the first episode of ‘off campus’ wasn’t even on for 30 seconds before rafe started huffing like you had ruined every day he was ever going to have.
he did this every time you started a new tv show, complaining that he didn’t want to get stuck watching more “boring” and “girly” shit.
you chose to ignore rafe’s interruptive noises and it didn’t take long before he became uninterested entirely, tapping away on his phone instead.
from the corner of your eye, you caught him sneaking glances at the tv when something captured his attention and his phone screen turned black as it was soon forgotten.
after a handful of episodes had gone by, rafe was on the edge of his seat and his arms were resting comfortably against his thighs.
“jesus christ, this is total bullshit! why are these girls so horny for this dean guy when logan is right there?” he exclaimed, a finger pointed at the tv in disbelief.
you mushed your lips together in amusement when rafe shook his buzzcutted head and ran a hand down his face at what he was witnessing.
“fuck this, i’m going to bed. these hockey dudes are ridiculous and hannah should’ve just stayed with the guitar player” he mumbled, making no actual effort to move from his place on the couch.
“call- call her right now” rafe’s voice is faint but recognizable through the phone five seconds after topper called you in the middle of the night. “dude she’s already on the call.” topper replies, followed by a loud shuffling noise as rafe harshly grabs the phone from him, losing balance and almost falling off the couch while doing so.
“heyyy..come to the party i wanna see you.” rafe slurs out. you roll your eyes, running your fingers through your hair in frustration. “are you kidding me? it’s 2am rafe. you guys woke me up im not going anywhere.” you reply in annoyance.
you hear the phone being passed around again, until it lands on toppers voice. “please i’m begging you just come pick him up. he’s like fucking high and drunk as shit and he says he won’t stop drinking until you come-”
“don’t fuckin’ tell her that” you hear rafe interrupt.
“dude shut up you’re seriously so fucked.” topper responds, “anyways please come just pull up for a second.” he begs. “topper i’m not going to your house at 2am i have to wake up early tomorrow. just tell rafe to snap out of it he’ll be fine.”
“he’s literally pouting as you say that right now.” topper says, glancing to his side where rafe is sitting there half slumped attentively trying to listen to your voice.
“wha-what’s she sayin’? is she coming?” you hear on the line, clawing your heart slightly at how desperate he sounds. “she said she’s not coming bro” you hear topper reply.
“oh my god fine i’ll come. just stop him from drinking or getting high or whatever the fuck he’s doing. ill leave now.” you reply, gaining a sigh of relief from topper.
when you reach the house the thumping music already starts to hurt your head. people greet you on your way in, not forgetting to mention something about how “rafe hasn’t stopped talking about you” and that “he’s been looking for you this whole time.”
you move through the busy, sweaty crowd looking for the familiar figure. when you finally find him, he spots you from across the room and immediately tries to stand up opening his arms widely. his intoxication however leads him to stumble and lose balance as topper helps him up, shaking his head in irritation. “thanks for coming seriously i owe you one-” topper starts but gets interrupted by rafe’s slurred voice saying “ohhhh my god you’re here..i missed you so bad.”
rafe wraps his arms around your waist, giving you a sloppy kiss on your cheek to which you freeze, taken aback. topper and kelce look just as confused as you, asking “since when does rafe cameron kiss you? you guys a thing or what?” you respond shaking your head which is now buried deep in his chest, saying “since never? we’re not a thing he’s just drunk.”
after saying your byes you attempt to drag rafe through the crowd but it’s hard when other drunk people who are unaware of their surroundings keep bumping into you. “nobody touch my girl i’ll fuckin’ kill you” rafe inaudibly shouts to some guy next to you as you whisper, “rafe please shut up it’s embarrassing.”
the car ride home is unexpectedly silent. you occasionally glance over at rafe who sits there sloppily, pupils blown wide and eyes half lidded. “you okay?” you ask. “i’m okay baby.” he smiles, turning his droopy head towards you. “why are you calling me that? and that kiss earlier? what’s up with you?” you question, a bit frustrated.
“but you are my baby.” he mutters under his breath. “no i’m not rafe, we’re just friends. and you’ve literally never said that before today.”
“so what? i can’t- i can’t call you shit now?” rafe argues.
“you sure you’re not just horny? no offense rafe but you usually never call me when you’re drunk because you’re too busy fucking some random girl.”
your statement makes rafe’s eyebrows knit and you can see the pure offense on his face. “wow okay.” he goes silent. “look i didnt mean it like that,” you start, trying to keep your eyes on the road and focus on driving. “i’m just confused on why you’re all of a sudden acting like we’re dating.”
rafe opens his mouth to say something, but then hesitates and closes it again. when you finally arrive at his house, you quickly get out of the car and walk around, opening the passenger side door to which he immediately leans into you. you help him out of the car, one of his arms over your shoulder as you quietly bring him upstairs to his room.
rafe immediately flops on the bed, lying on his back as he opens both arms urging you to join. “please i need you.” he whispers. you can feel your face reddening as you slowly walk over, gently sitting down on the bed next to his figure. he drags your body down, engulfing you into his embrace. his skin radiates warmth, flushed from the alcohol and you can almost smell his cologne buried in the scent of weed.
you look up at his face noticing how he’s sloppily smiling as he looks back at you, hair all ruffled up. you almost miss the way his pupils dialate as he watches you run your fingers through it. “you’re so fuckin’ pretty.” he says.
you stay silent as you convince yourself it’s just the alcohol and drugs talking, not him. “rafe don’t say stuff like that.” you quietly respond. “why not? it’s true.” he says, half lidded eyes never once leaving your face. “you just- you can’t. we’re not like that.”
you sit up slightly from your position attempting to snap back into your thoughts. “let me go pick out some fresh clothes for you, you can take a warm shower and clean up. how about that?” you ask. “no, not yet.” he says, pulling you back down onto the bed next to him. your face flushes when you notice how close it is to his.
“it wasn’t a question-” you say, but you get cut off by his lips crashing into yours. his tongue grazes along your bottom lip as if he’s asking for permission. you freeze for a second before letting his tongue slip into your mouth as you gently kiss him back; he cups your cheek with his palm, his thumb slowly stroking your cheek up and down.
you can taste the alcohol from him, bringing you back to reality as you pull away.
“rafe you’re drunk. we shouldn’t be doing this-”
“i’m so in love with you.” he admits. your eyes go wide as you shake your head.
“that’s not even funny rafe. don’t say shit like that when you’re not sober.”
the words hang between you, swallowed by the silence. his expression falters for just a second like he’s searching for the right words but coming up empty.
“but it’s not a fuckin’ joke. i promise.” he pleads with his eyes. “i’ll say it again in the morning.. i just need you right now.” he says, pulling your lips back onto his.
pairing – drew starkey x evangeline monroe
summary – when exes drew starkey & evangeline monroe get cast as the leads in an intimate new film, they now have to convince the world they’re in love on screen, while trying very hard not to remember what it felt like when they were in love for real.
warnings – rpf, strong language, anxiety, emotional distress, breakup references, unresolved relationship trauma, intimacy choreography, rehearsed physical contact, marijuana edibles, nicotine and tobacco references
word count – 10.5k
By seven-thirty in the morning, production has built a small, highly caffeinated civilisation beside the Pacific. There are white pop-up tents dug into the sand with bright orange weights, folding tables covered in radios and batteries, garment racks protected beneath clear plastic, coolers, cables, canvas chairs, two portable heaters and one deeply optimistic bowl of bananas beginning to brown in the salt air.
A row of black SUVs sits crookedly beyond the dunes where the road gives up, their tyres dusted pale from the drive in. Crew move between base camp and the water carrying clipboards, sandbags and coffee trays.
The ocean is silver beneath the morning cloud, broad and restless. Waves push up the beach in long white lines, flattening over wet sand before drawing back with a low dragging sound, taking shells and foam and several production footprints with them.
The air smells clean in a way Los Angeles rarely does – salt, damp wood, sunscreen somebody has applied much too early, coffee cooling beneath plastic lids. Wind catches at everything loose. Tent walls, call sheets, hair, the bottom corner of a reflector someone has already sworn at twice.
Evangeline decides she's having a lovely day. This decision is made early and with enough force to qualify as policy.
She’s at the beach. The sun keeps appearing in brief, warm pieces through the cloud. Nobody has yet asked her to discuss Athena’s cultural weight, answer an email about Cannes or sit beneath a ring of bulbs while three people debate whether her lower lashes need to look more emotionally unavailable.
The second day of filming is technically a blocking day rather than a full camera day, which means fewer lights, fewer marks, less waiting beneath heat while someone adjusts a reflection no audience member will ever consciously see.
More importantly, wardrobe has brought clothes. Not all of them, but there are enough garment bags hanging beneath the largest tent to suggest the day may contain joy in a form Evangeline understands: tiny dresses, ridiculous boots, sharply cut jackets, old leather, bright little scraps of fabric that become more alive as Kate does.
That part of the film has become Evangeline’s favourite piece of visual storytelling, perhaps because clothes are easier than feelings and considerably more willing to accept notes.
Kate begins the film dressed like a woman attempting to survive contact with her own life without leaving fingerprints on anything – dark trousers, white shirts, long coats, good wool, colours selected by a committee dedicated to emotional containment. Everything sharp enough to hold its own shape when she cannot.
Then Tom begins getting under her skin again, and the clothes start remembering she has a body. The hems climb first. Then the waistlines appear. Little fitted jackets, narrow boots, colour pushed into places Kate would once have considered professionally suspicious.
Black and red and dirty pink. Satin that catches low light. Dresses short enough to reveal that Kate’s legs have always been excellent and she has merely been withholding them out of spite.
Clothes influenced by the late eighties and early nineties without turning her into somebody attending a themed birthday party in Silver Lake.
Nina calls the shift “permission.” Simone, when Evangeline sent her the fitting photographs, replied that it was what happened when a woman remembered being hot wasn’t a lapse in judgement.
Evangeline had saved that message.
She arrived this morning in her own clothes – dark jeans, trainers, a thin grey sweater beneath a leather jacket, sunglasses large enough to discourage conversation – but Nina had pulled her into the wardrobe tent within fifteen minutes and asked whether she would mind trying one of the later looks for movement while they were here.
Just the current version of a silhouette they were still considering for a scene closer to the end of the film, once Kate and Tom have crossed enough lines that she begins dressing like she no longer expects to escape without being touched.
The dress is indecently cute. It has a fitted black bodice cut low and angular across her chest, straps widening slightly over the shoulders, and a short paneled skirt in black, dark red and a narrow stripe of faded pink brocade.
The waist sits exactly where it should on Evangeline’s small frame, close through the ribs before flaring just enough at the hips. It makes her legs look longer, her waist smaller and her entire personality briefly more optimistic.
Nina has put her in flat black mules for blocking rather than the heeled embroidered pair being considered for the scene, because the production would prefer not to lose its lead actress to a sand-related ankle injury before the end of week one.
There’s also a tiny gold heart pendant resting at the base of her throat, technically only there to test the length, though Evangeline has already decided it belongs to Kate and will become difficult if anyone attempts to remove it.
“She needs the bag,” Nina says from behind her, one hand at Evangeline’s waist while an assistant photographs the dress from the side. “The little black Coach one.”
“The cherries?” Evangeline asks, looking down at the hem as the wind presses it briefly against her thighs. “The cherries are important.”
“They’re not important.”
“They’re deeply important. They tell us she’s whimsical.”
Nina’s face remains calm in the way of a woman who has dressed actors through far more dangerous opinions. “Kate isn’t whimsical.”
“Visual storytelling.”
Nina looks toward her assistant. “Write it down.”
The assistant, who has learned faster than most people in this production, pretends to type it into the tablet.
Evangeline smiles and turns toward the standing mirror propped carefully against the inside of the tent. The dress looks even better when she moves. That’s the point of the panels, Nina explains – the red breaking around the body rather than sitting flat, the pink appearing in flashes when the skirt shifts, softness held between darker pieces instead of displayed all at once. Evangeline likes that more than she wants to explain.
They try a cropped black jacket over it, reject the shape, then discuss boots. Nina wants something mid-calf and slightly beaten. One of the assistants suggests a narrow knee-high pair.
Evangeline argues for the embroidered Dior mules on the basis that Kate should occasionally be allowed to make a choice designed entirely around looking good while walking six feet from a car to a restaurant.
By eight-fifteen, Nina releases her temporarily with the dress still on because Celeste wants to see how it moves in wind and whether the skirt creates a continuity nightmare.
Evangeline leaves the tent feeling almost offensively pretty for a rehearsal morning, the short hem moving around her thighs and the little heart pendant tapping lightly against her sternum as she crosses toward the chairs near video village.
Poppy is seated beneath the edge of another tent with her legs crossed at the ankle, Evangeline’s tote beside her, two phones in one hand and a paper cup balanced between both knees.
She’s wearing jeans, white trainers and a pale blue cardigan beneath an enormous production jacket that makes her look like a very earnest child employed by an airport.
She looks up and smiles. “Oh, that’s so cute.”
“I know.” Evangeline turns once before sitting, enough to make the skirt flare but not enough to imply she has planned the movement. “I’m furious about it.”
“Why?”
“Because now I have to spend twelve weeks getting dressed as a hotter person and then go home to my own wardrobe.”
Poppy looks at the leather jacket Evangeline abandoned over the back of the chair beside her. “Your own wardrobe is, like, entirely designer.”
“That’s not the point.”
“What’s the point?”
Evangeline sighs. “I haven’t decided.”
Poppy nods and takes a sip of coffee, accepting that this may be the full answer. Evangeline sits beside her, crossing one bare leg over the other and immediately uncrossing them when the wind comes up beneath the hem with workplace-inappropriate ambition.
She tucks both hands beneath her thighs instead, the metal chair cold even through the dress.
The beach is still being prepared around them. Celeste stands near the waterline in black trousers, boots and a long coat, speaking with the DP while pointing toward the dunes and then toward the curve of the shoreline.
Rina is beside them with a binder held close to her chest against the wind. Several grips are walking the path Kate and Tom will take tomorrow, placing temporary markers where the sand is firm enough to repeat movement without forcing two actors to recreate an emotional kiss while sinking at different rates.
Evangeline looks toward the garment racks. Very nice clothes. Great clothes, honestly.
Across the base camp, someone laughs. She knows the laugh before turning, which isn’t romantic. It’s a basic auditory skill developed through unfortunate repetition.
Drew is standing beside Theo near one of the equipment vans, sunglasses on despite the cloud and one hand holding a coffee near his hip. His trousers are brown corduroy, loose through the legs and sitting low enough to look accidental, though Evangeline knows enough about clothes to recognise expensive care disguised as not caring.
The t-shirt is black, thin and close across his chest, some faded band logo cracked almost entirely away over the front. The sleeves stop high on his arms. Ray-Bans hide his eyes.
He looks appalling. Appalling in the old religious sense. Something that should cause bells to ring in villages.
There’s no reason for a man discussing transport with his assistant to require that much chest. None. He isn’t even doing anything with it. Just standing there inside a t-shirt like somebody failed to regulate him properly.
Theo says something, glancing down at his phone, and Drew smiles. A small, private movement at one side of his mouth before he pushes his sunglasses higher with one finger.
Evangeline looks away with the quick moral discipline of someone removing a hand from an unattended flame.
Poppy follows the movement anyway. She has become much too good at this. “What?” she asks.
“Nothing.”
“You looked upset.”
“I saw something upsetting.”
Poppy looks across the beach. Evangeline watches the exact second she finds Drew and then looks back with her expression arranged into innocence so pristine it should be framed.
“Is it the weather?”
“Yes,” Evangeline says. “The weather’s wearing corduroy.”
Poppy lowers her coffee. “I think he just looks nice.”
Evangeline turns slowly. “You’re fired.”
“No, I’m not.”
“No,” Evangeline sighs. “You’re not. I’d have to train someone else and I don’t have the emotional resources.”
Poppy nods, satisfied with the security of her position, and looks back down at her phone.
Evangeline keeps her gaze firmly on the ocean. There are several excellent things about the ocean. Scale. Salt. The reliable absence of Drew Starkey’s shoulders from most of it.
Tomorrow she has to kiss him. That thought has been moving around inside her since yesterday afternoon without settling anywhere long enough to be addressed.
It appears at inconvenient intervals – while brushing her teeth, halfway through an email, during the car ride north when Poppy was explaining the revised call sheet.
It doesn’t arrive with the full violence of the trailer bathroom anymore. Nothing as useful as vomiting. Only a small internal tightening, a hand closing somewhere behind the ribs before loosening again when she directs her attention elsewhere.
Tomorrow, closed set. Rina. Three seconds. Break. Breath. Second contact. No tongue.
The fact that this last detail continues surfacing in her mind with the persistence of a legal disclaimer is deeply irritating.
Normally, the night before something capable of turning her whole nervous system inside out, Evangeline would build a distraction large enough to block the doorway.
Dinner somewhere loud. Too much wine. Jacob appearing after midnight with his hair still damp from a shower and his hand settling over her thigh before either of them discussed why she had called.
Except Jacob is gone now. Not gone in any tragic sense. Alive, well, still attractive and probably being photographed near a horse as they speak. But removed from the emergency-exit rota by the adult decision to date Kendall fucking Jenner.
Evangeline supports love. She supports honesty. She supports tall people finding one another and forming visually coherent unions.
She only wishes they could have scheduled it after scene twenty-nine.
She looks toward Poppy. “Can you get me those edibles I like for tonight?”
Poppy continues reading something on her phone. “The gummies or the brownies?”
Evangeline considers the ocean with grave seriousness. “Both.”
Poppy’s thumb pauses above the screen. “Both?”
“I need to sleep tonight.”
“The brownies usually put you to sleep.”
Evangeline turns her head. “How do you know that?”
Poppy shrugs without looking up. “Good at my job.”
Evangeline studies her, genuinely impressed. Then her mouth curves. “Atta girl.”
Poppy smiles down at the schedule. “You still can’t take them until you’re done looking at tomorrow’s pages.”
“I know how reading works.”
“You once texted me at two in the morning asking what scene we were doing the next day while the call sheet was open on your lap.”
“That gummy was stronger than advertised.”
Poppy shoots her a look. “It was the one you asked for.”
“Why are you becoming argumentative?”
“Professional development.”
Evangeline reaches over and squeezes the soft sleeve near Poppy’s wrist. “I’m so proud.”
“Thank you.”
The sun comes through while they’re talking, sudden enough to shift the whole beach. The water goes bright in narrow strips. Wet sand reflects the cloud like steel. Everyone beneath the tents seems to loosen by one degree, faces lifting toward warmth before work pulls them back down.
For several minutes, Evangeline almost manages it. A nice day. A beautiful dress. Poppy beside her, quietly emailing someone about baked goods while a wardrobe assistant carries three pairs of boots across the sand as carefully as newborns.
The ocean breathing beyond the equipment. Her hair in a loose knot, sunglasses pushed up over her head, no makeup beyond whatever she applied in the car and then forgot about.
She can be this person for an hour. A working actress at a beach location, pleased by clothes and weather, not a woman preparing to put her mouth against the one place in her life where time has refused to behave properly.
Celeste walks up from the water with Rina and a location assistant behind her, coat moving around her calves. “There she is,” she says, looking at Evangeline in the dress. “Oh, that’s dangerous.”
“Nina says it’s only an idea.”
She takes Evangeline lightly by both shoulders and steps back to assess the silhouette. “Look at your little legs.”
Evangeline lowers her sunglasses to stare over them. “I’m an adult woman.”
Celeste circles one hand, asking her to stand. Evangeline does, brushing sand from the backs of her thighs though there shouldn’t be any there. Celeste watches the dress move, then has her take three steps toward the edge of the tent and back.
“The wind likes it,” Celeste says. She catches the skirt lightly between two fingers, examining the red panel where it opens over the hip. “Not for tomorrow, obviously.”
“Obviously.”
Tomorrow’s costume is less charming. A thin slip beneath an oversized knit, boots, a coat Kate removes before the kiss. Something built to look accidental despite four fittings, three fabric tests and an email chain about whether the knit should retain the outline of Tom’s hand after he touches her waist.
Evangeline hasn’t read that email chain closely for health reasons.
Celeste releases the hem and looks toward the water. “We’re nearly ready. I want to walk it dry first, then take you both down near the tide once camera finishes measuring the light. No emotion today.”
“Thank God.”
Celeste’s eyes return to her face with quiet amusement. “Just geography.”
“Geography has never harmed anyone.”
Rina makes a soft sound that may be a laugh. “We’ll review the contact before we begin.”
“I remember it.”
“I know. We review it anyway.”
Evangeline nods. The steadiness in Rina’s voice still does something useful to the muscles beneath her shoulders.
Tomorrow isn’t a surprise waiting to happen. There will be no instinct disguised as art, no one changing pressure because the moment feels right, no director asking for one wild take while everybody is already positioned and vulnerable.
The kiss has rules. Rules have edges. Evangeline can work with edges.
Celeste begins describing the path. Kate and Tom walk from the dunes after the argument. Kate is ahead. Tom catches up. She turns. First contact at the wrist, already approved. Release. Two lines. Tom’s hand at her waist, Kate’s at the front of his jacket.
The first kiss tomorrow will occur just beyond the reach of the water, where the sand is dark and flat enough to support the movement but near enough that the sound of the surf swallows some of the breathing.
“Romantic,” Evangeline says.
Celeste smiles. “Very.”
“Wet shoes. Sand in places God never intended. The classics.”
Rina glances down at her binder to hide a smile.
They talk for another fifteen minutes. Marks. Direction. Where Evangeline should stop so the wind takes her hair across her face without completely covering Drew. How far Drew can close the distance before Kate turns. Whether the coat can be dropped safely or needs to remain on because a gust carrying it into the water would be beautiful but expensive.
The sun slips behind cloud again while Celeste is explaining that Tom should appear to decide to touch Kate a fraction before he actually does.
Cold moves through the dress immediately. It begins along Evangeline’s arms, fine bumps lifting beneath the skin, then slips beneath the low neckline and settles around her ribs. The wind isn’t fierce. That would be easier to respect. It’s only persistent, damp and rude, finding the exposed parts of her a little at a time.
She folds both arms lightly beneath her chest while continuing to listen. Celeste asks whether the turn feels natural. Evangeline demonstrates it once, the skirt lifting behind her knees. Rina notes where her wrist will be when Drew catches it.
Another gust comes off the water. Evangeline’s shoulders jump before she can stop them.
“You’re freezing,” Celeste says.
“I’m fine.”
Rina looks at her. “We can get you a robe.”
“No, it’s okay. We’re nearly moving.”
Celeste turns toward the location assistant to ask something about the next setup. Evangeline rubs both hands briskly over her upper arms and looks back toward the wardrobe tent, calculating whether she can retrieve her leather jacket without making Nina believe she intends to put it over the dress and crease the bodice.
Poppy’s no longer in the chair. Evangeline hadn’t seen her leave. She has become increasingly supernatural in the practical dimensions of the job, disappearing in the middle of conversations and returning with chargers, antihistamines, lip balm or information nobody remembers requesting.
Celeste resumes speaking. Evangeline nods at the correct intervals, one foot sliding behind the opposite calf to preserve warmth. The heart pendant has gone cold against her chest. She presses two fingers over it absently.
Poppy returns at the edge of the conversation and holds out a jacket.
Evangeline takes it without looking. There’s nothing significant in the movement. Her attention remains on Celeste, who’s pointing toward a narrow ridge in the sand and explaining where Tom should stop after Kate walks away.
Evangeline shakes the jacket open, pushes one arm into the sleeve, then the other, fingers briefly snagging in the lining before finding their way through.
The fabric is heavier than her leather jacket. Softer too, worn at the cuffs and warm through the body as though it hasn’t been hanging unused. She pulls it over the little dress and closes the front loosely with one hand.
The smell reaches her before thought does. Cotton warmed by skin. Faint tobacco even though he’s quitting. Something woody trapped near the collar. Coffee. The dry salt of the air already settling into fabric. Beneath it, quiet and devastating through familiarity, Drew.
Evangeline’s body locks. It lasts less than a second. A hard little stop behind the sternum, every muscle receiving the same urgent instruction at once.
No.
Her hands move toward the front of the jacket. The right catches the edge near the zip, ready to tear it open and pull both arms free before anyone notices what she is wearing.
The reaction is old enough to have no language attached. Get this off. Not his. Not around her. Not another piece of him allowed to become comfort before she has agreed to the cost.
Her fingers tighten in the fabric. Then she breathes.
The jacket shifts against her ribs with the inhale. Warmth held inside it moves toward her skin. The collar brushes beneath her jaw. His smell deepens in the small enclosed space between cotton and her body, and something inside Evangeline gives way with such quiet efficiency nobody looking at her would understand anything has happened.
Her shoulders lower. They simply come down from where the cold and the morning and tomorrow have been holding them. The tight band beneath her collarbones loosens by one painful degree. Her fingers stop trying to remove the jacket and close around both sides instead, pulling it nearer.
The relief is immediate enough to be humiliating. Her body knows this. Not the jacket itself; she cannot remember seeing it before this morning. But the shape of his warmth left in clothing.
The smell near a collar. Sleeves too long over her hands. Standing in hotel rooms wrapped in something he removed because she was cold, then complaining about the shoulders while refusing to give it back.
Sleeping in his shirts. Finding his sock in her suitcase. The small domestic thefts through which love once proved it had occupied the room.
For four years she has told herself memory lives in the mind because the alternative is too embarrassing. The body keeps producing evidence to the contrary.
Her ribs expand beneath the jacket. The breath goes all the way down this time. It feels so good that the ache arrives almost with it.
A dense, dragging pull through the centre of her, not sharp enough to flinch from, only large. Her arms want to do something they cannot do here. Reach. Close around a waist. Fit beneath his jacket rather than inside it. Her forehead wants the centre of his chest. Her cheek wants cotton and heat and the steady, unremarkable rise of his breathing against her face.
The wanting isn’t elegant. It has no interest in what happened on the balcony or the answer she gave him or the four years between. It doesn’t care that tomorrow’s kiss will be choreographed, witnessed, timed and called complete by someone else.
It only recognises him and begins moving homeward.
Evangeline presses her lips together. Her left hand disappears farther into the sleeve. The cuff falls over her knuckles. She draws the jacket closed at her stomach and hates the small comfort of being hidden inside it.
Poppy has gone quiet beside her. Evangeline turns her head by a fraction. Poppy is looking toward Celeste, face composed, both hands wrapped around her phone.
There’s no explanation offered. No careful little Drew was worried you were cold. No admission of where she got it or whether Theo handed it over or Drew did or Poppy simply saw the jacket lying there and made a choice with consequences.
“Thanks,” Evangeline says, and her voice is almost normal.
Poppy glances at her. “Mhm.”
That’s all. Good girl.
Evangeline looks across base camp. Drew’s still near the equipment van. Theo has moved away to speak with one of the drivers. Drew
stands alone now, coffee gone, both hands loose near the pockets of his corduroys. The Ray-Bans remain on, giving her nowhere useful to place his expression.
But his face is turned toward her. He’s watching. The jacket drawn closed over her body, sleeves swallowing part of her hands, his warmth sitting where her own has failed to hold.
For one suspended moment, neither of them moves. Evangeline cannot see his eyes, but she feels the attention land with the same old precision. It touches the way she has pulled the jacket tighter. The cuff covering her fingers. The small collapse of her shoulders inside it.
His mouth changes. Barely. Something loosens near one corner before being contained. Then Evangeline looks directly at him, and Drew turns away.
He drops his head and reaches into one pocket, pulling out his phone as though an urgent message has arrived from somewhere more manageable.
The retreat should irritate her. It does, faintly, in the familiar place. But the jacket remains warm around her, and the anger cannot find enough clean space to stand up properly.
Celeste says her name. Evangeline turns back. “Sorry. What?”
“I said we’re ready to take you both down.”
“Right.”
Celeste’s gaze moves over the jacket, recognition flickering briefly but receiving no comment. Either she knows it belongs to Drew or she assumes wardrobe has produced another layer. On this film, both are equally plausible.
Rina closes her binder. “We’ll start with the wrist.”
Evangeline nods and stands from the chair. Sand shifts beneath the flat mules. The little red-and-black skirt moves below the dark jacket, half hidden now, bright panels appearing only where the open front separates with each step.
Poppy reaches for Evangeline’s tote. “Do you want me to take that?”
Her hand hovers near the jacket. Evangeline looks down at herself. For one second, the correct answer is obvious. Yes. Give it back. Return the warmth before her body begins treating it like a promise nobody made.
Another gust comes up the beach and presses the fabric against her waist. “No,” she says.
Poppy’s hand lowers.
The sand changes beneath her after the first twenty feet, dry and loose near base camp, then darker and firmer where the tide has been reaching all morning. Each step leaves a clean little impression behind her mules before the wind begins softening the edges.
The jacket moves heavily around the dress, the hem brushing the backs of her thighs whenever the breeze catches it, warm enough through the body that she can almost ignore the cold gathering at her bare knees. Almost.
Drew comes down from the equipment vans at an angle, Theo following for several steps before taking the phone from his hands with the quiet efficiency of someone collecting valuables before a minor medical procedure. Drew removes the Ray-Bans last. He folds them with one hand, passes them over and looks up.
The attention lands on Evangeline before he reaches them. She feels it move rather than simply sees it. His eyes find her face first, then the little gold heart at the base of her throat, the open neckline of the dress, the dark canvas of his jacket swallowing most of her torso.
His gaze drops to where the red and faded-pink panels of the skirt begin beneath it, then lower along her bare legs to the black mules already collecting damp sand near the soles.
There’s nothing crude in the look. That might have been easier. It’s slow, startled and too complete, as if he has looked up expecting a coworker near the ocean and instead found a piece of his private life standing in his clothes.
His mouth parts by the smallest amount. The line between his brows deepens. For one second, Drew looks almost confused by the information his own eyes are giving him.
Evangeline grips the front of the jacket more tightly without intending to. His attention returns to her face. She holds it there because looking away first has become exhausting, a full-time occupation with poor benefits.
The wind pushes one loose strand of hair across her mouth. She lifts the sleeve-covered hand and moves it away. Drew watches that too.
Then Rina steps between them with her binder and the moment becomes employable.
“Alright,” she says, looking from Evangeline to Drew with the practical calm of someone who has spent her career turning chemistry into measurable workplace behaviour. “Before we move anything, I want to check that yesterday’s agreed choreography still feels good to both of you.”
Drew nods. “Yeah.”
Evangeline hears the roughness at the edge of his voice and decides it is the wind. “Yep.”
Rina opens the binder, though Evangeline suspects she knows the sequence better than either actor by now. “This is the first kiss we’re filming, but not the first kiss between Kate and Tom in the story. So we’re not playing discovery. They know what this feels like. What matters here is that they’ve been trying not to repeat it.”
Celeste stands a few feet beyond them near the monitor cart, arms folded against the cold, eyes already bright with the kind of interest that has historically preceded emotional workplace injury.
Rina continues. “Kate turns after the argument. Tom catches her wrist with his right hand. Release after the line. His left hand goes to her waist. Evangeline, your right hand comes to his upper arm. Then Drew brings his right hand to the side of your jaw. Your left hand goes to the back of his neck. He draws you in. We stop before contact today.”
“Love that,” Evangeline says. “A kiss without the kiss. Very budget-conscious.”
Rina smiles. “We’re saving your mouths for tomorrow.”
“Generous.”
Drew’s mouth twitches. He looks down at the sand before the smile can become fully public.
Rina glances between them. “Any changes since yesterday? Any contact that doesn’t feel good today?”
“No,” Drew says.
Evangeline shifts inside his jacket, the lining sliding warm over her forearms. “No.”
“Good. Let’s block it dry first.”
They move to the temporary marks pressed into the sand by the location team, small orange discs pushed low enough not to read on camera.
Evangeline takes Kate’s ending position with the water behind her. Drew stands several feet away, facing her. The ocean moves at his back from this angle, grey-blue and restless, white foam reaching forward and dissolving before it touches his boots.
Without the sunglasses, he’s worse. The morning light strips the scene of every useful disguise. There’s no amber studio glow, no dim rehearsal room, no hotel lamp making his eyes softer than they are.
Rina points between them. “Drew, close the distance when Celeste cues you. Don’t touch yet. Evangeline, turn on the third step.”
They walk it once with no contact. Evangeline moves ahead, turns over her shoulder, lets Kate’s anger sharpen her posture. Drew crosses after her with the held-back speed Tom would use when trying not to look like he has followed at all.
“Good,” Celeste calls. “Again, but Tom decides faster. Drew, your body knows before your pride does.”
Drew nods. They reset.
The second pass brings Drew close enough for his heat to reach through the wind before either of them touches.
Evangeline turns, stopping on the mark, and his body arrives within the small agreed space between them. His face is level above hers in a way that makes her neck aware of itself.
Rina steps closer. “Good. Now we add the waist. Drew, ask.”
He looks at Evangeline. “Can I put my hand on your waist?”
The question is familiar now. It should have lost some of its force through repetition. Instead, his voice reaches the body part he has named with embarrassing directness.
“Yes.”
Drew lifts his hand. Even knowing the route does not help. His palm settles over the side of his jacket where it covers her waist, warmth passing through canvas, dress and lining with enough clarity that Evangeline feels each layer separately. His fingers curve around her side.
The contact hurts. It’s a concentrated pressure behind her ribs, sudden and deep, as if the body has been waiting for this exact hand and has no idea what to do with the fact that it arrives under supervision.
She looks down at his shoulder because his face is too close. The hand on her waist isn’t relaxed. Neither is the arm attached to it.
Drew is holding himself with such unnatural control that the tension travels visibly from his wrist to the hard line of his forearm, up beneath the short sleeve and into his bicep.
His elbow is fixed. His shoulder lifted by half an inch. Every muscle appears to have received instructions independently and taken them too seriously.
Evangeline can feel the restraint through the point of contact. It sits between his palm and her body like another object.
Rina watches for several seconds. Then her brows rise. “Drew.”
He glances at her. “Yeah?”
“You can stop showing off your biceps.”
A huff of laughter leaves him before he can suppress it. “I’m not.”
“You are holding your arm like we’re photographing a fitness campaign. Relax.”
Evangeline’s laugh slips out softly, warmer than she means it to be. She keeps her eyes near the centre of his chest, where the old band logo has cracked into almost nothing. “It’s fine.”
Drew looks down at her. “Mhm?”
There is a question inside the sound, smaller than the formal check-in. She nods once. “Mhm.”
He exhales. The change moves through him gradually. Shoulder lowering. Elbow softening. The hard line in his forearm easing beneath the skin.
His fingers settle more naturally around her waist, and the heel of his palm comes closer, no longer hovering through tension but holding her with the shape the contact was always meant to have.
It’s worse. The professional distance disappears from the hand before it disappears anywhere else. His body remembers how to do this when he stops interfering with it.
The angle of the palm, the span of the fingers, the unconscious accommodation when she draws breath beneath them. Nothing anyone around them would identify as history.
To Evangeline, it’s history in complete sentences.
She remembers cold pavement under bare feet while complaining that somebody had taken her shoes. Drew laughing against her hair, one arm locked beneath her thighs as he carried her through a hotel corridor.
She remembers tucking both arms around his shoulders, face pressed into his neck, whispering that her toes were numb and her legs were cold while he told her she had been outside for thirty seconds and was behaving like an Arctic-expedition survivor.
She wants to do it now with a physical simplicity that frightens her. Lift both arms. Fold them around him. Make the small impatient sound he always laughed at before bending his knees and picking her up.
Wrap her legs around his waist and hide inside the warm point beneath his jaw, where the skin smelled like smoke and soap and whatever the day had put on him. Complain until he smiled into her hair and said, “You’re so dramatic, sweet girl,” while holding her tighter anyway.
Her fingers close loosely around his bicep instead. The muscle shifts beneath her hand. Drew’s jaw tightens once.
“Good,” Rina says. “That’s the level of pressure. Evangeline, is the waist still okay?”
“Yes.”
“Drew?”
“Yeah.”
“Great. Now the jaw.”
Drew’s hand leaves her waist. The cold registers instantly through the jacket. Before she can resent it properly, his right hand lifts toward her face.
He waits in the space beside her cheek. “Can I touch your jaw?”
“Yes.”
His fingertips arrive first beneath her ear, then his palm settles lightly along the side of her face. The heel of his hand rests near the hinge of her jaw. His thumb sits beneath her cheekbone, not moving.
The ocean makes a low rush behind them. Wind lifts the bottom of the jacket. Evangeline remains inside the small warm bracket created by his two hands, one returned to her waist now, the other holding her face as though the arrangement has happened every day of their lives instead of not once in four years.
Drew watches her. His gaze passes across her brow, the bridge of her nose, the place where the wind has reddened the skin high on her cheeks.
It lowers to her mouth for a fraction too long, then returns to her eyes. The attention makes the flesh beneath his palm feel brighter than the rest of her face.
Celeste steps closer to the monitor and squints. “Can we cheat Evangeline slightly toward the water?”
Rina nods. “Hold the contact. We’ll adjust together.”
Drew’s palm remains on her jaw while they move their feet by inches. Evangeline shifts one mule back. He follows. His thumb flexes reflexively beneath her cheek when the sand gives under her heel, then goes still again.
“More profile from Drew,” Celeste says. “Evangeline, bring your chin left. No, your other left, darling.”
Evangeline turns her chin. Drew’s fingers slide slightly behind her ear to accommodate the new angle. He swallows.
“There,” Celeste says. “That’s beautiful. Now Evangeline’s hand at his neck.”
Evangeline looks at Drew’s shoulder. Her left hand lifts from inside the long sleeve of his jacket. The cuff drops back enough to expose her fingers. She reaches toward the back of his neck and immediately discovers the problem.
Drew is too tall. She’s been aware of his height for several years and has lodged multiple complaints. But the combination of flat shoes, damp sand and the exact blocking means her fingers reach the side of his neck rather than the back, leaving her arm extended in a way that looks less like intimacy and more like she’s attempting to adjust a smoke detector.
Celeste tilts her head.
Evangeline stretches half an inch farther. “Don’t.”
Drew looks down. The corner of his mouth starts moving.
Celeste raises one hand toward base camp. “Wardrobe!”
A voice answers from the tent. “Yeah?”
“Make a note for Evangeline to be in heels for this scene, please. Tall ones.”
Evangeline’s lips press together. Drew bites the inside of his lower lip, but the smile reaches his eyes anyway.
It’s private despite occurring in front of thirty people, the old shared humour arriving fully formed around the fact that she has spent years claiming five-three-and-a-half is functionally five-four.
She looks at him. “Don’t.”
Drew’s smile deepens by one helpless degree.
Celeste looks between them from the monitor. “Whatever that is, keep it for tomorrow.”
Both smiles vanish at once.
Evangeline clears her throat. “Great,” she says. “Lovely.”
Nina calls down that the heeled boots have already been approved for the costume. Celeste looks triumphant as though she’s personally invented height.
“For today,” Rina says, rescuing them from further wardrobe litigation, “Drew can lower slightly and Evangeline can place her hand where she comfortably reaches. We’re marking the relationship between the bodies, not forcing the final camera shape.”
Drew bends one knee enough to shorten the distance without making a joke of it. Evangeline’s fingertips find the nape of his neck.
The hair there is shorter than it was in 2021. Soft but not buzzed completely down, a little longer near the centre where Tom’s almost-mullet begins. Her fingers settle lightly against the warm skin beneath it.
Drew’s eyes close. Only a blink, perhaps. Slightly longer than necessary. When they open, the blue has gone darker beneath his lowered brow.
Evangeline’s thumb moves once before she catches it. A tiny sweep at the edge of his hairline, muscle memory acting with the confidence of something that believes it still has a home here.
Drew’s breath shifts. His hand tightens at her waist.
Rina notices the pressure change, because Rina notices everything and has the manners not to turn noticing into spectacle. “Still okay?”
“Yes,” Evangeline says.
Drew answers half a beat later. “Yeah.”
“Good. Now we block the draw-in. Drew, this is slow. His hand at her waist brings her forward; the hand at the jaw stays supportive, not pulling. Evangeline, you step in rather than letting him move your full weight. You both stop before the lips touch.”
Rina demonstrates the timing with two fingers moving together, then separating. “We’ll use the breath as the cue. Close the distance, hold, release.”
Evangeline’s pulse becomes visible somewhere she cannot hide it.
Drew looks at her face. “Ready?”
She nods. “Yeah.”
Rina steps back. “Alright. Let’s block it.”
Drew’s fingers draw more securely around her waist. Evangeline takes the small step forward as his arm guides her, and the space closes between their bodies.
The front of his shirt comes close enough to brush the jacket at her chest. His face lowers. His palm supports her jaw, thumb resting beneath the curve of her cheek. Evangeline’s hand stays at the back of his neck, the other loose around his upper arm.
Their mouths stop an inch apart. Perhaps less. She can feel his breath, warm against the centre of her upper lip, altered faintly by the Zyn tucked beneath his own. Mint and coffee. The same combination returning in a different body of years.
Neither moves. Drew’s eyes remain open. So do hers.
The closeness is obscene without contact. There’s nowhere for the attention to go except through. She sees the fine texture of his skin, the faint pale line near his chin, the way his lashes separate near the outer corner.
His lower lip rests slightly forward from the angle, fuller than she remembers or perhaps simply available for inspection in a manner it has not been since she was twenty-two.
One part of Evangeline wants to close the remaining distance with no grace at all. Put her mouth against his and destroy the measured little air between them.
Forget Celeste, Rina, camera, sand, the call sheet and every year spent training herself not to ask him to stay. Catch the front of his shirt in both hands, pull him down and say it again anyway. Stay. Stay this time. Stay until the word no longer sounds like begging.
Another part wants to slap him hard enough to rotate him around. Stomp on one of his boots. Ask whether he remembers what her voice sounded like in Italy and whether the memory has ever had the decency to ruin a good morning for him.
Both impulses occupy her body at once, making stillness feel like a feat of advanced engineering.
“Hold,” Rina says.
They hold. Drew’s fingers press more fully around her side. His chest lifts once against the thin space between them. Evangeline feels the breath before she hears it.
“Release.”
They step apart only enough for the air to return. Drew’s hand leaves her face first, then waist. Evangeline lowers both of hers and discovers her fingers have gone cold.
Celeste studies the monitor. “Again.”
They do it again. And again.
Each time begins with the same pieces and becomes a different private disaster. His hand at the waist. Her step inward. His palm at the jaw. Her fingers behind his neck. The slow pull. Breath. Stop.
On the third pass, Celeste asks Drew to angle his head a little more to camera left. On the fourth, she has Evangeline turn later so the movement feels caught rather than offered. On the fifth, the wind blows hair across Evangeline’s mouth and Drew’s thumb begins to move toward it before he stops, hand suspended near her cheek until Maribel runs in laughing and fixes the strand.
“Sorry,” Maribel says, tucking it behind Evangeline’s ear. “The ocean has notes.”
“The ocean’s a micromanager,” Evangeline murmurs.
Drew huffs a quiet laugh.
On the sixth, they stop too close. Close enough that Evangeline feels the faint shift of his mouth when he draws breath. Drew’s eyes drop. Her hand tightens at his neck.
Rina’s voice reaches them gently. “And release.”
Drew steps back as though the word has physical force. Evangeline lets her hand fall. The place behind his neck remains warm against her palm for several seconds after there’s nothing there.
Celeste walks closer, smiling with the satisfied exhaustion of someone whose morning has produced exactly the problem she wanted. “Amazing. That’s the shape.”
The shape. As if their bodies haven’t spent years carrying it independently.
She points toward the waterline. “Tomorrow, we’ll bring the first contact a half-step farther down the beach so the wave comes near their feet on the second kiss. Not enough to distract you, just enough movement in the frame.”
“Nothing distracting about freezing water entering your shoes,” Evangeline says.
“We’ll warm them between takes.”
“My feet?”
“Your shoes.”
She nods, lips turned down in thought. “Good to know where I rank.”
Celeste kisses the air near her cheek and turns to speak with camera.
Rina closes the binder. “How was that?”
“Fine,” Evangeline says, because the word remains determined to outlive them all.
Rina looks at her.
Evangeline exhales. “Intense, but clear.”
“Good. Drew?”
He rubs his thumb across one of his rings. “Yeah. Clear.”
“Any changes for tomorrow?”
Neither answers immediately. Evangeline looks at the wet sand near Drew’s boots rather than his face. “No.”
“No,” he says.
Rina nods. “Great. We’ll review again before the take. You both have five.”
Celeste calls over her shoulder, “Five, then we do the argument path with dialogue!”
Crew begin moving at once, camera assistants adjusting equipment farther up the beach, someone collecting the temporary markers, wardrobe heading toward Evangeline with a robe she no longer needs because Drew’s jacket is still wrapped around her.
She steps away first. The cold comes at the exposed part of her chest where the jacket has fallen open. Evangeline draws it closed again, then immediately wonders whether Drew has seen her do it twice.
He has. His eyes are on the hand near the zip. They lift when she looks at him.
For a second, they stand near the retreating edge of the water with no instruction left between them. The ocean pulls pebbles backward in a soft clicking rush. Drew looks as though he might say something and hasn’t yet decided which version of his voice is permitted.
“Did you want a tea or something?” he asks.
It’s so painfully ordinary that Evangeline almost laughs. A tea. After six rehearsed near-kisses and four years of unresolved grief, Drew Starkey would like to offer her a hot beverage.
Her mouth opens.
Poppy appears beside her with the timing of a highly trained extraction team, one hand already holding a paper cup with a cardboard sleeve. “Already got her one. Thanks, Drew.”
Drew looks at the cup, then Poppy, then Evangeline. “Right.”
“Thank you,” Evangeline says, though she’s no longer entirely sure which of them she means.
He nods once. “Yeah.”
Theo calls his name from near the equipment cases. Drew looks toward him, then back at Evangeline for the briefest moment before walking away.
Poppy waits until he’s several metres out of useful hearing range. Then she presses the tea into Evangeline’s hands and steers her gently by the elbow toward the wardrobe tent.
“I figured you didn’t need his jacket and tea,” she says.
The laugh leaves Evangeline before she can stop it, small and cracked through the middle from everything her body has just survived. She looks down at the cup. Chamomile, judging by the smell rising through the lid.
“I’m giving you a pay rise.”
Poppy nods seriously. “I’ll let payroll know.”
“No, actually. I mean it.”
“You say that every time I stop you from making a bad decision.”
Evangeline grins at her. “And have you seen how many bad decisions there are? This is practically a performance bonus.”
Poppy glances back once toward the waterline, then at the jacket still folded around Evangeline’s body. “I didn’t stop all of them.”
Evangeline follows her gaze down. One sleeve has fallen over her hand again. Drew’s smell remains near the collar, quieter now beneath salt air and her own perfume but still there.
She takes a sip of the tea. It’s too hot and tastes faintly of flowers. “I’m keeping this on until wardrobe makes me take it off,” she says.
Poppy smiles and keeps walking, while Evangeline follows in Drew’s jacket, the wind lifting the little red skirt beneath it and tomorrow waiting just beyond the edge of the day.
By early afternoon, the beach has lost whatever romance it briefly possessed. The cloud has settled low and flat over the water, turning the whole coastline the colour of old cutlery.
Crew dismantle the temporary marks, coil cable, fold chairs and carry cases back across the sand with the tired coordination of people who have been cold for six hours and are beginning to hate every object they transported there.
The wardrobe tent collapses in sections. Someone shouts for a missing radio. A location assistant walks past holding three pairs of shoes by their straps.
Evangeline has changed back into her jeans and grey sweater, though Drew’s jacket remains over both. Because it’s cold. That’s the sole reason.
The fact that wardrobe has offered her a production parka twice and Poppy has pointed silently toward her abandoned leather jacket once has no bearing on the matter.
Neither of those contains retained body heat in the same efficient way. Neither smells faintly of tobacco, coffee and a man she has made several active efforts not to love. This is about temperature and nothing else.
She’s standing beside one of the vans with both hands tucked into the sleeves, waiting while Poppy verifies which car they are supposed to be getting into. There are six identical black vehicles lined unevenly along the edge of the road, every driver receiving contradictory instructions through at least two phones.
Sand has worked its way inside Evangeline’s trainers despite her changing beneath a tent on a groundsheet. She can feel it beneath her toes, fine and irritating. Her hair has dried into loose, wind-tangled bends around her face.
Tomorrow’s pages are inside her tote. She’s not thinking about them. She’s thinking about whether she has enough toothpaste at the hotel and whether Poppy will actually return with both forms of edible or decide one constitutes sufficient medical intervention.
A shadow moves over the gravel beside her shoes. Evangeline looks up. Drew’s walking toward her alone.
Theo is near the far van speaking to one of the drivers with his phone pressed between his shoulder and ear. Celeste has already disappeared into a car, presumably to spend the drive reviewing footage of two people not kissing. Rina is packing her binder into a canvas tote.
Nobody is near enough to make the interaction feel supervised, which is immediately suspicious.
Drew has put his sunglasses back on, though he takes them off as he approaches, folding them slowly in one hand. His corduroys are dusted pale near the hems. The black band shirt still fits him in the same offensive manner it did this morning, though the wind has raised small bumps along his forearms.
Evangeline assumes he wants the jacket. Naturally. It belongs to him. He’s standing in cold air without it while she’s spent half the day inside the warmth his body left behind, behaving as though possession can be established through extended use and emotional instability.
She lifts both shoulders and starts pulling one arm from the sleeve. “Sorry. Here.”
Drew’s hand comes up immediately. “No, no.”
Evangeline stops halfway out of it, one sleeve hanging loose from her wrist.
“It’s fine,” he says.
The voice is low from the cold. Or tiredness. Or genetics being used maliciously.
She puts her arm back through because standing there half-undressed would give the moment more significance than it deserves. “Oh. I’ll give it back in a second. We’re about to get in the cars anyway.”
“Yeah.”
Drew nods, but he doesn’t leave. Evangeline waits.
He looks at her. He studies her in the plain, unsettling way people look when they are trying to decide whether the answer they received is one they are willing to accept.
His gaze moves first over her hair, then her face. It catches briefly at the collar of the jacket, where her grey sweater shows beneath it. Down toward her hands hidden in the sleeves. Back to her eyes.
The silence lengthens enough to become rude. Evangeline lifts her chin by a fraction. She’s not going to look away. That’s how men end up believing they have won things.
She can stand beside a production van while Drew Starkey examines her like an object requiring restoration and keep her eyes exactly where they are. The wind pushes a loose strand of hair across her cheek. She leaves it there out of principle.
Drew’s brows pull together. “Are you actually okay with this?”
His voice has gone quieter. Lower. The words barely travel beyond the space between them. Evangeline feels the sound down the front of her body and immediately wants to hit him.
She folds her arms, which only pulls the jacket more securely around her. “With what?”
Drew gives her a look. A faint flattening of his mouth, one brow lifting enough to make clear he’s not participating in this particular performance.
“You know what.”
The beach is noisy around them – van doors closing, equipment wheels rattling over uneven pavement, someone calling that the second unit has the wrong coolers – but his voice remains distinct inside all of it.
Evangeline’s tongue presses briefly behind her top teeth. “I said I was fine.”
Drew breathes out through his nose.
“We’re adults,” she adds.
His head tips back slightly, eyes closing for one second as the exhale turns into something more openly exhausted.
Evangeline watches the movement and feels heat rise beneath the jacket despite the cold. “What?”
He looks at her again. “That isn’t what I asked you.”
“I answered.”
“No, you didn’t.”
Her spine pulls straighter. “Well, I’m telling the truth, so don’t make out like I’m lying.”
Drew’s eyes widen. His mouth falls open slightly, the genuine physical reaction of someone who’s been accused of saying a thing he was still in the process of attempting not to say.
His free hand comes up. He wipes the side of one finger beneath his nose, looks briefly toward the ground and then back at her.
“I–” He stops, jaw tightening. “That’s not what I’m sayin’.”
“Great.”
“Evangeline.”
She glares at him harder. “You don’t get to decide all of a sudden that I’m lying.”
“I didn’t decide all of a sudden.”
The answer is immediate enough to make her blink.
Drew’s hand lowers. His sunglasses remain folded in the other, one temple caught between his fingers. “I know you.”
The phrase arrives with no costume on it. No Kate, no Tom, no Celeste standing nearby to call it useful. It crosses the small stretch of road between them and enters her body in the old places first: throat, sternum, the soft, inconvenient space beneath her ribs.
Evangeline lets her mouth curve, though there is no amusement in it. “You knew me.”
Drew’s face changes.
She keeps going before the reaction can stop her. “Once. A long time ago.”
He shakes his head. It’s small. Firm. It’s not the uncertain movement he makes when reconsidering a line or trying to soften something after he has said it. This is refusal. “I know when you’re lyin’.”
Evangeline stares at him. The wind pushes the jacket against her body, shaping it briefly around her waist. Drew’s eyes do not leave hers.
She tilts her head, the movement slow enough to feel deliberate. “Do you, Drew?”
She expects him to back down. Drew can hold his ground through directors, interviews, rooms full of strangers, long shoots, pain he considers inconvenient to other people. But with her, lately, he withdraws. Every challenge reaches him and becomes another reason to step back. Sorry. Fine. Space. Whatever you want.
On the balcony, he had pushed until the moment became too sharp, then folded himself around the answer she gave even while telling her it wasn’t true. He had watched her leave and let the door close.
Now Evangeline gives him the opening to do it again. He could look down. Rub the ring. Say he didn’t mean it that way. Turn the whole thing back into a careful discussion about tomorrow’s choreography and whether she remains comfortable with the agreed contact.
He does none of those things. Drew keeps looking directly into her eyes. “Yeah, Evangeline,” he says. “I do.”
The certainty is quiet enough to be worse. His voice, low and steady, refusing to let her place the entire history safely in the past tense.
For the first time in years, Drew challenges the version of herself she has offered him and does not apologise for recognising the difference.
Evangeline’s mouth opens. Nothing comes out. Her body appears to have lost access to several basic systems at once.
She can hear the vans, the surf beyond the dunes, a gull making an ugly mechanical sound overhead. She can feel sand inside one shoe and the worn cuff of Drew’s jacket against the side of her thumb. Every detail remains available except language.
Drew watches the silence happen. His expression doesn’t soften into victory. That would be easier to punish. Something shifts near his eyes instead, a faint ache moving through the certainty now that he can see exactly where it landed. He looks as if he might say more.
Evangeline blinks once. Then again. Poppy appears at her side like divine intervention in white trainers.
“Oookay,” she says brightly, stretching the word over the tension with all the structural integrity of cling film. One hand closes around Evangeline’s elbow. “Come on, Ev. Gotta go.”
Neither actor moves.
Poppy gives Evangeline’s arm a small tug. “Car situation’s been solved. Very exciting. Huge day for us.”
Evangeline turns her head by perhaps an inch.
Poppy’s smile is wide and fixed. Her eyes say move now or I will begin discussing the edibles in front of him.
“See you, Drew!” she adds.
Drew’s gaze remains on Evangeline for another second. Then he looks away, shakes his head once and puts the sunglasses back on.
The movement contains something almost like disbelief, though whether directed at Evangeline, himself or the entire morning is impossible to tell.
“Yeah,” he says to Poppy. “See you.”
He walks toward Theo without asking for the jacket.
Evangeline watches him go. The corduroys move loosely around his legs. His shoulders are tight beneath the thin shirt. Halfway across the small road, his hand comes up and rubs once over the back of his neck. He doesn’t turn around.
Poppy steers Evangeline toward the nearest van. Evangeline allows this for several steps before her legs remember they are usually operated voluntarily. “What was that?”
Poppy opens the sliding door. “What was what?”
Evangeline gestures loosely. “The preschool-teacher hostage voice.”
“I thought we were having, like, a transition.”
“A transition?”
“From the beach to the car,” Poppy points to the sand then to the van.
Evangeline stops beside the open door and stares at her.
“You looked like your brain had stopped receiving oxygen.”
The van interior is dark after the flat grey light outside. Two rows of black leather seats, paper cups in the centre console, garment bags hooked behind the back bench. The warm air carries that particular hired-car smell of vinyl, stale coffee and air freshener attempting neutrality.
Poppy gestures inside. “After you.”
Evangeline doesn’t move. “He said he knows when I’m lying.”
“I heard,” Poppy nods.
Her eyes narrow. “You were listening?”
“I was walking toward you.”
“Slowly?”
Poppy considers. “At a normal pace.”
“You heard the whole thing.”
“I heard enough.”
“And?”
Poppy looks briefly toward the road where Drew is now speaking to Theo beside another vehicle. “I think it means he knows when you’re lying.”
Evangeline stares at her in profound betrayal.
Poppy climbs into the van before she can be verbally punished, sliding across the nearest seat and placing the tote beside her. “We really do need to leave.”
Evangeline gets in after her because remaining outside would place her in direct view of Drew’s car and she has suffered enough public exposure for one day. She pulls the door closed harder than necessary. The sound seals them inside the warm, dim vehicle.
Poppy hands her a bottle of water from the cupholder.
Evangeline accepts it automatically. “You’re not getting the pay rise.”
Poppy shrugs. “I hadn’t spent it yet.”
“You’re so irritating.”
“I learned from you,” Poppy smiles.
The driver starts the engine. Somewhere in the front, a radio crackles with an instruction about following the production vehicle back to the highway.
Evangeline twists the cap off the water and takes a drink. Her throat works normally. Excellent. Some functions remain.
Drew knows when she’s lying.
He knew her once. That’s true. He knew the different shapes of her silences, the small physical distinction between tired and upset, the way her voice brightened when she needed somebody to believe her before she had decided whether she believed herself.
He knew when she said she had eaten and had not. Knew when she claimed a headache was nothing and when nothing meant please stay near me without asking questions. Knew the particular calm expression she built when panic had begun arranging furniture beneath the skin.
That was years ago. People change. Evangeline has changed.
She has won awards, survived press tours, learned how to sleep alone in expensive hotel rooms without leaving the television on. She has played women who go to war and women who become gods. She has learned to sit through meetings while men explain her own face to her and to smile in photographs ten minutes after crying. She has accumulated entire adult systems Drew has never seen.
He should not still know.
The van begins moving, tyres crunching over sand and gravel before reaching the road. Through the tinted window, base camp slides backward in broken sections: white tents, equipment cases, the dark line of ocean between the dunes.
Drew stands beside the final van. Theo’s speaking. Drew’s not listening.
His head turns as Evangeline’s car passes. The sunglasses hide his eyes, but she feels the look anyway. She faces forward before the vehicle clears him, then becomes angry with herself for doing exactly that.
Poppy watches the movement from beside her and has the rare good judgement not to comment.
Evangeline twists the water bottle slowly between both hands. The plastic crackles beneath her fingers. Tomorrow’s pages are in the tote by Poppy’s hip. Scene twenty-nine. Hand at the waist. Palm at the jaw. Her fingers at the back of his neck. Three seconds. Break. Breath. Second contact.
She has to kiss him tomorrow. His mouth actually against hers while cameras record the evidence from multiple angles and Rina watches the choreography and Celeste waits for every year they have spent avoiding this to appear in the space between breaths.
And now, Drew has apparently decided he still knows her. Evangeline leans her head back against the seat and closes her eyes.
“Fuck,” she says softly.
Poppy reaches into the tote. “Gummy or brownie?”
notes from me – hi my loves!! i hope you enjoy this chapter! i know the slow burn is burning very slowly but i PROMISE we're getting somewhere very ... very ... slowly ...
but as always i wanna know all your thoughts so let me know all of them! <3
im convinced they using drew for the lucky promo 😭😭😭 bc tell me why hes the one going everywhere and doing interviews and whatever so the show gets views and meanwhile they decided to take him out
