Page 18 of Love At First Fright

“D o you want the good news or the bad news?” Ellis’s makeup artist Tania looked back at him from the wide mirror, a bag of fake hair in her hand.

“Hit me with the good news.”

“Well, you won’t need to keep shaving, you can let all that silver fox stubble grow out,” she said, unabashedly flirting as if she weren’t the same age as his mother, “but the bad news is you’re going to have to wear these bad boys.

” Tania held up a pair of thick, dark brown, adhesive muttonchops. Ellis grimaced.

“Do you want to hear the worst part?”

“I sense you’re about to tell me.”

“I’m not even sure what kind of hair it is. But I’m sure it’s natural.”

“My money is on horsehair,” Aaron chimed in from their corner of the room, where they were steaming Ellis’s costume.

“We’ll have to send it to the lab for tests after the shoot is done in that case.” Ellis smiled, and tilted his head to lean back in the makeup chair, graciously allowing Tania to stick the sideburns-of-unidentified-origin to his face.

It wasn’t pleasant, but at least he could eat and drink during the day without taking them off.

His phone buzzed in his pocket, a text from Brody.

It must have been just after midnight in LA, but he knew by now his agent considered sleep to be for the weak.

If he could strap himself onto an IV to keep him permanently awake, he probably would.

After all, you can’t make money when you’re asleep.

How’s my leading man? How’s life in the little leagues? Ah, yes, because anything that would bring in Brody less than a high six-figure commission was termed “little” in his eyes.

Ellis snapped a photo of himself in the chair, with one muttonchop already affixed to his face.

The little leagues suit me just fine, he replied. Even a text from Brody was enough to bring down his spirits, which had been at a high after his run-in with Rosemary in the woods this morning. She watched birds, it was fucking adorable.

Brody fired back a text. You look like shit, ask them to add some concealer under your eyes.

Ellis flashed a look at himself in the mirror.

He looked…his age. Tired? Sure. Muttons?

Chopped. But he wasn’t covered in a slick of tanning products anymore, and that was a blessing.

He didn’t deign to respond to Brody. One of these days he would muster the courage to quit working with the bastard and find himself an agent who wasn’t a blackmailing piece of shit. One of these days.

Once his makeup was done, Ellis dressed in his costume for the first time.

They’d had his measurements, and Aaron was a whiz with a sewing machine, so he was unsurprised to find it fit him perfectly.

Ellis glanced in the mirror. The first scene they’d be filming today would be his character, Alfred, arriving at the manor where his ailing uncle lay dying.

It was meant to be filmed during the day, to instill a false sense of peace into the audience, right before all the scary shit went down.

So he pulled on his billowing white shirt, tucked it into the neat trousers, and topped it with the waistcoat, made of a slightly worn material as to hint at his character’s financial distress.

He hadn’t seen Rosemary since earlier this morning, but his eyes found her immediately in the crowd of people preparing to shoot outside the main house.

Unlike most of the crew, she wasn’t dressed in black, but rather a pale blue jumper that hugged her form.

His gaze roved down over her full thighs that looked like they had been poured into those jeans, and the tall boots.

She’d pinned her hair back from her face, and she was busy writing something in the margins of the script she held.

Christ, this woman clearly had it in for him, how was he supposed to focus on work under such attractive conditions?

“All set?” Jeremy said, coming up to Ellis.

“As I’ll ever be.”

Jeremy reached up and thumped a hand on Ellis’s shoulder. “Of course, of course. Now, on the accent.”

“We already discussed this. Do you think I’m incapable of doing a good Manchester accent? My mum is from there.”

“No, that’s not it. You know that’s not the issue, Ellis. The studios…”

“The studios will be fine with it when they see the footage, I’ll tone it down enough to not be overwhelming.”

“Or you could tone it down to zero?” Jeremy offered, giving him that million-watt smile.

“I don’t think so.”

The smile slipped off Jeremy’s face. “Brody won’t be happy to hear about this,” he said, as if that was some kind of warning meant to keep Ellis in line.

“Feel free to let him know all the details then.” Ellis walked away, finishing the conversation.

The only person from whom he needed a final opinion on the accent was Vincent, and they’d already had a separate discussion.

The Mancunian accent would stay, just as Rosemary had written it in the script and the novel.

And if that made Rosemary happy, well, that was just a positive side effect.

—

The first day of filming at Hallowvale manor began, and the skies opened up within fifteen minutes.

“No, no, keep going,” Vincent had shouted over the downpour. “It adds to the atmosphere!”

The first few shots went as smoothly as they could with the rain, getting footage of Ellis climbing down from the curricle his character had rented, viewing the menacingly gothic facade of his uncle’s manor for the first time.

Ellis spoke only his first line—“I hope the old man dies fast”—before hearing Vincent shout, “Cut,” giving them just under ten minutes for a break before they set up another scene, the first one with Lance.

Ellis spotted Rosemary blowing on her fingers in a pop-up tent.

She was cold. Some animal part of his brain responded with a need to fix that, and before Ellis had time to figure out what the hell that was about, he was already halfway to the craft services tent.

He spotted Lyn, Rosemary’s PA for the shoot.

“Lyn, do you have a second?”

“I have exactly twenty of them,” they said, grinning. Ellis was glad to be on a film with Lyn again.

“Can you tell me what Rosemary’s coffee order is? Or how she takes her tea?”

The PA narrowed their eyes. “Why do you want to know?”

“Oh. No reason, just curious.”

“Just curious, huh?” Lyn bent closer. “She’s very pretty, isn’t she? Very smart, too.”

“It’s not…I’m not…”

“And what about Jenna? Or is that another one of those situations?” He had no idea how the hell Lyn knew about Brody’s scheme, but that certainly appeared to be what they were hinting at.

“How did you…?”

Lyn gave him that piercing look, a reminder that they knew everything that went on on set. “She likes her tea with milk and two sugars, and her coffee the same. Be nice to her, she’s not used to the movie world.”

“I know,” he replied sincerely.

He made it to the craft tent, pleasantly empty at the moment, and fished around the miscellaneous boxes of tea for something good.

He was happy with an English breakfast, but if he happened upon an Assam, dark and malty and delicious…

well, he wouldn’t complain. As luck would have it, he found some. Perfect.

He grabbed two reusable mugs, flicking on the travel kettle.

Tea bags in, two sugars for Rosemary and one for him.

He used to drink his tea without sugar at all, but something changed in him when he hit thirty-nine.

Ellis had just woken up one morning, blearily heading down to the kitchen with Hank at his heels, and when he was standing there, looking out at his garden, he came to the entirely simple but rather remarkable realisation that he deserved to do things that made him happy.

No more forced diets for movies, dehydrating himself so that he looked more ripped on camera.

He would never be unfit, he loved sport, loved weight lifting.

But that didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy the finer things in life.

After realising that, he had never failed to enjoy the no-longer-guilty pleasure of a cup of tea with one sugar.

The kettle finished boiling, and Ellis poured the water in. He carried the cups back to the tent where Rosemary was waiting out of the rain.

“I thought you might want a cup of tea,” he said, handing one to her. “It’s cold out here.”

Lyn was standing beside Rosemary, clearly here to watch Ellis make a fool of himself.

“What? No cup of tea for me?” they said, mimicking a broken heart.

“Ha ha.”

“I didn’t realise you both knew each other,” Rosemary said.

“I was a runner on the last Soldier of Justice movie,” Lyn said, adjusting one of their earpieces. “One time, I accidentally elbowed Ellis in the eye! It was a particularly horrendous lake set, and I slipped on a makeshift stage.”

“They’re lying.” Ellis winked at Rosemary. “Lyn has had it out for me from day one.”

“Clearly. Better check that tea for poison,” they replied, when someone contacted them over the radio and they had to rush off.

“Lyn is the best,” Rosemary said. She took a sip of her tea and sighed in a way that was so deep and lovely that Ellis felt a rush of something akin to desire that pebbled the skin on the back of his neck.

“Thank you, Ellis. I needed this.”

“Anytime.” He sat down beside her in a pop-up chair, and looked out at the rainy film set.

“Once I ordered tea in a diner in Brooklyn and the waiter brought me a mug of microwaved water with a teabag on the side,” Rosemary said.

“Sacrilege. Treason,” Ellis said.

“I never would have thought so before, but Dina, one of my friends I mentioned before, owns a café in Bloomsbury now. She makes me special blends and ships them to New York.”

“What kind of blends?” Ellis watched as she took another thoughtful sip.

“The usual sort of things. Blends for career success, blends for when I have trouble sleeping.”

“You have trouble sleeping, Rosemary?”