Page 36 of Just for December

‘We’re up to mid-six figures right now, just shy of a full half million.’

‘Dollars?’ Evie exclaims.

‘Dollars,’ echoes her agent. ‘I’m telling you: this is your moment, darling. We have to seize it!’

Evie nods, then realises her agent can’t see her do that down a phone line. ‘Right,’ she says. ‘That’s nothing like what we got for this deal. That’s so much money,’ she says. ‘I don’t know what I’d do with that kind of money. It makes me feel a bit sick, actually.’

‘Pay off your house, for a start,’ her agent says, gleefully. ‘And spend the rest, baby. You’ve worked hard for this. You should enjoy it!’

‘Right, yeah, okay thanks,’ says Evie, her chest getting tighter. She’s hot in her face, and the back of her neck too, despite the temperatures being freezing. She can see the hotel across the way, and doesn’t even realise she’s heading in that direction until she’s searching for her key card, using it to take the elevator, pushing through to her room to rip off her coat and jumper and then standing in her bra in front of the bathroom mirror, desperately splashing her face with cold water.

She looks at her reflection. She cannot have that money.That money will kill her. She can’t have half a million dollars – more, if her agent keeps pushing. God only knows what the royalty cheques will be if she’s charted in multiple countries, with several other countries having put in foreign rights bids too. She doesn’t want that. She doesn’t deserve that. It’s too much. She comes back to that thought again.It’s too much, it’s too much, it’s too much, it’s too much.

She thinks of her father leaving, the last thing he said to her:This isn’t enough for me.This wouldn’t be enough for any man.She thinks of her mother in the home. And here she is about to get a freaking lottery win for books that aren’t even that good. She just got lucky. But this is more luck than any one person needs. Her breathing gets shorter. Duke springs to mind, but she doesn’t trust him. She likes him, but she doesn’t trust him. Somewhere in the back of her mind she can see that she’s gone pale, really pale, and she stumbles to the bed and looks at the hotel phone and she thinks to herself:But there’s nobody I can call. There’s nobody here to help me.

20

Duke

Duke pulls out his phone to see where Evie is so they can get another fake date underway, but as he goes to type her name into the search bar he realises he doesn’t, actually, have her number. He’s never had to use it before, since they’ve always been in the same space on set, or in snow blizzards.

He decides to burn off his excess energy in the hotel gym. Maybe he’ll bump into her at dinner or in the bar. He doesn’t want to chase or seem desperate. He grabs his workout shorts and vest and heads to the state-of-the-art gym in the basement. He has his AirPods in and is scrolling emails as he walks, so it’s not until he practically bumps into Brad that he looks up and sees he’s not alone. He pulls one headphone out. Daphne is there too. They’re arguing, and he’s interrupted.

‘Oh, hey – sorry,’ he says, looking between them both.

‘Hey, man,’ Brad says, and it takes Duke a beat to process what he’s seeing. There’s nobody else in the gym, Daphne’s eyes are red-rimmed but she’s forcing a smile, and Brad is breathing heavily and unevenly, like he’s agitated about something. He’s been in a foul mood all day, so Duke doesn’t blame him for coming down here to burn off some steam, but the way Daphne is rubbing her wrist doesn’t seem right. She sees him notice and looks away quickly, and when Duke looks to Brad, he does the same, like he’s been caught.

‘You okay?’ he says to Daphne, looking from her wrist to her face once more, and pointedly so this time.I know something has just happened,he wills her to understand through the way he looks at her.Let me step up for you. I can handle this.

‘It’s just a stupid fight,’ she says, not even bothering to try and deny it. ‘We’re both tired. It’s fine.’

Duke can tell by her tone that it isn’t fine.

‘Did you put your hands on her?’ he says to Brad, through gritted teeth and trying very hard not to simply pin him by the neck to the wall, because nobody touches a woman that way. Nobody hurts a woman.

‘She was pushing my buttons,’ Brad says, looking at Daphne as he says it. ‘We were pushing each other’s buttons. That’s all.’

‘So you … what? Laid your hands on her to stop her?’ Duke presses. His heart is thumping wildly. Brad is his director, and losing his temper at him won’t play out well for the rest of the shoot if he flips his lid, but that’s no reason not to.

Brad sighs. Exasperated. Dramatic. Dismissive.

‘You of all people know what she can be like, bro. Don’t walk the moral high ground. You get it.’ He stops short ashe sees Duke’s undoubtedly changing face – the tension in his jaw, the flare to his nostrils – and softens his voice, man to man. ‘Nothing happened, dude, okay? Come on, Daphne, let’s go.’

Daphne winces, just slightly, as Brad grabs her by the very spot she’s rubbing like it’s tender. Reflexively, quicker than light and sound, Duke punches his arm away so he lets go. There’s a beat, a moment, where nobody knows what to do. It was a violent, deliberate move. There’s a faraway part in Duke’s brain that knows nobody can get any visible bruising because of their jobs, but another part has Duke take a quick step towards Brad like he might actually deck him. Brad dodges in fear, and it’s pathetic. Brad is scared of Duke. It makes Duke laugh out loud.

‘Scum,’ he says, taking a step forward, leading with his chest. ‘Don’t you dare ever – and I mean ever, ever, ever – hurt her again. Do you hear me?’

Brad rolls his eyes. Duke takes one more step to close the gap between them and screams, louder than he has screamed anything in a very long time: ‘DO. YOU. HEAR. ME?’

He can see in the gym mirror that he’s gone purple. He waits for his answer.

‘Yes,’ Brad tells him. ‘I hear you.’

He walks off then, and as Daphne tries to go after him, reaching out, he shrugs her off and says, ‘Not now, Daphne. Fuck off for a minute, why don’t you?’ Daphne’s face falls to hell. She can pretend it’s a misunderstanding all she likes, but now Duke has heard him speak so nastily, the jig is up.

‘He’s just stressed,’ Daphne says, almost pleadingly, like she doesn’t want Duke to think badly of him. ‘What with thedelays, and he’s got the producers on his back, his wife calling him every hour of the day …’ She trails off, embarrassed. ‘He’s never done it before,’ she says. ‘I swear. I wouldn’t stand for it if he had.’

Duke looks at his friend, the woman he thought had broken his heart. He sees that her own is breaking, too, and it’s Brad who has done it.

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