My Leading Man | Timothée Chalamet

chapter ten

Suddenly, Timothée was standing right in front of us.

He looked back and forth between Sydney and me, waiting for an answer. I, unfortunately, was too caught off guard to formulate an answer quick enough.

"I- uh, we-" I tried, but luckily Syd saved me.

"We were just gonna go get some burgers. Wanna join us?"

"Yeah!" He grinned and fell into step beside me.

I was so flustered I could barely keep up with what was going on. Timothée was joining us for lunch? I wanted it to be just Syd and me. I frowned to myself, then snuck a peek up at Tim, who had a small but constant smile resting on his face. My heart softened. It occurred to me that Timothée had no friends here. He was just as much of an outsider to this crew as I was; even more so, because I'd at least been in contact with them for the last two months. I supposed Syd and I were the closest things to friends he had here. Besides, why should him joining us bother me anyway?

I shook my head out of my thoughts and turned to him. "Cool," I smiled, hoping to appear friendly.

"So do you have any suggestions on where we should eat?" Syd asked.

I assumed she was asking Timothée, so I turned to him to hear his response.

"Uh," he glanced down at me quickly, then back to Syd and then back to me, all under a second. "Have you guys ever tried In-N-Out? They don't have them in New York."

I shook my head and pushed my lower lip out, turning to Syd. "Nope. Have you?" I asked her.

"No. Sounds good. I'll drive." She took the lead toward her car, so Timothée and I followed.

We walked for a few moments in silence, looking at the ground until I swallowed and asked the  question I'd been wondering all morning. "So what did you think of today? It's my first time, you know, directing like this and I'm not really sure if anything is actually-"

"You're doing great," he cut me off with an encouraging smile. "Seriously. Just act like you know what you're doing and people will believe you."

I looked up at him. "What if I really don't know what I'm doing though?"

He shrugged, looked forward. "Fake it till you make it. Even if something has never been done that way before, doesn't make it the wrong way. It's a means to an end."

"And that works?"

He grinned at me. "It's gotten me this far."

I was about to ask him to expound on that when the car door slammed and I realized we were at Syd's car. Timothée hopped in the back seat so I walked around to the passenger's.

I pulled on my seat belt and heard Syd tell Tim to lead the way, so he did. I took in my surroundings then, noting the smell of roses and old cigars, the pristine interior and tan leather seats. Yep, this was definitely her grandparents' car. 

The whole drive was kind of awkward; Syd told us about her grandparents' place and how I had to come visit because they had a great view of the ocean. Her voice droned on the whole ride, except for when it was periodically broken up by Timothée telling her directions from the back seat. Not exactly what I had in mind for my lunch with her, although I did appreciate her filling the silence. I knew if I was the one leading the conversation, it wouldn't be much of one. Making small talk was not exactly one of my strengths.

As Sydney spoke I regularly glanced at Timothée's reflection in the side mirror, though I tried not to. I was just never-endingly curious about what he was doing. Sometimes he was looking out the window, expressionless, others he was looking at his phone, presumably for directions but I couldn't know for sure.