The Beautiful Truth

// 141

"Shouldn't you have found a replacement by now?" I asked, slipping into my usual bar stool at my usual bar on Claremont two days before filming began on campus, watching my favorite bartender slice lemons on the back counter.

Charlie met my eyes in the mirror behind the liquor shelves and smirked in a very Grant-type fashion. "Hi gorgeous. What can I get you?"

I blushed. "Uh, the usual."

Charlie softened his smirk into a smile, and reached for a pint glass and the Sierra Nevada tap. "And yes, boss, today is my last day until after filming."

I smiled, continuing to feel self-conscious under his gaze. "Good, I can't have you showing up on three hours of sleep, hungover and so irredeemable that even the best makeup artists can't help you."

Charlie leaned against the bar, both hands on the counter. "You ready for this, Sawyer Fitzgerald?"

I nodded. "I've been over to see the sets they've already built. It's a little surreal," I admitted. "I can't believe I did this...that I'm doing this, you know?"

"Uh, yeah," he admitted. "You don't have to have pretend sex with two of the most gorgeous women on the planet in a room full of your peers, so don't tell me you can't believe you're doing this."

I forced a laugh. "Well...at least it's not real sex in a room full of your peers and cameras?"

Charlie nodded to the side in relative agreement. "I don't know, I probably wouldn't complain if it were Jordan."

I smiled. "So how does it feel, now that you've met her? Is the reality as good as the myth?"

Charlie sighed and rolled his eyes dramatically. "I think she hates me."

"I think she hates everyone," I tried to reassure him.

"Maybe. I guess I might feel that way too if I were working with an amateur like me," he told me. "Jesus. I feel like a blind man out there."

I frowned. "Charlie, you're doing great. Hey, if I can do this, so can you. We're in this together, remember?"

He finally smiled. "I like you, you know that?"

I blushed again, trying to remember the last time a guy had made me blush like this. I took a long pull off my beer and exhaled.

"How are your boys doing? I can't remember the last time I saw either of them," Charlie asked, moving back down the bar to tend to someone else's needs in the meantime.

"Well, Travis is at camp in Minnesota," I reminded him. "And Chase is doing two-a-days here. He'll be by a little later, I bet. Man's gotta eat. And make sure none of his boys are here, you know."

Charlie smiled. "Who would have thought that guy would end up a coach."

"Yeah, quite the turnaround from his Ketel One days," I laughed. "I'm proud of him."

"Well, fancy meeting you here," a now familiar voice announced happily from behind me.

I turned just in time to find Julian sliding onto the stool next to mine. This had become our routine this week. We'd visit the sets as they were being built, meet on notes the two of us made in the process, review the schedule for the shoot, call the studio to give them a progress report, then head home for a shower and meet back at the bar for the evening.

I'd thought I'd be out running around, making last minute trips to Home Depot or IKEA or wherever for who knows what, but I apparently had a team for that—Trey, Sal, Jenny and Scarlett, all of whom had stuck around for summer at Cal, had all volunteered as PA's, and so, while Julian and I relaxed (tried to maintain some sense of normalcy in all this excitement) at the bar, the four of them routinely and expertly split up the to-do list and were, thus far, making it all happen.