Page 10 of The Likelihood Of You

After that, I headed to my dressing room to grab my things before waiting by the set for Nate until he joined me again.

“Any plans tonight, J?” He asked as we started walking toward the exit doors.

“Yes. Reading, eating, and sleeping til noon. Very big plans. You?”

“Well, actually—”

“Hey, guys.”

We both spin to face Adaline, that signature grin of hers resting on her face as she glides her way through the middle of us. “Good job today, Jacob. Maybe Monday will be the day we finally get this SCENE DONE!” She shouted, her words reaching Wes, who held up a lazy middle finger at the three of us.

And when I said that I wished someone had the balls to say something to him about how much of an asshole he is, Adaline Moore had already done that. On the first day, in fact, when Wes raised his hand in the air and clicked, indicating he needed one of the assistants. Adaline didn’t like that one bit, so much so that she walked overto the panicked twenty-something assistant and told her to go back into the green room and wait for Wesley to come and ask for her, instead of clicking at her like a dog.

She’s a feisty thing, Adaline- or Addy, for short- we never call her Adaline anymore. She's so strong-willed and not afraid to say the right thing. I think that comes from her being an older sister; her protectiveness was hard to beat down. She was also one of Hollywood’s infamous child stars, so I guess a lot of that independence and maturity was built from an early age. Whatever clever combination of qualities made her who she was made her one of my favourite people on the planet.

I let out a laugh. “One can dream, Addy.”

A sigh slips out of her mouth as she flips her red hair over her shoulder, wrapping her sweatshirt-covered arms around herself shortly after.

And then…silence. Right on cue.

The cloud of awkwardness comes next, a big dusty grey one that’s been subtly rolling in all day. Oddly enough, that uncomfortable air that always seems to crop up when Nate and Addy are near each other rolls along with it. It begins to bubble and stays like that for a while, our only way of communicating being side glances before one of them ultimately breaks the silence.

It’s Nate this time.

“You were good too, Add’s. That monologue was really…something.” He says, offering up a forced smile and getting nothing back from Addy.

“Gee, thanks.” Sarcasm smothered both of her words.

Then we go back to walking in awkward silence.

Here’s the thing: I’ve known these too for a long time, and I still don’t understand why they’re like this.

When I met Addy at theDefenderstable read, we got talking, and within minutes, I was glued to her. Ten minutes later, we were hunched over, crying and laughing about something I wish I could remember, and I wondered how I'd survived without being friends with her before this.

It wasn’t long before Nate walked in, and my laughs turned into gasps because, by that point, Nate and I had known each other for years.

I met Nate when we were twenty-one, both fresh off the bus from college with dreams of making it big, like I’m sure every twenty-one-year-old who moves to New York City is. I managed to score a small apartment in the underbelly of Brooklyn with my college savings, but I didn’t have nearly enough if I wanted to stay there for longer than a year, so I put out a roommate listing.

Nate was the first and only person I interviewed.

By this point, we’d seen each other’s careers skyrocket one after the other and had become brothers. Once our reunion was over, I turned to Addy to introduce the two of them, but they didn’t need to be introduced.

They already knew each other.

The tension between them was undeniable, so thick and angsty it would be like trying to slice open a brick with a plastic knife. Their faces turned to stone, not taking their eyes off each other for a good minute. It wasn’t until after the table read had ended that myself and Nate went back to his apartment, where he confessed that he and Addy had grown up together, been neighbours since they were twelve,and had a thing for each other since they were fifteen. He didn’t tell me anything more than that, but from how they avoid each other and occasionally argue like it’s going out of fashion, I knew he wasn’t telling me the whole story.

Addy never let anything slip, either. Whenever I try to ask her about what exactly happened between them, she always tilts her head, looks at me with sadness settling in her eyes and says, “I’ll let Nate tell you that one.”

“Jacob! Let’s go, man, the car’s here.” Nate calls over to me several feet away, he and Addy leaning against the shiny black Mercedes. I hadn’t even realised we’d made it outside.

I need coffee, desperately.

I bring my hand to a curve and rest it on my mouth to shout, “I’m gonna walk, I think. I need some air.” I didn’t want to walk, but I was craving a Pin’s coffee, and there was no point taking one of the cars that was lining the front of the production lot for us, as it was only a short walk away.

“You sure?” His voice goes shaky. “Then it’ll just be—”

“You’ll be fine,” I shout back, rolling my eyes at how nervous he looks at the idea of getting into a car alone with Addy. I wait until she’s opening her door and sliding in before I mouth back to him, ‘TALK TO HER’. To which I get another eye roll before he slides into the car and drives off into a swarm of flashing lights and heckling paps.

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