Page 83 of Over & Out

After the plane landed, we’d accidentally fallen asleep. Who could blame us after being up for nearly twenty-four hours minus that little catnap when she discovered my notebook—and then the greatest fucking sex of our lives? My life, anyway. Hopefully hers too.

A heavy knock on the door woke us up. I’d bolted upright and answered in my underwear, thinking it was the pilot. The pilots for this charter fly world leaders aroundand are known for their absolute discretion. Unfortunately, it was the customs officer, a fierce-looking middle-aged woman with her braided black hair in a tight knot at the back of her head and a hard line where her mouth should have been.

“Sir, you can’t enter Canada with no pants,” she’d said.

I wanted badly to ask if that was an official rule, but I could sense Chris freaking out under the sheets. So I asked her to please wait while we got dressed.

The officer looked very disinterested the next time I opened the door—both Chris and I fully pantsed. She checked our information and handed our passports back to us.

“Welcome home, Mr. Donnach. Ma’am.”

“Do you think she’s going to tell anyone we were together?” Chris asked worriedly after she left.

“One person is no big deal,” I said. “Not enough credibility for a rumor.”

I didn’t mention it to Chris, but I learned a long time ago that people who appear disinterested can sometimes be the most interested. I don’t trust anyone not to call up a tabloid looking for a quick buck or to get in on the ground floor of a scandal. If anything does come up, Mabel’s a pro at squashing these kinds of things. But in that moment, I remembered everything Mabel told us. How she warned me to stay away from Chris.

I can’t do that, but I did need to protect her.

“If anyone else sees us together,” I said, “it does have the potential to become a thing.”

Chris blanched. “We don’t want it to become a thing, right?”

I wanted very badly to argue that I did actually want it to become a thing. I would very much like the whole world to know how I feel about Chris Maplewood.

But my dad’s face appeared in my mind then, at his angriest. Most vengeful. Drunkest. “No,” I said, the word feeling wrong in my throat. “We don’t.”

Something flickered in Chris’s expression, but it vanished when she suddenly laughed, hand over her mouth. “I can’t believe you answered the door to a border officer in no pants.”

“Down with pants,” I said.

“Literally,” she’d laughed.

After we get the take, I tell Toni we’re cutting out early. I know I’ve used this card already, but I play it like I’m Santa Claus. “People need time to buy Christmas presents, Toni. Give them a few hours to do that during the day when the stores are open.”

“You really care about everyone on this movie, don’t you?” she asks after she finally relents, begrudgingly agreeing we all need a break.

Sure. This is not about my desperate need to be close to Chris again. To be so close I’m quite literally inside her.

“The most,” I say, already heading to my trailer.

“Hopper, wait.”

I groan inwardly, resisting the urge to check the time.Now that I’ve got the time off, all I want to do is GTFO and head straight to Chris.

But Toni decides to take this moment to blow smoke up my ass.

“Hopper, I’ve been meaning to say, I appreciate how you took the lead with Chad. Marlo’s been incredible in his place.” If by taking the lead, she means telling Chad to fuck off, I guess she’s right. I found Marlo because I asked Charlene which AD she’d worked with lately had been her favorite. Then I paid her a signing bonus myself.

“That’s not all, Hopper.”

Fuck me. She goes on to tell me how she knows it was me who insisted the studio give everyone a travel budget to get home over the holidays, then lists off ten other things I apparently did that make her so happy she ignored everyone’s concerns about hiring me.

“Thanks?” I say at the backhanded compliment. The thing is, most of the things I made happen stem from questions Chris asked me at various meetings about inequities she saw in the industry. I tell her that now when she says again how much she appreciates my “team effort” on this picture.

“I’m no saint, Toni. I had to have these things pointed out to me.”

Toni smiles. “Yeah, well, not everyone would have sent those things up the chain.”

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