Apparently,pretty badaccording to the fourteen taxi drivers in a row who insisted they weren’t leaving Manchester for love nor money.
Taxi driver number fifteen agreed to drive him as far as he thought safe for a significant bank transfer and an autograph, once he’d wheedled out of Nash that he was an actor.Unfortunately,as far as he could goturned out to be a service station outside Chester, which wasn’t eveninWales.The man simply refused to cross the border, as though things were going to get that much worse if he tried.
Granted, he might have been onto something.
It was pure luck (or perhaps, on reflection, terribly bad luck) that, just as the taxi zoomed off, a huge truck full of sheep had pulled up alongside him, ready to fuel up at the gas station.Nash is recognisable, he knows that.He has ‘The Look’ of an actor, so to speak, and globally, enough people have the streaming services that host his various films that they’ve at least scrolled past his face, if not watched something he was in.Unless he meets a real connoisseur of the romance genre, he doesn’t get outright recognised as much ashey you look familiar-ed.
This together with his generally helpless situation made it even more improbable that the driver of said sheep truck, Gethin, the very Welsh farmer, was not only a huge Nash Nadeau fan, but was heading back home to Walesandwould be passing the town where Nash was staying.Despite years of festive-themed films, Nash has never stopped to consider whether a Christmas miracle was a real thing, until now.
And sure, Gethin’s truck reeked of sheep – a smell he’s convinced he’s never experienced so intensely before now – and Gethin was a little strange and over-enthusiastic, but he was also Nash’s best chance of escaping that service station.
Nash paid for the gas, because that only seemed polite, but wow is it expensive in the UK.
The drive took a couple of hours, and from Gethin’s enthusiastic questioning, Nash isn’t entirely convinced the man didn’t go well out of his way for an exclusive interview.But what was the cost of a few incredibly invasive questions in exchange for a possibly lifesaving lift?A few sanity points that he would have definitely lost if he’d been stranded in Chester.
Anyway.At least he’s here.Well, he’s definitely ...somewhere, and Gethin was insistent this was the right place.If only Nash’s phone would work, he could dig all the information out.This is why people print things still; just in case they’re stuck in a catastrophic snowstorm in the middle of nowhere.
Now, he rubs at his soaked, wind-blown hair with the damp top he just took off, which typically just makes his reflection in the mirror look even more like he’s been on the journey from hell.Which, well, he might have been.
The dry, clean, and crucially not-smelling-of-sheep clothes do brighten his mood enough that he can face leaving the bathroom and talking again with the ornery café owner.
God knows why that guy is acting as if Nash’s entire existence is his own personal cross to bear.Like, come on, it’s asnowstorm, dude.Help a guy out?Nash only asked him for a coffee.It’s not as if he asked the man to polish his boots, or give him a piggyback through the snow.Though, given he’s going to have to go out into the snow in jeans again, maybe he should ask to be carried.
All he needs to do is get this weird, gangly British man to direct him to the place Tessa booked, and then he can get out of here.Be alone,finally.
Thank fuck he packed too many clothes and a full bottle of testosterone gel.
Get it together, Nadeau.The show must go on and all that crap.
All he needs to do is slap on some good old North American charm, like every miserable press circuit has taught him to do.
This is nothing.This is just one weird dude.
He can do this.
Be polite, ask for help, get the fuck out of there.Easy.
And with that, he opens the bathroom door.
Chapter Five
Christopher
While Nash is changing, Christopher somehow finds himself further down an anxiety spiral.He’s not the best in novel social situations, and this isreally fuckingnovel.
It’s a very weird thing to meet someone you feel you know.But really, it’s Nash’scharactershe knows – perhaps that’s why the man himself feels so alien.
Nadeau himself is famously rather private.There never seem to be interviews or profiles of him.The last thing Christopher remembers was one of those Google autocomplete video interviews byWired, where Nash said he liked tacos and found it weird that so many of the questions were about who he was dating and where he lived.The number of interviews he’d done really dropped off afterParental Units, his first role in a family drama where he played a trans teenager.After going through puberty on screen, perhaps it was understandable that he wouldn’t want to subsequently share much else with a world so obsessively curious about trans bodies.
The thing Christopher had noticed about Nash was that he always seemed to be alone.Some kind of island, apart from the others.He was never papped, and never posted pictures of himself with his famous friends.At one time, Christopher had thought it was just privacy, but on the Christmas-movie Reddit that Christopher followed way too intently, someone who had assisted on one of Nash’s film sets said that Nash was just like that.Kept to himself.
Is it weird that he knows all this?
It is, isn’t it?
As Nash will be on his way back into the main café any moment, all being well, Christopher decides that he will just have to pretend he doesn’t know who Nash is.Yes, that’ll be much more casual and won’t prolong the situation.Hopefully, Christopher can keep his cool and Nash can just chalk up any prior awkwardness to him being British.
Nash returns from the bathroom in a clean pair of dark blue jeans and a brown checked shirt that appears to be lined with faux fur.In his hands are his damp clothes.‘Is it okay if I hang these up for a second?’
