Chapter 24

I went back to my trailer after Sophia left, avoiding Cassie's advances with some excuse about having to prepare for my next scene. She offered to "help" me prepare for it by "relaxing" me. When I said no, she literally grabbed my crotch and insisted we go back to my trailer.

And for the first time in my life, I turned her down. I'd never been one to turn down sex or a good blowjob, especially from Cassie – even though she was bat-shit crazy, as we'd already established, but I did. And I wasn't sure if I wanted to admit why that was.

"What the hell, Christian?" Cassie snapped her hand back and crossed her arms. "Since when do you turn me down?"

I didn't have a good answer to that because even I wasn't sure why. "I don't know. Sorry, Cass, but when we broke up a few months ago, it was for good. We're done – done dating and done hooking up."

"Why, because of her?" She pointed in the direction Sophia had gone even though she was nowhere to be found. "Are you seriously choosin' her over me? Are you insane? You know damn well she ain't got nothin' on me."

I shrugged. "That's where you're wrong. I'll see you around, Cass, but you need to accept that it's over and leave us alone."

I left before she could jump me again and headed back to my trailer, making sure to lock the door behind me this time. She didn't try to follow me. She was like me in that her ego was the size of an elephant, but even an ego as big as Cassie's could only take so many blows in one day. Between Sophia's snappy remarks and my refusal, she'd probably had enough.

When I heard a knock at my door a few minutes later, I almost didn't answer assuming it was Cassie.

"Yo, Chris, open the fucking door," Blake said from outside. "There's mosquitos out here and they're eating me alive. Come on –" His sentence was cut off by a girly scream, probably thanks to the above mentioned mosquitos.

I rolled my eyes. My best friend, ladies and gentlemen. My best friend.

I could've let him suffer some more out there but decided to be a decent friend for once and let him in. "You better not have let any mosquitos in here. Close the fucking door, Blake, you're letting them in."

I swatted at the air to get one away from me and had to pull out a fly swatter to squash it. I should've just left him outside.

"How did Cassie's visit go?" Blake asked, still carefully surveying his surroundings. I had a feeling he already knew how it went.

"How do you think it went?" I shook my head. "She's fucking nuts. She told Sophia off and pretty much told her to stay away from me."

Blake sat down on the couch, finally content with his surroundings. "And what did Sophia say?"

I shrugged, leaning against the kitchen counter. "She said she wasn't interested in me so she had nothing to worry about. But..."

"But what?"

I chose my words carefully, trying not to seem like some idiot with a schoolgirl crush who read too much into small exchanges. "But she said Cassie would never know how she really feels about me because she's not a mind reader."

This finally piqued Blake's interest, who had previously been distracted by his phone, probably because he'd heard the whole exchange like me. "Ah. There it is."

"There what is?"

Blake stared at my face for the longest time before grinning. "You're into her."

"What? No, I'm not."

"Oh, but you are," he said. "I've been watching you guys from the start. There's a fine line between love and hate, you know. At least that's what my grandma said when I asked why she and my grandpa were together if they hated each other. She tried to kill him once. She says it was an accident, but she knew he was allergic to mayonnaise."

I chose to ignore the part about his homicidal grandma and focus on the part that involved me. We didn't have time to talk about Blake's dysfunctional family. "I'm not in love with her, what the fuck?"

"Okay, okay, maybe not in love, but you're definitely into her. Question is, is she into you, too or was she just trying to fuck with Cassie by saying that?"

I sighed. "I don't know. I don't even know if I'm into her, okay? I just know something's different. She annoys me less, and I don't know, I guess she's pretty nice to look at."

Blake clasped his hands together and put them under his chin with a pensive look on his face. Finally, he spoke, and I wasn't sure where he was going with his tirade. "If Sophia walked into your trailer one day and started taking her clothes off and said, 'Let's have sex,' what would you say?"

I looked at him like he'd grown a third eyebrow. "I wouldn't say anything. I'd just start getting naked. What kind of question is that? She'd never do that."

"Okay, and if a random hot girl walked in here one day and did the same thing, what would you do?"

"I don't know. That sounds like a trap to me."

"Aha – but Sophia getting naked in here doesn't? Or is it just that you wouldn't be thinking about that because you'd be so distracted by her hot nakedness to care?"

Well... he had a point. But I wasn't going to tell him that. "Okay, but what does that even prove? I'm attracted to plenty of girls. That doesn't mean I have feelings for them."

"What if she walked up to you one day and said she wanted to get to know you better because she was starting to think she was wrong about you?"

"I'd do it," I said. "I've been telling her for ages that I'm not that bad. It'd mean she finally listened to me."

"And when you think about dating someone again, could you picture it being her?"

I paused. "I mean, yeah, I don't see why not." That was partly a lie. I could see why not – because I wasn't sure if she still hated me and was being civil or if she was actually changing her mind about me like Blake's third scenario suggested.

"Then it's settled."

I rolled my eyes. Here we go. "Then what's settled?"

"We're hooking you two up," Blake said. "Well, I'm hooking you two up. Maybe Tori will help... who am I kidding? Of course Tori will help. Alright, we need a name for this mission... Operation Tiny Dick?"

"No."

"Operation Needs to Grow a Pair?"

"You're one suggestion away from getting kicked out of here."

"Operation Chicken?"

I sighed. That was probably as good as it was gonna get with Blake, and it wasn't totally inaccurate. The only inaccurate one was the first one, if I was being honest. I was a chicken when it came to Sophia, but rightfully so. I had a feeling if I asked her out she'd reject me faster than I could say "please."

"Alright, whatever," I said.

Blake grinned like he'd just accomplished something great even though all he did was name our "operation." "Then Operation Chicken starts today."

***

When it came time for my first romantic scene with Sophia, I felt something I'd never felt before one of these scenes: nerves. I was actually nervous. What the fuck was going on with me? Christian Ryder didn't get nervous before sex scenes, much less simple make-out scenes. Who even was I?

We did several takes of the dialogue leading up to the making out, getting closer and closer with each take. We were sitting on the edge of the bed with numerous lights above us and a massive crew surrounding us, in character and casually dressed. I'd never been uncomfortable getting close to a girl in front of a camera and a big ass crew, but this felt different. It almost felt like an intrusion of privacy, which was crazy.

We started the next take a few lines before I leaned in and kissed her.

"Admit I'm your cat onesie," I said. We'd been getting closer and closer with each take, as the conversation escalated until it would eventually explode in passion. Or at least I hoped it would, because that was kind of our job.

"No," she snapped, looking utterly exasperated. Her eyes were glued to mine and I didn't want to look away even though she was basically yelling at me. I was used to it, anyway. "God, why does it even matter?"

"I don't know, okay? Just admit it," I said.

"Let. It. Go," she enunciated, with as much fire as she had when we'd tried practicing this scene in private.

And then it happened. Lost in the scene, finally oblivious to my surroundings, I grabbed her face, leaned in, and kissed her the way I was supposed to, but above all the way I'd been dying to do since the last time we kissed. So what if we were in character? I had a feeling that was the only way I'd ever get to kiss her, even with Blake's mission underway.

Still following the script, she put her hands on my chest to try to push me away. Part of me was hoping she'd forget the blocking because that would mean she was also forgetting we were in the middle of the scene. But the other part of me didn't think that was likely.

I snaked an arm around her waist and brought her closer, waiting for it to happen – and finally, it did. She relaxed and got into the kiss, as was outlined in the script. Always following a script.

She started moving her lips against mine passionately and I tried in the back of my mind to think about dead puppies or spiders or something that would stop me from getting a boner, but I don't think my half-assed attempt at it worked very well.

She put her hands on my shoulders and I took her relaxation as my chance to deepen the kiss, parting her lips with my tongue and pulling her towards me until we fell back on the bed.

I ended up on top of her like I was supposed to be without stopping our kiss. I ran my hands up and down her body, completely having given up on not scaring her off by getting turned on. I normally didn't have to worry about this, because with the pressure from the lights and the crew, it was pretty hard to get aroused. But I was so caught up in the moment, anything was possible.

Her hands began roaming my body, going underneath my shirt, and every spot she touched felt electric, or like it was on fire. It was already hot underneath the lights, but all of a sudden I felt 100 times hotter. She tugged at the bottom of my shirt, and I lifted up my arms to help her get it off. That feeling of electricity just increased when she had access to the bare skin of my chest and abdomen.

I forced myself to somewhat stay in character and remember the blocking. My lips started trailing along the nape of her neck like they were supposed to, and she ran her fingers through my hair, again, like she was supposed to. When it was time for her tank top to come off, there were no bumps in the road surprisingly. I still half-expected to get smacked for it, but we were actors. It was just part of our job.

I pulled away from her not long after so we could catch our breaths and so I could say the line that fucks up the whole scene and stops it from becoming a sex scene.

I rested my forehead against hers, staring into her hazel eyes. They were hypnotizing, almost enough to make me forget my line. But I didn't.

"You're so beautiful, Rage," I said. Rage was my nickname for her character because she was such a raging bitch at first. It was supposed to be cute, though, even though the reasoning behind it wasn't. "God, I'm crazy about you."

The smile that had slowly spread on her face when I called her beautiful – and God, she was beautiful – faded and she snapped back to reality. "Oh, my God, what am I doing? I can't do this."

She pushed me away as hard as she could and stumbled off of the bed.

"What's wrong?" I asked, sitting up and watching her flip the fuck out.

She ignored my question, choosing to mutter to herself instead. "What the hell is wrong with me?" She frantically paced the room looking for her tank-top. "Oh, God."

"Rage, hey, wait," I said, carefully standing up, not wanting to scare her away even further. "I'm sorry. I should've slowed down. We just – we got carried away. We can take it slow. I would never pressure you into anything you didn't want to do. We can just lay here and talk or watch a movie or something. This isn't about sex for me. I mean it."

She didn't say anything. She just shook her head and put her tank-top back on.

"Rage."

"I need – I – I'm going downstairs, okay?"

With that, she ran off, avoiding eye contact with me the whole time. I barely heard Nora call for the scene to cut. I barely heard her congratulate us on a job well done. Because as much as I hated to admit it, as much as I hated to admit that Blake and Cassie were right... they were. I'd somehow developed feelings for the one girl who could barely stand to be around me.

In short, I was fucked. Operation Chicken was inevitably going to end in disappointment.