The Love Club

Chapter Eight

Butterfly's swarm around uncomfortably in the pit of your stomach as you approach the studio lot. It is the third week of filming, and you are all too aware of that fact as you start your first day on set.

"Everyone will already know each other," you sigh, your mind already betraying you. Concocting images of a tight knit group of strangers who stare blankly back at you while you walk through the door.

"So what?" Sally replies simply, adjusting the collar of your cardigan.

Nothing ever seemed to faze Sally and it was a trait you greatly admired. If a guy turned her down, she would shrug and say, 'his loss' or if somebody shouted profanities in the street she would simply turn and say, 'why should I get mad? They don't know me'. Sally thought of herself so highly, it never really seemed to sink in when others didn't.

"What if they don't like me," You whisper, cringing at how stupid the words sound as soon as they leave your mouth.

"What's not to love?"

And so, you breathe deeply as you are escorted down to a room where you are told dance rehearsals will begin. Feeling overwhelmed, yet eternally grateful as you pass by countless posters of the studios most successful pictures.

How did I get here? A sense of imposter syndrome begins to creep up your back like a shadow you can't shake as you walk further down the hall, trying to remember to make polite chitchat with the scrawny intern by your side. But it's overpowering, the thought that you are walking the same halls as the women you have dreamed of being since you were a little girl, visiting the pictures for the first time.

The room was larger in your head, but the people are just as intimidating. A record player is set up in the corner of the room, static spilling out into the air as the vinyl continues to spin even though the song has ended, and you catch a glimpse of your fidgeting reflection in your peripheral vision. Your escort abruptly leaves you, seemingly convinced his task has been completed and you stand up straight, jolted up right by how bare you feel without that spotty teenager's presence at your side. Exposed, you nervously glance around the room and catch eyes with a handsome young man in the corner. He smiles, beckoning you to join him and his friend.

"Hi there," he says, blue eyes twinkling in the afternoon sun. "You're new, right?"

"Yes," you breath out in an anxious puff, "first day."

"Thought so, you looked a little lost over there." He laughs, "I'm Walter Floyd, this is Jack Harvey."

Walter is the type of guy who Sally would refer to as a glamour boy. Blonde hair combed back from his face and enough of a youthful glow about him so that he could say mostly whatever he pleases and get away with it. His shirt is expertly pressed, and his trousers tailored to fit only him. He wasn't shy in the way of telling you his mother was originally Madeline Kincaid, daughter of Richard Kincaid and how his grandfather thought he was the perfect fit for the leading man of his newest picture, even though his father had pushed him to follow in his own footsteps and go into the oil business. He reminded you of the boys your mother would force you talk to at functions back home and it made you shift uncomfortably as memories you tried to forget began bubbling to the surface.

On the other hand, Jack came from a middleclass family and got a job a few years back as a personal assistant to a casting director by being the paper route boy on the production house block and finally landed a small role in what he hoped to be a hit picture. It's not that you disliked Walter, he is pleasant and approachable. But you found Jack kind and refreshing, offering you polite jokes at his expense rather than Walter's boasting about who his family was, as if that gave him more of a right to be here than anyone else.