AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But when he glanced across the table, Maggie was watching him with a slightly dazed smile on her face, as if he were a butterfly she’d seen in October after she’d assumed they’d all flown south for the winter.
Well, he couldn’t have messed up too badly, not if his words had Maggie looking like that.
“Cole’s right,” Maggie said.
It was all he could do not to puff his chest out.
Maggie turned her attention back to Rhiannon, and for a second, he was almost tempted to say something else reckless to get it back. But he’d done enough. He had to go back to following the rules.
“We canalwaysmodify the waiver. It’s my job to have those conversations for you and to get everyone on the same page.”
Next to Cole, Rhiannon considered this, twisting a lock of her red hair between her fingers. “I need to think about it.”
“That’s totally fine. That’s why we’re starting this now, before we even get into the full rehearsals. Whatever you decide, I want you to feel good about it. Is there anything else you want to discuss?”
“Nope.”
“Okay, then.” Maggie turned to Cole. “On to Geordie.”
Her tone was more removed than last night, and Cole wanted to press Maggie until she went soft, like she had been when they’d walked back to the hotel, under the twinkle lights with the romantic trumpet serenade and all the wine going to his head. Before he’d made an ass of himself, of course.
He was making up for it now and proving that he wasn’t a total fool. To keep doing that, he had to focus. And in, like, twenty seconds, he was going to do exactly that and stop indulging in the schmaltzy crap that had gotten him into trouble in the first place.
“We’re going to be good friends by the end of this shoot, Cole. You have a lot of nudity and intimacy on the books. But let’s start withthis scene with Madge from episode two. Just top line, how do you feel about the costuming?”
The script said he’d bare his ass, but that ship had sailed. Cole had shown his ass to anyone who’d wanted to see it fromCentral Squareon. And it didn’t bother him ... though it did seem odd that no one had ever asked how he felt about it before.
“I’m comfortable with it,” he said. “I’ve signed the waiver. I don’t need a body double.”
“Okay. But it’s the same thing I just talked about with Rhiannon: you aren’t locked in.”
“I appreciate that.” And he did. “But I’m not worried about the nudity on my end.” At least the script didn’t call for full frontal—becausethathe’d need to think about.
“You’ll keep your pants on for this scene with Madge, but with Effie, you’ll be more exposed. What’s most comfortable for you in terms of coverage when we’re filming?”
“The genital barrier is fine. Can we get Penelope Bullock for that? We’ve worked together before.” Having a strapless thong pasted over your junk was the kind of job where trust was important.
Maggie made a note. “I need to check, but I’ll put in that request.”
“Thanks.”
She riffled through the script. “So we just have a rough description of the choreography. We’ll get into the details in the next few weeks. I know that Zoya is going to direct episodes one and four herself. Kevin Combs will handle episodes two and three. Access to the set will be quite limited on the days with intimacy, but do either of you have any hard limits?”
Rhiannon lowered her eyes, and Cole got the sense that she was deferring to him, waiting to see what he would say. Cole was a senior talent here, and if he showed a willingness to negotiate, to think about how stuff was written, that could help Rhiannon.
“I don’t ... I don’t love the moment when Madge is performing oral sex on Geordie and he’s basically ignoring her. This isn’t a hard limit. I knowhowwe’ll film it, and I know why we need it.”
Cole had prepared for this role for months, and part of what he loved about it was how much Geordie was going to grow. But the way this scene was meant to draw a clear line between the sex that Geordie had with Madge and the kind he had with Effie, it struck him as kind of gross.
“What don’t you love about it?” Maggie wasn’t disagreeing with him. Her question was open and curious.
“I’m playing an asshole,” he said flatly.
She tipped her head to the side. “Are you worried about how people will respond?”
Strangely, he wasn’t. Cody Rhodes had frequently been an asshole, and that hadn’t put people off the character. Far from it.
But you still had to identify with a character to play them. Cole didn’t want to rattle around inside himself to find the bits of selfishness that matched Geordie’s. He knew they were there, but he’d rather not rip them out and hold them up to the light.
