Black Soda Drink [exo]

XV

It had been a week of planning behind Kris’s back. I went for job interviews and looked at houses while Kris was at work. When he came home, we’d drill through improvisation acts and the script. The better he got, the more I wanted to leave.

I didn’t want to keep him from his dream.

Gura agreed when I asked to stay over at her place for just a little while until I had all the paperwork done for the new apartment. She said that we’d both find our own mansions once this movie took off, but we needed to scrounge every penny for the time being.

Night after night, I tried to bring up the subject of moving out. I needed to tell him soon or else I would never work up the courage to leave. But I didn’t know how to do it without crying, and I refused to look like a sobbing mess in front of him again.

Instead, I kept my mind on helping Kris improve. He liked to laze around on the couch while I ran lines with him, telling him which words I thought should be emphasized and where he should soften his voice.

Near the end of the week, we were both tired of our schedule and I asked him a question that surprised the both of us.

“Can I do your makeup?”

It was a simple question in my head. If he was going to be a famous movie star, he would have to get used to makeup. But halfway through the makeover, I realized being so close to him made my hands shake. Perhaps it was because I was too scared to breathe when his face was so close to mine, but I stopped trying to make him look good.

By then end of that half hour, he looked like a vampire.

I snorted when I backed up to take a look.

“What?” he asked, opening one eye.

“The foundation’s too light and I put too much eyeliner on you. You look like a vampire.”

He bared his teeth. “Don’t girls like vampires?”

“Not when they’re this scary.” I grabbed a wipe and tilted his chin upward to take away the makeup.

“Am I scary to you?”

I scoffed and gently wiped his cheek. “Not to me, but you’d probably scare away all the little kids at the park.”

“How about now?” Suddenly, his hands were on my hips and he lunged forward until I felt his warm breath on my neck.

I gasped and dropped the wipe, clutching to Kris’s shirt instead.

His soft chuckle reverberated throughout my entire body. “Am I scary now, Yuan?”

I leaned away from him and grabbed the first thing I could find. Luckily, it was something he was afraid of. “I have eyeliner and I’m not afraid to use it on you again.”

He shrank back in a way that I could almost call cute if not for the fact that my brain was barely working.

“We should get back to work.”

He groaned and tossed his head back against the couch. “How much more can we do?”

“Well, there’s the scene that we were looking at on Monday. You never tried it again even though it was hard for you.”

“Because I didn’t know what to do! That was the second day that we started and you were already forcing me to read the climax. Do you know how many times I’ve tried to play the whole movie out in my head with me in it?”

My throat tightened as he spoke to the ceiling.

“I can’t, Yuan. I can’t. It’s not me. I don’t belong there. I’ve tried and it’s not my thing. I’m not cut out for this job. I was born to sit on this couch for the rest of my life.”

“Kris…”

“I appreciate your help, I really do. But there are people with natural talent out there and I’m not one of them. I think I was meant for something else. Something smaller. God probably wanted me to start as a bank teller but then forgot to give me a promotion or something. I’ll work on that. But this…I don’t know how to do this.” He gave a heavy sigh but then quickly sat up, reaching a hand out to me. “H-hey, why are you crying?”

I swiped at my cheeks, embarrassed that I actually cried. “Because you just did that scene perfectly.”

“I did?” He pulled on my arm but I didn’t want to go any closer.

“It’s the part where—“ Hiccup— “the angel doesn’t think he’s the right one for the mission.” I hiccupped again. “He’s confused and he’s struggling with himself. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do on this earth, and I think—“ Hiccup— “you know exactly how he feels. You brought him to life.”

Kris laughed and pulled me onto the couch beside him, stroking my hair and murmuring, “Is that why you’re crying?”

I nodded, even though it wasn’t true. I was crying because, just like the woman in the script, I was falling in love with the unattainable angel.