a bunch of rainbow hearts. And then Mason must have posted something of his own that drove more people to Owen’s post because as Owen watched, with vaguely horrified amazement, his post began garnering likes, a lot of them, and he began acquiring new followers too. Fans of Mason? They must be, from some of the comments that began appearing on his post.
Are you the guy who’s going to be on TV with Mason?
Is this M’s new BF?? OMG I’M SCREAMING
U R so hot! You and Mason must be beautiful together! Pls post lots of pics! #loveislove
And finally:
Okay, who are you and what have you done with my boyfriend’s brother?
Owen blinked in confusion at that last comment before he realised it had been posted by none other than @aaron_scriptdoctor. Grinning, he replied to that one with the comment, “Been getting some Insta lessons from an expert,” and quickly got back, “So I see!” from Aaron.
After a few more minutes of checking and liking comments, his eyelids began to droop. It had been a long day. He’d started not long after dawn, missed lunch, been run ragged all day, and now it was almost midnight. And he was due at the RPP studio at seven a.m. tomorrow for their first bit of filming. Which he really was nervous and excited about.
With a jaw-cracking yawn, he shoved his phone in his pocket and headed upstairs to bed.
The first day’s filming didn’t wrap up till four-thirty, more than nine hours after they started.
Owen really shouldn’t have been surprised by how long it took—he’d realised ages ago that everything related to Weekend Wellness took way longer than he’d have ever imagined—but even so, as he and Mason walked back to his van afterwards, he grumbled about it.
“So much for ‘a couple of hours.’”
Mason snorted. “I told you.”
Owen sighed. “I know.”
In truth, though, he was having to fake being disgruntled. Despite the stupid script notes Naomi, Misty’s intern, had pressed on them, and all the hanging around—seriously, they’d spent more time waiting to be filmed than actually being filmed—and despite it being as cold as a witch’s tit all day and there being nowhere near enough coffee, it had been a pretty good day. A great day, actually. And yeah, that was mostly because he’d spent it with Mason.
He honestly couldn’t remember the last time he’d enjoyed another person’s company so much, and it wasn’t just because he fancied the pants off of Mason and wanted to fuck him six ways till Sunday. He liked Mason. Mason made him laugh, and he could be surprisingly thoughtful. During the filming, he was unflaggingly cheerful, despite having to brave near-hypothermia, and endearingly friendly to the whole crew, from the director right down to Eddie, the junior runner who spent the whole, long day doing constant errands.
“It was actually a pretty normal day for me,” Mason said as they neared Owen’s van. “There’s loads of waiting around on shoots as well. At least today I didn’t have to contort myself into uncomfortable positions for hours on end. Following you around and chatting while you worked was a lot more entertaining than posing for pics.”
Owen flashed him a grin. “I don’t think Naomi was very happy with our chatting, though, do you?”
Mason laughed. “Oh my God, no! But what did she expect giving us all those script notes when we were just about to start? There were, like, twenty pages of them!”
“She obviously thought we should be mugging up on them whenever we weren’t being filmed,” Owen said, pulling out his keys. He unlocked the doors, and they both got in.
“To be fair, they were Misty’s notes, not hers.” Misty hadn’t been able to make the filming, thankfully.