“Hi, Mom,” Drew said, a little sheepish. “Sorry it’s been, uh. Well. I’m sorry I didn’t return your call until now.”
“It’s all right, sweetheart. We know you’re busy.”
His father chimed in, “We’re just happy to hear from you. Is everything okay?”
Drew exhaled and bit his lips, and Steve nudged his foot under the table in a show of support. “Actually yeah. Everything’s great. But I don’t…. Can you catch me up on what’s new with you guys first? My thing is sort of hard to follow, and I don’t want to miss anything.”
Drew’s parents ran through the news in, Steve guessed, order of ascending importance. That seemed odd, but then again, maybe it was a tactic for keeping him on the phone longer, if they didn’t speak very often. The new puppy had peed on his mother’s houseplant, his great-aunt needed a pacemaker, and the neighbor down the street hit the line for the sprinkler system when digging a hole for a koi pond and flooded half the street before they got the water turned off.
“And I don’t know if Sarah told you, but she and Eric set a date for the wedding.”
From the momentary flash on Drew’s face, no, she hadn’t told him. “That’s great,” he said. “I’ll have to make sure to get the details. I don’t want to miss it.”
“And I think that’s everything,” his mother concluded quickly, in a tone that Steve guessed was meant to signal to her husband that he’d better not think of anything else to add because she was dying to grill Drew about his recent tabloid appearance. “Now tell us what’s new with you.”
Steve valiantly held in a laugh at Drew’s expense. Drew stuck his tongue out. “Well, as you may have guessed from various news sources of ill repute, I… met someone.”
“That’s wonderful! Will you tell us about him—them?”
So she’d definitely looked at the pictures.
“His name is Steve.” Drew squeezed his fingers. Steve was tempted to leave the table—having someone talk about you as if you weren’t there was a cringeworthy experience—but the squeeze anchored him in place. “He’s a writer… and an actor. He’s actually the writer of and my costar in the movie I’m doing now. I bullied him into the second part.”
“Drew!” his mother laughed in admonishment. “How did you manage that?”
Drew and Steve met eyes, and Steve lifted his shoulders. “It’s possible he finds me unaccountably irresistible,” Drew admitted.
Steve grinned at the tabletop.
“There,” he said when the conversation was over and Drew’s parents had hung up. His mother was obviously over the moon that Drew had found someone more permanent. “That wasn’t so bad, right?”
“You provide excellent moral support.” Drew smiled tiredly. “Okay, I’m going to shower, and then I’m probably going to crash. That okay?”
Shrugging, Steve said, “Sure. I’ll probably be asleep by the time you’re out.”
He wasn’t, quite, when it came down to it: Drew climbed into bed just as Steve was drifting off. He had just enough presence of mind to lift his arm so Drew could snuggle under.
“SHE’Sa natural,” Steve’s mother said after Rita’s first scene wrapped. She was waiting in Steve’s chair under the sunshade, looking for all the world as though she were about to take one step out of the chair and join them in the movie.
“Obviously it runs in the family,” Drew chirped, though he flung himself into his own chair with considerably less energy than he’d put into his voice. One of the production assistants handed him a Perrier.
Rita herself was currently gorging herself on cold water. Soon Marla would ferry her back to a nice air-conditioned hotel room to recover. The desert heat didn’t agree with her—they were being careful to film her scenes quickly and make sure she had a chemically cooled mat and a shady place to refresh herself, but they still put her in an air-conditioned trailer if they had more than five minutes between takes.
Honestly they were lucky she had learned her hand signals so well, or it wouldn’t have been worth casting her at all. But she rarely missed a cue, and when she did—when Drew as Scotty “broke into” her mistress’s house to rescue her—her ad-libbed jumping all over him fit the scene perfectly anyway.
“Obviously,” Marla agreed, standing. She grabbed Steve by his upper arms and planted a kiss on either cheek. “You’re wonderful, darling. I’m so proud of you.”
Steve didn’t have to do much acting; he just followed Drew around likehewas the lovesick puppy. “Thanks, Mom.”
Then she shook her head, her eyes faraway. “If your father were here….”
Steve’s throat got thick and he blinked hard. “Yeah.”
“Oh, but look at me. Harshing your comedy buzz with my pathos.” She released him. “Are you finished with Rita for the day? She seems tired.”
Steve looked at Nina, who was one chair over. She nodded. “Yeah, she’s done. Give her a bully stick from me.”
“I will. I—” Something buzzed quietly. “Excuse me.” Marla took out her phone and opened it. Steve couldn’t hear whatever was being said, but her countenance went from smooth if somewhat wistful to confused to apoplectic in the space of a few terse sentences.
