CHAPTER 45

BATTLE LINES ARE DRAWN:

CODIA IS OFFICIALLY DEAD

The divorce between Cole Masten and Nadia Smith has moved into high gear, with each side lawyering up and court documents flying furiously back and forth between the pair. Nadia, who recently won her first Academy Award for Heartbroken, is allegedly going after an equity stake in The Fortune Bottle, Cole Masten’s latest film, which begins filming in just two weeks.

I was engaged once. Three years ago. I thought I was in love. But love shouldn’t hurt, shouldn’t dig through your chest, carve out your heart, and serve it like a meal. Or maybe it only hurts when it’s real. Maybe when breakups didn’t hurt—that was when you knew the love was false.

I wondered if Cole and Nadia’s love was real. I wondered how much he was hurting. I wondered how much of his asshole behavior was pain, and how much was just him.

I hadn’t spoken to him since I dropped off the baby chick. Word around town was that he had a new truck and bought a mess of chicken feed. So I guessed he kept the chick; I guessed he was settling in. Ben met with him twice about locations, and brought me over a script. I shrugged when he delivered it, tossing it onto the table, and scurried about finishing the batch of chicken salad I was working on. But as soon as he left, I devoured it. Settled into the recliner and ran my fingers reverently over the top page. It wasn’t bound, it wasn’t protected, it was just a fat stack of pages, held together with one giant clip. I flipped over the top page and started reading.

Three hours later I took a break, standing up and stretching. I stood at the sink and filled up a glass, looking out the window, across the field, at the Kirklands’. I’d been doing that lately. Staring at the house. I had known before Brandi Cone had called, her voice all high-pitched and excited, that Cole had a new truck. I had watched it being delivered, had seen a barely-visible Cole jogging down the side steps and over to the trailer. I wouldn’t have guessed him to be a truck guy. He seemed more the flashy convertible type.

Then I went back to the script. Read every line slowly, sometimes aloud. The role was manageable. Ida was an independent thinker, a secretary with a nest egg to invest. She often stood up to Cole’s character, keeping him on his toes, and they had a respect/hate relationship that morphed into friendship by the end of the movie. The fights—and the script was full of them—would be easy. The respect, the eventual friendship… that would be more difficult. But not impossible. No, for a half a million dollars, I’d charm the spots off a frog.

Filming started in just two weeks. Before, I’d have been busy helping Ben get any final details in place. Now, as an actress, I had a different set of things to handle. Just one teensy problem: I didn’t know what they were.

“I feel like I should be doing something,” I spoke into the phone, the long cord twisted into a knot of epic proportions, my fingers busy in its coils, trying to make sense of it.

“The other actors are meeting with voice coaches, working on their dialect. You don’t have to do any of that,” Ben said, his voice scratchy, the sound of drilling loud and annoying in the background. He was at the Pit. Cole wanted it finished yesterday, and the crew was still working out some electrical kinks. Next Monday, starting early, our construction workers would move out, the crew would move in, and our sleepy little town would be taken over by Californians. I was terrified and excited, all in the same breath. Each day felt a hundred hours long and still passed too quickly.

“So what should I be doing?”

“Waiting. Next week you’ll get an acting coach and have some media training. Have you signed the contract yet?”

I glanced over at the dining table, where the FedEx envelope lay, the hefty contract inside. “No.”

“Why?” he challenged.

“It’s eighty-two pages long. There can’t be anything good to say in that many pages.” I gave up on the knot and stretched the mess outta the exposed line, reaching over and snagging the envelope from the table. I studied the outside package, ENVISION STUDIOS printed in block on the return address form.

“Then get an agent like a good little actress and have them look it over.”

“For fifteen percent?” I laughed. “No thank you.”

“Then get a manager. That’s what everyone in LA who can’t get an agent does. Managers only take ten percent.”

“Still too much.” I pulled out the first of three contracts and skimmed over the initial paragraph, which was filled with enough thereafters and heretos to make my head hurt.

“Summer. Either quit bitching and sign the contract or pay someone to review it. Hell, pay a lawyer an hourly fee to review it. But do something. You’re running out of time here.”

I couldn’t just sign it. Not without knowing what it said. Not without knowing what I was giving up or agreeing to. “I’ll call my lawyer,” I finally said, dropping the contract back into the pack.

“And then you’ll sign it?”

“Depending on what he says, yes.” I tossed the contracts back on the table and tried to smile at Ben’s celebration on the other end of the phone.

“Okay, go. Call him right now.” If I could see him, I’d bet a hundred dollars he was doing a little shooing motion in the midst of the construction area.

“I will,” I promised, and hung up the phone, eyeing the mess of phone line. My next purchase: a new cord. Or better yet, a cordless phone. Really fancy stuff.

I needed to handle the contract; I knew that. I needed to have a professional review it; I knew that. It was worth paying an attorney; it was smart to pay an attorney. And I had one, one who had known me my entire life, one who would watch out for my best interests and do it for free.

I picked the phone back up off the base, took a deep breath, and called Scott Thompson. My attorney. My ex.

CHAPTER 46

Cocky seemed lonely. Cole sat next to the bathtub, in workout shorts and tennis shoes, and watched him. The baby rooster scratched at the Quincy newspaper and looked up at Cole. Tilted his head and opened his beak. Chirped out a tiny sound. Cole had turned the bathtub into his new home, the lamp plugged in and sitting at the left end, three layers of newspaper lining the bottom, the tub four times the size of Summer’s pathetic creation. He was bigger this week, his legs long with giant knobby knees halfway up. Early that morning, he had puffed his chest, white down fluffing out and strutted. Cole had laughed, his toothbrush in his mouth, mid-brush, and pulled out his phone. Tried to catch video of the action but failed.

Now, he pushed off the floor and bent over the tub. Scooped up the bird and held him to his chest, the bird’s feet kicking against his chest. Walking out the bathroom and thru the backdoor he set him carefully on the back porch. Stepping down the back steps, he looked back and saw the bird carefully follow ’til he got to the edge of the first step and stop, wobbling, his head tilting down at the fall, then back up at Cole.

“You can do it.” Cole patted his leg for encouragement, then felt stupid. He crouched down and clucked. The chick squatted, then hopped.