Page 3 of The Actor: Harrison

She is gorgeous in this silver sequined dress. If I play my cards right, I won’t be alone tonight.

“Good, because they are barely legal.” She winks at me while she keeps grinding to the music.

My hands travel to her lower back, skimming over the naked skin. “Are you here with someone?” I lower myself to talk into her ear, feeling my erection growing in my pants.

“Yes, with my husband,” she answers back against my ear.

I freeze. “Your what?”

“My husband, he’s over there.” She points to a bunch of producers chatting between each other.

“Since when do you have a husband?” I ask in disbelief, completely stiff in the middle of the dance floor. The other people surrounding us are too engrossed in the music to pay attention to us.

“A couple of weeks.” She frowns. “I thought you knew.”

“Well, obviously not. Why are you grinding against my boner if you’re married?” I ask in disbelief.

“Because you’re hot? A lot of times I get off watching your shirtless compilation on YouTube,” she admits like it’s the most normal thing in the world and my heart sinks into my stomach.

This is my life. Approached by fans way too young to have a conversation or married women who use fan videos of me shirtless to pleasure themselves. While sometimes this is flattering because, no matter what, some confessions boost a man’s ego, on the other hand, nobody takes me seriously.

I’m the good-looking actor that takes his shirt off in the first fifteen minutes of the movie and stays like that for the other ninety. Nobody remembers that when I won an Oscar, I spent the entire movie stuffed into a black coat, the only skin showing was my face and hands. People seem to have forgotten I can actually act.

Don’t get me wrong, I like fame and the movies I star in, but sometimes I’d like something that showcases my skills more than my abs.

A middle-aged man with a beer belly hidden under his jacket approaches us, and I realize I’m still hugging Samantha way to close for a married woman.

“Can I dance with my wife?” he asks, smiling sweetly at her.

“Sure,” I blurt out jumping back way too fast to be smooth and waving at the couple that doesn’t even pay attention to me.

I march to the bar where I left Aaron and find him chuckling. He probably saw everything that happened on the dance floor.

“Fuck my life,” I mumble, waving down the bartender to order something stronger than champagne.

“Not your best night, I guess,” he jokes.

“Shut up, please.”

This night perfectly summarizes my last few years. I have a life most people envy. I’m rich, famous, and I don’t have any problems meeting women. The thing is, nobody takes me seriously. I’m a stereotype, a cliché: the shallow Hollywood star, good for fucking and taking off my shirt on screen but nobody stays around long enough to dig under the surface.

Fuck. My. Life.

“Are you kidding me?” I stare horrified at the crowd in front of me.

Dozens of people dancing to loud music in the middle of the tackiest house I’ve ever seen. The taxi dropped Harper and me in front of the mansion’s gates where hordes of paparazzi wait for the last celebrities to show up. They paid little attention to us, taking some picture but not flooding us with flashes when we walked through the gate.

Harper and I are not rich and famous. She’s a waitress at one of the many clubs in the city, while she auditions for roles waiting for her breakthrough role, and I am the penniless indie director struggling to pay the rent. This is why we’ve been roommates since I arrived here ten years ago, barely eighteen, with a dream to become the most famous director in the world.

The ‘becoming a director’ part has worked out these last ten years; I’m still working on the ‘most famous’ part. Which is why I’m in the middle of the most hideous party Hollywood could spawn. I landed a contract with the producer who’s hosting this nightmare for a movie I want to direct. Hence, I’m here squeezed into a cheap dress, trying to impress the Hollywood bigwig. A recipe for disaster.

“Is that a pole dancer?” Harper asks pointing to a corner of the room where a half-naked woman is sensually dancing around a pole. She is the most gorgeous creature I’ve ever seen, but she seems utterly out of place here with these famous pigs ogling her while a bunch of actresses try to catch their attention.

“It appears so,” I sigh, and she casts a glance at me and smiles.

“Don’t even think about it. You at least need to show your face to Kevin. He invited you here, you go over there and smile at him.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I’m sure she can read my desire to disappear from this place as soon as possible.

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