lover of mine ( five )
series masterlist
pairings: drew starkey x fem!oc content: first meeting, lucky table read, cast interactions, subtle tension, awkward flirting, immediate onscreen chemistry, drew being standoffish, danielle being bubbly & talkative, drew quietly judging her warnings: mild language, slight age-gap mentions/teasing, feelings of insecurity & being “too much,” subtle hurt feelings/overthinking word count: 8k
The door opened before Danielle had enough time to decide whether she wanted another second.
The room beyond it was bigger than she had pictured, though she wasn’t entirely sure what she had pictured in the first place.
A long arrangement of tables had been pulled into a loose rectangle beneath bright windows, every seat marked with a folded name card and a thick stack of pages.
Coffee cups, water bottles, breakfast wrappers, laptops, and pens had already begun collecting between them, while most people were still standing in little groups instead of sitting. Enough conversations overlapped that Danielle couldn’t pick out any one voice anymore.
It should have made her more nervous. Instead, the noise helped. A room full of people was easier than a room waiting for her.
Sophie stepped aside to let her through, and Jonathan spotted her almost immediately. “There she is.” Several heads turned at once. Danielle smiled automatically. “Hi.” Jonathan crossed toward her first and hugged her, which gave her somewhere obvious to put all the nervous energy vibrating beneath her skin. “You found us.” “Barely. I almost got kidnapped by the elevator.” “Good start.” “I thought so.” Cassie appeared beside him next, then Lauren, and suddenly Danielle was being welcomed from three directions while someone asked how New York had been and Cassie complimented the little ring on her finger.
Danielle tried to put her matcha down so she could hug her properly and nearly knocked the straw into Jonathan’s sleeve instead. “Okay, great. Five seconds in and I’m already a liability.” “You’re early,” Cassie pointed out. Danielle glanced toward the clock. Two minutes. “That counts.” “It does.” “Can somebody tell Avery? She doesn’t believe in me.” Jonathan looked at her. “I’ve met Avery. I’m siding with her.” Danielle gasped. “You’ve known me for one meeting.” “It was enough.”
The laugh that moved through the small group loosened something in her chest. This was a room. Just a room. People she would work with. People she would know eventually. Danielle had always been better once names started becoming people instead of things she had read in emails, and she slipped easily into the familiar process of making that happen. Annette Bening was talking to one of the producers a few feet away, and there was still some stupid little part of Danielle’s brain capable of going, That’s Annette Bening, despite years of being around people she had once only watched through screens. She managed not to say it aloud, mostly because Annette looked over and smiled at her first. “Danielle.” “Hi.” They met somewhere between a handshake and a hug, Danielle realizing at the last second that Annette was going for the latter and silently congratulating herself for not making it weird. “I’m so happy to finally meet you,” Danielle said. “Likewise. I’ve heard very good things.” “Hopefully none from Jonathan because he started bullying me before I put my bag down.” From behind her, Jonathan said, “You’ve been here thirty seconds.” “Exactly.” Annette laughed, and Danielle liked that immediately. She liked little successes she could collect—the first laugh, the first easy question, the first detail somebody told her that she could tuck away and remember later. Rooms became much less intimidating once she had something to connect to everybody inside them.
Timothy was next, then Clifton, and Danielle told Clifton she liked his glasses before she even properly finished introducing herself. He touched the frame automatically. “These?” “Yes.” “You want them?” “Don’t offer because I’ll actually take them.” “I have another pair.” “See, now you’re creating a problem.” Timothy, standing beside them, looked between the two of them. “She’s been here a minute.” “I move fast.” “I can see that.” Danielle smiled. “You’ll adjust.” “I’m worried I won’t.” “Then you’re doomed.” That got another laugh, and by the time Danielle turned to set her bag down, she had almost forgotten the particular voice she had recognized from the hallway.
Almost.
Drew stood on the far side of the room with one hand curled around a paper coffee cup, listening to one of the writers speak. He wasn’t looking at her. That was probably why she let herself look properly for a second. He was taller than she had expected, which was immediately irritating because Juliet had asked her weeks ago whether he looked tall in interviews and Danielle had said she couldn’t tell and didn’t care. He wore a dark sweater and jeans and looked strangely ordinary for someone Danielle had spent the last month unconsciously assembling from disconnected pieces—Queer, Hellraiser, interviews at one in the morning, four-sentence emails, Cary’s name printed beside his. Seeing the actual person should have made those pieces click into place. It didn’t. If anything, it made him feel less familiar.
Then Drew looked up.
Their eyes met.
Nothing happened.
No absurd pause. No room disappearing. No sudden understanding that this person was going to become important to her. Danielle smiled because somebody had looked at her and that was what she did. Drew returned it, smaller and polite, before the writer said something else and his attention shifted back.
Danielle looked away.
Fine.
Normal.
Exactly what she had expected.
She found the card with DANIELLE SNOW — LUCKY ARMSTRONG printed across it and set her bag underneath the table. The card across and slightly down from her read DREW STARKEY — CARY MASTERSON, which made sense and still somehow felt pointed. Danielle was pulling her notebook from her bag when a voice beside her said, “You found your seat.”
She straightened.
Drew had crossed the room without her noticing.
“Apparently.”
“Good sign.”
His voice sounded exactly like it did through speakers. Danielle had no idea why that surprised her. “Hi.”
“Hey.”
She tucked a piece of hair behind her ear and shifted her script beneath one arm. “Danielle.”
“I know.” His mouth moved slightly the second he said it, like he heard how strange that could sound after the fact. “I mean—obviously.”
Danielle laughed. “I was going to be concerned if you didn’t.”
“Would make the morning harder.”
“A little.” She waited automatically for something else. It didn’t come. Drew didn’t look uncomfortable, which somehow made the silence worse. If he had seemed shy or awkward, Danielle would have known what to do with that. She could carry awkward. She could rescue people from it. But Drew just stood there looking perfectly content with the fact that the conversation had apparently reached its natural conclusion after twelve seconds.
Danielle took a sip of her matcha. “I feel like we’ve technically been coworkers for a month without actually meeting.”
“Pretty much.”
“Very normal.”
Drew lifted one shoulder. “For this job? Kind of.”
“True.”
Another silence.
Danielle’s fingers tightened around the plastic cup.
Okay.
She knew he was quiet. She had watched interviews. She had literally told Juliet he was comfortable with silence. It would have been ridiculous to suddenly take that personally now that she was standing inside one of those silences with him.
Then Timothy called from behind Drew, “Starkey, tell her what you just told me.”
Drew turned, and Danielle watched something in him loosen almost immediately. “What?”
“The airport thing.”
“Oh, no.”
Timothy was already laughing. “He got halfway through security before he realized—”
“No,” Drew cut in, smiling properly now. “You’re already telling it wrong.”
“I haven’t told it yet.”
“You were going to.”
And suddenly he was speaking in full sentences.
Danielle stood there as Drew explained something about showing up at the wrong terminal, Timothy interrupting every few seconds because apparently he thought Drew’s version lacked sufficient humiliation. Clifton joined them halfway through. Drew fired something back at him without hesitation. Timothy laughed. Drew did too, head dipping before he looked up again with a grin that Danielle had not received even once in the minute they had been talking.
Oh.
So he could do that.
It wasn’t a hurt feeling. Not even close. More like a fact her brain immediately circled in red.
Quiet, apparently, was flexible.
Jonathan called everyone toward the table before Danielle could decide what she thought about that. She sat, pulled the pilot toward herself, and placed her notebook beside it. Across from her, Drew settled into his chair. His gaze dropped toward her pages, which had accumulated even more tabs since the last time Juliet made fun of them. Danielle followed his eyes. “Don’t judge me.” Drew looked up. “I wasn’t.” “You looked.” “At the tabs.” “Exactly.” “There are a lot.” She narrowed her eyes. “They have purposes.” “I’m sure they do.” “That sounded judgmental too.” The corner of his mouth moved. “I believe you.” Danielle couldn’t tell whether he was teasing her. Before she could ask, Jonathan began speaking and the room slowly quieted.
He welcomed everyone formally, talked briefly about finally having the principal cast in the same room, thanked people for making schedules work, and explained that they would read the first episode straight through with a break before lunch and save most notes until afterward. Nobody needed to perform, he reminded them. Just listen and see what happened. Danielle had always thought telling actors not to perform while asking them to read dialogue in front of forty people was funny, but she understood what he meant. Don’t prove anything. Don’t arrive having nailed every decision to the floor. Let people affect you.
Danielle opened to the first page.
Someone began reading the stage direction.
And she stopped thinking about Drew.
Across the table, he noticed.
He had spent the first half hour privately congratulating himself for having read her correctly.
That was probably the part that bothered him later.
Danielle Snow was exactly what he expected her to be. She walked into a room like she had been invited individually by every person in it, talking with her hands, remembering Sophie’s name after hearing it once, asking Annette questions, complimenting Clifton’s glasses, finding some reason to laugh with practically everyone she came within six feet of. She wasn’t obnoxious. Drew almost would have preferred that. Obnoxious was easy to dismiss. Danielle was charming, and worse, she seemed to know how charming she was without ever appearing to use it deliberately. Nothing about her social ease looked accidental. She knew when people were listening. Knew when to turn a joke back on herself. Knew exactly how to keep a conversation moving before anyone else had to.
There was something younger about it.
Not childish. Drew knew the distinction, even if he suspected Danielle would hate that he had made one at all. She just seemed younger in the way she carried excitement where everyone could see it. More willing to be impressed. More willing to make herself part of everything happening around her. He had spent enough years learning that not every silence required fixing, not every stranger needed to become a friend, not every room had to like him by the time he left it. Danielle seemed to operate according to the opposite philosophy.
Timothy was easier. Clifton was easier. Annette was easier.
They let conversations die. Danielle resuscitated them.
Then Jonathan said they were beginning, and the woman sitting across from Drew changed so completely that for the first few pages he kept looking at her when he wasn’t supposed to.
Her knee stopped moving.
The matcha went untouched.
The open, responsive expression she had worn through every introduction disappeared—not into blankness, but into something contained. Danielle wasn’t looking around anymore. She wasn’t checking reactions. She wasn’t smiling at things that had nothing to do with her. Her attention narrowed to the page and whoever was speaking.
Drew had seen Blue Hours. He knew she could do this.
Seeing it three feet away was different.
The opening moved quickly, Lucky’s life already carrying the momentum of someone who had spent too long moving from one bad decision into the next. The aftermath of Vegas sat beneath everything. Money that was supposed to mean freedom. A future that was supposed to begin once they got out. Cary beside her, familiar enough that Lucky didn’t need to explain what she was afraid of because he already knew.
Then they reached their first real scene together.
Drew straightened slightly.
Danielle looked up.
The stage direction established enough of the Vegas hotel room to fill in the rest: late hour, adrenaline still high, too much money nearby, Lucky unable to settle into the relief Cary wanted her to feel. They were supposed to feel like two people who had been doing this together long enough that intimacy no longer needed announcing. That was the difficult part. Anybody could play attraction. History was harder.
Drew gave Cary’s first line the way he had planned it—casual, calming, the kind of reassurance that worked specifically because Cary wasn’t making a big deal out of giving it.
Danielle answered.
Drew’s attention sharpened.
She didn’t give him what he expected.
Lucky’s worry was right there in the scene. Danielle could have played it openly. Instead she made the answer almost amused, like Lucky was lightly mocking herself before Cary had the opportunity.
Drew looked at her.
Danielle was already looking back.
Worried, then.
But refusing to let him see that she was.
Better.
Drew changed the next line slightly without thinking about it. Not the words. The pressure behind them.
Danielle caught it immediately.
Her next answer changed too.
That quickly.
Something in the rhythm settled.
Jonathan’s attention lifted from the script.
Danielle didn’t notice. Or if she did, it didn’t reach her face.
Cary tried to talk Lucky out of the paranoia circling the edges of the night. Lucky let him, but only because she wanted to believe him more than she actually did. Danielle leaned back in her chair, voice lighter than her eyes. Drew felt the beginning of Cary’s smile happen naturally in response.
Danielle’s gaze flickered.
Tiny.
Lucky noticed it.
The next line came warmer.
There.
Drew felt it before he could name it.
The room changed around them.
Not dramatically. Nobody gasped or exchanged giant looks. There was simply less movement. A chair that had been creaking stopped. Someone who had been quietly flipping ahead through pages no longer was.
Drew knew the word for it.
He didn’t particularly want to use it.
Chemistry. Too easy. Too obvious. He preferred rhythm.
Except rhythm was something you could build.
This felt like discovering something that had already been there.
Cary withheld. Lucky came looking. Lucky pushed. Cary gave her less. Danielle seemed to understand instinctively that every time Drew retreated, chasing him harder would flatten the scene, so she got quieter instead. Drew had to pay closer attention to catch the shift.
That was irritatingly good.
He tested her on the next exchange. Again, not consciously enough to call it a decision. He simply slowed one response down, let Cary consider her longer than the page necessarily required.
Danielle lifted her eyes.
Her answer came softer.
Drew forgot the room.
For one beat, there was simply Lucky looking at Cary like she had known him long enough to understand exactly how much he wasn’t saying and loved him enough to pretend she didn’t.
Then Danielle gave him a line almost under her breath.
Nothing showy. No emotional underline.
Just a brief crack where Lucky’s confidence wasn’t quite as complete as she wanted Cary to believe.
Drew looked at her.
And missed his cue. Barely. Half a beat, maybe less.
But Danielle caught it. Her eyes dipped toward the page for a fraction of a second, like she was checking whether she had somehow skipped something or misread the rhythm. Drew recovered immediately and continued. Jonathan didn’t stop them. Nobody else reacted.
Danielle did.
Not visibly enough for anyone else to notice.
Drew saw the tiny crease between her brows disappear as Lucky returned.
By the time the scene ended, he had stopped making notes.
The next reader picked up.
Danielle reached for her matcha as though nothing had happened and took a sip from an almost-empty cup. The straw made an awful hollow sound in the sudden quiet. Her eyes widened. Clifton looked over. Danielle mouthed, “Sorry.”
Drew looked down at his script before she could see him smile.
There she was again.
And somehow that made less sense than before.
— ᨳଓ .
By the first break, Danielle had reached three conclusions. Annette Bening was terrifyingly good while barely moving. Timothy could make almost any line sound like he had just thought of it himself. And Drew Starkey was going to be incredibly annoying.
She stood the second Jonathan called fifteen minutes, stretching her legs mostly because she had been sitting too long and partly because she needed to physically remove herself from the place where Drew had missed his cue. It shouldn’t have mattered. People missed cues at table reads. Pages stuck. Somebody looked away. A thought took a second longer than expected. Danielle knew that. Except he had been looking directly at her. Then he hadn’t spoken. She hated not knowing what that meant.
The drinks table had coffee, water, tea, and absolutely no soda. Danielle stared at it. “Tragic.”
“What?”
She looked over. Annette was reaching for coffee beside her. “No diet coke.”
Annette looked pointedly at the empty cup Danielle was still carrying. “Im sure you've had more than enough caffeine in one day.”
Danielle pressed a hand to her chest. “That felt judgmental.”
“I’m a mother. It comes naturally.”
“Everyone keeps monitoring my beverages.”
“Maybe you need monitoring.”
Danielle laughed. “Do you like coffee?”
“I do.”
“I wish I did. It tastes like punishment.”
Annette smiled. “You’re young.”
Danielle gasped. “That was targeted.”
“It was.”
They drifted back toward the table together, and Annette nodded toward Danielle’s script. “You’ve done a lot of work on this.”
Danielle looked down at the tabs. “Everyone’s making fun of me.”
“Who?”
Her eyes moved before she could stop them. Across the room, Drew was talking to Timothy again. Of course he was. Danielle redirected the glance before it became obvious. “Everyone.”
Annette’s eyes followed anyway. If she noticed the original target, she was kind enough not to say so. “Let them.”
“Are they too much?”
“The tabs?”
“Yeah.”
Annette leaned closer to Danielle’s pages like she was taking the question seriously. “They’re too much if they stop you from playing.” She straightened. “Doesn’t look like they do.”
The compliment landed more deeply than Danielle expected. “Thanks.”
Annette nodded and moved away when someone called her.
Danielle watched her go, immediately wanting to text Juliet that Annette Bening had validated the tabs and therefore Juliet could never speak against them again. She resisted.
Then someone across the room laughed. Danielle looked without meaning to.
Drew. Again.
Timothy was telling him something while Clifton stood beside them. Drew’s head tipped back, shoulders loose, expression completely different from the mildly polite one Danielle had gotten when she met him.
She stared for a second.
Interesting.
Very fucking interesting.
“Staring’s free. Photos cost.”
Danielle jumped and found Timothy somehow beside her now. “I wasn’t staring.”
“At what?”
She narrowed her eyes. He smiled. “I hate this cast.”
“You’ve known us an hour.”
“Long enough.”
“Good. Means it’s working.”
“Do you need something?”
“Coffee.”
“It’s behind you.”
“Then I don’t need you.”
“Great conversation.”
Timothy walked away still smiling. Danielle looked back toward Drew once more. He was already looking at her. Caught. She lifted her eyebrows as if to say what?
Drew’s mouth twitched. Then he looked away. Danielle frowned.
What the hell was that?
— ᨳଓ .
The second half before lunch made the problem worse. Or better. Danielle couldn’t decide. Now that she knew how Drew responded when she gave him less, she started doing it intentionally. Not enough to become self-conscious, and certainly not enough to turn the read into some private experiment nobody else had agreed to, but she was curious. He didn’t seem attached to a fixed version of the scene. That was immediately clear. Plenty of actors arrived with their choices already built and then spent the first week trying to preserve them regardless of what anyone else did. Drew didn’t. He listened. Changed. Made her respond.
Danielle liked that.
A lot.
The next Lucky-Cary scene was shorter. She delayed one answer slightly. Drew adjusted. She looked down instead of meeting his eyes where the line seemed to ask for it. His next response became more careful. She changed an inflection. He caught it and sent something different back.
It became a game without either acknowledging they were playing.
For several pages, Danielle forgot she had found him irritating. Then Jonathan called lunch and Drew became a person again. That was unfortunate.
Catering had been set up down the hall in a larger room, and by the time Danielle finished talking to Cassie about a later scene and helping Sophie put down an impossible stack of drinks she absolutely did not need help carrying, most of the tables had filled. Clifton spotted her from one of them and lifted his hand. “Danielle.” She turned. He pointed at the last open chair beside their group. “Over here.”
Across from Drew.
Naturally.
Danielle smiled and carried her plate over. “Perfect.”
It was not perfect. It was a chair.
She was being weird. She sat.
Timothy was beside Clifton, Drew opposite her, and one of the writers was tucked at the end of the table. Danielle had barely put her plate down when Drew glanced toward it. “You found food.”
She looked up. “Were you worried?”
“No.”
“That sounded cold.”
His eyes moved toward her. “I saw you talking for ten minutes instead of eating.”
Danielle paused. Then smiled a little. “I was helping Sophie.”
“I saw.”
That was all he said.
Danielle waited for the follow-up without meaning to. Nothing. Again. “Right,” she said, mostly to herself, and picked up her fork.
The conversation around them started easily enough. Somebody complained about traffic, which opened the inevitable Los Angeles argument within seconds. Clifton had been stuck somewhere for two hours the week before. Timothy announced that anyone who voluntarily lived in Los Angeles forfeited their right to complain about driving. Danielle immediately looked up. “That is insane.” Timothy pointed his fork at her. “It’s true.” “I was born into California traffic. I didn’t consent.” “You live here voluntarily now.” “Where am I supposed to go?” “Anywhere.” Danielle glanced across the table. “Drew, back me up.”
He paused with his fork halfway to his mouth. “Why me?”
“You look reasonable.”
“That’s your first mistake.”
Clifton laughed, and Danielle smiled despite herself. “Okay. Do you like LA traffic?”
“No.”
“Do you live here?”
“Sometimes.”
Danielle spread one hand like the case had been settled. “There.”
Drew shook his head. “That proved absolutely nothing.”
“It proved enough for me.”
“Convenient.” His mouth twitched when he said it, and Danielle caught the smile without letting herself react to it.
Better. At least there was that.
The conversation drifted from traffic into restaurants that had closed, places people used to go after shoots, and eventually movies Danielle had either been too young to remember properly or had only heard about secondhand. Drew had more to say here. So did Timothy and Clifton. Danielle listened, occasionally adding something, but for the first time all morning she could feel herself sitting slightly outside the rhythm rather than creating it. Nobody was excluding her. There was nothing to take personally. The three men simply had references she didn’t and stories from years she had spent worrying about homework rather than call sheets.
Timothy mentioned a movie from the early 2000s and Danielle made a face. “I think I was, like, six.”
Drew looked at her.
She caught it immediately. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“You made a face.”
“I didn’t make a face.”
“You did.”
Drew smiled slightly. “I just forgot how old you are.”
Danielle stared at him. “That’s rude.”
“You’re the one who said you were six.”
“I couldn’t control that.”
Clifton laughed.
Danielle pointed toward Drew. “How old were you?”
“When?”
“When that movie came out.”
He answered. Danielle paused just long enough for his expression to shift.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Now you’re making a face.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
Danielle smiled down at her plate. “Interesting.”
“What’s interesting?”
“Nothing.”
“Right.”
It was the first exchange they’d had all day that didn’t feel like Danielle was dragging every sentence out of him, and she hated how relieved she was by that.
Clifton asked her something about A Complete Unknown, and the conversation moved again. Danielle explained a story from set, which led to another one about Timothée getting food down the front of a costume without noticing. She was halfway through explaining how long it had taken before anyone told him when Drew finally spoke from across the table. “You didn’t tell him?”
Danielle looked at him. “Of course I told him.”
“Eventually?”
“Immediately.”
“That sounded defensive.”
“Because you accused me of letting my friend walk around covered in food.”
“I asked a question.”
“With judgment.”
Drew smiled into his drink. “You seem very sensitive to judgment.” Danielle narrowed her eyes. “I’m sensitive to tone.”
“That sounds worse.”
“You have a lot of opinions for someone who barely talks to me.”
The line slipped out before she thought much about it. It wasn’t an accusation. She smiled when she said it, light enough that Clifton barely glanced between them. Drew’s eyebrows lifted. “I’m talking to you now.”
“Barely.”
“You want a monologue?”
“Maybe.”
“Wrong actor.” Danielle laughed.
This time the exchange didn’t feel strained. For maybe thirty seconds, it felt easy. Then Timothy asked Drew about another shoot, and Drew turned toward him.
The ease transferred with him so naturally that Danielle almost wondered whether she had imagined having it at all.
For the next few minutes she ate and listened while Drew and Timothy fell into a conversation about filming somewhere cold, living out of suitcases, and how long it took before a temporary apartment stopped feeling like somebody else’s. Clifton joined in. Drew interrupted once. Told a longer story. Asked Clifton a question without anybody needing to pull it out of him. He wasn’t loud. He wasn’t suddenly the most talkative person at the table. But he was participating in a way Danielle had spent most of the morning trying unsuccessfully to coax out of him.
She kept her attention on her plate. Maybe he simply had more in common with them. That was normal.
Timothy was older. Clifton was older. Drew seemed more comfortable with people who let conversations breathe, people who didn’t fill every silence before it could settle. Danielle knew exactly what that probably said about her and decided she didn’t particularly want to examine it over lunch.
It still made her feel awkward. Not hurt. Awkward.
Like she had misread the rules of an interaction everybody else understood instinctively.
Danielle hated feeling awkward. She was almost never awkward.
That was the whole problem.
She picked up a cookie from the plate in the middle of the table mostly to give herself something else to do, then noticed Drew looking at the desserts like he was considering getting up for one. Without thinking much about it, she grabbed another and held it across the table. “Here.”
He looked at her hand. “What?”
“Cookie.”
“I can see that.”
Danielle stared at him. “Then we’re making progress.” Clifton laughed under his breath.
Drew looked from the cookie to her. “You don’t want it?”
“I took two.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“I want both. I’m choosing generosity.”
“That sounds difficult for you.”
Danielle immediately started pulling her hand back. “Okay. Never mind.”
Drew took it before she could.
Her eyes widened. “Oh, now you want it?”
“You offered.”
“I changed my mind.”
“Too late.”
“That’s theft.”
“You handed it to me.”
“Under false pretenses.”
“What were the pretenses?”
“That you’d be grateful.”
Drew’s mouth curved. “Thank you.”
“Too late.”
He took a bite.
Danielle looked at him in mock offense for a second, then laughed despite herself. Drew did too, quieter, but real enough that the awkwardness loosened again.
She relaxed a little.
Maybe this was simply how he was. Maybe she was making too much of every small difference because she had spent weeks building an impression before meeting him and now reality refused to fit neatly inside it.
The writer beside Timothy mentioned her daughter applying to colleges, and Danielle turned immediately. “Wait, where?” The woman answered. Danielle asked which schools, whether her daughter knew what she wanted to study, whether she was excited or terrified. The conversation pulled her away from Drew altogether for several minutes.
Across from her, he noticed. He had expected something different from her when nobody important was watching. He wasn’t proud of that.
Maybe he had assumed the endless friendliness would flatten once she wasn’t in front of a camera or a producer or somebody whose opinion mattered. It didn’t. Danielle had spent ten minutes helping Sophie with drinks when Sophie was the one assigned to help them. Now she was asking a writer about her kid and listening with enough focus that she had forgotten the food in front of her again.
Nothing about it looked strategic.
That irritated Drew because it meant his first read on her was becoming harder to defend. She was still a lot. There was no getting around that.
She told stories with unnecessary details. She asked follow-up questions nobody else would have thought to ask. She laughed loudly. She had already managed to know more about half the room than Drew would probably know by the end of the week.
But perhaps the effortlessness he distrusted wasn’t effort at all. He didn’t know what to do with that yet.
Clifton eventually glanced between Danielle and Drew. “The thing you guys are doing works.” Danielle looked up. “What thing?”
“The read.”
“Oh.”
He gestured vaguely between them. “That withholding thing.”
Danielle smiled. “That sounds healthy.”
“For the characters.”
“Still.”
Timothy nodded. “It does.”
Danielle looked across the table. Drew was already looking at her. For once, neither immediately looked away. “Good,” Danielle said. “Considering we’ve barely spoken.” Drew’s mouth moved. “We’ve spoken.”
“Technically.”
“Several times.”
“You make it sound like we’ve had meaningful conversations.”
“We discussed traffic.”
Danielle nodded seriously. “True. Very vulnerable.” Drew smiled. Clifton shook his head.
The conversation moved on.
Danielle looked down at her plate. Okay. Maybe this was fine. Still weird.
But fine.
— ᨳଓ .
The room felt different after lunch. Not close exactly, but less formal. The first-day politeness had started wearing down at the edges. People sat differently. Coffee cups multiplied. Someone had taken their shoes off under the table. Danielle returned to her chair, put her bag down, and found a small wrapped mint sitting on top of her notebook.
She frowned.
Across from her, Drew was flipping through pages. “Is this yours?”
He glanced up. “What?”
“The mint.”
“No.”
Danielle looked around. “Huh.”
“Maybe Sophie.”
“Maybe.”
She unwrapped it and put it in her mouth. Drew looked down again.
Danielle stared at him. His mouth was doing something suspicious.
“Was it yours?”
“No.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not.”
“Why are you smiling?”
“I’m not.”
“You literally are.”
Jonathan spoke before Drew could respond. “Ready?” Danielle turned forward. “Yeah.”
Drew said the same.
The read resumed.
Within minutes, everything else disappeared again.
The next substantial Lucky-Cary sequence carried a different tension from the earlier hotel scene. The ease underneath the first part of the episode had begun to fracture. Lucky didn’t fully know why yet, but something in Cary wasn’t lining up anymore, and the audience needed to feel her noticing before she had enough information to understand what she was noticing.
Danielle felt it almost immediately.
She didn’t approach Cary the way she had before. She watched him.
Drew registered the change and pulled back further.
Again, neither had discussed it. Again, it worked.
Lucky tested. Cary deflected. Lucky changed tactics. Cary gave her enough to keep her from leaving but not enough to answer what she actually wanted to know. Their rhythm became a negotiation before Danielle consciously decided that was what the scene was.
At one point Lucky asked something ordinary.
There was another question underneath it.
Drew answered the ordinary version. Danielle lifted her eyes.
Held them on him.
Waited.
Then Lucky smiled.
Not warmly.
Like she had just learned something Cary didn’t know she had learned.
Drew felt the whole scene shift beneath him.
His next response changed. Danielle’s gaze sharpened.
Jonathan leaned back. Cassie glanced toward Lauren.
There it was again.
Not novelty. Not luck. Not something they had stumbled into once.
Whatever existed between Lucky and Cary appeared every time Danielle and Drew were required to actually listen to one another.
Drew knew it now. Danielle did too.
He could tell because she had stopped anticipating him. At the beginning of the morning she had seemed to be waiting for the next thing, her actor brain visibly tracking where the exchange ought to go. Now she simply listened and trusted that she would know what to do once he gave her something.
That was better. Drew hated how much he respected it.
The scene narrowed. Cary withheld. Lucky came closer. Lucky retreated. Cary watched. Neither actor raised their voice. Neither pushed. The tension grew anyway.
When it ended, Danielle didn’t immediately drop her eyes.
She remained Lucky for half a second longer, looking across the table at Cary.
Then she blinked.
Danielle returned. And smiled. Tiny. At him.
Not for Jonathan. Not for the room. Drew smiled back before thinking about it.
Then Jonathan said, “Yeah.”
Everyone looked toward him. He tapped his pen against the table and looked between Danielle and Drew. “That.” Danielle straightened slightly. “That rhythm,” Jonathan continued. “Keep it. Don’t clean it up.”
“The overlap?” Danielle asked.
“The whole thing. You’re both waiting for the other person to blink. That’s useful.”
Danielle looked down immediately and wrote it in the margin. Drew watched her underline it.
Twice. Of course she did.
Jonathan continued, and the read moved forward.
By the final pages, Danielle had stopped wondering whether she was doing Lucky correctly.
That was the best thing that could have happened. The fear had burned off somewhere around page forty. She knew what Lucky sounded like now because she knew what Lucky sounded like when somebody else pushed back. She knew how her body changed around Annette’s character, where Timothy’s timing made her instinctively speed up, how Clifton could alter the temperature of a scene by barely moving.
And she knew what happened around Cary. Around Drew.
That was the strange one.
Whenever she offered him something, he seemed to give her just enough back to change what she had planned.
She liked it more than she wanted to admit. The final stage direction was read. Then silence.
Jonathan closed his script. “Okay.”
Everyone breathed again.
A little applause moved around the table, casual and warm, the habitual release of making it through the first complete read. Danielle sat back and finally noticed how much her shoulders hurt.
“Good?” Cassie asked.
Jonathan shook his head gravely. “Terrible. Recast everybody.”
Danielle immediately raised her hand. “Can I stay?”
“No.”
“Fuck.”
Annette laughed.
Conversation broke apart around them almost instantly. People compared notes across the table, writers leaned toward producers, somebody asked Jonathan about a scene in the middle, Clifton stretched his arms over his head.
Danielle looked down at her own pages.
Then, against her better judgment, across at Drew.
He was making a note. Of course.
She hated the little flicker of disappointment that came with that.
Jonathan liking the read should have been enough. Cassie liking it should have been enough.
The room had felt it. Danielle had felt it.
Still, she wanted to know what Drew thought.
That was professional. Obviously.
He had been the person on the other side of those scenes.
She waited until he closed his pen. “That second one felt better than I thought it would.”
Drew looked up. “Yeah.”
There it was. One syllable. Danielle immediately wished she hadn’t started.
She nodded. “Cool.”
Drew’s expression shifted slightly. “No, I mean—it was good.”
“Oh.”
“The scene.”
“Right.”
Danielle smiled, but now the whole exchange felt inexplicably awkward again.
Why was talking to him so fucking difficult? She could talk to anybody.
She could talk to cashiers. Drivers. People beside her in elevators. Interviewers who had clearly not watched the movie they were asking her about. Somehow Drew Starkey turned ordinary conversation into a task she could feel herself performing.
He glanced toward the tabs on her script. “You always do that much prep?”
The question caught her off guard enough that her smile became more natural. “Unfortunately.”
“Why unfortunately?”
“Because then I convince myself every note matters and spend the next month finding out half of them were stupid.”
Drew looked down at the pages again. “Didn’t seem stupid.”
Danielle glanced at him. “High praise.”
His mouth twitched. “You want more?”
“No.” She immediately heard how abrupt that sounded. “I mean—no, that was nice. Thank you.”
“Sure.”
Another silence. Danielle wanted to crawl out of her own body.
Why had she said high praise? Who said that? Apparently her.
Drew didn’t seem bothered at all. Naturally.
Timothy called his name from behind him. “Starkey.”
Drew looked over. “Yeah?”
“Come look at this.”
He stood. “One second.”
Danielle nodded too quickly. “Yeah, go.”
The second he turned away, she looked down at her notebook and closed her eyes for one beat.
Great. Fantastic. Very normal interaction.
She started packing.
Across the room, Drew reached Timothy and immediately slipped into whatever conversation had already been happening. He leaned down to look at something on Timothy’s phone, said something, and Timothy laughed. Clifton wandered over. Drew answered him. Easy.
There was that word again.
Danielle zipped her bag slightly harder than necessary. She wasn’t jealous of Timothy Olyphant. That would be clinically insane.
She just hated feeling like she had suddenly forgotten how to talk. Especially when Drew clearly had not.
Sophie appeared beside the table holding a stack of folders. “Danielle, sorry, do you have a second?”
Danielle looked up immediately. “Yeah, of course.”
Within thirty seconds she was talking to Sophie about tomorrow’s schedule, asking whether she had actually gotten lunch after carrying everybody else’s drinks around, and laughing when Sophie admitted she had stolen two desserts instead.
Across the room, Drew looked over. There she was again.
He had just watched Danielle stumble through a thirty-second conversation with him like she couldn’t decide what tone to use, and now she was talking to Sophie as if they had known each other for months.
Interesting. He didn’t know why that bothered him. Maybe because the awkwardness between them seemed to belong specifically to them.
“Good, right?”
Drew turned. Timothy stood beside him. “What?”
“The read.”
“Yeah.”
Timothy glanced toward Danielle. “Those scenes work.”
Drew followed the look. Danielle was laughing at something Sophie said.
“They work.”
“You sound surprised.”
“I’m not.”
Timothy looked at him. Drew caught it. “What?”
“Nothing.”
Drew frowned.
Apparently Danielle wasn’t the only person in the room who communicated through irritating facial expressions.
— ᨳଓ .
By the time Danielle reached the elevator, she had said goodbye to nearly everybody twice. Annette hugged her. Clifton told her he was stealing one of her tabs next time. Jonathan reminded her about the next read. Cassie said she would send updated notes later that evening. Timothy told her not to be late tomorrow even though he had absolutely no authority over her schedule.
Drew had been talking to someone else when she left.
Danielle did not wait to say goodbye. Not deliberately. She simply didn’t.
She pressed the elevator button and shifted her bag higher on her shoulder, script tucked against her chest. The doors opened almost immediately. She stepped inside, pressed the lobby button and released a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.
The doors had almost closed when a hand appeared between them. They opened again.
Of course. Drew stepped inside.
“Thanks.”
Danielle moved slightly to make room. “Yeah.”
The doors closed. Just them. Wonderful.
Danielle looked at the floor numbers. Drew glanced at his phone.
Silence. One floor. Then another.
She could practically hear Juliet laughing at her from miles away.
Normally, Danielle would have filled it without even noticing she was doing so. Asked what he had planned after this. Said something about tomorrow. Complained about how cold the room had been. Anything.
Instead, every option suddenly sounded forced.
So she stayed quiet.
Which somehow felt even more forced.
Drew looked up from his phone. Danielle could feel it.
She kept looking at the numbers.
“You okay?” Her head turned. “What?”
“You got quiet.”
“Oh.” Danielle laughed once, too quickly. “Yeah. I’m fine.”
Drew nodded.
Silence again. She wanted to die.
Finally she looked toward him. “Did you think the room was freezing?”
Drew paused. Danielle immediately regretted everything. “A little.”
“Okay, good. I thought it was just me.”
“No.”
“Cool.”
Cool. Danielle wanted to throw herself through the elevator doors.
Drew’s mouth moved faintly, and for one horrifying second she thought he might be trying not to laugh at her.
Then he said, “You watched Hellraiser, right?”
Danielle forgot to be embarrassed. “How do you know that?”
He looked almost amused. “You mentioned it earlier.”
“When?”
“At lunch. You said something about horror movies.”
Danielle frowned, replaying the conversation. “I did?”
“Pretty sure.”
“Oh.” She adjusted the script in her hands. “Yeah. I watched it.”
“What’d you think?”
That was better. A real question.
She relaxed by maybe ten percent. “I liked it.”
“Just liked it?” Danielle looked at him. “Do you want a review?”
“Maybe.”
“Well, now I’m nervous.”
“Why?”
“You were in it.”
“Exactly.”
“That makes it worse.”
Drew smiled. Danielle looked at the elevator doors instead of acknowledging that.
“You were good,” she said. “Annoyingly.”
“Annoyingly?”
“Yeah.”
“How?”
She hesitated, suddenly aware that the answer she had given Juliet sounded far more intense when delivered directly to the person it was about. “You don’t really tell people where to look.”
Drew looked at her.
Danielle continued before she could overthink it. “Like, you don’t push things. You make the other person come find it.”
For the first time all day, Drew didn’t answer immediately because he seemed to actually be considering what she had said.
Then, “That’s a good thing?”
Danielle smiled. “Usually.”
“Usually.”
“Don’t get cocky.”
He laughed softly.
The elevator dinged. Of course it did.
The doors opened into the lobby just when the conversation finally stopped feeling painful. Danielle stepped out beside him. For a few seconds they walked toward the entrance together.
“Did you watch anything of mine?” she asked before she could stop herself.
Drew’s expression changed. There. Danielle smiled slowly. “Oh my God.”
“What?”
“You did.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You made a face.”
“I did not.”
“You absolutely did.”
He looked ahead. “My manager sent me some stuff.”
“That counts.”
“It wasn’t research.”
“That is literally research.”
“He wanted me to see your work.”
Danielle’s smile widened. “What did you watch?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You’re lying.”
“I watched a few things.”
“Which things?” Drew looked at her. “You ask a lot of questions.”
The smile stayed on Danielle’s face.
But something in her stomach dipped.
It was tiny. Probably because of the way he said it. Not mean. Not even particularly annoyed. Just an observation. Still, she heard something in it.
There it is.
Too much.
Danielle’s answer came lighter than the feeling. “I’ve been told.”
Drew seemed like he might say something else. Then Clifton called from near the entrance. “Starkey, you leaving?”
Drew looked over. “Yeah.”
And just like that, the moment was gone.
He turned back to Danielle briefly. “See you tomorrow.”
“Yeah. See you.”
Then he crossed toward Clifton.
Danielle slowed near the lobby desk. Nothing had happened. Nothing. He had said she asked a lot of questions. She did. Her mother said the same thing. Juliet said worse.
Danielle herself joked about never shutting up at least twice a week.
There was no reason for the sentence to sit strangely beneath her skin. Except it did.
Maybe because it had come from somebody who already seemed to ration every word he gave her.
Outside, Drew and Clifton were talking as they headed toward the curb.
Danielle watched for one second. Then stopped. No. Absolutely not.
She was not going to spend the next several months analyzing a coworker because he was harder to talk to than everybody else.
That sounded exhausting.
“Danielle?” Sophie had appeared again with an empty plastic cup in her hand.
Danielle stared at it.
Her matcha.
“You left this.”
“Oh my God.” Danielle laughed. “Throw it away. Please.”
“You sure?”
“Yes. Save me from myself.”
Sophie smiled and carried it toward the trash.
Danielle stepped outside.
Avery’s car was already waiting.
— ᨳଓ .
“Well?”
Danielle had barely closed the car door.
She dropped her bag onto the seat beside her and looked at Avery. “Hi to you too.”
“How was it?”
“Good.”
Avery waited. Danielle buckled her seat belt. “Really good.”
“That sounded more convincing.”
“It was.”
The smile came before she could stop it.
Once she started, the words followed easily. She told Avery about Annette first, because apparently she needed to tell everyone about Annette. Then Clifton. Timothy. Jonathan’s notes. The way the first scene had felt different once everybody was actually there. How Lucky finally made more sense aloud than she had inside Danielle’s apartment. How Jonathan had told her and Drew not to clean up the rhythm between them.
Avery listened while the car pulled away from the curb.
“And Drew?”
Danielle stopped. “What about him?”
“How was he?”
“Good.”
Avery looked at her.
Danielle frowned. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You have a face too.”
Avery smiled. “I asked if he was good.”
“He is.”
“That’s all?”
Danielle looked out the window.
She could still feel the strange focus of their scenes, how little effort it had taken to find something with him once they were no longer trying to talk as themselves. That part had been undeniable. Whatever the show required Lucky and Cary to have, something in Danielle and Drew’s instincts seemed to know how to reach it before either of them did.
“He’s really good,” she said finally.
“I assumed.”
“No, I mean…” Danielle searched for the right explanation. “He listens.”
Avery glanced at her.
“That sounds basic when I say it.”
“A little.”
“It’s not. You’d be surprised.”
“I’ll trust you.”
Danielle leaned her head against the window.
For several seconds, Avery returned to her phone.
Danielle should have left it there.
Instead, “He’s kind of weird.”
Avery looked up again. “Weird how?”
“I don’t know.”
“Helpful.”
“He’s just…” Danielle frowned. “I thought he was quiet.”
“And he isn’t?”
“He is. Except he isn’t.”
Avery waited. Danielle hated when people made her finish thoughts.
“He talks to everybody else.”
There. The sentence sounded stupid the moment it existed outside her head. Avery’s expression remained neutral. “Maybe he knows them better.”
“He met half of them today too.”
“Okay.”
Danielle looked at her. “You think I’m being dramatic.”
“I think you met him four hours ago.”
“I know.”
“So maybe he takes time.”
“Maybe.”
Danielle looked out the window again. That was probably it.
Normal explanation. Boring explanation. Most likely explanation.
Her phone vibrated.
Juliet.
Obviously.
jules: WELL??????
Then, before Danielle could answer:
jules: is annette amazing
JULES: did the read go good
jules: and unfortunately i am legally required to ask about drew
Danielle smiled despite herself.
dani: annette is everything
dani: read was rlly good
She paused over the keyboard.
Then:
dani: drew is weird
Juliet responded almost immediately.
JULES: LMAOOOO HOW
Danielle thought about it.
dani: idk he talks to everyone except me 😭
The typing bubble appeared.
jules: maybe ur annoying
Danielle gasped aloud.
Avery looked over.
“Nothing.”
Her phone buzzed again.
jules: KIDDING
jules: mostly
dani: blocked
jules: you cant keep doing this
Danielle smiled and locked her phone.
The city moved past the window. She wasn’t hurt. There was nothing to be hurt by.
Drew was practically a stranger, and strangers were allowed to take time to warm up to each other. He had been perfectly polite. He had laughed with her a few times. He had asked about her prep. He had listened when she talked about Hellraiser. Their scenes worked.
There was no problem.
Danielle knew that.
Still, something about him had gotten under her skin before the first day was even over.
Not attraction. Not yet. Something far more irritating. Curiosity.
She could talk to almost anyone.
She knew how to make people comfortable. Knew how to find the subject that loosened somebody up, the joke that shifted a conversation, the question that made a person stop giving polite answers and start giving real ones.
Drew seemed immune to most of it.
Worse, he didn’t seem immune to people in general. Just harder with her.
Danielle watched the city blur beyond the glass and thought about the moment in the elevator when their conversation had finally begun to feel normal, only for one sentence to send her straight back into wondering whether she had been talking too much again.
Fine.
He could be difficult.
She would see him tomorrow. And the day after that.
Then the camera test. Then rehearsals. Then months of filming. Eventually, she would figure him out.
Danielle usually did.
