PERMANENT - Leonardo DiCaprio

Chapter 21 - Developments

Tuesday 2.25pm (2 months later)

I breathed heavily as I ran through the crowd of people, weaving in and out, the long coat heavy on my shoulders. I spotted Leo running down the stairs and sprinted towards him as we collided into an embrace at the bottom of the stairs, holding on to each other for dear life.

"Rose!" he wailed, kissing the side of my cheek as he held me, tears pouring out of my eyes.

"You're so stupid," he said, grabbing my face with both hands and kissing me repeatedly with urgency. "Why'd you do that, huh?" he said, hair falling in front of his frenzied eyes as he stood inches away from my face. He kissed me again with such force I felt our faces would mash together (not a pretty picture, I know).

"You're so stupid, Rose." He repeated, still clutching my face tightly, then proceeding to desperately kiss me again, quick repeated kisses on my lips.

"Why did you do that? Why?" he asked. My head shook lightly as he held my face, trying to emphasise his question through his hand movements, but failing (wasn't sure if that was in the script?)

I looked back and forth between his eyes, his face holding a look of intensity. "You jump, I jump, right?" I replied, a smile fighting through the tears, my voice a slightly higher pitch than usual.

He looked at me with such emotion. His face was full of adoration and disbelief, and after months of acting alongside him, he still blew me away. It was so easy to get into character and not even feel like I was acting with him. Though that being said, I saw a glimpse of that look the other day when we were sitting on the beach at sunrise and his face lit up as we talked about our childhoods.

The months following our 'incident' had been pretty smooth sailing and we were almost back to normal. I say 'almost' because it never really went back to exactly the way it was. There were still moments where we caught each other's eyes, and sometimes our stares would linger. Being alone with him was also different – more unpredictable. However, we still managed to retain that playful, banterous friendship that we'd always had.

As for Jake, he hadn't visited, but he called me every single day. It was like he was a different person, constantly changing, as if with the seasons. It was like having a different boyfriend every couple of months. I couldn't even break it off with him because my moral centre was too strong to end it over the phone, and he never visited due to 'work', so I was stuck, just floating through the months, trying to hold the relationship together for a little longer.

I caressed Leo's face, my hand cupping his cheek. "Right," he smiled after a moment, his voice breaking in the most endearing way. He wrapped his arms around me fully again, kissing me on the cheek again before holding me against him, moulding me into his body.

"Cut!"

The background noise increased again, the film crew rushing around, emerging from the stand-still. We let go of each other, both smiling wide and high-fiving, our fingers wrapping around each other's for a brief moment as our hands clasped together. It had taken us about 15-20 takes to get the scene right. Leo was either running too fast, or people blocked the shot as I ran. Leo even tripped and nearly face planted the ground at one point.

"Okay, on with the next scene. Pen and Leo don't move. Where's Billy? Will someone get Billy on set?" I heard Jim argue.

"You know what's coming next right? The water scenes. God I hate them, they're the bane of my life I'm telling you," he sighed tiredly, pulling his hair back with his hands, then stepped back to sit down on the steps of the grand staircase where we were filming. It was concerning how exhausted he seemed as soon as the camera's stopped rolling.