Serendipity

CHAPTER 1

Quinn Fabray bopped her head with the song on the radio as she rolled up to the gates at the Paramount Pictures lot. The security guard checked her name off on the production list and waved her through, and she smiled wiggled her fingers at him playfully as she drove off. She had put her time in doing bit parts on television as she worked her way through school at USC and some higher-profile supporting roles in larger productions after she had graduated, and now, at the age of twenty-five, she had made it to the big leagues.

She pulled into a space marked 'Fabray' and grinned.

"Alright, you enjoyed it, now suck it up and act cool, Fabray. At least pretend this isn't your first rodeo," she lectured herself as she unplugged the aux cable from her iPhone and slipped the phone into her purse next to her wallet and a ridiculously expensive pair of noise-cancelling headphones. She'd learned early in her fledgling acting career that sets can be obnoxiously noisy places to work and that thin aluminum trailer walls did little to drown out the sounds of people talking, metal clanging, and cars zipping by. In order to maintain her sanity, she needed to block that extra noise out.

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, counting to ten as she breathed in and out slowly, and by the time she got to ten, her childlike grin was gone, replaced with a cool, calm, professional façade. Once her expression was perfectly schooled, she climbed out of the car and nodded hello to various grips and other technicians milling about as she made her way out of the bright Southern California sunshine and into the dark interior of Building 5.

She quirked one corner of her mouth up into a half-smile of greeting as she saw the screenwriter coming her way and she felt her heart skip a beat in her chest at his expression. It was serious. And she'd been around sets long enough to know that a serious look on the screenwriter's face on the first day of shooting meant changes. Usually big changes.

"Chase, what's up?" she asked, pushing her aviators up onto her forehead. Her half-grin turned into a frown the longer the lanky, typically-bookish man remained silent.

"I... ahm... I was hoping I'd be able to find you before you got over to hair and makeup," Chase Evans said timidly.

"What happened? Are we shooting today or not?" she asked, suddenly wary. The final read-through the night before had gone well. Everybody had seemed to have a decent grasp of their characters. So for the writer to be looking like he was about to pee himself not even twelve hours later, something big had to have happened.

"Um, yeah," he muttered. "There's just been a tinycasting change."

"How tiny?"

"Well-" he toed the concrete floor anxiously, "-Tyson..."

Quinn nodded understandingly and groaned at the writer's mention of her male co-star's name. Tyson Howe had that boy-next-door look, the build, the goofy smile, but he was far from the brightest bulb in the box. "What did that moron do now?"

Chase grimaced. "He got arrested."

There were any number of things Quinn was expecting to hear, but that was certainly not one of them. "Arrested? For what?!"

"Soliciting a prostitute," Chase murmured.

Quinn rolled her eyes at the man's stupidity. "He could have walked into any club in the city and had any girl he wanted, and the dumb fuck decides to pick up a hooker. Was she at least pretty?"

Chase blushed and looked down at his shoes as he mumbled, "Well... I'd give her a four."

Quinn stared at the writer for a moment as his words sank in before she started laughing. Loudly. Not giggles, but full-on belly laughs that had tears pouring from her eyes. It was too much. It was... "Perfect!" God, he really was an idiot.