“Sure thing. I’ll see you out there.”
“Your camera will too.” He winks, standing up when I do.
“That it will.” And later tonight and every day after. You’ll see soon enough, and you’ll never care to be in front of another cameraman again.
He walks me to the door, and I look back at him one more time with a huge smile before returning to the main building. Everyone’s busy at their own stations, and one of the other camera guys is relieved when he sees me, ushering me to the back so I can help him with something in the monitor room. When it’s finally time for filming, I’m all set up and ready to go,ready to see Sterling mistake the real butcher’s knife for a prop and get closer to the kind of actor he was meant to be.
The kind that serves a real purpose. The kind that’s the sole motivation for these types of films to begin with. He looks so much happier when he convinces himself he’s actually ending a life. He was made to evoke fear in people’s eyes and to have someone else’s blood covering his skin. He was made to do it all for the camera too. For my camera.
He won’t always have to pretend, and the day he no longer has to will be the real day he finds his true calling. It’ll be the day the person he’s been held back from being will finally get to be free, and I’ll be there to catch it all. I’ll be there to save the moment forever.
I’ve always been infatuated with killing and watching the life leave another’s eyes, I was just never good at being the one to do it. But that’s because I wasn’t meant to ever be the star in any of my movies, he was, while I was meant to be cameraman Hayden.
Six
Sterling
Lisa had me redo the same scene three times today. It wasn’t because the knife turned out to be real either. I noticed the weight before the sharp tip could pierce skin and said something immediately even though a voice inside me said not to. My fingers tightened around the handle, and as I sat it down, the emptiness it left behind in my palm felt wrong.
I want to make sense of it, but lately it’s been easier to forget it keeps happening. To brush it off as me getting too wrapped up in my role so that the audience believes what I’m selling. It doesn’t matter how perfectly I portray a psychopath, I’m still struggling to sell it to myself and there’s a nudge in me to take a step further. To make it more real. Is someone out there telling me to do the same thing by swapping out all the fake weapons?
I squeeze my eyes shut and go back to focusing on what’s supposed to matter. On the actual problem, the real reason I should be feeling off. The one that makes sense.
Me mixing up my lines has never happened before, and I don’t know if it’s because of how tired I got halfway through filming or if it was because I couldn’t stop looking at the man zooming in on me. It was his job to film me, but it also felt like more than that. It felt . . . yeah, I’m letting my crazy thoughts get away from me again.
He’s a nice guy. That’s all. Everything else that’s happened is pure coincidence. Him driving by while I was running, him ordering pizza when I was looking for something better to eat, and him buying those pop tarts.
He wouldn’t have come to my trailer if I hadn’t made him feel bad about buying them all. His hand wouldn’t have touched mine if he wasn’t trying to stop me from backing myself into a corner the way I do when I accidentally say the wrong thing. I sit back in my bed, resting my face in my hands. Why did his skin feel so good on mine, though? Why did he have to smile so big that it felt like it was reaching my soul?
And why did I want so badly to bring our hands back together the moment he pulled away?
I look at my phone, trying to remember if I’ve saved one of my old fuck buddy’s numbers in my contacts. Melanie was only ten minutes away from here. I might be able to sneak off for an hour and be back before anyone notices. Lisa didn’t say I couldn’t leave. She only said she wanted me sleeping on site, and I would be.
Swiping through my contacts, I stop when I land on the right name, and my hand feels stuck when I try to select it. I can’t move. It’s like I’m temporarily paralyzed. But then I go back to thinking about Hayden and suddenly my legs work. They’reheading toward the door as I look out the nearby window, wondering if he’s out there now and if he’s working late again.
I open the door and then slam it shut, trying to knock some sense into myself. I need to call Melanie, and once I’m in her bed, I’ll feel more like myself again. Except I’m not even sure what that is anymore. But when I think about the way Hayden looked at me, I swear his eyes were promising to help show me how to get there.
No. I’ve done a good job all this time with ignoring those kinds of desires. I’ve never felt them so strongly as I have with him, though. They’re burning inside me and curling low in my stomach. Something festers there when he’s touching me. It’s hot and has me in a fucking chokehold.
We work together, and I don’t know if he feels the same way. I don’t even know how I feel.
What is it about him?
It’s not him. It’s me. What if it’s some weird side effect of my sleep meds? I press my back to the door, my hand twisting the handle, and I think about Melanie. I think about her perfect, round, petite ass, and then an image of Hayden’s thick thighs rubbing together in his jeans push the thought to the side.
I picture Melanie in one of her sexy bralettes. How delicate the pink color looked against her blemish-free skin, and then Hayden’s muscular pecs that are outlined by each snug-fitting, light-colored shirt he wears take precedence in my mind. I sink to the floor, tugging at my hair, and say Melanie’s name out loud while touching myself through my sweatpants.
It’s not her I see. My muscles tighten, my mind disengaging from everywhere I try to make it go. It fights me hard, and while I’m remembering how hard Melanie’s nipples got when she rubbed her chest against me, I think about the time she shoved her finger in my ass.
I wanted to tell her to stop, but then she twisted it inside me, the tip brushing over what felt like a fucking magic button. I nearly exploded right there.
Yeah, I can think about that. It’s not him, so it’s still safe. I shove my pants down my hips and my erection springs free. I moan as my fingers roll over the bare, sensitive skin of my cock. I pretend my hand is Melanie’s mouth, and when she says to come for me, it’s not her voice I hear.
Her blue eyes turn brown and facial hair rubs over my thighs, and her fingers around my balls are rough and thick. It’s not her anymore, and I don’t want it to be. She’s not the one making me slip off the edge. It’s not her causing the explosion of arousal that shakes me from the inside out, or the twitching in my hole from being so fucking empty.
If her fingers felt good, what would his feel like? They’re so big and his hands are covered in tattoos. They don’t look like they’d be gentle, and I wouldn’t want them to be, would I? I tug harder on my cock, putting more pressure on my balls with my other fingers, and I’m so drunk from being close to my orgasm, my eyes are playing tricks on me. I’m seeing the black hood of a camera lens through the glass window across the way.
I come so hard, I feel like I’m losing my grip on earth and floating off the fucking ground. I’m seeing stars and moons, traveling to a different planet. My breaths stutter and my vision is fuzzy. I laugh, shaking my head.