Page 46 of Under the Mistletoe with You

When they pull up to the bakery, Nash leaps out of the van and picks up the heaviest bags from the back.If he’s not going to get a chance to do any proper lifting, this will have to do.At least Christopher seems happy to let him, and takes the remaining bag under one arm.Once inside and de-booted, Christopher goes to walk upstairs when Nash stops him.‘Where are you going?’

‘To ...put the shopping away?In my house?’

‘Shouldn’t we cook down here?Might just be easier if we’re cooking for ten to do it in a kitchen where we can swing a cat.’

‘Good point.’

They dump the bags on the floor of the bakery kitchen, and Nash starts grouping ingredients together into ‘soup’, ‘bolognese’ or ‘chilli’ on the massive table in the centre.While he loves to cook, he doesn’t get to do much of it at home.Plus, the strict diets he ends up on pre-shooting aren’t exactly a joy to cook – no inspiration ever came from plain grilled chicken.When he was little, he would cook with his nonna, and she always insisted on setting everything out ready before you even thought about prepping, never mind cooking.That’s stuck with him.

British through and through, Christopher takes a few bags up with him, and goes upstairs to make them tea.Nash drags a stool over from a corner and settles on it, his elbows on the prep table in the centre of the room, and opens up his message chain with Barbie.

Nash:don’t worry.I have been kidnapped but adopted by locals and am being looked after, though they insist that someone sends a lot of money before I’m allowed to leave, and they keep taking photos of me with the newspaper.All very weird.

Barbie:lol

Barbie:good.

Barbie:or not good?Is this even Nash I’m speaking to?

Nash:send over £100k and we’ll tell you for sure

Barbie:hmm I’m not sure he’s worth that

Nash:rude

Nash:I mean…

Nash:You should send it

Barbie:you should tell Nash that if he signs his new contract, they can get the money that way

Barbie:(sorry)

Nash:not you too

Barbie:babe you know I do not love the reality of the biz, but like I gotta eat, you gotta eat, the crew have to eat, let’s just do the thinggggg

It all sounds soreasonablewhen she says it.But it’s another year of his life, at least.More than that really, because this is actually a multi-year deal, multiple films.If it was just the lastChristmas at the Clinicfilm then that would be a different conversation, but the execs made it very clear to him, before he fled LA, that if he didn’t agree to do more films, it wouldn’t just be hurting his career, but perhaps hers too.Not that he’d told Kurt that, because he’d then have to tell Kurt about all the rest of it.

At one point, this kind of deal and the security that comes with it had been his dream.But now it feels like a trap.

A gilded cage.

All this feels so much worse now that Barbie is rightfully on his case.There’s no way he can tell her that he’s being blackmailed with her own career security, and that’s part of the hold-up.Another thing that Kurt probably could advise on.

But the thing is, he needs to protect her.AfterParental Unitsgot cancelled and everyone went their separate ways, he was kind of afloat in the industry.He was a young adult actor in a sea of them, and even though Kurt was great at getting him into the audition room, Nash just wasn’t having any luck.It was months and months of showing up and sitting alongside the same four or five guys who looked exactly like him – blond, slightly preppy, all built like greyhounds – reading the same scripts.It wasn’t always the same guys, because every now and again someone else would get their big break – they’d get a season-long role or a nice guest star appearance, and someone else would rotate into his slot in the audition room instead.

Eventually, they ran out of greyhounds and he’d got lucky with a pretty terrible made-for-TV film role, but he and Kurt agreed the only reason to do it was the strangely high pay (thank you to all the product placement), as they all agreed the script was a dud.

But strange things can come from terrible movies, because Barbie Glynn, rising star of social media and darling of the girls-next-door, had seen him in that stinker of a movie and wantedhimto play alongside her in her first movie.He’d been a little sceptical to begin with; how could he not be?It was her first movie, basically written for her, and arguably the execs had her follower numbers translating into dollar signs in their mind.She was a bit younger and he wasn’t sure if she’d done any acting at all.Plus, they’d never met.And yet, she wanted him to audition forChristmas at the Rink, in which they’d play rival ice-skating coaches training their youth teams for sectionals, or regionals – he forgets which.

It turned out they had amazing on-screen chemistry.Like, the type that made Nash wonder very briefly if it wasn’t real, but no, he tends to like his real-life love interests with more stubble.Even so, just watching the tapes back for the chemistry reads they did together, it was clear for everyone to see that they wereit.

They had a good time filming, too.Mostly, he just got to drive the Zamboni while Barbie wore the most incredible yet impractical, aggressively fluffy faux-fur coats in every scene.

And then, it really took off.He was officially a leading man, albeit in small-budget, made-for-television or straight-to-streaming romantic comedies, but the work kept coming.Screenwriters wrote scripts with them in mind.It was kind of magical, while he wanted it.

If it wasn’t for Barbie, he’d probably have left the industry by now.And it feels very much like the weight of her career is also on his shoulders.He writes back that he’s‘working on it’, hoping this is vague enough that she won’t see all the way through to the void ofI can’t think about this not even a little bitin his brain.