Silver Screens and Broken Dreams (Echoes of Us #2)

1. “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” – Emily Brontë

Austin

Three years later – California

“And that’s a wrap on Season Three!” the director’s voice boomed across the sound stage. Rapturous applause sounded out from all corners of the studio, signalling the end to months and months of gruelling production schedules, intense behind-the-scenes drama that had led to changes in key backstage personnel and even the replacement of an on-screen star. This had also been the longest season yet, with Season Three consisting of twenty-two episodes, compared to the twelve-episode runs of the first two seasons.

Earlier in the season, production had been rocked when a gossip site had published a photo capturing a stolen moment between our illustrious director Yiannis and the lead actress, Christina. It had showed them in what could only be described as an extreme public display of affection – both of them naked in the back seat of his car. It had shocked us all, but none more than our executive producer, Caitlin, who just so happened to be Yiannis' pregnant wife.

The studio and the pair had ‘amicably’ parted ways, releasing both of them from their contracts with FilmFlix a full two years early. It had shaken production to its core, especially since Christina’s character Beth had to be shipped off to parts unknown, and a new love interest for our dear Teddy (playing Eli): Carly, played by a newer actress Juliet, was introduced by Lisa’s character Naomi. Thankfully, my character Mike's storyline had been largely unaffected by the whole thing, so in front of the camera, nothing much had changed for me.

As I revelled in the end to the months of shooting nearly every day, I heard a squeal from behind the camera operator, and Lisa emerged, beaming happily and throwing herself into my arms.

“Mate!” she laughed. “Can you believe it’s finally over?”

“Tell me about it,” I smiled into her neck, “I thought that hellscape was never going to end.”

We spent the next few minutes listening to Carlo’s less-than-inspiring speech about unity and coming together in times of great trials and tribulations, overcoming adversity to create something beautiful and regenerative, where we had come together and scraped together what could be salvaged from the original plotline and hoped to god that the viewers accepted the new characters and losing Christina, who had been a firm fan favourite.

“Can we all please put our hands together for our very own fantabulous four: Teddy, Lisa, Austin and Carly!” Carlo waved his hands towards us like he was Vanna White. After what seemed like a never-ending applause that made my balls disappear inside of me, I sloped off towards my trailer.

Over the course of the three seasons we had filmed, my trailers had improved significantly. I'd started with a tiny box that could hardly be called a trailer, with no air conditioning and several rackety old plastic white fans that were expected to keep me cool, especially during the hellish fortnight I was filming in the Nevada desert with Lisa. My second trailer in Season Two was moderately bigger, but had come with very good air con and a little kitchenette where I would pretend to myself that I might cook every now and again, but had failed every time, preferring to feed myself at the catering trucks scattered around the lot. Now, in my third year, I had a triple-wide trailer that would have been the envy of any actor in a mainstream Hollywood blockbuster. My agent had done me proud, ensuring that on-set perks were a part of my contract, as well as a healthy percentage of back-end merch in return for a lower per-episode salary.

I was just about to get inside my trailer when a deep baritone sounded from directly behind me. “We get beers later, yes?” I lurched forward, the edge of the door smashing into my forehead, as the shock of a sudden voice from behind me had, as I assumed from the deep chuckle, its desired effect.

“Motherfucker!” I yelped, rubbing my forehead with the back of my hand, turning to see Teddy’s grinning face as he stood at the bottom of the steps to my trailer. “I might be getting a CAT scan later instead.”

“You Americans are delicate, like flower.” He pushed me back into my trailer and sat me down on the couch. As I pressed my hand against the hot skin of my head, I heard him clattering about next to the tall fridge-freezer in the kitchen. “Here, press this.” I looked up and winced, taking the bag of frozen steaks out of his bear paw-like hands and pressing the cool, solid meat against my forehead.

I sat there for a moment, ensuring that I could still do basic functions like counting to ten and listing the presidents. I heard Teddy tinkering around the trailer, picking things of shelves and looking in drawers, inspecting its contents.

“Are you sure you’re not KGB?” I barked out a laugh. “You certainly seem to be spying on me.”

“Yes Austin,” Teddy puffed up his chest, his muscles straining against his tight white t-shirt. “I am spy, the type that does his spying in front of everyone for extra special cover.”

I allowed myself a moment to stare at the man mountain and his bulging biceps, rock hard abs that were very much visible through the thin material of the shirt, and the broad pecs that were currently giving the material of the shirt a run for its money. He caught my obvious perusal of him and tutted. “Am I man candy now, Austin?”

“I think the saying is eye candy, buddy.” I chuckled at the frown forming on his face.

“You say potato, I say kartofel .” He shrugged. “Are you not still in mourning period over lost love?”

“Mourning?” I shook my head. “I think you are over-estimating how close me and Jason were before we broke up.”

“He was…” Teddy thought carefully. “What I mean to say is… Oh heck, my English is terrible.” He waved me off sheepishly.

“No, it’s fine, and I know what you wanted to say. Jason was a dick.”

This wasn’t the first time, and undoubtably wouldn't be the last time, my ex-boyfriend Jason would be referred to as a dick, I’m sure. Jason Grace was a day player on several shows for FilmFlix, the streaming service that produced and aired our show. He would often appear as background characters, and every now and again he would score some lines on one of the many soap operas or telenovelas that featured on the platform. I’d seen him around at several studio functions and had admittedly thought he was quite cute, if a little arrogant.

I admired ambition in a guy, but sheer unfounded arrogance had been known to give me the serious ick factor . Every brain cell had screamed at me to run for the hills when he'd approached me one day on set. They had hired him to play a love interest for Carly’s character in a two-episode arc, only to be dispatched under mysterious circumstances, with all fingers pointing to Teddy’s character, dun dun dunnnn.

“You’re Austin, right?” He’d smiled at me from across the craft services table. I’d thought it was cute how he was loading his plate up with the carb-iest food available, remembering what it had been like to be a struggling actor and taking whatever opportunities you could get to score a free meal.

“Yeah, and you’re hungry?” I’d nodded towards the two baked potatoes loaded with sour cream and cheese on his plate, and the small mountain of nachos with pico de gallo smothered over the top.

“I’m a growing boy,” he smirked, obviously flexing his muscles under the tight blue short-sleeved polo shirt they’d given him from wardrobe.

“I can see that,” I mumbled, my eyes never straying from the defined muscle stretched underneath his smooth olive skin.

“Really? Well, I can show you a lot more if you want to invite me back to your trailer.” Going from zero to a hundred and eighty in two seconds flat had been a ballsy move. My brain had warred with my cock as to the correct course of action. My brain had screamed at me to put the plate down and move quickly away from both the table and the red-flagged, muscle-laden hunk on the opposite side of it, whilst my cock had whined how it had been so long since I’d had action of any kind.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I’d chuckled, giving him a salacious wink as I made a move to go back to safety.

“I think it might be the best idea I’ve had all day.” He'd moved around the table quicker than I had time to react. He'd stood mere inches from me, a few inches shorter than my height, so that he had to look up to meet my shocked gaze. “I have my eyes set on you now, sir.” His eyes had raked me up and down. I'd felt his stare burn deep. My breath had hitched as he'd caught his bottom lip between his teeth. “I always get what I want.”

He'd rested a strong hand against my chest. Standing on his tiptoes, he'd brought his mouth to my ear. “Always.” And with that he was gone. The director had called an end to lunch, and we'd gotten back to shooting.

It had taken Jason another three tries before I’d finally agreed to meet him for drinks. Jason hadn't been the first guy I’d dated since ending things with Dylan, hell, he wouldn’t even have been the tenth. I'd hoped with each time, however, that things would be different. I'd always hoped that I wouldn’t compare every one of them to Dylan and how he'd made me feel, and how I knew I'd made him feel. I'd hoped, since Jason had been a lot more forceful, confident and arrogant than the others, that this time it would be finally what I'd needed to move on.

It had only taken two weeks of dating Jason for me to realise that I hadn’t broken the trend. Everything had been wrong. His hand hadn’t fit in mine like it should. His body had felt wrong curled up next to mine on the sofa while we watched a movie. I hadn’t felt my heart skip a beat, and my stomach hadn’t dropped like a plummeting rollercoaster when I'd seen him smile. I hadn’t wanted to call in sick every day just to spend a day wrapped up around each other in bed. Most of all, his kisses hadn’t made me like a fucking rock star.

Only Dylan had made me feel that way, and I’d blown that big time.

I had tried everything I could to make it work anyway. I’d tried to ignore the feelings of wrongness that coursed under my skin when he'd touched me. I'd blocked out the internal moans of protest when his tongue had pushed its way into my mouth and I'd shut out the internal screams accusing myself of cheating as I'd slid inside his body. Our inconvenient but cordial relationship had quickly turned bitter and sour. Especially since I’d told him I had no plans to ever come out as being in a relationship with him. My fans already knew I did like women but preferred men, ever since a gossip rag had done a story about me dancing and kissing a boy at prom. Garrett had phoned me not long after the article broke to let me know that a 'well-meaning' admin assistant at the high school had supplied the so-called journalist with all the first-hand information he could have dreamed for, enough to out me to the world.

“When are you ever going to get off your ass and claim me, Austin?” Jason had stood at the end of my bed, not a stitch of clothing off after we'd just fucked. My dick had barely deflated when he'd appeared to have reached a breaking point and snapped.

“What do you mean?” I'd looked around the room helplessly. “What the fuck just happened?”

“You asked me if you should call me a taxi .” He'd muttered the word as if it were a curse word that needed to be censored.

“I’m sorry, was that wrong somehow?” I had definitely screwed the pooch here somehow. “Isn’t that what we always do after?”

“Exactly! We spend no time together. I never stay the night and god forbid we talk about any actual feelings, otherwise you shut up tighter than a clamshell.”

I couldn't even have argued, because he'd been right. I'd had no desire to be seen with him in public. I hadn’t wanted the press capturing us sitting at a fancy restaurant. I hadn’t wanted them to take pictures of us walking down Santa Monica hand in hand. And why? Because some twisted part of my brain hadn’t wanted Dylan to have to see that. I hadn’t wanted him to see me with another man, because the thought of hurting him even for a moment had made me want to curl up and die. Also, yes, I'd been aware how arrogant my own thoughts were, to believe that Dylan would give a fuck what or who I was doing at all.

It hadn’t just been Dylan I'd been protecting, though; it had still been the show as well. Whilst people had known I was bisexual by this point, it had been an immutable fact that the main stars’ availability was a major draw for the show. They had dedicated entire marketing campaigns to promoting these young, and as far as the public were concerned, available actors.

“Listen, I don’t want to sound like the heartless prick here, but you knew what this was when we first started seeing each other.” I'd known I'd sounded heartless, but in that moment I'd felt the need to be as transparent and crystal clear as I could. “My career has, does and will always come first. That means that I will appear available, even when I’m not. If you can’t handle that, they maybe we shouldn’t be doing any of this.” I'd gestured my arms wide.

“Are the press with us in the bedroom?” Jason had muttered, I'd thought more to himself, but there had definitely been a question behind his question.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I think you know what I mean." He'd smiled sadly. “I think you know what I am talking about.”

Sure, Jason had had his faults, and there had been many. For example, he had never met a server he didn’t hate and try to get fired. He'd been a shameless social climber and name dropper. He would openly use his connections to get him anything he wanted and if that hadn’t worked, mine. Aside from all that, he'd been quite honest, too honest to the point of being rude and abrasive, case in point when he'd told Lisa that her British accent must seem like a disability since no one could understand a word she was saying half the time. He'd also asked on more than one occasion for Teddy to speak into an online translator when he was, in fact, already speaking English. So yeah, he hadn’t very much been admired by one and all.

“Even when you’re with me, you’re never really there.” His eyes had tracked to the ground.

“Jason, I…”

“No, stop,” he'd held a hand up towards me, “I thought it was just new relationship nerves or a settling-in period, but it’s never gonna work if you don’t actually want to be settled. And then there’s him.”

I had known before he'd said anything that he would bring him up. One evening not long after Jason and I had started dating, he had woken me in the middle of the night and spoken a name which I had made every effort not to mention in front of him or any guy I dated .

“ Who the fuck is Dylan?” He‘d shoved my arm, rousing me from what I could only deduce from my pounding boner was a very nice dream. An uneasy, sorrowful ache had sprung up in the center of my chest. A horrible feeling of loss had threatened to overwhelm me.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I’d rubbed across my eyes with the back of my hand, rubbing away the remnants of a deep sleep. I'd pushed down on my insistent boner, trying to soothe away some of the tension.

“You were moaning and calling out for someone called Dylan.”

I'd snapped my head to the side to catch him watching me with his arms folded across his chest, an annoyed expression marring his face. I'd wondered exactly how long I had been doing this and wondered also if this had had anything to do with other people I’d dated not calling me back for a fourth or fifth date. In the time after that night, I’d been woken by an angry Jason four or five times more.

“Listen Jason,” I'd realized that he'd been right about one thing; this was never going to work, “I have thoroughly enjoyed our time together and will treasure the memories we have made.”

“Oh fuck you and your fucking hallmark greeting card brushoffs, Austin.” He'd stepped into his underwear and jeans that he'd hastily discarded a while earlier. “I’m worth so much better that this. I deserve so much more than some fucking second rate wannabe actor who wouldn’t know good bussy if it slapped him in the face.”

I’d flinched at the vulgarity but composed my face. Rocking this already turbulent boat was not the smartest of ideas. “No, I completely agree with you. You’re just too good for me, Jason.”

He’d left in a taxi not long after, his things from my bathroom and from my clothes drawers, which I was in fact surprised he’d managed to sneak into my house, were tucked up safely in a cream six hundred dollar Hermes washbag. I'd known the price, because it had been mine. I would just have to consider it a parting gift.