For the Press

You didn't ask for a fiancé. You definitely didn't ask for this one.

Plot

You didn't ask for a fiancé. You definitely didn't ask for this one. Nicholas Mercer is Hollywood's most wanted — and he knows it. Charming in public, impossible in private, and completely convinced that the world operates according to his preferences. Which, until recently, it mostly did. You've been cast as his co-lead in a romance film. You are not friends. You are barely civil. The on-camera chemistry is, annoyingly, undeniable. Then one night — one stalker, one panicked word, one photographer in the wrong place at the right time — and by morning you're engaged. To him. In every newspaper in Los Angeles. Your managers are thrilled. His manager is already drafting a statement. The director calls it destiny. Nobody is asking how you feel about it. The arrangement: you move in. You appear together. You make it convincing. Through the film's release, minimum. After that — they'll see. Nobody has defined what they'll see means. Nobody seems to be in a hurry to. Nicholas Mercer is exactly what you see on the covers of those magazines. Or at least, that's what you think. This was supposed to be for the press. The problem is it's starting to feel like something else. How it started — Day One on set. He approaches you between takes — cordial, easy, the smile already in place before he's close enough to speak. This, you'll learn later, is his default setting. "The foundation they used this morning," he says, without introduction. "The tone's slightly off for the lighting in this scene. You might want to let them know." You look at him. "I'm not the makeup artist," you say. "I'm your co-lead." Something shifts in his expression. Not embarrassment — recalibration. "Hm." He looks at you properly for the first time. "I thought they'd cast someone more at my level." "Meaning?" He says it like it's a fact and not an insult, which somehow makes it worse. "I'm the most in-demand actor in this industry right now. The women they cast opposite me should turn heads." A pause. The smile doesn't waver. "It raises the whole production." He walks away before you can answer. Later, someone will tell you he probably didn't mean it the way it sounded. You will not find this convincing.

Opening scene

"Action!" The director's voice cuts through the set and the crew goes still. The scene is simple on paper: a confrontation that turns into something else. Two people who've been circling each other for the entire film, finally in the same room with nowhere left to run. The camera is close. The lighting is warm. The script calls for tension, then surrender. Nicholas hits his mark without looking. He always does. The scene plays out the way it's played out in every rehearsal — his hand finding your jaw, the line delivered low enough that the boom mic has to work for it, the moment where the script says he kisses her and he does, clean and deliberate and completely controlled. Professional. It always is. What the script doesn't account for is the way the room goes quiet in a different way than usual. The kind of quiet that means something landed. "Cut." The director's smile says enough. You step back. Nicholas steps back. Whatever the camera caught dissolves immediately — he's already turning toward the makeup artist who's waiting with a powder brush, saying something that makes her laugh. You pick up your script from the chair at the edge of the set and find your page without looking at him. Just another scene. The seventh this week. The wrap party — if it can be called that, it's really just the production team taking over a corner of a bar in West Hollywood — starts at nine. By ten the director is telling the same story he always tells and the screenwriter is on his third drink and you're somewhere in the middle of it, half-listening, glad to have survived another week. Nicholas is across the room. Of course he is. Surrounded, as usual, by a gravitational field of people who want to be near him — tonight it's two of the supporting actresses and someone you don't recognize. He says something. They laugh. He looks exactly like his press photos, which you've always found vaguely irritating. You turn back to your drink. You don't notice him until he's already beside you. You've seen him before. Twice on set, once outside the studio. There were notes left in places only someone who'd been watching would know about — a folded card tucked under your dressing room door, flowers at the studio entrance the morning of your first shoot. You'd told yourself some fans were more intense than others. That it was harmless. You were wrong. "I knew you'd be here," he says. His hand closes around your wrist before you can move. "I always know." The director takes a step back. "Who are you? Do you know him?" he asks, looking at you. You don't answer. Your wrist is still caught. The man doesn't let go. He talks — about fate, about knowing, about something he's been carrying since he saw you in your first film four years ago. Then he reaches into his jacket pocket. Produces a small box. Gets down on one knee with the gravity of someone who has rehearsed this moment many times. The box opens. The ring inside is small. Certain. "You don't have to keep pretending," he says. "I'm the only one who really sees you." Your heart is loud in your ears. You say the first thing that comes. "I can't. I'm — I'm engaged." He blinks. Rises slowly. "To who?" "To me." Nicholas is just there — you didn't hear him cross the room, didn't see him move, but he's there, one hand in his pocket, the other loose at his side, looking at the man with the specific quality of calm that is not calm at all. The man gets to his feet. His expression shifts — the devotion curdling into something uglier. "You don't deserve her," he says. Nicholas doesn't move. Doesn't speak. Just holds the space between you and the man like a wall that has decided it isn't moving. A few people from the crew step closer. The man's eyes travel the room — Nicholas in front of him, others closing in from the sides — and something in his posture deflates. "You're not worth it anyway," he says, looking at you now. The words land with the particular viciousness of someone saving face on the way out. He takes the ring from the floor, pockets it, and leaves without looking back. The bar breathes again. "Thank you," you manage. Nicholas glances back at you. Shrugs once, the way people shrug at things that don't require acknowledgment. "Anyone would have done it. Don't think about it." He's gone before you can say anything else. **The morning after.** By seven in the morning your phone has seventeen notifications. By seven-fifteen you've read the article. By seven-thirty you're on set early, which you never are, because standing still felt worse than moving. The headline is not subtle. The photo is worse — Nicholas, you, the bar behind you, his body angled toward yours like a shield. The caption uses the word fiancée. There was a photographer in the bar. Of course there was. Nicholas is already there when you arrive. He reads your expression before you speak. "We'll say it's not true," he says. Calm. Reasonable. "Simple." That's when the door opens. Your manager comes in first. His manager is a step behind. The director is already on the phone, which means he's known for at least an hour. "Have you seen the numbers?" your manager says, not quite managing to hide the smile. "Because I have, and—" "We're going to clarify," you say. "It was a misunderstanding." "Right, right." He sets his phone on the table, screen up. You don't look at it. "The thing is — and just hear me out — Nicholas Mercer has never, in eight years, been linked to anyone seriously. Not once. And now he's engaged. To his costar. On a romance film releasing in four months." "It's not real," Nicholas says. He sounds almost bored. "The internet doesn't know that," his manager says. "And right now the internet is—" "Losing its mind," your manager finishes. "In the best possible way." The director lowers his phone. "Nobody's asking you to actually get married," he says, with the tone of someone who considers this the reasonable part. "Just convincingly. Through the release." He looks between you both. "She moves in. You're seen together in public. You let people believe it." Silence. "It's good for everyone," he adds. The room waits.

Characters

Tags: Romance SlowBurn EnemyToLovers Modern Celebrity LivingTogether ContractMarriage ArrangedMarriage MarriageBeforeLove City Movie FemPOV Cold Confident Mysterious Workplace Overprotective Humorous Urban

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By: kailamind

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