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Having spent most of his adult life in the business, Callum had found that the trick to enduring long days on set was to have a life outside of filming. Which meant limiting his social time with the cast and crew and spending as much time as he could with his friends, family, and flings.
The flings, of course, he conducted within the agreements he and Nerea had for their extracurricular activities. Sometimes they were frequent; sometimes they were few and far between. At the moment Callum was only contemplating such a relationship, with a blue-eyed freckle-faced Irish boy too young for him by half.
Family was also difficult to come by presently. Nerea was at their home in Spain, having learned early in their marriage that her enjoyment of Callum’s life on set was inversely proportionate to her proximity to it. Their middle daughter, Devon, lived in Spain too, just half an hour away from Callum and Nerea’s house. Leigh, their eldest, and Piper, their youngest, both lived in London, but had their own busy schedules and complicated lives. Which made tonight a friend night.
Thom Abbot was Callum’s latest best friend. Callum went through best friends at the rate of one or two a decade, which was far better than the turnover rate on his lovers. They had met while working on a movie and they’d quickly bonded over odd films, obscure books, and the raw incompetence of their first-time director. Now, five years on, here they were at a gastropub of the sort that had recently been taking over London. Callum appreciated the food — few things were not improved by being fried in duck fat — but he appreciated the dim lighting and relative quiet even more.
“God, you’re getting old,” was Thom’s first response when Callum finally told him about Leigh.
Callum was working up to a clever retort when someone approached their table to nervously-yet-politely ask for a selfie. Callum winced but obliged.
Thom waited until the fan had gone to give a heavy sigh. “This is ridiculous,” he complained. “How am I supposed to mope with your good news and all your groupies around?”
“They’re not groupies; they’re not my fault; and it was only one,” Callum replied.
“That’s how it starts.” Thom toyed with a chip. “And you love it.”
Callum started to protest, then gave up. Thom had half a point. “Not when I’m eating dinner. Or trying to have a conversation with you.”
Everyone Callum was close to teased him about being unable to go without human contact for twenty-four hours. No matter how often he denied the accusation, they weren’t wrong. Callum loved people: Their stories, their foibles, their failures. And yes, he adored their eyes on him. But just as much, he loved looking at them when they were engrossed in their own lives, unselfconscious and unaware. Even Thom, in the midst of a messy divorce that was incredibly awkward for their social circle, was fascinating to him. Sure, he’d been yo-yoing between clinginess and refusal to communicate for months, but Callum loved him all the same.
Thom was nearly as tall as Callum but rail-thin where Callum tended to broadness. Since the divorce process had started, Thom had kept his hair buzzed short to hide that he was rapidly going bald. Callum had wondered if Thom was mourning his marriage or trying to get laid again when he’d made the change, but didn’t have the heart to ask. Thom reminded him of the friends he’d had as a boy: Loyal, absurd, and desperately kind. Callum always enjoyed the time they spent together.
* * *
AFTER THEIR MEAL, THOM declared a need to escape any further groupie appearances and noted that his own place was far too pathetic and sad to hang out in now that Katherine had moved out. So they took a cab from the pub to Callum and Nerea’s pied-à-terre in Covent Garden. Callum was glad he had a late call the next day; it meant he and Thom could stay up as late as they wanted to talking.
Because Nerea and Callum properly made their home in Spain near Cortegada, the flat was tiny. They maintained it more to provide the comfort a hotel couldn’t when Callum was shooting or when he and Nerea wanted to spend a few weeks in London. It was on the top floor of the building, under eaves which formed a ceiling Nerea found charmingly slanted and Callum found dangerous given the number of times he’d whacked his head on a low beam that ran above their bed.
The walls were eggshell white, the floors a bright hardwood, and all the textiles of the furniture and curtains were pleasant red and golden browns that echoed the brick of the exterior. The kitchen formed an odd L-shape perpendicular to the rest of the space and the tiny living area was almost entirely taken up by an armchair and a sofa. The bedroom, such as it was, was merely an alcove separated from the rest of the space by a heavy dark red curtain, insisted on and installed by Nerea herself. The layout allowed them to entertain without the awkwardness of having a bed in the middle of the space, but the flat had never truly been big enough for two grown people.
Callum fetched beers out of the cupboard and handed one to Thom. He had already stretched out on the sofa, his shoes off in deference to Nerea’s concern for the furniture.
“Tell me your woes.” Callum dropped into the squashy armchair wedged in between the sofa and the window.
“I’m forty-one years old. Divorce sucks. Being single sucks. Dating occasionally sucks, like how we can’t go to your club anymore because my brief affair with Eloise at reception was...brief.”
“Understatement. That was disastrous,” Callum added helpfully.
Thom gave him a wary glance. “When it doesn’t suck, it’s somewhat terrifying. But I’d guess you’d know that. About dating, I mean.”
Callum tipped his head to the side in a vague acknowledgment of Thom’s point. “Dating can be good,” he said. Honestly, anything that distracted Thom from his misery was a positive. Because Thom was supposed to help Callum with his periodic fits of misery. Which it was very hard for him to do when he was preoccupied with his own disaster of a life. Callum wasn’t comfortable with being the well-adjusted one amongst his friends.
“Can be. Theoretically.” Thom blew tunelessly over the mouth of his beer bottle. “I have my own life and fitting people into it is hard. Relationships are...complicated.” Again, that oddly wary look. Callum wondered why. It wasn’t like Thom was trying to date him. Was he?
“You’ll figure it out,” Callum said inanely, mostly because he didn’t know what else to say. Relationships came easily to him; he liked people and liked to be liked. That hadn’t caused problems for him in at least several years.
“Mmm.” Thom blew over the mouth of his beer bottle again.
They lapsed into companionable silence, until sufficient time had passed that Callum was fairly sure it wouldn’t be rude to start talking about himself.
“So, I think I have a problem,” he said at the same time Thom said, “I need to tell you something.”
“What is it?” Callum forced himself to ask.
Thom sighed wearily and waved his hand. “No, you go.”
Callum didn’t protest. “There’s a boy,” he said.
“Of course there’s a boy. There’s always a boy. Or a girl. Or someone.” Thom teased.
“There hasn’t been one in months,” Callum protested. “Not for more than a few hours anyway.”
“There’s a boy and you think you’re serious about him. Heaven help us all. Who is it? And how bad of an idea does Nerea think he is?” Thom’s voice conveyed the judgment of the long-suffering.
“I haven’t told her yet. I haven’t told him yet. I’m still thinking. Maybe I won’t even do anything about it. Maybe he’ll say no.”
“No one says no to you.” Thom started peeling the label off his beer bottle.
“You do.”
“You never ask,” Thom drawled. “You never write, you never call.”
“I know better.” Thom was charming when he felt like being so and smarter than Callum. If he were interested, Callum wouldn’t be opposed.
“Yes, and I’m grateful for that.”
“It’s Jamie,” Callum said.
“Jamie who?”
“Jamie the handsome, charming, complete nobody who is now my co-star and is going to be a household name in six months.”
Thom’s jaw dropped. “Seriously? Him?”
“Yes.”
Thom thunked his head back against the arm of the sofa and stared at the ceiling in supplication. “Why do you always make such terrible choices?”
“I haven’t done anything,” Callum protested, mildly offended. “I just want to.”
“Good. You should continue not doing anything.”
“Why?”
Thom held up a hand and ticked off points on his fingers. “He’s new to the business. You’ll have undue influence. He’ll need you too much. It won’t occur to him he can say no. He will drive you crazy.” Thom ran out of fingers and held up his other hand. “And then you’ll be mean.”
“I need to help him get to Dublin. For the referendum.”
Thom narrowed his eyes. “You’re not listening to me.”
“Rather.”
Tom sighed. “Fine. Define ‘help.’ And that is a sketchy way to seduce someone.”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you.”
“Are you going to start paying me your assistant’s salary?”
“Hardly. I’ll owe you one.”
“You’ll owe me several,” Thom grumbled, but he sat up and looked mildly attentive nonetheless. “So you need to get your boy to Dublin.”
“Jamie and a half-dozen other kids who need to get back when they’re all supposed to be on set. I should probably offer to pay the union fines for when some arsehole complains about whatever rules our director is going to need to break in the process.”
“And he’s going to do it because you ask?”
“Probably,” Callum said. As far as he was concerned there was nothing to be gained from being oblivious to the combined power of his charm and his box office appeal.
There was a pause in which Thom conveyed with a wordless look just how much he was judging Callum.
“He was very upset,” Callum said more weakly now.
“And you have a type. Helpless, confused, and very pretty when they’re sad. Which, according to Nerea, was fine when the same could be said about you.”
“And now?” Callum was amused and even a little gratified that his wife and his best friend took the time to discuss his foibles.
“And now it looks like a pathetic midlife crisis, frankly.”