My scene partner, Ashley, is renowned for her blonde bombshell looks. She’s the sassy love interest to my brooding anti-hero. We get on well, having been around the industry for a similar amount of time.
In a break between the scenes, she approaches as I’m taking a sip of the water Eric’s fetched for me.
“So, how are you finding London?” She asks almost breathlessly. Her soft Irish accent hidden behind the American monotone she’s picked up for the role. It doesn’t really suit her, a bit too low for her natural voice.
“Yeah, good,” I say with a friendly smile. “You? Where have you been staying?”
“Oh I’ve got an amazing little flat in West London. It’s got amazing views of the river at night. You should come see it some time.”
I open my mouth to respond, but before I can Sam is calling her over for some notes.
“See you,” she says with a wave.
“Bye,” I say, turning back to Eric whose mouth is hanging open.
“Wow,” he says, breathlessly. “I can’t believe she just asked you out like that.”
I laugh, “She didn’t ask me out, Eric.”
His brow scrunches. “That’s what it sounded like.”
“She just wants to hang out.”
“Alone. In her house. At night.”
A frown pulls at my lips as I glance off in her direction. Ashley is already looking at me as Sam talks to her and she sends me another smile.
“Nah,” I shake my head. “She wasn’t flirting with me,” I insist. Was she?
“I don’t know. That’s what it looked like from here.” Eric shrugs.
It doesn’t matter if she was or wasn’t, there’s only one woman who I want to flirt with and she’s waiting for me in a one bed flat with my baby inside her.
11
ROSIE
The waitingroom is quiet with only one or two couples sitting in chairs, all engrossed in their phones. Which is great for me as the man currently sat next to me is about as incognito as an elephant.
“I can’t believe you think the hat is working,” I grumble under my breath. Jackson is decked out in jeans and a black hoodie showing off his broad shoulders and rippling muscles, and I have to remind my ovaries that we’re already fertilized.
Jackson sits back, the seat creaking beneath him, widening his jean clad legs until his knee nudges mine. “I thought a full balaclava would scare the poor nurses.”
“I don’t think scaring them is the worry.”
He leans closer to my ear to reply before my name is announced by a woman in a nurses uniform.
I jump, almost knocking Jackson’s hat off his head in my eagerness to stand up.
We follow the nurse down the hall. I’ve had a handful of appointments so far but this is the first time we’re going to see anything exciting. It’s also the first time Jackson’s beenable to get away from set and I’m not used to his presence beside me, his hand brushing mine as we walk. I hook my hand on the strap of my handbag and plunge the other into my pocket, desperate to keep them occupied.
“The midwife will be with you shortly,” the nurse says as she ushers us inside.
The room is covered in dioramas of fetuses and other paraphernalia, almost every wall covered with pictures of babies. It’s enough to be overwhelming. I really don’t want to think about how the child of the giant man behind me is getting ready to exit my body through, in my opinion, a very small opening.
“I think that’s your spot, pretty girl,” Jackson says, gently nudging me towards the bed in the middle of the room.
“Right,” I say quietly. I pull my bag off my shoulder and he gently takes it from me, looping it over his own.
