The Real Real by Emma McLaughlin, Nicola Kraus Page A

keep the sun from amplifying the heat of the basement ovens come noon.
    “Jesse!”
    I twist to see Drew jogging over from the Stop & Shop parking lot across the street. “You’re always running!”
    What?
    “What?” He reaches me, his breath coming out in little puffs.
    “What?” Take two. “Hey, what’re you doing here?”
    “Working.” He points at the red apron over his windbreaker. “The cart kid’s sick today so I’m on duty.”
    “Cool. I didn’t know you worked there,” I lie, leaning into the pole like a cane to steady myself against a wave of nerves because, despite his initial declaration of being in this together, I’m always with Nico and Melanie and he’s with Jase and Rick. Other than crowded chaotic morning check-ins, we haven’t exchanged more than a “What’s 105

    up?” since that second day in the trailer.
    “Yeah, Sundays in the stockroom. Just helping out my folks with the bills.” He looks away, and I wonder just how bad things are. “And, you know, saving for a Maybach.” He raises his head, squinting into the bright sky.
    “I’m working while you’re working, so that’s probably why you haven’t . . . ” You know that I’m working when you’re working? I pray he couldn’t see me gazing from the counter in my fetching Prickly Pear trucker cap—thanks, NYS health code.
    “Yeah.” We smile stupidly at each other and, staring up at his wind-reddened cheeks, I can’t think of a single thing to say. “So . . . ” and that went nowhere.
    He tucks his hands in his pockets. “It’s nice out here this morning, just kinda being out here by myself.”
    “I can go back inside.”
    “No.” He laughs. “Just with all the filming this weekend.”
    “What did they make you do?” I will my nose not to drip in the cold.
    “Oh, I had to go to some pool place in Montauk with Jase and Rick, and we were there, like, all night shooting the same thing over and over, which was kind of . . . ”
    “Weird?”
    “Yeah. And then they did, like, all these beach walk things yesterday. So many freaking people.”
    “Come on, dude.” I cock my head in my best Fletch, daring to poke his ribs. “You’re not having more freakin’

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    fun than ever before doing what kids do?”
    “Not bad.” He grins.
    “You wish you were wearing a mike pack right now, admit it.”
    He raises a shoulder, his name tag going askew. “I do kinda miss the raw skin and clammy wire.”
    My turn to laugh.
    “Yeah . . . ” He looks intently at me. “It’s all a little—”
    “Much,” I fill in. “Much makeup. Much people. Much weirdness with friends . . . ”
    “You too?” He steps closer and, beneath his flushed cheeks, I notice a small patch of stubble at his jaw that he missed shaving.
    “I promised Caitlyn I’d make sure she got cast and yesterday had to tell her she wasn’t,” I confess. “I feel like I ran over her dog.”
    “I know.” He crosses his arms over his apron. “I was supposed to watch my little brother Friday night and then, obviously, that didn’t happen, and my mom came down on me about how I’m getting a big head.”
    “I see you and raise you.” I look up at him and let my hand dart out for a split second to his forearm. “My parents drove all the way to Providence only to turn right around in the wee hours to check local hospitals for my mangled corpse. So they’re loving me. It’s like this . . .
    thing that’s kind of landed between us and—”
    “Everyone. Exactly.” He shoves his hands in his pockets 107

    and clears his throat, his bangs falling in his eyes. “Listen, do you want to grab lunch together?” I feel a tremble up my spine. “I can break at eleven fifteen, and we can hit the deli counter and make use of my six percent discount?”
    “I can bring dessert.” I lift up on the balls of my Converses. “At a full eight percent off, thank you very much.”
    “Cool!” Smiling, he jogs backward across the street toward the edge of the