Drew acknowledged him with another bite of yogurt.
“No beard would be better if there’s going to be kissing.”
Through years of training, Drew avoided choking.
“Isthere going to be kissing?” Nina asked.
Okay, Drew wanted to know that too. It was killing him not knowing how this story was going to end. “Yeah,” he chimed in with an impish grin. “Is there going to be kissing?”
Steve shot him an indecipherable look. “Shave it,” he said after a few more beats. “I can grow it back if I need to hide from paparazzi.”
Drew grinned around his yogurt spoon. Facial hair as a disguise never worked, but it seemed like it would be cruel to say so now.
That set the tone for their morning. With no further delay, Chantelle and her assistant got them made-up and ready for Wardrobe. With the script only partially finished, they were filming more or less in chronological order, so shooting opened with Scotty convincing Morgan to road-trip to Vegas to liberate Roxy—renamed for Drew’s old costar—from the evil Lila.
They nailed it in three takes.
“Cut!” Nina yelled, and Drew broke into a grin that Steve answered readily.
“Don’t look too pleased with yourselves,” Nina warned cheerfully. “Schedule’s tight. Drew, Wardrobe! Steve, you’ve got half an hour until your scene with Trevor.”
Steve’s stomach growled so loud Drew could hear it.
“No rest for the wicked,” Drew said wryly. “Duty calls.”
As it turned out,dutymeant a strange echo of Steve’s debate earlier that morning.
Drew stood shirtless in the wardrobe trailer while Nina and Will debated the line of hair that led down from his navel.
“Well, he’s vain as hell,” Will pointed out, brandishing the clippers.
“But lazy,” Nina countered.
Drew took a seat on the trailer’s only stool and hooked his feet under the rungs. He had no horse in this race. He’d shaved and waxed and manscaped for so many movies his body hair didn’t even feel like his own.
At least the consensus onlazymeant he didn’t have to get up at five and lift weights for an hour. Though, all right, Drew wasn’t exactly innocent of vanity either. He tended toward lean muscle, and he swam or ran in the evenings to make sure it stayed that way.
When it didn’t seem like Will and Nina were going to come to a consensus, he pointed out, “We’re on a schedule.”
They turned to look at him.
Drew shrugged. “Shit takes time. Gotta keep it up if there’s going to be continuity. What if I have to be naked later?” He didn’t think the script was heading toward a steamy sex scene, but who knew?
Besides, hair regrowth itched like a son of a bitch.
Will shrugged, defeated. “Okay.”
Wardrobewas maybe a bit of an overstatement. Drew left the trailer wearing slides and a bathrobe he’d be ditching at the set of Scotty’s apartment. Chantelle floofed his hair and touched up his makeup, and then he had just enough time to get on set for his call.
Steve, Nina, and the two camera infants, Mel and Adam, were waiting for him at the door. Nina whistled as he flashed some calf through the opening in the robe.
“That’s harassment!” Drew said cheerfully.
“I’ll call my lawyer,” Nina told him. “You ready to talk business?”
He waved his script, then realized he still had Steve’s costume change in his other arm and started with that. “Here. Saving you a trip, per Will’s instructions.”
“I never realized being a movie star would be so glamorous.” Steve draped the polo shirt over his shoulder and started taking off his button-down.
