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mlqueen89 · 18 days ago

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pairing: glen powell x f!writer oc (aimee)

rating: 18+ (minors dni)

warnings/triggers: smut in overall series

word count: 12,104

summary: aimee’s first day on set turns out to be so much more than she expected.

A/N: right on into chapter twooooo! you'll notice i’ve taken some artistic liberties with some of the names, etc.

as always, endless love goes out to my beta readers, @dreamysiren89 and @marrianena

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Traffic was a nightmare.

A newly discovered tenth circle of hell Dante would surely have written about had there been some form of apple cart/horse drawn carriage gridlock in 1314 Italy.

“Hey Google,” Aimee enunciated, loudly, as if she was trying to speak a foreign language she thought might be easier to understand if she just raised her voice. “Make a note: tenth circle of hell is traffic. Traffic jam 1314 Italy.”

She’d definitely look at her notes later and understand what that meant. For sure.

Aimee scanned the scene in front of her then with a sigh: in all directions, the highway was a Costco parking lot on a weekend.

Drumming her fingers against the steering wheel, Aimee exhaled sharply as the car in front of her inched forward a whole two feet before stopping again. At this rate, she was going to be late on her very first day on set. Not exactly the impression she wanted to make.

She was humming a few bars of a Chappell Roan/Gracie Abrams hybrid song when her phone rang, and the car’s navigation screen lit up: Adrienne.

Funny, she thought she’d changed the contact information to ‘chaos gremlin’ after yesterday’s call.

Aimee tapped the answer button on the steering wheel, her voice dry, as though she already knew what was coming. “If you’re calling to tell me to be on time, I’d like to inform you that I left on time but am currently trapped in a vehicular themed nightmare.”

Adrienne didn’t even acknowledge the current predicament. “Aimee! Oh my God. Oh my God! Can you believe today is finally here?”

Aimee sighed as she lifted her foot off the brake, only to press it back down a brief beat later. “Well, I mean, you only told me about this yesterday, so yes, I—”

“I mean, I just got the virtual tour, and the set looks fucking incredible. Isla’s vision? Insane. The costuming? Stunning. And the cast, Aimee, the cast! We are talking huge names. It’s just so, so great.”

Aimee hummed a vague noise of agreement, truly only half-listening as she watched the brake lights ahead of her flicker on and off. Just as she started to have some hope.

This is how everyone on the highway died in one of those apocalypse movies she hated. Her car would be one of the many scattered along the roadway, overgrown with nature taking back territory after people were gone.

There was a beat of silence before Adrienne’s voice sharpened. The tone never failed to rope Aimee’s wandering thoughts back to the present. “You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

Aimee winced, shoulders hunched, bracing for impact. “What? Of course, I do.”

She had a shit poker face; she was glad Adrienne wasn’t on a video call.

A month or so ago, she vaguely remembered thumbing past an email in her inbox with an excessive amount of exclamation marks in the subject line before making the executive decision to not open it.

To be fair, it coincided with a time when Aimee’s life was a smattering of court appearances and listening to lawyers chatting casually about custody hearings. Talking like it wasn’t her sense of normal that had been turned upside down and shaken for spare change.

In the chaos of ‘survival mode,’ she’d quickly banished it to a folder labelled “Stuff for Later” and scrubbed the event from her memory just as rapidly.

“Aimee.”

“I definitely read your email.”

“Oh really?” she challenged, voice incredulous, like Aimee had just tried to sell her on a pyramid scheme involving something called Gut Milk or timeshares in Florida, or both. “Then who was cast as Ivy?”

“Uh…” Aimee hummed, her fingers drumming on the steering wheel, her mind scrubbing through the last handful of movies she’d seen, “...Anne Hathaway?”

A long, exasperated sigh that stretched out until it ended in a strangled groan came through the speakers. Then, shuffling, like Adrienne was moving papers around. “Aimee Ophelia Wright—”

“Oh, come on,” Aimee scoffed. “We both know Ophelia isn’t my middle name.”

“Yeah, well, it’s what I call you when you’re being difficult and you make me want to drown myself in the nearest body of water like I live in a Shakespearean tragedy,” Adrienne shot back. “Seriously, you didn’t even just, like, skim the email for keywords?”

“I was busy!” Aimee defended, hands flapping as though Adrienne could see her. “And then I kind of just figured you’d tell me anyway, so…”

Adrienne groaned again briefly, but Aimee could tell she was still bursting at the seams to spill, so she was already launching into the list as Aimee took a sip of coffee from her travel mug. “Fine. Ivy is being played by Rebekah Davenport—”

Aimee nearly choked on her coffee. “Wait. Rebekah Davenport? As in daughter of—”

Tim Davenport and Keighley Spanner. Thirteen-time Oscar winning Director and Victoria Secret model duo.

“The very same,” Adrienne confirmed as Aimee leaned over, her fingers searching for a stray napkin in the glove compartment to mop up the coffee dripping down her chin. “So yeah, nepotism at its finest. But to be fair, she seems to be talented. And Isla greenlit the casting herself...”

“I loved her in that movie about the ballerina turned spy—”

“Well, you should have been on the panel at the BAFTAs then, because I think you and my great aunt—who is like 87 years-old, by the way—are the only two people on the planet who without threat of torture will admit to liking Bulletproof Ballerina.”

Aimee shrugged. Fair judgement. It had been a straight to streaming movie and Aimee was known to be an equal opportunist when it came to rom coms with the 2000s vibe.

“Anyway,” Adrienne continued, rattling off a few more names, some familiar, some not. “And now, Aimee…”

Aimee narrowed her eyes at the indecipherable vanity plate of the car ahead, wary of the tone in Adrienne’s voice.

“Take a wild guess who they cast as Ben.”

Aimee wrinkled her nose, mind whirring as she tried to come up with another name.

For someone who claimed every year at Noah’s school charity trivia night she was the resident pop-culture guru, she was so incredibly bad at this. “…Bradley Cooper?”

Adrienne made a noise like Aimee had just caused her physical pain. “No.”

Aimee huffed. “Okay, well, you said wild, and I didn’t say Pedro Pascal, so I deserve credit for that one. And you can’t expect me to just—Wait, is it Pedro?”

“I’ll give you a hint,” Adrienne pointedly ignored her. Voice on the edge of exasperation. “What’s your dad’s favourite movie?”

Aimee blinked, confused. “Uh—Hunt for Red October?”

A sharp sigh, some more shuffled papers. “No, no. Walter’s other favourite movie.”

Aimee thought for a second, scanning through each childhood memory of reruns, each movie blending with the next. “Con Air?”

“Jesus, Aimee. Almost, it’s about planes.”

Aimee’s brain clicked, her response coming out excited. She knew this one. “Oh! Top Gun.”

“Yes! Yes, okay! Finally.”

Aimee perked up a little. “Wait. Are you saying—”

“Yes...”

“Miles Teller?”

“No. Warmer.”

“Jon Hamm?”

Adrienne sighed. “First of all, I wish. That man is a certified DILF.”

Aimee made a face. “Okay, well, that tells me way too much about your taste in men.”

“Not the point. Focus up, Aimee. We’re so so close. Warmer.”

Aimee made a humming sound, signaling and switching lanes as she sorted through the Top Gun cast. Couldn’t be Tom Cruise, not Miles Teller... so, that left—Aimee stilled.

“No.”

“Yes. You’re red-hot, Aimee...”

Aimee squeezed her eyes shut. “You cannot be serious.”

“Glen. Fucking. Powell.” Adrienne let the name land with all the weight it deserved. “Twisters. Anyone But You. That Glen Powell.”

Aimee’s stomach dropped.

“Aimee?” Adrienne prompted when the silence had stretched too long.

“I—” Aimee swallowed.

Glen Powell.

As Ben.

Her Ben.

Glen Powell who would be on the set she was currently driving to.

Her stomach tossed the lone banana in a sea of vanilla latte she’d guzzled this morning. This was going to be... something.

The guard at the front of the studio lot gave her a look—one of those polite, neutral expressions that also, somehow, screamed, You’re not on the list.

Ironically, very similar to the look the cashier gave Aimee last week when she couldn’t find the loyalty card she swore was just in the front pocket of her bag.

The name tag clipped to his shirt read Hank, and she made a mental note.

Aimee offered a sheepish smile and a half wave in return as she rolled her window down. She tried not to fumble with the lanyard attached to the pass Isla’s assistant, Casey, had rush couriered her last night and then proceeded to email her about three separate times.

Don’t forget it. The lanyard.

You need the lanyard. Don’t detach the pass from the lanyard.

Seriously. Please. Lanyard. Pass. Don’t forget them.

Aimee was pretty sure she’d never read the word “lanyard” that many times in one day.

She looped it through the strap of her tote bag at the front door the night before, muttering the word under her breath like a spell. Lanyard. The more she said it, the weirder it sounded. Lan-yard? Lany-ard. Was it even a real word anymore?

“Hi, Hank—I’m supposed to have a temporary pass, here...” Aimee smiled before twisting awkwardly toward the passenger seat where her canvas tote lay, half tipped over in the jostle of stop-start traffic. It yawned open, threatening to spill all over and create a crime scene along the floorboards.

Hank leaned out of his booth, clearly waiting for a name and it took her half a beat.

“Uh—Aimee Wright. Author. Technically the author, I guess?”

She was so weird. She could feel it in her bones. It was like an out of body experience where she knew it was happening but couldn’t stop herself.

Somewhere, in an alternate universe, ala Marvel, there would be someone watching her life on a screen and cringing. Deeply invested in the second-hand embarrassment.

He blinked at her, carefully, eyes darting to something Aimee couldn’t see on the inside of the booth. “Oh, yeah. The book one. Wright.”

“Yep,” she smiled, holding up a hold on finger as she went back to rifling through her open bag and instantly regretting every life choice that led her to toss things in it like a raccoon packing for a weekend trip.

Dumpster fire chic: Loose gum. A nail file she’d been looking for last week. A receipt that was so old the print had rubbed off. “I had the—there’s a badge thingy, I swear.”

She grabbed the strap of the bag, reaching into the depths and accidentally yanked out a notebook, her backup ChapStick, half a protein bar, and—somehow—a rogue contact lens case. Her only set of contacts.

The case flopped onto the floorboard with a sickening snap.

“Nonononono—”

She automatically dove down to retrieve it, bumping her head on the steering wheel and letting out an ungodly noise somewhere between a groan and a hiss. She could see the contact case, open, one contact floating in a puddle of lens solution with a pebble and a hair and a gum wrapper in a groove of a winter car mat she hadn’t yet had a chance to take out.

Her contacts were officially toast.

Gone.

Floating in mystery lint and stray grass from Noah’s soccer cleats.

As she straightened, rubbing the back of her head, she could see Hank’s mildly concerned expression from the corner of her eye. “You okay, Ms. Wright?”

“I’m fantastic,” she lied through the mortification. Spotting the badge (attached to the lanyard) nestled at the very bottom of her tote, Aimee emerged, red-faced and victorious, with her badge in one hand and her dignity in negative numbers. “Just… minor contact lens difficulty. Totally fine.”

He waved her through as the gate lifted, and she tried to thank him without sounding winded from the struggle.

The studio lot was already buzzing when she pulled into a parking space somewhere near the back. People in headsets zipped past on golf carts, a woman walked by carrying a tray of croissants, and somewhere in the distance, through her half open window, Aimee could hear a faint megaphone blaring something about blocking and call times.

Aimee quickly repacked, shoving the now-leaking contact case back into the bag before she fished out her backup glasses. The ones where the prescription was a tad too weak and there was a deep, angry scratch across the top of the left lens.

Her backup, emergency driving glasses.

The ones with the thick black frames that made her feel less “interesting new author” and more “English professor who hoards mugs but can’t grasp the basic understanding of how face shape and frame thickness walked hand in hand.”

They were the Frankenstein’s monster of ocular assistance. The kind of glasses a substitute teacher who moonlights as a taxidermist would choose.

With a huff, Aimee jammed the glasses onto her face, threw a cautionary glance at her reflection in the rearview mirror, and cringed. Tried not to think about how she’d be walking onto a set full of conventionally beautiful people.

“Perfect,” she muttered. “Just in time to look like the surprise guest speaker at a library board meeting.”

...And that is why, I believe, whispering needs to be implemented in a 100-foot radius surrounding the library.

What do you mean the children were afraid of the plague doctor educational presentation?

Petition for romance novels to not be removed from the romance novel reading area, formerly called the “anti-sticky pages movement”, now tallying votes.

Aimee let her forehead rest against the steering wheel for a beat. “You wrote the book,” she whispered to herself, an almost mantra. “You belong here. Ridiculous glasses and all.”

Now or never.

She blew out a noisy breath and blindly reached for the door handle before she stepped out, fumbled slightly when her bag strap caught on the stick shift, and powered forward after a beat to untangle it like she’d meant to do it.

After a few calm steps, Aimee abandoned her calm “fashionably late” strut quickly, sprinting across the lot, tote bag bouncing against her hip, hair a little less put together than she would’ve liked. First day on set, and she was already running behind.

To be fair, in the history of her lateness, this wasn’t nearly the worst kind of late she’d been. That was reserved for the graduation (her own) she had to sneak into after her seventeen alarms hadn’t gone off because she’d forgotten to plug her phone in. Yet, it was late enough that her anxiety was already thrumming loud and she could feel it in her calves, the weird goopy feeling of weakness.

First impressions mattered. It was why Aimee was a huge, unapologetic fan of the Scooby-Doo Villain Theory™.

This was her story. Hundreds of people were working to breathe air into its metaphorical lungs and her first impression on all of them was going to be: late.

As she neared the soundstage, dodging a zipping golf cart on the way, she slowed just enough to give a quick smile to the security guard checking passes.

“Morning,” she panted, flashing her badge at the man who looked like he could be Hank’s long-lost twin. “Sorry, I’m running late—well, obviously, but hope you’re having a good one!”

The guard chuckled, waving her through. “No worries. First days are always a mess.”

At least someone understood. She made a mental note to bake Hank 2.0 some cookies if she ever made it back to set after today.

She gave him a mock salute before jogging toward the main set entrance, dodging crew members and half-assembled props. Someone was balancing a precarious armload of cables, their face twisted in frustration. Without thinking, Aimee reached over and nudged the top coil into place.

“Thanks,” the woman huffed, adjusting her grip.

Aimee smiled. “No problem. You’re the real MVP here.” Then, after she had already turned, pivoted again, as an afterthought, “Hey, do you know where the table read is happening?”

The woman tipped her chin toward a building on the far end of the lot. “Room B, second floor. If you hit the craft services table, you’ve gone too far.”

“Noted,” Aimee said, already moving. “And, honestly, dangerous information to give me. I will get distracted by snacks.”

The woman smirked as she adjusted the cable load. “Honestly? Wouldn’t blame you.”

By the time Aimee reached the building across the lot, she was puffing slightly.

It was her fault. Her first mistake was she’d (incorrectly) hedged on the stairs being faster than the elevator. Her second mistake was wearing a knit sweater on a borderline warm day, the kind that started cold and evolved into a muggy, hair frizzing kind of humid heat. She was used to running, but when it came to climbing stairs at speed, her cardio was absolute shit—combined with the wardrobe miscalculation, she was a hot mess when she made it to the second floor.

Across from the stairwell, a large double set of doors were closed, but Aimee could hear the chatter of voices behind them. The sign taped to the door was the confirmation she needed.

BENEATH THE SURFACE

TABLE READ IN PROGRESS

The heavy door creaked slightly as she slipped inside, and immediately she knew she had walked into the wrong moment.

Aimee winced as she carefully closed the door behind her, inciting another creak.

The long tables arranged in a square in the center of the room were surrounded by actors, Isla Rodriguez seated at the head with a sharp, focused expression. Aimee easily spotted Rebekah Davenport, sitting poised and effortlessly composed, and then—

Glen Powell.

Seated beside Rebekah, near Isla, comfortable, casual in the way only someone used to commanding the attention in any room he walked into could be.

In contrast to her, he fit here.

His hair was tousled in a way that probably took exactly two minutes to get perfectly imperfect, and his plaid button-up—open slightly to reveal a white T-shirt underneath—had the sleeves pushed up to his elbows, exposing forearms that really should’ve come with a warning label.

He swept a hand through his hair, then tugged off his ball cap and, seemingly on reflex, turned it backwards and slid it back on. His tongue flicked out to wet his bottom lip like it was second nature.

The late-morning light slanted in through the windows behind him, casting a soft halo across the curls of brown-blond hair now spilling from the back of the cap, and catching on the sharp angle of his jaw—dusted with a bit of scruff—and a mouth currently tilted in a subtle, unreadable curve.

He held the script loose in one hand, curled in his grip, eyes scanning the page with laser focus—until he looked up.

And his green eyes, iridescent and clear, locked with hers as if she’d called his name.

His gaze was direct. Intense. Not showy or smug, but steady, like she’d just stepped into the exact scene he was waiting for on a cue she hadn’t been aware of. Like he expected her to hit a mark that started the scene with a clap of a slate.

And for one stupid second, as her heart stuttered in a way that wasn’t from the impromptu cardio of the stairs she’d climbed, Aimee forgot how to breathe.

Her stomach did a little traitorous flip.

Nope. She definitely couldn’t deal with that right now.

Tearing her attention away and muttering breathless, whispered “sorrys,” Aimee squeezed between a few crew members standing at the edges of the room. She barely had time to dig into her bag for her notebook to take notes before she pulled it out and—

A soft clatter hit the floor.

Aimee froze.

Her pen. And, of course, her damn lip gloss. Rolling to a stop at the back of a shoe and between the feet of the guy standing beside him.

Clearly, she hadn’t learned from this morning how her packing habits caused trouble.

The man in front of her looked down and then back up to Aimee, as she flushed and whispered an apology.

She bent down quickly to retrieve her things from between khaki shorts guy’s feet as the man beside him also shifted and looked down, a few more hushed “sorry”s slipping from her lips.

The moment she straightened, her hands full of the noisy purse contents, Isla’s voice rang out over the room.

“Alright, hold up,” Isla’s voice rang out, followed by a few “shushing” sounds.

From where she stood, peeking around the shoulder of khaki shorts guy, Aimee could see Isla Rodriguez twisted around in her chair, her tone dry but amused as she turned back to again shush a supporting cast member running a line on a scene Aimee vaguely recognized as the scene where Ivy starts her new teaching job. “I’m hearing some un-American levels of humility happening over there.”

The room chuckled.

Aimee wanted to die. To shrink into the floor. Blend into a wall. Disappear from this moment entirely.

Isla turned her attention fully to her now, waving Aimee over with exaggerated gestures. “Come on, let’s go. Get over here. Everyone, let’s meet the woman responsible for all of this.”

For a brief beat, Aimee considered staying exactly where she was and pretending not to exist, pretend like Isla Rodriguez didn’t know who she was, but there was no way out of this. Heat creeping up her neck, she forced herself to walk forward.

Isla’s arms swept the table grandly as Aimee stepped away from the crowd, clearing her throat as quietly as possible as she tried to find a spot on the floor, the back wall, somewhere to look other than at all the people looking at her. “Everyone, this is Aimee Wright. If you somehow live under a rock and don’t know, she wrote the book we’re all here making a movie about.”

She shot a knowing smirk at Aimee who had now reached the table. “Aimee, you wanna say a few words to the cast and crew. Something motivational?”

Did she?

No.

She absolutely did not.

Could she say something, anything, let alone something intelligent and motivational when she was currently fighting for her life to keep from throwing up?

She wasn’t even confident about that part right now.

When she dared to glance up, at nothing in particular, she could see everyone looking at her. Definitely expecting her to say something clever, like something she’d written.

The alternative was to flee, run and never return. In these circumstances, she’d be okay leaving the pride lands to Scar and his hyena henchmen.

Isla’s gaze, now turning from encouraging to confused, did not look like she’d be okay with the sudden abdication of her spot in this room, though.

Well, she’d lived a great life.

Aimee cleared her throat, shifted her notebook in her grip. Lifted her eyes. Pushed her shoulders back like Allie was scolding her telepathically about her terrible posture. Stood taller. Fake it until you make it. Even though she could feel her soul actively trying to jettison from her body through an escape pod. Except the sci-fi show that was her life had a low budget, too much fishing line, a model of the ship someone’s kid made out of papier mâché and entirely too much scotch tape.

“Uh… hey. Hi. I’m Aimee Wright, the writer, author, obviously,” she managed a weak smile, a small half wave. “Um, well, first of all—thank you, Isla, for, uh… letting me be here. I mean, I think Adrienne might have twisted your arm a bit, but that’s neither here nor there.”

Was this a nightmare? This had to be. Ranked up there with going to school naked.

At her side, Aimee could swear she saw Isla arch a brow, clearly feeling something (probably unimpressed) with her start.

Aimee’s palms sweated, they stuck to the back of the notebook, and she barely resisted the urge to wipe them down her pants. “I, uh—yeah, this is very surreal. I never thought I’d get to be part of something like this, and I’m… really excited to see what you all do with the story.”

Her eyes flickered around the table. She took in the expectant faces, waiting or her to continue. Probably onto the motivational part. Right. Okay. She shifted her gaze.

To the guy whose peaked paper nameplate set out in front of him said he was playing Ben’s cousin, Jeremy.

To the woman Aimee thought she recognized from an episode of Law and Order: SVU who was linked with the character of Ursula, Ivy’s co-worker who was just the right amount of hardened by years of teaching unruly students.

Her eyes skipped over to Rebekah Davenport, blonde, long-lashed and doe-eyed: effortlessly gorgeous in a way Aimee’s single mom friend, Louise, had chased desperately for one entire summer. Juice cleanses. Pilates classes “just like R.D. does every other day!”. Blonde extensions. Lipstick too red for her pale skin.

In Louise’s case, it was easier for Aimee to go with the flow than to stage an intervention with the rest of their single parent group friends—especially when it was so painfully obvious that Louise wasn’t dealing with the elephant in the room: the fact her ex-husband had already remarried. And not to just anyone. After a sinfully short engagement (read: two weeks) he’d married a woman who was likeable in the way that Belle from Beauty and the Beast was kind: wholesome, universally liked by animals, children and adults alike. So unlike Louise it felt as though the universe was putting on a one-night only special of ‘one of these things is not like the other’.

As a result of the sustained overexposure to all things Rebekah, Aimee, subjected to constant images of the actress in every possible scenario (leaving a spin class in L.A.; slipping out of a club at 4 AM, hand in hand with her BFF Taylor Swift; grocery shopping in an oversized jacket and ball cap) was convinced Rebekah looked like she just stepped off the cover of a magazine—in perpetuity. Currently, she was examining her cuticles closely, uninterested, as her crossed leg bounced absently.

When her eyes, following the natural progress around the table, shifted over to Ben, Glen, Aimee realized quickly, what a bad idea that had been. She felt it, the lock of his gaze, like a punch to the gut.

He, unlike Rebekah sitting at his side, was watching her intently. As if they were both suddenly the only two people standing across from each other in the actually very crowded room, Aimee watched as his mouth curved into an easy smile, calm, casual, encouraging maybe? Behind his eyes, there was a flicker of something, a softness that felt like sympathy, but also, possibly, a bit of amusement.

In another beat, she looked away sharply, as if she’d been burned, but she could still feel his eyes lingering on the side of her face.

She didn’t blame him, she supposed it was true: looking away from a car wreck, crunched and burning on the side of the highway, sirens wailing somewhere in the near distance, was hard to do. Except in this case, the car wreck was Aimee, and the burning was the slow embarrassment of both being late and unprepared to speak to anyone, let alone a room full of professionals.

“Anyway,” she finished lamely, plastering a half-smile on, “Thanks for putting your faith in Behind—” Aimee paused, died, came back to life, regrouped, “—Beneath the Surface. I’ll, uh… be over here. Taking notes.”

Taking notes and quietly wishing for the sweet, cold embrace of death.

She didn’t say that last part out loud, but quietly, she wished she had a sudden, quick to develop allergy to nuts. The kind that sat on the table beside one of the writers sitting near Isla.

Anaphylaxis was a good enough excuse to leave and never come back, right?

She could fake it. Of that she was confident, she’d once faked period pains for an entire semester of gym class.

There was a short silence before Isla grinned. “Well, I think we can all agree that was sufficiently awkward and only semi-motivational.”

Laughter rippled through the room. Aimee dropped her gaze, mortified.

Isla clapped her hands together. “Alright, well, you heard the woman. Let’s make her book into a damn good movie. Aimee, take a seat—let’s get to work.”

Aimee slid into an open chair, cheeks still warm as she flipped open her notebook. As she settled, a couple of the writers nearby leaned in with quiet, welcoming whispers.

“Huge fan of the book.”

“Excited to have you here.”

“Can’t wait to see what you think of the changes.”

Aimee managed a small smile, nodding in acknowledgment as she set her pen to the page. Okay. That was nice. Maybe she wouldn’t completely die of awkwardness today.

“Alright, where were we?” Isla glanced at the script in front of her, made a few noises with her mouth as she scanned, then looked pointedly at Glen. “Ok, right, Powell. Bottom of page sixty-four—Ben meets Ivy.”

Glen smirked, tapping his rolled script against the table before turning the page. “You got it, boss.”

Aimee didn’t look at him. Couldn’t. But she heard the way he cleared his throat before his voice, deep, the slight hint of an accent, shifted as he started reading, smooth and easy, like he belonged in the role. Like he stepped off a page, ink on paper, modeled like clay and brought to life: Ben.

Aimee tucked her chin into her chest, scribbled circles into the corner of her paper as Glen read the words she had written aloud. She hated that the timbre of his tone did something unsettling to her ovaries, and she shifted to distract herself from it.

Why did her words have to sound so good coming out of his perfect mouth?

“So, we definitely have a lot of ground to cover,” Casey buzzed, taking a deep draw from the chewed plastic straw of an iced drink that smelled overwhelmingly like maple and cinnamon. “We’ve got costuming and makeup, probably video village, then you’re probably going to want to go visit the writer’s lounge—”

Casey Flannigan, “Isla’s Assistant extraordinaire” as she’d quickly introduced herself after the table read, swooping in to rescue Aimee from further embarrassment, was a tattooed Tinkerbell on a sugar high, wrapped up in converse and a cute pair of Lululemon leggings.

She’d given Aimee’s sweater a sharp tug and after scrambling to gather her things and (once again) throw them haphazardly into her tote (which she knew she’d regret later), Aimee had chased her out the door without looking back. She didn’t want to make eye contact with a bunch of people who likely felt sorry for her and after listening to Glen Powell work through Ben’s lines for the last hour and a half, she wasn’t ready to deal with that either. Not yet anyway.

Now, Aimee’s short legs worked overtime to catch up as Casey zipped around the lot. How it was possible that Aimee, a sneeze taller than Casey, had to hustle to keep up, was a mystery of science.

“And this is Stage B—filming doesn’t start here until next week, but props and set dec are essentially putting the final approval stamps on the lakeside cabin—Ben’s cabin.” Casey motioned to a far corner, not really giving it more than a half glance as she walked, the wire of the unplugged headset bouncing around.

“You should have been here last week—a bird got in and I think it made a nest and had a nine to five job scoping out crumbs from the snack tables. We had to get animal control in to remove the nest and the birds. But I really think it’s the ultimate seal of approval. A bird, a literal creature of nature and instinct, legit thought our cabin set looked like the real deal.”

Aimee felt this, the set, a hive of buzzing activity and organized chaos, like she felt that Steve Buscemi meme. She’d shown up, pretending on the back of a singular iota of hope and a whisp of caffeine. But instead of blending, she stuck out like a sore thumb. She was the Hey, fellow kids! line in this scenario, delivered with false confidence that didn’t help what she was trying to project. No one would believe her. Even in this settling, her words on paper, coming to life—the fuel for this entire stream of reality that were sets and soundstages, costumes and lines delivered perfectly.

Someone, somewhere, was loudly chatting about a missing canoe, another disembodied voice bemoaning a last-minute wardrobe change.

“So, that read went so fucking well though, right?” Casey took another sip from her maple caffeine mix, chewed on the straw before she continued again. “You totally fit right in, the chemistry was popping off. You totally crushed it. Everyone’s obsessed with the dialogue—”

Aimee shrugged. “I mean—I wasn’t reading, technically and I think the screenwriters had more to do with what ended up in the final draft. I just kind of sat there being super awkward and trying not to make direct eye contact. Glen sounded great, so did Rebekah.”

“Oh my god, Rebekah is killing it. She’s just like, so in the Ivy zone it’s like she was born to play her.” Casey was buzzing as she drained the last of her drink and dropped it into the nearest garbage can without breaking stride. She was turned around, facing Aimee and pacing backward when she continued, “I don’t know if you heard, but she signed on the same day Glen did. Like, literally within the same hour. People think she read the script just to make sure he was attached and then pounced.”

“Is that a thing?”

Casey scoffed but then cleared her throat as if she remembered herself, recalling that Aimee wasn’t used to the industry gold star standard of rumour and contracting negotiations. “It happens more often than you’d think, especially when Glen is like, crazy hot and has award-season level sexual tension with just about every single actress they put him across. Tumblr has been going off about this since Glen posted that mysterious playlist on his Spotify and Rebekah made a similar one.”

If Aimee hadn’t spent literal hours trying to decode a single Taylor Swift easter egg, she might have thrown a shade of judgment at the Spotify playlist hype.

“I have this theory that Tumblr runs on Glen Powell and Pedro Pascal with a sprinkle of Marvel and F1 preservatives. Fight me on it.” Casey grinned. “Seriously though, you ever get bored, and you need to keep yourself entertained? Check out the hashtags Glen Powell and Glen Powell x reader. You’ll either be awestruck or horrified, there’s no in between.”

Aimee chuckled, but her eyes were on her feet.

Casey must have sensed the sudden silence, because before Aimee knew it, she had stopped abruptly and was now facing Aimee. “Wait—so you seriously weren’t getting updates? Like… at all? I was trying to make sure they had your contact info right. I’m so sorry about that, I’ll see what I can”

Aimee tugged the sleeves of her sweater over her hands, cleared her throat. “Actually, that was a deliberate me choice. I kind of just... filtered out everything that wasn’t on fire.”

Aimee had specifically asked Adrienne to be her city walls, complete with hot tar traps and archers at the ready. Nothing got by that wasn’t super serious on a scale of you’ll live, here’s a band-aid and chocolate to the world is ending, make your way to the closest fallout shelter. “Adrienne’s been shielding me from the chaos unless it was clowns on fire level serious. I think we called it the ‘sanity-preservation protocol.”

Casey gave her a lingering look before she turned back to her tablet and tapped out something Aimee couldn’t see. In the next moment, Casey was turning the screen toward Aimee. The screen was filled with TikTok video thumbnails. Aimee reached out and swiped up, the carrousel of videos cascading past, half notes of speech and overlay songs playing every time the screen settled for more than a beat.

Big News! Casting is OUUUUT!

GLEN POWELL AS BEN.

SCREAMING INTO THE ABYSS – GLEN IS A PERFECT BEN.

BTS Movie — Concerns about Casting? #glenyesrebekahno #rebekahdavenport #nepokid

The screen was still scrolling down when Casey turned the screen away and tapped out of the app. “Girl, this—” she motioned around as a rack of wardrobe rolled past, someone in the near distance shouted directions, “—has been news for literal months. You were trending. Like, Tom Cruise jumping on Oprah’s couch, trending. Like, Doja Cat and a goat, doing a viral slime tutorial on TikTok.”

Aimee blinked, her mind stuttered, trying to conjure the mental image of the singer, a goat and Tom Cruise, couch hopping beside a shocked Oprah. “Sorry, Doja Cat and a goat doing what now?”

Casey paused, eyeing her cautiously for a moment as if she were trying to determine if Aimee was being serious. After a beat, she waved her hand at Aimee, “Okay, well, we’ll circle back to that one.”

Casey took another sharp turn that had Aimee pivoting quickly, almost tripping over herself to keep up. She trailed just behind, at Casey’s heels as they powered past a wall of fabric swatches and concept sketches, reference photos and on-site location shots taped up like an art school decoupage.

The lake house cabin. Quiet and nestled in the thick, placid woods of Virginia. Shots of the exterior of a cabin that looked like it was plucked straight from her mind via the pages of her book. Log exterior, a wide, wrapped porch looking out over a long dock extending like an arm onto the calm, bluish green water. Two Adirondak chairs painted a sage green sat at the end. Swatches of several green fabrics, likely for the blanket in the pivotal scene between Ben and Ivy were stuck beside the photos, labelled, critiqued with “too soft,” “not soft enough,” and “just right?”.

Ivy’s apartment above the hardware store on main street in Lexington. The stone archway between her living room and the hallway that led to the back bedroom where the floorboard creaked. The distressed paint on the old brick somehow both modern and out of date. The same apartment where she realizes she wants to know more about Ben, the mysterious uncle of her most difficult student. Paint chips of blues were fanned out under a thumbtack; blues Aimee had described Ivy painting the kitchen cabinets when she realized she didn’t want to live in the muted greige of her small apartment anymore.

Quickly, she reached up to shift the cornflower blue to the top of the pile, restacking the array carefully before tacking it up again.

“Anyway—having you here on set is going to do really good for people like Rebekah. She needs the feedback, you know? Glen’s pretty much dialed into Ben. I mean you saw and heard how he read through the dialogue.” Casey continued from about fifteen feet away, chatting like she didn’t know Aimee wasn’t right beside her.

By the time Aimee hurried back to her side, Casey was waving her hands, a conductor mid-symphony. “Have you met Glen’s agent yet? Margot? Scary French lady. I swear she manages his every breath like some kind of sea witch with a Black AmEx card. I mean she dresses like she’s going to simultaneously take you to court and lecture you about the most appropriate way to make an espresso.”

Aimee shook her head, sharply, when Casey’s eyes slid over to her.

“Well, you’ll know her when you see her.”

They passed a set of wide double doors open to the lot where a standing army of white trailers sat. A few signs pointing out read “Hair & Makeup”.

“I just want you to know—” Casey turned to Aimee now as they approached a craft services table where a few of the faces Aimee recognized for the table read were milling about, “—Isla is really hitting her directorial stride. She’s coming into this right off Julietta. She’s passionate about this one. The whole message about rebirth, burning away the old and blooming into the new, like a fucking kick-ass Phoenix.”

Aimee had seen Julietta at least twice. Once with Allie and then again with her “Single Parents” group. The story of the mother of a murdered daughter, going after the cartel that took her child’s life. Systematically wiping out anyone who stood in her way on her quest for justice. It had won her an Academy Award for Best Director.

“She’s perfect for this story,” Aimee smiled, not for show, but because she felt it. The excitement ebbing off of Casey, the buzz on set, the palpable, expectant giddiness of the people in the room during the table read. “I think she’s really going to do right by Ivy and Ben and the message behind their story.”

Casey was nodding before she was finished, guiding Aimee over to the closest table set with water bottles and a few individually packaged snacks. “You honestly picked the perfect time to be here. We’re just about to springboard off the pre-production chaos and into the deep end with shooting. Today’s going to be a lot of blocking and last fits for costumes. Shooting officially picks up bright and early on Monday.”

Aimee accepted the water bottle Casey extended and tucked away the package of tamari almonds into a back pocket with a crinkle of the plastic. “So, eye of the swirling storm?”

“Exactly.” Casey snapped her fingers, cracking open a canned energy drink with a hiss. She took a few deep gulps before her eyes were back on the tablet in her grip. ��Come on. I’ll show you the war room, or the production office. They’ve got this bananas concept wall that’ll help you transcend. Honest to god. The mood lighting is like, aggressively sexy. You’re on birth control, right?”

Aimee snorted and Casey’s serious demeanor cracked. “No accidental mood lighting babies, pinky promise.”

“I knew I fucking liked you,” Casey shimmied on the spot before she clapped her hands loudly, a production slate on the moment. “Okay, okay. Great. This way.”

Aimee cracked open the water bottle as she followed.

All of this still felt like a fever dream, like she was walking through an alternate universe where Glen Powell and Rebekah Davenport weren’t just casually running the lines she wrote at the old melamine kitchen table in the house she and Olivier lived in together. The same lines she wrote on very little sleep and somehow always cold cup of coffee and a toddler screaming within her line of sight.

Then, there was no way she could have imagined this. No chance she could have thought her little narrative therapy book about a teacher looking to rebuild her life from the ashes of her old one, and a man trying to outrun his past would have ever made it out of her Word document.

Let alone onto the New York Times Bestseller list.

No way people would talk about how her writing rewired their brains or was the catalyst to leave abusive relationships.

This was totally normal, right?

Standing in the primordial beginnings of your book becoming something alive and living and real?

Yup. Normal. Totally, completely normal.

Just her fictional universe becoming… real in a way that absolutely blew the wall out between her reality and the fiction that had once only lived in her head.

Aimee leaned against a water cooler in the corner as it burbled without provocation.

Casey had disappeared about five minutes ago in a bit of a harried fluster and flourish of the tablet when an “urgent” call came in from Isla. One that definitely sounded half coffee panic and half hysteria over chickpeas.

Whatever it was, Casey had slipped away with a few quiet apologies and a semi explanation about oat milk and Isla’s aversion to it and someone not getting the notes Casey had very specifically communicated about. Aimee swore she heard a shout about “literal crisis” and “oat milk is the devil” on the other end of the phone Casey pressed tightly to her ear.

So now Aimee hung around the water cooler, alone.

Air bubbles burbled as a group of people carrying a variety of armfuls of things. When their gaze slid momentarily to Aimee, loitering, she offered them a quiet, half smile.

The hallway smelled like fresh cuts of wood in the Home Depot section her dad hung around for no particular reason in the summers of her childhood. If she had to guess where in the maze of the studio lot she was now, she would have guessed she was tucked off to the side of what would be the main soundstage, the one with the set of Ivy’s classroom where the majority of the scenes took place.

Before Casey zipped away, they’d been on their way to visit a few “close to ready” sets filming would begin on next week; the interior of Ben’s lake house, the cabin that served as his fortress of solitude; the teacher’s lounge; the bar where Ben would get into a barfight.

Now, Aimee stood just a few feet back from a rather plain looking plywood door with a label created with green painter’s tape and a sharpie, “Ben’s Cabin”. It called to her, begged her to open the door that was already cracked ajar, a warm yellow light cutting across the floor. A beacon to passing curios minds like a lighthouse in the storm.

Aimee picked at the label on her mostly empty water bottle. Shifted her weight like she did when Noah was a baby, and he wouldn’t sleep. Now, she did it when she found herself standing still for too long. Part of her was already walking up to the door, slipping into the golden light and immersing herself in whatever she’d find behind the door.

Aimee pulled out her phone, scrolled aimlessly past the text threads. Pulled up her social media profiles that hadn’t been updated in ages except with the posts Adrienne begged her update. Scrounged through the email folder she’d condemned all of Adrienne’s emails to, full of casting updates and director squabbles. When she locked the screen, the door was still open, possibly a little more than before.

It called to her, a crooked finger goading her.

Well, she never presumed to be the person who survived in a horror movie. In fact, she was sure the phrase “curiosity killed the cat” applied to her 89% of the time.

With a dramatic huff, Aimee gave one last long glance to the spot where Casey had disappeared earlier.

Two minutes, right? What harm could taking a look at one of the sets that was technically (kind of still) her intellectual property cause? She was sure Casey had meant to show her that next anyway.

The first thing that caught her attention as she approached, careful, like she’d be caught if she had a thought that was too loud, was a few polaroids fanned out across pages of the script.

INT. BEN'S CABIN – NIGHT

Wide shot of the rustic cabin interior. The fireplace glows low. A storm rumbles in the distance. BEN stands near the window, his silhouette tense against the flickering light.

BEN (quietly, with weight) I thought I’d lost every chance I had to love. Every single moment slipping through my fingers... and all I could do was let them—

CUT TO:

INT. BEN'S CABIN – BEDROOM – NIGHT

Tight pan to the ONE BED tucked beneath a sloped ceiling. IVY sits on the edge, blankets tangled, expression caught between disbelief and amusement.

IVY (laughs, dry) This isn’t a serious situation, is it?

Aimee’s fingers grazed the words as she passed, catching a few messily scrawled notes on an array of coloured sticky notes. More swatches pinned here and there. A polaroid of a sun setting on the porch. A stack of photos topped with Ivy’s jacket on a hanger. The distressed shirt that Ben wore the night after they shared a bed together for the first time.

When she pushed open the makeshift door, Aimee felt something catch in her throat, a feeling she couldn’t name, but could definitely place: the feeling of seeing a sad commercial, the choking feeling of emotion she had to clear her throat around.

The first thought that crossed her mind, once her thoughts settled into something cohesive, was how incredibly large the set felt. So much so that when she stepped through the door, it felt like she had stepped through a hidden door at the back of a closet in her strange uncle’s house.

She felt as if she were stepping into her own mind, a step off what you thought was the last stair, only to find another under your foot.

Surreal. Uncanny in the best of ways, stretching out in front of her eyes. Bursting with the deep greens of pine trees, tinged with the changing leaves on the edge of fall and somehow, impossibly, the smell of the air right before rain.

Beneath her feet, the crunch of fallen pine needles, mixed with gravel from the small path that led to the half constructed front porch. Aimee was climbing it, fingers dancing along the wooden railing as she ascended to the green front door, slightly weathered from the elements. Just as she’d described. She wouldn’t be surprised if she looked close enough and could see the layers of paint over the years, chipped away in certain areas to reveal all the lives it had lived before—bright orange, a deep, orient express red, a sea foam green.

As if she owned it, Aimee gripped the handle, twisted and pushed open the door.

It creaked exactly like she had described it in chapter eleven as she stepped over the worn front mat. There were muddy boots by the entrance, a green blanket tossed over the back of the brown leather couch, paperbacks on the shelf with faded, cracked spines. The kind of well-loved tomes Ben would’ve read as he spent his summers there, hiding away. The kind of titles Ivy would tease him for when she stayed here with him in chapter eighteen.

She moved slowly, reverent. Let her fingers trail along the edge of the couch as she rounded it. She allowed herself to fall into it for a moment and leaned back, eyes falling closed, breathing in deep the scent of sawdust, the smell of cedar, and something faintly herbal—probably whatever they used to fake pine and woods and nature.

It was almost too much. Too close. Too raw. Something ripped out of her mind like a silvery memory dropped into the Pensieve in Dumbledore’s office.

Pushing herself to her feet, she wandered into the kitchen space, opening a cupboard on a whim, just to see if they’d gone as far as to stock it. Maybe with Ben’s favourite tea or a half-empty bag of coffee beans waiting to be ground. She knew it likely wasn’t even supposed to be in frame, but sure enough, there were dishes. Mugs. A cereal box with the label half-covered, opened in the way a man would open a box of cereal.

“You know I think if you’re looking for snacks, craft services might be a better start.”

Aimee jumped so hard she squeaked—and the cabinet door detached from its hinges with a thunk, immediately claimed by gravity as Aimee’s hands flew to brace it before it hit the floor.

“Oh my God, fuck, fuck,” she gasped, turning in a panic, her mind already fumbling for an excuse. “I didn’t—this isn’t—”

Leaning casually in the doorway, Glen Powell looked far too amused for her comfort. His arms were crossed, one brow raised.

“Oof. Well, Brad’s definitely gonna have an aneurysm.” There was a teasing edge to his voice that Aimee didn’t miss, even in her panic.

Brad? Who the hell was Brad? Aimee could feel her eyes widen, wild with a frantic kind of spiral she was well used to.

“Prop guy.” Glen supplied when it was clear Aimee had no idea who he was talking about.

“I wasn’t even—I just opened it and—I wasn’t even pulling that hard,” Aimee stuttered, horror-struck, trying to lift the door, slot it into the place where it looked like it had once been attached.

Since when were cabinet doors so unreasonably heavy?

How fast could she slip off set before anyone (other than Glen Powell of course) noticed she’d vandalized a Hollywood movie set?

How soon could she crawl into a hole and cover herself to avoid the approaching shame storm with a cold front of sheer embarrassment coming her way?

“It just—came off. Look, see it’s not even attached properly! Oh God. What do I do? Do I leave? Should I leave? Am I banned?”

Glen casually pushed off the wall, strolled past the couch Aimee had been sitting on a moment before, carefully approaching the kitchen.

He looked like he fit here. In this world that Aimee had built from the fragments of sad songs, the whisper of a plot from her favourite Hallmark Christmas movie, a dash of her own heartbreak.

If she hadn’t been going through the idea that she’d be fired and owe someone money, lose the book deal, lose her house, become homeless and die in a tent city next to a man named Orson who talked to an imaginary dog, she might have seen how comical it was: how relaxed and at ease he was next to her sheer, unfiltered chaos.

“It’s fine. When we were filming Twisters, I broke the passenger door off the storm chaser truck in the middle of a take. Took four hours to reset the shot. I definitely thought I was going to be written out of the movie by lunch the next day, or worse—replaced by Zac Efron.”

Aimee’s mind stopped momentarily, catastrophizing thoughts slowed to an ebb for a beat. “Really?”

He grinned. “No. But it made you feel better for half a second, right?”

Aimee sagged, a strangled groan falling from her before she hugged the evidence closer. Maybe she could get rid of it somehow. Throw it in the fake lake like a bloodied knife, the sole evidence tying her to a crime. “You’re not helping.”

Maybe no one would notice.

Maybe she could just set it just so that it looked like it was fixed and...

“Honestly, don’t worry about it. This is the most interesting thing to happen this morning—well, if you don’t count the table read, anyway. That was—”

“—a disaster—”

“—interesting—”

Aimee blinked at him for a moment. She could feel her brow pull together.

She wasn’t sure if he was being sincere. He looked to her like he was. The easy, relaxed lean he’d adopted against the kitchen island, the way his lips always looked like he was a moment away from a full, bright smile.

She settled on sincerity. The feeling that he was trying to do something, she just wasn’t quite sure what that was, yet.

“Thanks for the reminder. I’d almost forgotten about that car crash...”

“Why?”

There it was, that smile. So incredibly close to megawatt territory. She was convinced someone hadn’t yet thought of how to harness its power and that was the only reason why it wasn’t powering an entire city sized grid.

Aimee felt her stomach flip.

Felt the heat climb of the back of her neck.

She was suddenly reminded of the time she tried to talk to that cute barista in high school and tripped over a box of mugs instead. She’d left without saying a word to him, instead apologizing to the mugs under her breath. Truth be told, she still (nineteen years later) had trouble going into that particular coffee shop without remembering her embarrassment.

She didn’t miss the irony that she now lived on writing romance, when, historically, she was so bad at romance in real life.

“It was memorable. You made an impression.”

Her mouth was dry. Why was her mouth so dry?

Did her breath smell bad? She’d only had three coffees that morning.

Did she even have gum? Or mints? Mints would be acceptable.

“When you say impression,” Aimee was already half-turned, back to the open cabinet face, her mind flicking between solutions now, “if you mean I humiliated myself in front of you and Rebekah and the entire cast and production team...”

Glen shrugged, planted his hands on his hips, smiled. “Semantics.”

She didn’t blame Rebekah for jumping on Beneath the Surface when Glen signed on. If that was actually what had happened. What woman with a pulse wouldn’t?

Aimee was already trying to find a makeshift screwdriver, (a knife, a bobby pin, a coin, something) when the telltale creak of heavy boots on the front porch and the low rumble of voices caused her to freeze. Her wide eyes were already turned back to Glen who had straightened, if only a fraction.

“Oh no,” she whispered.

Why did it have to be the top cabinet?

Why did she have to open it?

Glen’s expression shifted in an instant. “Oh, that’s definitely Brad,” he muttered, eyes darting to the broken cabinet and then back up to Aimee. “Here.”

“What?” Aimee’s frantic gaze turned back to him, and she could feel the wobble in her knees when her green eyes locked with his.

“Trust me.” He held out his hands, his chin tipping to the suddenly very heavy evidence in her grip before his eyes, a dark rimmed green flicked up to hers.

Assurance.

A plea to trust him.

Quickly, with a bit of reluctance, she handed off the door like it was smuggled contraband, careful to make sure the screws that had come out with the hinges didn’t get him in the hand-off. Once he had it, Aimee reflexively shrunk behind the kitchen island, tucking her knees into her chest. Instinctively, she made herself small, channeling her inner child playing hide and seek.

Glen breathed a quiet sound that might have been a laugh as he tucked the cabinet-less door casually under one arm. He turned just as Aimee heard the door creak and the head set guy—Brad, presumably—stormed in.

“We need to get this spot all cleaned up before—” the voice was already mid-speech when it paused. Aimee could hear it in the silence. The voice (Brad) was likely putting two and two together now. Cabinet sans door, Glen, standing there, the other half of the equation in his hands.

Glen cleared his throat. Casual. Full of nonchalance.

“Powell!” Brad barked in a way that said he’d been working far too long with people who didn’t respect his craft.

From a reflection in one of the “lake” facing windows, Aimee could see him stopped, frozen, just beside the coat rack by the entrance. “What the hell are you doing with my cabinet door?”

Glen shrugged and gave him what Aimee assumed was his most innocent, I-don’t-know-what-happened-but-my-face-is-pretty smile. Maybe she’d filled in the gaps from what she could see from her floor vantage point in the side of his face. The strong cut of his jaw flexing as he smiled. “Method acting.”

It didn’t even sound like he wasn’t sure. She supposed that was why he was the actor, and she was, well, the writer.

Under pressure, in chaos, Glen pivoted. Committed like an improv session, prompts throw out by a semi-inebriated crowd.

Under pressure, Aimee edited and tweaked, polished and practiced. Stalled, overthought the meaning and weight of every word, every mark of stylistic punctuation.

Brad was silent, his reflection squinting at Glen. “What the fuck kind of scene involves you holding a broken cabinet door on my finished set, exactly? That’s not in the pages from this morning.”

Aimee could see Glen dragged his free hand over the scruff along his jaw, a smirk already on his lips before he shrugged as if he were giving away a state secret.

“Well, I’m kind of riffing. See, I’m trying to build Ben’s inner turmoil through symbolic and literal destruction,” Glen said, deadpan. “Wanted to give the author some ideas for a few deep dive scenes for Ben’s character. Just wanted to workshop them a bit.”

Aimee’s pulse jumped at the base of her throat.

Reflection Brad was wiping a hand down his face, shaping his beard, the faded tattoos, black ink shaded blue, on his exposed forearms shifting.

“Like, did you know, Brad—” Glen started again, shifting the door to rest against his hip, “—Michelangelo actually hammered off parts of his sculptures after—”

Reflection Brad was waving his hands, cutting Glen off before staring at him for a beat. “Let me be the first to say, I don’t care. Truly.” Brad huffed out a long breath, “All I have to say is that you’re lucky you’re charming.”

“Thanks Brad, that’s what my therapist says.”

“Just leave it,” the floor creaked by the door again, reflection Brad was leaving. “I’ll get someone to fix it later. Just do me a favour and don’t fuck anything else up for at least half an hour. Isla wants to do a final walkthrough before her noon goat yoga or some shit.”

“You’re a gem, Brad.” Glen carefully placed the door down on the top of the island above Aimee’s head and raised his hands as if it were a weapon he wouldn’t dare use. “Thanks, man. I owe you one.”

“Yeah, yeah. Next time you have notes for the writers,” Brad started, “don’t do any of your workshopping on my fucking sets, got it?”

Brad snorted, a sound that didn’t scream amused, before he muttered something about “goddamn actors,” and retirement in Vermont and stomped off, pulling the door shut sharply behind him.

When Brad’s footsteps clomped down the porch stairs outside, Aimee waited a half beat before she looked up in time to see Glen lean down, peering around the side of the island.

“I think you can come out now,” he said, voice low, warm. “Crisis averted. You’ve officially survived your first on-set emergency.”

He offered his hand and hoisted Aimee up to her feet easily when she took it.

“Mazel tov.”

It took Aimee a beat to realize that she was still holding his hand, soft and warm. Comfortable. Safe.

“I’m pretty sure that was the fastest lie I’ve ever seen in action.” Aimee cleared her throat, tucking her hands into the back pockets of her jeans when she’d recovered enough of her stream of thought to realize she probably shouldn’t still be holding his hand.

“I’ve had practice,” he shrugged, casually nudging the cabinet door on the counter. “You survive in Hollywood by developing very specific skills.”

“Such as: lying with confidence and taking the fall for strangers when they break sets?”

“And making it look good, don’t forget that part,” he added, flashing a dazzling grin. “Which I think I did pretty convincingly.”

He had to know what that smile did, right?

“For what it’s worth, I’ll be sure to put you in for an Oscar nomination,” Aimee rolled her eyes but didn’t bother to fight a smile. “Do you do this for all the new writers, or just the ones who accidentally vandalize set pieces and freeze like a deer in headlights?”

Glen’s eyes slid to her, his eyebrows quirking up briefly. “Just the cute ones.”

She blinked.

He blinked.

It was a joke.

Definitely.

Kind of.

Sort of.

It was, wasn’t it?

Right?

Her laugh was short, surprised. Maybe a bit incredulous. Probably too loud. The kind that shook startled birds from trees like a gunshot.

It took Aimee a minute to compose herself before she stepped around the island, past Glen and jabbed her thumb toward the door. “Okay. Well, I’m just going to go, before Casey thinks I’ve stolen set secrets and run to Hulu. I should possibly consider never returning at this rate.”

“I hope you come back,” Glen said, turning toward her. “Like I said, most interesting morning I’ve had on a non-shoot day in a long time. I mean it.”

Part of her wanted to believe he did mean it, and she wasn’t sure why. “You say that, but I don’t know if I want to know what your definition of interesting is after you’ve worked with Tom Cruise. A dude known for climbing literal hundred floor buildings without safety gear.”

“Ah, you know, it was mostly the part where Isla made you stand up and introduce yourself to the whole room like it was the first day of high school. Instant classic.”

Aimee had already paced to the back of the couch in the living room, her hand resting on the green throw blanket as she groaned. “Okay. Got it. So, your definition of interesting is watching the slow, death by embarrassment of a woman who claims to be an author but almost forgets the title of her own book?”

“Exactly,” he was nodding again, large hand on his hip.

Aimee had to do just about everything in her power to remind herself that she shouldn’t be cataloguing the way he moved, the way his tongue jutted out on his perfect bottom lip. The way he seemed to be scanning her for tells, something that might tell him more about her other than weirdo in thick frames.

“Top-tier, nightmare fuel content.”

Aimee shook her head, a dry laugh escaping her lips. “Thanks. Maybe I’ll outdo myself next time. Show up with a thong stuck to the back of my sweater or something equally mortifying.”

It was out before she could stop it, riffing, as Glen had called it, herself right into a foot-in-mouth situation. Classic. This was classically her, wasn’t it?

Like the time she’d cheerfully said, “you too!” to the very confused kid behind the popcorn counter who had just told her to “enjoy the movie”.

Glen’s laugh, genuine in a way that made his eyes crinkle at the corners, smoothed down her panic quickly. Soothed a part of her that felt the immediate cringe of the words after they were already gone and irrevocable, the bell rung.

“Don’t make promises you don’t intend to keep,” he shook his head, “but thanks for that visual.”

Aimee stopped herself before she could even process the thought to offer finger-guns in response. Instead, settling on: “Oh, you’re welcome. Anytime. Fresh embarrassment served daily, apparently. Also, free.”

When his laugh had settled into quiet, Aimee breathed within the walls of the comfortable silence for a beat before she broke it. She’d broken the cabinet. Glen had covered for her. The storm had passed.

“Anyway, I guess I’d better flee the scene of the crime before Brad comes back,” Aimee patted the blanket, picked at a pilled piece of material before she looked up again.

“See you around, Wright.”

Aimee opened the plywood door as quietly as possible, slipping out into the hallway between soundstages, carefully closing it so it looked just the way she had found it before she went in and caused havoc.

She brushed off her pants, cleared her throat, paused to check the bottoms of her shoes for any evidence of the pine needles or the gravel.

Somewhere, in the near distance, she thought she heard a (loud) conversation about what she swore was the cabinet door.

“What the fuck do you mean someone broke the door? Who? Just want to talk to ‘em for a minute.”

“Bottom line is: The door is broken, Pete. Doesn’t matter who the fuck did it, it needs to be fixed before noon.” Brad, Aimee recognized his voice.

“I fucking told them to lock that shit up until the walkthroughs.”

There was a grunt and a half explanation—something Aimee couldn’t hear.

“Oh, don’t you worry, good ol’ Pete will fix everything.... Fix the classroom set, Pete. Oh, Pete, Ms. Rodriguez doesn’t like the placement of the fairy lights on the mini putt set...”

The response was sarcastic, dry.

Aimee sidled up to the water cooler, tested what she thought was a “casual” lean before she abandoned the attempt, deciding against it. She wasn’t good at pretending to be innocent. She was historically bad at lying.

“Oh, good! There you are!”

Aimee nearly jumped out of her skin as she startled and then pivoted, Casey, all bright smile and bounce in her step, rounding the corner. She waved an iced coffee at Aimee, as she approached, her pace clipped, but she didn’t sound winded. “Sorry about that, Isla needed a better coffee—” she tipped her head toward the one she held, made a face that suggested the existence of the coffee was appalling, “—and a pep talk about the super tight schedule Netflix has us on. She’ll be good for like, another hour or so, I think.”

Aimee smiled, tightly, maybe too tightly? She was trying to workshop this whole pretending to not know anything about what had just happened, feet away. “Oh, no worries at all!”

“You didn’t get too bored, or wander off?” Casey had already balanced the iced drink on top of the still burbling water cooler, her face tipped down to the tablet in her grip, tapping away.

“Nope.”

Aimee cracked open her already empty water bottle, tipped it back until the last little droplets drained. She dipped and turned her attention to carefully filling her bottle.

She could feel her pulse hammering, she needed to take a breath, to calm down.

She needed to figure out how to act like a woman who hadn’t just experienced her own rom-com moment with the stupidly gorgeous, unfairly charming male lead on a set based on her work. A male lead who saved her from a murderous set designer/prop guy with a frightening number of keys clipped to his belt, like it was nothing.

Like he lived to save damsels in distress.

It was the kind of meet-cute moment she’d likely have written, a clumsy female protagonist opposite the dashing male lead who knew exactly what to say and when to say it.

Get it together, Aimee’s mind thrummed, scolding, you’re not the main character and this is real life, not a Nora Ephron movie.

She definitely needed to stop thinking about the neither here nor there stat about men and green eyes and how she swore Glen’s eyes were the perfect shade of jade, hinted with blue like the lapping flow of the lake at—

Aimee jumped, shocked back into the present when the water started to overflow from the spout of her bottle.

Taking a steadying breath, Aimee exhaled carefully. Her brain felt like it had exactly 17 tabs open, one of which was elusive, playing “embarrassing memories from 2009” on full volume and she tried to find it before she was sick with anxiety.

“Perfect! Great! Okay—” Casey looked up as Aimee shook the water off her hand, wiped it instinctively on the back of her pants, “—I think we’re gonna head over to costuming next. They’ve got these killer pieces in Ivy’s wardrobe. There’s this knit sweater for the pinnacle Ivy decision scene. I think it’s gonna absolutely break the internet, no cap.”

Quietly, Aimee was thankful Casey seemed to be adept at ignoring awkward situations, because she didn’t blink twice before swishing off toward the next objective, her hand waving for Aimee to follow.

Pausing to screw on the cap of the now full bottle, Aimee threw one last glance toward the door with the painter’s tape label. Tried to shake off the thought of the lingering embarrassment.

She couldn’t see Glen from here. It was possible he was gone, slipped out through another hidden exit.

She didn’t know, but what she did know was she wasn’t going to ask.

That wasn’t what she was here for.

She actually wasn’t even sure what she was here for... yet.

a/n: stay tuned for more Glen trying to kill Aimee with his smile and mild flirtation.

if you like this series, reblog, comment, like!

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mlqueen89 · 19 days ago

Note

When can we expect a new chapter for i can do it with a broken heart? Loving the series already!

Nony! Sweet, Nony!

Thank you for the nudge! I'm really happy to hear that you're loving it so far! Chapter Two will go up tonight! Likely around 8 or 9 PM EST. It's a little over double the length of chapter one!

I had a lot of fun writing it, so I'm hoping you'll love it too!

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mlqueen89 · 25 days ago

Text

I'm just over here, reliving trauma from 2020. Excuse me. Just crying in the corner.

THE LAST OF US 2.06 – The Price

#the last of us #tlou #tlou spoilers #tuserpris #tlouedit #useryolanda #tvedit #joel miller #pedro pascal #ellie williams #bella ramsey #thelastofusedit #gifs #just reliving trauma #nbd #cool cool cool #no doubt no doubt

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mlqueen89 · 30 days ago

Text

how is this so accurate?

Pondering my orbs.

#REAL #writing #writers life #writer problems #writer probz #writer prompts #my wips #my wips bring all the readers to the yard #and i'm like maybe i'll finish one

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mlqueen89 · 1 month ago

Photo

This, tbh. 😂

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mlqueen89 · 1 month ago

Text

Wait until Jake calls in his favour. 😉

Seven | Teamwork

She's a fire sign And I don't really know what that means I'm a cold night And I wanna be close to the heat I don't want to get burned I don't want love like that But I can't go any further 'til I start coming back

Edge of the Earth by The Beeches

pairing: jake “hangman” seresin / ofc (top gun: maverick)

rating: 18+ (minors dni)

warnings/triggers: 🔥smut in overall series

word count: 13,095

summary: ellie plays by jake’s rules to get his help feedback. desperate times call for desperate measures.

looks like the cold front might be on its way out with ellie and jake!

this one was not beta read and i think i wrote a lot of it in a fugue state, high on Benylin (respiratory infections are no joke). so... enjoy? all joking aside, i've been super excited about this chapter. we’re about to get into it with these two!

long wait = long chapter!

❥ playlist ♡ masterlist ♡ taglist ♡ glossary of terms ♡ previous chapter ♡ next chapter ❥

Your destination is on the right.

The map assistant reported her arrival as her tires dropped off the road and into the gravel lot.

Truthfully, the place wasn’t much to look at: a squat, weathered building that looked like it served as a barn in a past life with a tattered and faded banner advertising The Best Damn BBQ Outside of Texas. She swore she’d driven this stretch of the freeway at least four times since she’d been back in California but had never managed to notice this place was here.

Jake was easy to spot.

Leaning against the side of a red pickup, she realized she’d never seen him in anything other than a flight suit, tan Navy issue uniform and... nothing.

Now, he wore a simple white t-shirt that hugged each muscle group and a pair of regular blue jeans. She noted the cowboy boots, with a raised brow.

“You’re really milking this, aren’t you?” Ellie called over as she crunched across the gravel toward him.

“Not sure I follow.” Jake smirked.

That fucker. He followed.

She rolled her eyes, adjusting the strap of the laptop bag on her shoulder.

He was really going to make her say it. Again.

Probably use the memory to pleasure himself later.

Not that she thought about that. Or him.

Except she did.

Explicitly.

She was shaking her head, an etch-a-sketch on her memory. “My asking for your help.”

Jake’s responding brilliant smile caught her somewhere in the lower abdomen, kicked up a cluster of fluttery things she quickly worked to swat away. Dandelion seeds in the wind.

“C’mon then,” he tipped his head toward the restaurant, “let’s get you your help, sweetheart.”

That was a Texan thing, wasn’t it? Sweetheart? Darlin’?

His hand hovered somewhere above her lower back as she stepped forward, the heat of his palm something she could feel where her shirt didn’t meet the hem of her jeans as he corralled her the rest of the way.

Ellie kept her head high as she stepped inside.

This was business.

Fixing the parameters to elevate the test results so she didn’t have to pack up her office in shame.

Business.

Fergus had finally found a spot on the shelf he liked, full sun. She’d finally settled into a rhythm of watering him semi-regularly. He’d grown into his pot with the plant slogan.

Did plants get traumatized from sudden moves to dark bedrooms where she’d undoubtedly wallow in self-pity if Stark voted to pull the plug?

The scent of slow-smoked meat and spice hit her immediately, warm and rich, curling in the air like an invitation.

The place was packed for a Wednesday night, filled with the low hum of conversation and the occasional clang of metal trays, ringing bells and order callouts. Red-checkered tablecloths covered the wooden tables, and faded photos of rodeos and football teams lined the barnboard wood walls.

Jake led the way, past a sign inviting patrons to seat themselves, weaving through the crowd with the ease of someone who had been here before. He picked a booth near the back, away from most of the noise, and waited for Ellie to sit before he slid in across from her.

Ellie set her laptop bag on the table, fingers already working at the zipper.

“Not even gonna take a minute to appreciate the ambiance?” Jake clicked his tongue, arms stretching across the back of the booth as he watched her.

She ignored the way his biceps flexed with the motion, focused instead on pulling out her laptop. “Ambiance doesn’t help me fix the parameters.”

Jake exhaled a slow breath, shaking his head in a way that was more amused than anything, like he expected as much from her. He reached for the laminated menu between them, and she swore she heard the stickiness of it as it separated from the table.

“You’re really somethin’, Rigby. You ever just, I dunno—relax?”

She did.

It was just unfortunate that the last time she’d relaxed was under him, and over him, on him and—

“My work relaxes me,” she shot back with a bit more bite that she’d intended.

His smirk that had started small deepened, but he didn’t look up from the menu. She hated that it made her feel so... exposed.

“Then I think you must be the most relaxed person in this entire state.”

Ellie leveled him with a look. “Seresin.”

He caught her eyes over the top of the menu, shiny under the dim pendant light hanging over the table.

“Rigby,” he mimicked as he signaled to a passing waitress. “Two sweet teas, please.”

She frowned. “Actually, I’m—”

“You’ll like it,” he interrupted, flipping the menu over to glance at the back side. “And if you don’t, well, that’s somethin’ I’ll just have to live with.”

Ellie exhaled sharply, drumming her fingers against the table. Her laptop sat, half out of the bag. “Fine. But once the drinks come, we talk about the adjustments.”

Jake hummed noncommittally, still scanning the menu.

He probably already knew the damn thing by heart and was just trying to make her squirm.

“Tell you what, we’ll get there. But first, let’s play a game.”

Ellie narrowed her eyes at him. “I want you to know I hate the sound of that.”

Still, he pressed on, undeterred. “It’s simple. You guess things about me, and I’ll guess things about you.”

“Or, and hear me out,” she parried dryly, nudging her laptop, “we could just get to work, like we said we would.”

Jake ignored her.

“I’ll go first, as a show of good faith.” He tucked the menu between the wall and the napkin holder, rested an elbow on the table, tilting his head. “You grew up somewhere... rainy, lots of trees. Northwest, I’d guess. Washington or Oregon?”

Ellie blinked, caught off guard.

Jake smirked, tipping his head, as if her silence prompted elaboration on his part. “You’ve got that rain-soaked, tree-hugger edge to you. Bet you were raised around evergreens and overpriced coffee.”

She huffed, but the corner of her mouth tugged up despite herself. “Oregon,” she admitted reluctantly. “West Linn.”

Jake looked pleased with himself. “Lots of trees, I bet.”

Ellie snorted. “Yeah. And rain.”

The waitress buzzed by, dropped off their drinks, and Ellie instinctively reached for hers, grateful for the temporary distraction. Jake wasn’t done.

“Mom still there?” he asked, stirring his tea with his straw. Ellie’s grip on the glass tightened, taking a moment before she swallowed carefully. “Tilly Rigby. And no. She moved around a lot for work.”

She left out the part where moving came with her dad’s work, too. That she was from Oregon, but that she’d spent most of her life on bases in California, one in Florida, briefly.

Jake nodded like he was filing the information away, carefully. “Siblings?”

“None.”

She didn’t need to tell him she’d always wanted one. Maybe a sister. Maybe someone to share clothes with. To talk to about boys. To commiserate living with her dad and surviving her mom’s sad attempts at casseroles. Tuna. Broccoli. Chicken.

He nodded. Took a deep sip of his own tea before he set it down. “And your dad?”

Ellie felt her stomach twist. Knot. Flip.

Jake’s eyes locked with hers across the table for a moment. She looked away. Lifted her tea, took a slow sip. Set it down. Swallowed, hard.

“Pass.”

Ms. Rigby, tell us about your childhood trauma.

Ms. Rigby, why don’t you want to talk about your dad?

Ms. Rigby, when was the last time you responded to any of his phone calls?

She’d long approached any question related to Rick Neven like a congresswoman dodging questions she didn’t have answers for.

Drink water.

Downplay.

Dodge.

Something flickered across Jake’s face, but where she expected he might, he didn’t push. Just sat back, drumming his fingers against the table, curious. In a beat, he nodded at her, “alright. Your turn.”

Ellie huffed, already regretting indulging him. She didn’t have much of a choice though, did she?

Fuck it. She was already well up the creek, sans paddle.

“Fine. You’re from Texas. Obviously.”

She answered the question before he asked it. She’d bet her first born on Jake being a Texan boy. Mostly because she’d read his file, partly because she felt he’d wear a Stetson unironically.

Considering him for a moment—his straight face, his posture—she tapped her finger against her lip before continuing. “Probably some tiny town in the middle of nowhere. Lots of cows.”

Jake’s lips cracked into a slow smirk. “You’d be right. Ten thousand people, give or take. Just as many cattle. One gas station, two bars, and a Friday night football obsession that borders on cult-like.”

Ellie tilted her head, elbow on the table, she propped up her chin on a fist. “I’d bet you were quarterback.”

Jake placed a hand over his heart, mocked a wince. “That hurts, Rigby.”

“So, not quarterback?”

“Oh, I was. But I don’t know I like how quick you were to assume.” He grinned. “Alright, one more. You think I’m an only child?”

Ellie studied him, the easy confidence, the natural charisma. He had a certain way of filling a room, but not in a way that demanded attention—more like someone who had learned how to stake his claim without overshadowing everyone else.

“Oh, definitely not,” she said finally, her tone was almost a laugh. “You don’t give off only-child energy. I bet you have a bunch of siblings.”

Nic was the middle child in a family of eight. She’d once chugged a Kings cup of mixed drinks and curdled Bailey’s to prove she could even though no one had said she couldn’t. Middle child energy was chaotic. A tell. A gremlin fed after midnight.

Jake’s grin turned knowing. “Four. One older brother, three younger sisters.”

Ellie sat back slightly, arms folded. “Middle child confirmed then. That explains a lot.”

Somewhere, a toddler squealed and someone guffawed, notes of a jazzed up “Happy Birthday�� and a clapping call and response filling the silence in between.

Jake chuckled. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

She shrugged. “Just that you probably got away with murder while your older brother took all the heat and your sisters had you wrapped around their fingers.”

Jake lifted his tea in a mock toast. “You’d be correct.”

Ellie shook her head, amused despite herself. “Alright. We played your game. Can we talk about the parameters now?”

Jake sighed, long-suffering but entertained. “Fine, Rigby. Let’s talk about your damn parameters.”

She reached for her bag, pulling out her laptop again, cracking open the screen, tracing her finger over the trackpad to wake it up. “I thought that’s what we were here for.”

On this outing that felt like a date but definitely wasn’t a date.

A not date.

Where he asked her about personal details.

Like a date.

Jake leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table, a smirk that had now become signature still in place. “You’re here to work. I’m here to pry into your personal life and eat.”

Ellie shot him a flat look. “At least you’re honest about it.”

Jake shrugged. “Figured I might as well be. Besides, what problem ever got solved on an empty stomach?”

“Lots, actually. Discount Mac and Cheese got me through grad school.”

Ellie had looked up the numbers, back when she was in college and the only thing she could afford were the cheapest loaves of bread and the deli meat near expiry, price reduced by 30%.

The search had been the first step in the decision-making process on the pros and cons of selling a less important organ to afford her tuition and more than a few days' worth of fresh produce at a time.

In some studies, hunger actually sharpened the thought process. At least that’s what she told herself when she ate leftover Mr. Noodles for breakfast from a chipped Disneyland mug, snagged from Nic’s collection.

“I know you didn’t just try to pitch me poverty an academic advantage...”

Ellie smirked as she sipped her sweet tea when she caught the way Jake was still looking at her—not mocking, not even smug this time. Just quietly amused. Maybe even... impressed?

Could she say that? Jake Seresin, pain in her ass, impressed by her?

He was still watching her, eyes flicking across her face when he leaned back and flagged down the waitress with a quick lift of his fingers.

“Ribs and brisket,” he said with easy confidence. “Extra sauce. Sweet tea.” He glanced at Ellie, a nod of his chin in her direction before she looked away, back to the glow of the screen. “And she’ll have—”

“Nothing,” Ellie said, without missing a beat, her fingers moving steadily as she jotted a note in the margins of her parameter matrix.

When the silence stretched and Ellie glanced up, the waitress was blinking at her, the nib of her pen paused on the notepad in her hand. Jake tilted his head. “You sure?”

“I’m working,” she said simply, looking down again to adjust a slider bar and frowning when the updated model didn’t sit quite right. “I’m not hungry.”

It wasn’t completely untrue. She’d had a granola bar and a yogurt earlier that morning. A single section of a tangerine she promptly forgot about and lost track of in the mess of papers scattered across her desk. The rest of a can of flavoured sparkling water she’d chugged before she realized it had lost its fizz.

She envisioned the empty fridge back at her place and momentarily thought about what she’d scrape together after this. That was a later problem.

Jake waited another beat, but didn’t push, instead handing off the menu with a grin and a “Thanks, darlin’,” before settling back in with that same relaxed energy. The same ease that felt as if they were just two friends out on a normal night—one of them elbows-deep in code.

It was another moment or two of silence before Jake spoke again.

“You should eat something.”

She didn’t answer, already dragging a new variable into the override logic chain.

“So, this—” she nudged the laptop toward Jake, her finger tapping the line of code nestled in between a data spike, “—is where you said it felt off. I widened the margin here,” she pointed, “and added a buffer. If you were flying it, I want to know if you’d feel a delay.”

Jake leaned closer to the screen, scrolled a bit and then, shrugged. “Might. But that’s better than it kicking in too soon.”

“Okay, good, exactly,” she said with a smile, reaching too quickly across the trackpad—where Jake’s fingers still rested—in her haste to note it before it slipped her mind.

Ellie pointedly ignored the way her stomach dipped when her fingers brushed his, and he didn’t move away in any hurry.

She swallowed, as carefully as she could manage, avoided eye contact.

What was this? A Bridgerton reenactment? She wasn’t Kate, he wasn’t Anthony.

She needed to get her head in the game, out of the clouds.

She needed to pull him out from under her skin—where he’d somehow wedged himself before she’d even noticed.

Not like a splinter, but like the ink of a tattoo—warm, alive, part of her now. So deeply woven in, she couldn’t tell where he ended, and she began.

It vexed her.

When the food arrived, Ellie was thankful for the distraction. As the waitress slid the overflowing plate in front of Jake, the smell hit the booth like a punch-smoked meat, spices, the sweetness of the cornbread.

To the very edges of the large plate, was a mountain of unapologetic southern comfort. Ellie, now hyper-focused on the adjustments, did her best to ignore the tiniest, traitorous twist of her stomach, the gurgle as it clenched around nothing.

Pizza. She’d order pizza when she was on her way home. She let the thought repeat until it was a mantra.

Pizza. Pepperoni and cheese with olives. And breadsticks. Also, with cheese. Lots of cheese.

“Still not gonna try any of this?” Jake waved a rib, sticky with BBQ sauce, toward the cornbread tower and the cliff of brisket, hanging dangerously over the edge of his plate.

Ellie gave a half-hearted shake of her head, but didn’t look away from the screen. “I’m fine, really.”

It was only when she saw him shift in her periphery, did she look up.

Across from her, Jake leaned forward slightly, lowering his voice like he was sharing a secret. “Norma’s gonna be real heartbroken if you don’t eat.”

She paused, blinking at him. “Who?”

“Owner,” he said, nodding toward the kitchen beyond a grey swinging door with a steamy, rounded window. “Sweet old lady. Spends all day making this stuff from scratch. You sit here working like her food isn’t worth looking up for, she’s gonna take that real personal.”

Ellie side-eyed him. “You’re laying it on thick, even for you.”

He shrugged. “Maybe. But if you make a woman named Norma cry, I’m not taking responsibility.”

A beat passed. The scent of brisket hung in the air. Ellie let out a quiet sigh, then—without ceremony, but maybe a little bit of theatrics—reached across the table and stole a piece of rib off his plate.

Jake grinned at her like he’d just won a bet he never voiced, his brow quirking up only once as he chewed.

She took a bite and her brows lifted—just slightly.

He didn’t say anything. Just waited.

After a second, she swallowed and flagged down the waitress as she passed by. “Can I actually get a plate of brisket?” she asked. “And some cornbread?”

“You got it.” The waitress smiled wide, tapping her pen on the pad in her hand before she turned back to the kitchen pass.

The low, satisfied whistle that spilled from him might as well have been a quick peel of laughter. She could see him holding it back as she resisted the urge to stick her thumb in her mouth to taste the last tang of the sauce.

“Look at you. Starting to make friends. Might have to get my eyes checked, too.”

Ellie glanced at him, her eyeroll already cued up. She carefully wiped her hands with a napkin she tugged from the dispenser. “Shut up.”

“Ya know, I would, but I think Norma just felt a warm breeze roll through her kitchen.”

Ellie was shaking her head when she turned her laptop back around, already refocused. “You’re kind of insufferable, you know that, right?”

“Some people’d call that charming,” he settled back as if the whole thing had unfolded exactly according to his plan. “Just don’t say I didn’t warn you: this is about to ruin every other barbeque place for you.”

They finished off the food slowly, conversation giving way to focus.

Ellie tapped through the last set of adjusted parameters on her laptop, double-checking her notes and locking in the final values according to Jake’s feedback.

Jake polished off the last of his brisket, picking up a cornbread crumb with one finger and popping it into his mouth with a look of deep satisfaction.

“That should be it,” Ellie closed the laptop with a soft click.

Jake leaned back with a pleased hum. “Not bad for a night’s work.”

When the bill came, Ellie reached for her wallet.

“I got—” Jake started, but she cut him off with a head shake.

“I’m paying for mine.”

He raised both hands in mock surrender. “Didn’t say a word.”

They stepped out into the warm night air, the neon sign above the restaurant humming softly in the darkening sky. Ellie slung her laptop bag over one shoulder, already talking as they made their way toward the lot.

“I’m actually kind of excited for the test runs on Friday. Might actually get through a test without you redlining it in under five minutes. I want to see how it holds up under real conditions—especially with the buffer extension. I think it might actually—”

She stopped mid-sentence when she realized she was alone, the sound of her feet on the gravel loud as she pivoted on the spot, halfway between the restaurant and her car.

Jake wasn’t next to her anymore.

She was halfway through her second scan of the parking lot when she saw him a few yards back, standing at a low iron gate, strings of fairy lights leading into the soft glow of a mini putt course, tucked away beside the restaurant. Beyond the fencing, more string lights hung overhead, giving a soft glow over brightly coloured obstacles—windmills, lighthouses, a small fake volcano—in the middle of the numbered course.

Jake was standing with his back to her, hand on the gate, already holding two putters. When he looked up, he tipped his head, calling her back. Then he watched her; one eyebrow raised like he was waiting to see which way she’d go. She could almost see the challenge in his eyes, even from distance.

Ellie stood frozen halfway between him and her car. Her keys were in her hand.

She could go.

She should go.

This was done—she had the data, the adjustments, Jake’s feedback; the night had served its purpose. He’d helped her like he’d promised.

Hopefully solving her Stark shaped, funding related problem in the process.

And yet... something in her refused to move forward, to close the distance between where she stood and her car door. Something in her hesitated to end the night.

Ellie let out a long sigh, turned and walked back to her car just long enough to stash her laptop bag in the trunk.

“This doesn’t have to be complicated,” she murmured, giving herself a quick moment, her head stuck under the open trunk. “Don’t make it complicated.”

When she stood, she shut the trunk with more force than she intended.

When she crunched across the lot, toward the low gate and the mini putt course beyond, Jake handed her the shorter putter with a grin. The putter with the green grip. She wasn’t about to admit that she found it endearing he kept the putter with the pink grip.

“No laptop?” he asked, clearly amused.

When she grabbed a ball from the tray sitting on the counter, she shrugged. “Thought I’d give my spine a break.”

Jake’s smirk deepened, the divots of his dimples ghosting his cheeks. “I figured I’d give you a lower-pressure shot to—what was it? Wipe the floor with me? You know, at a different game.”

Ellie arched her brow, unable to hold back the scoff. “Because pool didn’t go my way?”

“Exactly.” He winked at her, something easy and natural. She hated the way it made her heart pick up pace. “No stakes this time. Just fun. You know what that is, right?”

He opened the gate wide with a squeal of the hinges and she stepped past him, barely resisting the urge to roll her eyes—but not quite able to fight the small tug at the corner of her mouth. And when Jake’s hand found the small of her back again, guiding her toward the green felt loop-de-loop of the first hole, she didn’t stop him.

She ignored the part of her brain that told her this was nice.

The Astroturf on the third hole was damp under Ellie’s boots, still holding the day’s humidity.

Fake rocks cast soft, early evening shadows across the course. The sound of a fountain burbling near the pirate/Goonies themed hole competed with Jake’s commentary on her latest shot.

Which had gone... poorly.

Correction, it had gone horribly wrong.

Laughably disastrous in the way that meant her ball was now sitting off course, one stroke into a par 2 hole.

“That was—wow,” Jake drew out the word with mock awe.

He stepped up, dropped his ball on the starting point and looked up at her, his face set to the gloat lite setting. “Bold strategy. Let me guess, you thought you’d bank it off the cannon, over the skull, and then completely miss the hole. Iconic.”

Ellie rolled her eyes, waved him off like she had meant to send her ball on an unmanned reconnaissance mission to the fucking moon instead of the hole. In her peripheral, she could see it sitting in a patch of fake palm fronds, a nearby marooned pirate figurine mocking her on a deserted island.

“I was accounting for wind resistance.”

Obviously.

“On a low-lying course?”

“Simulated wind.” She waved at the straightaway piece of green leading up to the fiberglass ship hull. “This whole stretch could be considered a wind tunnel. Maybe you can’t feel it, but some of us are just more in tune.”

Jake smirked, straightening out of his putting stance before he casually turned, leaning on his putter like he had all night to watch her pretend she wasn’t trying to win. “Right. Very spiritual approach to mini golf. I respect it. Tell me, Ms. Cleo, what do the star signs say about my game? Does the Scorpio moon mean I’ll manifest a par on this hole?”

The glare she shot him didn’t hold the heat she wanted—her mouth twitched into the ghost of a smile.

She could say what she wanted about Jake Seresin, but undeniably, he had a way of poking at her that didn’t feel like a challenge to rise to.

It just... landed between them.

A little too easily.

He threw the line, she bit, and he tossed her back. She served; he volleyed.

He lined up his shot and sent the ball curving around the loop-de-loop and straight into the hole. He gave an exaggerated tip of an imaginary hat as it dropped in with the telltale plunk. “Now that was textbook.”

“Ok, Seresin,” Ellie scoffed, offering an exaggerated theatre clap, “try not to pull a muscle patting yourself on the back.”

“You’re not gonna blame wind resistance for that one too, are you?”

Ellie let out a quiet laugh under her breath as she retrieved her rogue ball from the palm tree grove, taking a minute to poke out her tongue at the grimacing pirate on the sandy island.

She didn’t know what the hell she was doing here—playing mini golf with Jake Seresin of all people—but there was something easy about the rhythm they’d fallen into.

They were orbiting each other, never too close, but never too far. Pulled back to each other time and time again by something too complicated to name.

He stayed quiet for a moment, watching her as she set up her shot. He was good at that, she’d noticed: knowing when to go quiet—when other pilots didn’t know, fundamentally, when to shut up. Like silence made them feel smaller, slower. Jake, though… made room with it.

Funny the things you learn about people when you look, Mav had always told her. Everyone’s secretly dying to tell you every little thing you need to know about them. You just have to see it when it happens.

Initially, she’d shoved Jake into that same category. The smart ass, cocky pilot who always felt the need to prove themselves. Show he was better. Tell he was quick and sharp and invincible without showing the work on the equation that brought him there. But now she saw it, possibly, maybe unlikely, but a flicker of something real beneath the shiny, reflective exterior.

“You’ve got a real instinct for flight paths,” he said lightly, neither here nor there. “For someone who doesn’t fly, anyway. That something you picked up from family, or just a natural gift?”

Ellie froze for half a beat—just enough to register that the question wasn’t really about mini putt or the tech. Her grip tightened on the putter, just slightly, before she bent to place her ball on the turf again.

“Guess I just pay attention; lots of extracurricular reading,” she said, tone cool but not frosty.

Another non-answer.

More non-engagement.

Maybe she could really consider a career in politics if her tech shuffled off this mortal coil.

She swung, sending the ball toward the paint chipped pirate ship and missed the hole again. “God, seriously?”

Jake made what sounded like a sympathetic noise. Ellie was thankful he didn’t push the question further. “Well, at least you can take comfort in the fact you’re still better at this than Bob.”

“Hey now, don’t drag Bob into this. He’s not here to defend himself.”

Bob. Her saviour from Teak, Bob.

The quiet, shy, WSO behind Phoenix’s strong instinctual knowing in the drivers’ seat.

The one who reminded her of the nerdy, careful, put-together, respectful guy Nic swore she was into in college, but Ellie suspected was a way to get back at her Omega Kapa ex. Justin? Or Chad? Maybe it was Austin...

If Ellie could go back, she’d take Phoenix and Bob over Teak and Lover in a fraction of a heartbeat.

“Exactly why it’s the best time to do it.”

She stepped forward to take her next, embarrassing attempt.

As she swung her putter, her mind buzzed, louder now.

Jake hadn’t said her dad. Hadn’t asked for specifics, but she didn’t like how close the question had skirted the truth.

When she finally sunk the ball, she was two over par and Jake was already scribbling on the scorecard. When he looked up, tucking the card and pencil away in his back pocket, he was grinning. “Don’t worry, Darlin’. You’ll get me back on the next hole.”

Before she could stop herself, Ellie raised her brow at him. “Bold of you to assume I don’t just sabotage your putter by the tenth hole, and you’re forced to forfeit.”

His grin widened, slow and amused, like she’d just said something deeply entertaining, like she’d proven a point he hadn’t shared aloud. “You know,” he said, stepping closer, “I think I’m starting to like how your brain works.”

She rolled her eyes but couldn’t help smiling, wide, genuine.

“I mean it,” Jake added, easy. The sound of his voice was just a low rumble that caught Ellie in the stomach. “Cutthroat. Competitive. Fiery. Could be dangerous in the right conditions.”

“Maybe these are the right conditions and the next time you flatter me,” Ellie paused for effect, “I aim for your kneecaps on my follow through swing.”

Jake let out a low, genuine laugh. “Just confirming what I suspected all along.”

She walked past him toward the next hole, letting her shoulder brush his just enough to be deliberate.

She didn’t look at him—didn’t need to. She could feel his eyes on her, could sense it in the heat on the back of her neck. This time, she leaned into it. She had him. His attention. She just wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with it yet.

In the very brief history of them, the emerging pattern had been simple: She ran. He chased. But standing still? Letting him catch up with her? She watched the shift—small, seismic—saw the ground tilt under his feet.

She excelled where she was underestimated, thrived in mystery.

“Careful, Seresin,” she threw it over her shoulder, an afterthought. “Some of us play dirty.”

Behind her, Jake’s voice followed, warm and thoroughly entertained. “Yeah, and some of us like it that way.”

The fourth hole had a quaint, over-the-top charm—paint-chipped posts holding up a miniature covered bridge, just wide enough for the ball to pass through if the angle was perfect.

A narrow footbridge arched over a thin stream beside it, leading to the back of the covered bridge. It was strung with fairy lights—probably prettier later at night

Ellie liked it more than she expected to. It reminded her of old road trips with her mom when she was younger, when her dad was away on deployment. Just her, her mom, a random city a few hours outside of wherever they’d been posted, mini putt and ice cream.

She didn’t mention that.

Instead, she observed.

Jake stood on the green, lining up his shot with exaggerated concentration, tongue tucked into the corner of his mouth like a kid.

She resisted the urge to laugh as he muttered something low to himself, maybe the ball. She watched as he took a few practice swings before he straightened out and tapped the ball.

It bumped the edge of the covered bridge and bounced straight back toward him.

This time, Ellie barked a laugh. “Beautiful form. Really elegant, Lieutenant.”

He let out a sigh and stepped aside, sweeping a hand dramatically toward the bridge as his ball rocked before it settled right back near his foot where it started. “By all means, hotshot. Show me how it’s done.”

“Gladly.”

Ellie stepped up with a smug little smile, cleared her throat, squared her stance, and knocked the ball with an efficient little tap of her putter.

No pretense. No ball whispering. No practice swings.

It sailed clean through the covered bridge, hit the back wall of the cup on the other side, and rimmed out.

Jake tried not to grin, but Ellie could see him losing the battle from the corner of her eye. “Oof. So close, Rigby.”

“Don’t even.” She pointed her putter at him like a warning. “I will absolutely unscrew your putter head and toss it in that stream.”

“God,” he muttered, clearly delighted as he replaced his ball on the green and knocked it through the drawbridge on his next shot, “you’re so competitive. It’s kind of adorable.”

She rolled her eyes but didn’t argue.

They crossed the footbridge, and Ellie glanced over at him, her pace falling in step with his. For a second, she studied the way the low lights caught on the edge of his jaw, softened the planes of his face.

It surprised her, how easy it felt—how not on guard she was when she was around him now.

Like tonight, with brisket and cornbread, he had dismantled her walls before she knew to throw them up. A trojan horse of meat and sweet bread.

Her next words were out without meaning to lend sound to them, barely a blip on the filter she usually maintained between her brain and her mouth, voice casual but sincere: “They tell me you’re the best.”

She anonymized it. Like she was reading it off a crumpled complaint card from a break room box.

Jake has a distinct asshole vibe.

When I asked why he was tired, he told me to “ask your mom.” My mother is a Christian woman.

Would not trust him with a Roomba, let alone a fighter jet.

She’d read his file, in greater detail than she might have liked. Objectively speaking, no one had to tell her he was the best.

Jake tilted his head, like he wasn’t sure if it was a compliment or a setup. “Yeah? Should I be asking who they are?”

“I mean, Hangman,” she said, one brow arched, pushing past the question like he hadn’t asked. “You don’t get a call sign like that for being mediocre.”

She stoked his ego, fed it the fuel it craved. She wanted to see how he burned it. What was left when he digested the compliment.

He let out a short laugh. “That’s debatable. Some would argue it’s for being a pain in the ass or for leaving my wingmen to sit in my wash. Ask Bradshaw, he’s got a few stories.”

Ellie shrugged.

Rooster had never spoken badly of Jake, but she knew he was hinting at things she never asked more about. When he told her how to handle Jake; how he gave Jake grace when all Ellie wanted to do was nail him to the wall over “flying like an asshole” after that first test flight.

“So, I guess the next, most obvious, question is… why’d you become a pilot? Was it a family thing, or just something you knew you’d be good at?”

Her eyes flicked up to him, studied the side of his face in the softness of the string lights, the curve of his jaw, the shadow of stubble. For once, she wasn’t trying to read him. She just wanted to know, know what his motivations were, what he chased when he flew like a bat out of hell.

Jake clicked his tongue, but didn’t answer right away. The question hung between them, carried lightly on the sound of water trickling beneath the footbridge. He looked ahead, then back at her, the usual smirk gentled into something closer to real.

He wiped his thumb across his bottom lip before he finally spoke, the words coming out on a dry chuckle. An inside joke, maybe. “Bit of both.”

Ellie watched the way he rolled the golf ball in his hand, casually. She didn’t interrupt, just kept pace with him steadily.

“Dad flew for a bit. Not the same kind of flying, but… I grew up around it. He wanted me to do something safer. Maybe take over the ranch. I didn’t listen. Couldn’t imagine herding cattle and never leaving Kerrville. Even then.”

There was no universe in which Ellie could imagine Jake Seresin being a “yes, sir” man, even in childhood. If she looked at him now, blurred her eyes just right, she could almost see a younger version of him, respectfully, telling his dad he’d fly, even if it killed him.

That ever present middle child energy probably helped.

Ellie nodded, quiet, considering, choosing her next words carefully. “Would’ve been weird if you had, I think.”

Jake smiled. “Yeah. Listening’s not really my strong suit.”

“No kidding.” She pointedly drew her eyes to him, from head to toe, before she glanced away, fighting the tug at her mouth. “I mean, I can’t imagine you in a t-shirt, jeans, cowboy boots and a Stetson, chewing on sweetgrass while you tend to the cows.”

His eyes were twinkling when he looked at her, the fairy lights illuminating the flecks of blue in the seafoam of his iris. “So, you admit you fantasize about me then, Rigby?” His brilliant smile was full now, highlighting laugh lines.

“I think I’ll take that to my grave if you don’t mind.”

They reached the next tee box, the ensuing quiet stretching into something that didn’t feel awkward or weighty—just there. Shared. Ellie wasn’t sure what had shifted between them or even when, but something had. And for once, she wasn’t in a rush to undo it, to fill the silence.

The sixth hole had a tricky setup—pure chaos disguised as kitsch.

A mini water tower teetered at the top of a small incline, rigged so water poured down the slope every few minutes after a bucket overhead filled and tipped. Timing the shot was half the battle; the other half was hoping the water didn’t catch your ball mid-roll and send it careening off course.

Jake stood off to the side, arms crossed, watching. Ellie took a minute, judging the cycle with narrowed eyes like she was timing a missile strike.

If she was here with her mom, Tilly would have started counting out loud, out of order, trying to distract her.

Ellie knew she didn’t get the competitive streak from Hollywood.

“You’ve got that look again,” Jake interrupted, halfway through her first count of the cycle, “the one that says you’re calculating trajectories in your head.”

“That’s because I am,” Ellie replied simply after she finished the count just as the bucket started to tip, unleashing the concentrated rush of water. “Don’t start acting like that’s not how this game should be played.”

Ten seconds to fill.

Five seconds to fully empty before it tipped back up to begin the cycle again.

“So, on the subject of trajectories...” Jake smirked, then nudged the conversation sideways, out to left field. “I gotta ask—how is it that you know Mav, anyway? You two seem pretty close.”

Ellie didn’t flinch, didn’t point out that his question had nothing to do with trajectories.

Quietly, her posture shifted, a touch more upright as she dropped the ball onto the felted green.

There was another cycle of fill and dump before she found the words, sussed out how she would twist her response just enough away from the truth. Avoid direct impact, minimize the damage.

“Met a while back,” she sighed, careful not to oversell the casual of it all, as her eyes shifted back to the water tower which had already spilled again. “We crossed paths on a project a few years ago.”

Jake hummed and Ellie knew from the sound of it: he wasn’t buying 100% of what she was selling. But he didn’t call her on it either. “Huh. Funny. I saved the guy’s life, and he still gives me grief. You? He talks to like a proud uncle.”

Ellie looked at him then, briefly sharp, until she trained her face to say less. When she was composed enough, she offered him a quiet shrug, “maybe he just likes me better.”

“That,” Jake smirked, running a hand through his hair, “I can’t argue with.”

The bucket gave its telltale groan, beginning its slow tip. Ellie waited—one beat, two—then tapped the ball just as the last splash hit the turf. The ball coasted easily up the incline, passed clean under the dripping tower, and curved into the hole. Clean. Simple. One stroke under par.

She kicked up her heel behind her like she was taking a victory lap and turned to face him, eyes shining.

“Eat it, Seresin.”

Jake let out a laugh, low and genuine, as she strode past him, head held high, to retrieve her ball. His eyes followed, his head already shaking. “I take it back, you’re kind of annoying.”

“You love it.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No,” she said, tossing him a smug look over her shoulder. “But you’re thinking it.”

The truth was—she was enjoying this.

All of it.

The teasing. The game. The way Jake didn’t press too hard when she dodged his questions but let her know he knew she was dodging them.

For the first time in a long time, she felt oddly light. Almost stupidly at ease.

Like the air around her had thinned out just enough for her to float.

The tumor had to be growing. Burrowing into some critical part of her brain that managed caution and boundaries and all the sharp edges she usually kept between herself, and guys like him.

It felt like standing on the edge of something unknown and mysterious, but instead of cautious and careful, standing in a tourist trap full of fiberglass structures and novelty obstacles, she felt good.

She felt normal.

The ninth hole was absurd in the best way. A deep level of unserious in a way that almost made it art. Fiberglass and “get-along little doggy” energy in equal measure.

A miniature rodeo ring sat smack in the middle of the green, complete with a tiny corral, a few fake hay bales, and a wooden cutout of a cowboy frozen mid-buck atop a rearing bronco. The hole sat just beyond the ring, tucked behind one of the pinto’s painted hooves.

Somewhere within the setup, a tiny speaker played the occasional, tinny “Yeehaw!” on loop.

Ellie leaned on her putter, watching Jake line up his second shot.

He crouched with exaggerated focus, his lips pursed like this was a championship and not a fiberglass fantasy world behind a barbecue joint. She wondered if at any moment, he’d request pin-drop silence before he committed to a shot.

God, he was annoying. Annoying and annoyingly good at selling the whole golden-boy act. Did women really fall for this? Maybe Ellie couldn’t judge, since she, herself, had indeed... fallen for it. By her count (because Jake was hoarding the scorecard), they were neck and neck—Ellie had caught up after Jake lost a ball to the water hazard on the seventh hole, something she still hadn’t stopped teasing him about. His swing had been too aggressive, too showy, and now he was playing catch-up.

“Do you always fly like that,” she asked lightly, “or do you dial it down when you’re not trying to prove something?”

“You sound like my CO in Lemoore,” Jake laughed, quick, dry as he adjusted his stance. “I think he used the word ‘reckless’—that what you mean?”

“I mean loud. Fast. Show-offy.”

He glanced over his shoulder at her, grinning. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

Ellie shrugged, like it didn’t matter—but it did, a little. She wasn’t needling him. Not this time. She just wanted to know. And maybe it was because he’d been asking about her all night—or maybe because, in spite of herself, she liked hearing him talk about flying in his own words.

Jake tapped the ball. It skimmed through the narrow space between the bronco’s legs, hit the far edge of the ring, curved—

And missed the hole by half an inch.

He winced, muttered “unreal,” and dragged a hand through his hair.

Ellie bit back a grin. If she landed this one on par, she could pull ahead. Set the tone.

“It’s not not a bad thing,” she said, stepping forward.

Jake straightened. “I flew with this old-school Top Gun guy once—type who could land a bird on a carrier in a storm blindfolded. Real cowboy in the sky. Got me thinking I should try being more like that.”

Her smile dimmed—not because it wasn’t charming, but because of how he said it.

Cowboy in the sky. Her dad used to use that phrase. Reverent. Like flying wasn’t just a career—it was a calling.

It set off a twinge, something sharp in her chest. Her dad had been that kind of myth once—heroic, untouchable. Cool, confident. Wholly unbothered.

Until he wasn’t.

Jake didn’t look at her when he said it, but she felt the shape of it hanging between them. Like he’d thrown a line, waiting to see if she’d catch it.

She didn’t.

Instead, she looked down at her ball, focused on the paint-chipped bronco like it hadn’t just sucker-punched her chest. “Must’ve been something,” she said, light, practiced.

“He was,” Jake answered. “Last I heard, retired to Italy.”

The quiet between them stretched—not awkward, just there. Ellie stepped up to the tee, shook off the weight in her chest, and sank the hole in two.

When she turned, Jake was watching her with a grin that, for once, didn’t feel like a challenge. Just… appreciation.

“I think that means I’m ahead now.” She tipped her chin toward him, tone bone-dry. “So, eyes on the green, Seresin. Unless you’re planning to lose gracefully. Wouldn’t want you blaming your tragic mini putt downfall on me being distracting.”

Jake smirked, already strolling toward the next hole. “Barely ahead,” he tossed back. “And only because that damn water tower had it out for me.”

The eleventh hole was set on a fake cliffside with a little white-and-red lighthouse perched at the precipice.

The green wound its way up a spiraling path dotted with jagged fake rocks and a rotating beacon that clicked softly as it spun. The whole thing was dramatic and charmingly oversized, and somehow it still smelled faintly of sunscreen and plastic turf in the way an air freshener called “Hawaiian Breeze” smelled vaguely like hibiscus and sand.

Jake crouched beside his ball, squinting at the slope with an intensity that suggested he was planning a real approach vector. Ellie leaned lightly on her putter, watching him with a tilt of her head, the lighthouse’s sweeping light catching in her eyes for a beat before moving on.

She let the question come out quieter than the ones before, like it had snuck up on her as much as it did him.

“Have you ever seriously screwed up in the air?”

Jake froze—not visibly, not in a way most people would notice. But Ellie had spent enough time with him now to catch the barely-there pause, the flicker of something heavier sitting behind his eyes for just a fraction of a second when he looked up.

“Why?” he asked, looking up—casual on the surface but a little too measured underneath. “You got a theory going? Building a profile for all your test pilots?”

Ellie shrugged, trying not to overplay her own curiosity. “Just wondering. You carry yourself like you’ve never made a mistake in your life. Figured maybe I’d get to see the chink in the armor.”

Jake smiled faintly, but it didn’t reach his eyes this time. He stood, rolling the ball back and forth between his hands. “Yeah,” he said finally. “I have.”

That surprised her. Not the admission—just the ease of it, or the lack of resistance.

“Want to know what it was?” he added, looking at her now.

Ellie hesitated, then, she could feel herself nodding. “If you want to tell me.”

Jake tapped the ball once against his putter, thinking. “It was early on. Post–Top Gun, but not by much. I got cocky on a turn during an exercise with my home squadron. Pushed too hard trying to outfly the guy on my tail. Pulled too many Gs too fast, lost situational awareness. Came damn close to a G-LOC.” He exhaled through his nose. “Woke up to my backseater screaming, every damn alarm going off and the ocean way closer than it should’ve been.”

Ellie stared at him, eyebrows lifting. “Jesus.”

“Yeah.” He offered a weak smile. “They grounded me for a while. Made me sit with that one.”

That wasn’t the data she expected, but it was the kind she trusted more than numbers.

It was playing across her face as she frowned slightly. “That… wasn’t in your file.”

Jake shook his head before she could finish. “It wouldn’t have been. Internal incident, scrubbed from record. They wanted to protect the squadron. And me, probably.”

She didn’t say anything at first. Just let it hang there.

“Why tell me?” she asked softly.

Jake met her gaze, quiet for a moment before he replied. “Because I think you’re the kind of person who already knows everyone screws up. You just want to see if I’ll admit it.”

Ellie’s lips tugged up into something small. Not quite a smile, but close. “That wasn’t a test.”

He stepped up to take his shot. “Sure it wasn’t.”

Jake hit the ball—too hard at first, but it clipped the edge of one of the rocks and bounced into the spiraling path like he’d meant it to. It curled around the curve and slipped neatly into the cup, disappearing with a soft plink.

He turned and winked. “Still got it.”

She didn’t mean to notice the way his fingers curled around the putter, steady and loose like he wasn’t trying too hard—but of course she did. Just like she clocked the shift in his voice, low and easy, warm enough to slide under her skin if she let it.

Ellie rolled her eyes, but there was a flicker of warmth behind it. “That was definitely a fluke. No way you planned that.”

“Guess you’ll never know,” Jake said, handing her the ball from the tray, fingers brushing hers briefly. “Try not to choke under the pressure, Rigby.”

She stepped up, squared her stance. “You saying that out of concern, or just because you like watching me prove you wrong?”

Jake smiled. “Yes.”

She took the shot.

The twelfth hole had a medieval theme—naturally.

A miniature stone castle rose up from the green, complete with a foam moat and a slowly lowering drawbridge. At the top of the ramp, a tiny animatronic knight in gleaming plastic armor pivoted back and forth, halberd swinging lazily in timed arcs that could knock an off-angle ball clean off the course.

Ellie crouched near the tee, squinting at the layout, her ball balanced between her fingers. “If I can angle the shot just right off the left curve here,” she murmured, mostly to herself, “and time it so it slips past the knight’s swing while the drawbridge is dropping, the kinetic deflection might push it right into the center lane. Sort of like accounting for crosswind shear when you’re dealing with intersecting velocity vectors—” “Crosswind what now?” Jake asked, leaning on his putter beside her, lips twitching. She didn’t even look at him—just smirked. “You know exactly what a crosswind is, Seresin. I think you just like hearing me say it.”

“Guilty.” Jake grinned. “But come on, Rigby. You have to know how stupid hot it is when you talk like that.” She rolled her eyes but stepped up anyway, adjusted her grip, and sent the ball on a clean arc up the ramp.

It skimmed the inner curve, dodged the knight’s swing by a hair, and struck the descending drawbridge at just the right moment—bouncing off the edge and straight through the castle gate. A moment later, the satisfying clink of the ball dropping into the cup echoed through the turreted plastic.

Ellie straightened with a self-satisfied smile, but Jake was still watching her like she’d just solved cold fusion in front of him.

“What?” she asked, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear.

He leaned in slightly, eyes dancing. “I’m serious. Vectors. Wind shear. Real-time deflection. You just made physics sound like foreplay.”

Ellie blinked, caught off guard. Her ears flushed a little despite herself.

“Oh my God,” she muttered, turning away toward the next hole.

It was stupid, how one sentence could make her feel like a whiteboard, all her inner workings scrawled in bright marker. Unnervingly visible. Uncharacteristically loud. Unconditionally wanted.

Jake followed, chuckling under his breath. “I’m serious. That was like… NASA dirty talk.”

“Stop,” she warned, half-laughing now.

He leaned in as they walked. “Say ‘relative velocity’ just one more time.”

“I will hit you with this putter, Seresin.”

Jake clicked his tongue, “worth it.”

The fourteenth hole was bottlenecked.

A trio of teenagers in front of them were taking their sweet time with a windmill setup, laughing too loud and arguing over who cheated on the last hole.

Ellie didn’t mind the break in pace—her score was up, her swing had evened out, and Jake had just come back from the little refreshment shack with two cold bottles of beer.

He handed her one, condensation slick against her palm. She took it, twisted off the cap, and glanced up at him as he leaned casually against a weathered picnic table nearby—one foot braced on the bench, posture all confidence and sunset ease.

“So,” he said, voice easy but eyes trained on her with that laser-sharp Seresin curiosity, “be honest—was schooling hotshot pilots with that big brain of yours always the dream? Or was this just the backup plan after villainy school didn’t pan out?”

Ellie snorted into her beer. “Wow. That’s the line you’re going with tonight?”

He gave a one-shoulder shrug and a smirk. “Just trying to get a sense of the origin story, Rigby. Genius like yours doesn’t just show up one day.”

She didn’t answer right away. Just took a long pull from the bottle, the cold settled low in her chest, clear and sharp. Like it knew exactly where to land. A few feet away, the windmill’s blades spun lazily.

“I liked planes,” she said finally. “Figuring out how they worked, why they flew. The math made sense when nothing else did. My brain just… clicked with it.”

The coles notes version of it all. Easily processed. A nugget of truth buried beneath false flags.

Jake nodded, saying nothing.

“I didn’t think I’d end up in this lane. I thought I’d go into engineering—build better systems, maybe make flight less of a gamble. But then I sat in on a lecture once. Radar telemetry. Flight paths. It was like—” she shrugged. “Someone flipped a switch.”

She looked at him sidelong. He was actually listening. Not nodding out of politeness, not filling the silence just to say something—just there. Really there. Like he was waiting for her to say more without expecting it.

“I didn’t want to be in the air,” she added. “But I wanted to understand everything that happened up there. Every variable. Every edge-case. Every way to fix what breaks.”

Jake tipped his beer toward her. “Backup plan sounds like a hell of a plan A.”

Ellie smirked, tapping the neck of her bottle against his. “Villainy school would’ve hated my flair for precision.”

“Oh, absolutely. You’d have taken over the syllabus by week two.”

She laughed. For a second—just a beat—everything heavy fell away. Work. History. The tightrope between here and wherever her brain lived most days. It went quiet.

The windmill clicked as it rotated. That stupid little metronome of sound beneath it all that kept the moment whole, grounded.

“C’mon, Seresin,” she said, setting her beer down. “You’re up.”

Jake stepped to the tee, but not before tossing her a grin over his shoulder. “Try not to be too heartbroken when I reclaim my lead.”

Ellie leaned back against the table and took another sip, smiling into the bottle like it had said something funny.

The fifteenth hole was built like a mini airstrip—complete with faux runway lights embedded in the turf and a tiny control tower off to the side. The sun was getting lower, painting the whole place in a soft amber light that made it easier to forget what kind of day it had started as.

Ellie watched Jake crouch low to line up his shot, tongue caught lightly between his teeth in concentration.

She knew the second he saw her watching because his smirk made a reappearance.

“You always size people up this fast,” he asked, not looking away from the ball, “or am I just special?”

Ellie arched a brow, resting her putter against her leg. “You’re loud. You make everything a performance. You deflect like your life depends on it but you’re more observant than you let on.”

Jake straightened, blinking once, maybe surprised she answered seriously.

She gave him a crooked smile and added, “But yeah, sure. You’re also just special. Like a limited-edition action figure. With impulse control issues for an accessory.”

That pulled a laugh out of him—low and warm—and he held his hands up in surrender. “Guilty. But you’re not wrong.”

Ellie stepped up for her own shot, tapping the ball and watching it roll just past the hole. She groaned and sighed, “Figures. Too much force.”

Jake tilted his head. “Said the woman with surgical control over crosswind drag simulations.”

“The mini putt gods don’t respect science.”

Jake chuckled again, still watching her with that same amused, curious look. And Ellie could feel it creeping in—that uneasy ease. Like maybe she wasn’t just analyzing him. Maybe he was doing the same to her. And somehow, it didn’t feel like a threat.

The sixteenth hole had a safari theme—sort of.

At least, that was the assumption based on the patchy plastic grass, zebra-print fencing, and the giant purple hippo with its gaping mouth parked smack in the middle of the green. A sign above the obstacle read “Hungry for a Hole-in-One!” in uneven letters that looked like they’d been painted by a seven-year-old on a sugar high.

Ellie stood at the tee, eyeing the hippo like it didn’t belong.

“Okay,” she said, squinting. “If I bank left, past the tree stump, I can aim for the back wall and bounce clean into the mouth before it closes.”

Jake gave a low whistle, leaning on the numbered post for the course like it was a bar stool. “You always this strategic with children’s games?”

She didn’t look up. “It’s not strategy, it’s physics. That jaw’s on a three-second delay. You just have to time the angle and speed.”

He grinned. “You say that, but I’m not convinced you haven’t been out here practicing.”

Ellie rolled her eyes and adjusted her stance. “I’ve had better things to do than master hippo equations.”

She lined up and hit the ball. It banked exactly where she said it would, clipped the inside of the tree stump, hit the far wall, and—right on cue—slid neatly into the hippo’s mouth just before it chomped shut again. The sound of the ball dropping into the cup was deeply satisfying.

Jake let out a breath, watching her. “Seriously. Weaponize this brain of yours and you could take over the world.”

Ellie gave him a sidelong glance as she stepped away from the green. “What about you? Were you always this competitive, or is that a ‘growing up with sisters’ thing?”

Jake snorted, the sound short and unguarded. “Let’s just say, if you’ve never been ambushed with glitter and a curling iron, you haven’t known true psychological warfare.”

Ellie leaned on her own putter, expression softening just a touch. “Survival instincts, huh?”

“Exactly. I still twitch when I smell bubblegum-scented shampoo.”

She watched him set up, the corners of her mouth twitching. “Tell me you cried.”

“Oh, I wept,” Jake said without missing a beat. “It was a layered trauma. Glitter everywhere.”

She laughed—genuine and light—and something in Jake’s shoulders loosened at the sound.

He took the shot. It clacked against the stump, missed the bounce by a hair, and got caught in the hippo’s jaws just as they closed.

“Damn,” he muttered.

Ellie patted his shoulder as she passed him. “Guess survival instincts only get you so far.”

He looked back at her, smirking. “Pretty sure I’m still winning.”

“Not the hole-in-one race,” she said, breezy, smug, already walking like she had the crown in her back pocket.

Jake chuckled and fell into step beside her as they headed for the final hole, a lightness between them that hadn’t been there a week ago—something building, quiet and unmistakable.

The eighteenth hole looked like it had been slapped together as an afterthought—flat green, standard windmill, one rotating obstacle like a tired metaphor. Ellie eyed it with a touch of disappointment. After knights and jungle animals, this one felt like the designers had just given up. A copy and paste from a previous hole with slight change in colour.

She crouched anyway, reading the timing of the spinning blades, calculating the best window. One more clean putt and she’d have him by two strokes. Maybe three, if he got cocky and tried to overcompensate like he had on the hippo hole.

Jake’s voice drifted toward her, almost casual. “Can I ask you something?”

Ellie didn’t look up, eyes tracing the path she willed her ball to take. “You mean besides what wind drag, and hippos have in common?”

He let out a laugh behind her, and she caught the sound of his putter shifting on his shoulders. Her lips twitched before she could stop them.

“Yeah, besides that.”

She took her shot, letting the ball roll just short of the windmill, right on cue. Easy. Planned.

And then he asked it, calm, casual, like it didn’t weigh heavy between them.

“Why now?”

Two words.

Casual.

Her spine stiffened like he’d hit a pressure point she didn’t know she was guarding. When she looked at him again, he wasn’t watching her. It gave her the briefest of moments to recover.

Play dumb. It wouldn’t hold water—not with him—but maybe it’d buy her time to come up with a version that hurt less.

“What do you mean?”

“My help. Why ask now?” He clarified without lending words to what she knew he might have said instead. You know what I’m talking about, but I’ll spell it out anyway.

“What? Because you think I’m too proud to admit that you might be useful?” she replied, voice dry as usual, but she knew it didn’t land like she’d wanted it to.

She could tell by the way he was watching her. He wasn’t smirking. Wasn’t goading. Just... watching her. Still. Like maybe the silence might spill something if he held it long enough. Like she might incriminate herself.

She exhaled, a quiet, measured breath that didn’t quite ease the tightness in her chest, even when the air was out.

There were ten different versions of the truth she could offer. None, clean. None without underscoring the ticking clock. Each one sharper, messier, more real than the last.

Because if she told him the truth—that she was out of time, that Stark was already circling the slow dying of her tech like a buzzard waiting for the last breath....

It wouldn’t just be admitting she needed him.

It would be admitting she might have bet her whole career on the wrong damn play.

“Maybe I thought collaboration would be more productive than butting heads and snarking each other within an inch of our collective lives,” she shrugged, her voice even, as truthful as she could manage. “Radical, I know.”

There, she’d said it.

It lived now, between them.

Controlled. Mostly safe. A small, sliver of truth, wrapped in the comforting, hardened shell of reason.

“You could’ve asked Rooster,” he said too fast, like he’d practiced the line in the event of that response from her. Ellie almost heard the edge of something in his voice, like he was hoping she hadn’t asked because she was desperate, out of options.

It was brief, the static between radio stations as it scanned for a stronger signal.

Ellie scoffed before she could stop herself, brow raised as she turned her gaze on him. “I could still ask Rooster if you’re bored.”

The corner of his mouth tugged, but his eyes… they were still on her, sharp, yet warm. There was something behind his gaze—something he wasn’t saying. Like he didn’t quite buy her answer. Like he felt the edges of a shift he didn’t fully understand yet.

“Didn’t say I was bored,” he said, stepping a little closer. “I’m just trying to figure out if this is about the tech… or something else.”

The question landed hard—low in her stomach, coiled and tight like something waiting to escape.

She didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink.

Just turned back to the green, like she could outmaneuver the heat of it by focusing on spin and angles. On anything else. In the quiet, she tapped the ball like it was the easiest thing in the world. Straight through. Past the spinning arms. Right into the cup. Par for the hole.

Don Quixote had nothing on her.

“Guess you’ll have to keep showing up to find out, Hangman,” she called over her shoulder, already walking away.

But even as she put distance between them, her heart didn’t settle. It thudded with every step—louder than it should have.

Jake had a talent for asking questions that sounded like banter but felt like a scalpel. Sharp in the hidden context, a tool meant to cut to the heart of it. She’d dodged most of them, an acrobat twisting and arching through hoops, walking across a tightrope.

She hadn’t lied. Not exactly. Yet, this question felt... different.

She yes, while she hadn’t lied, she hadn’t told him what changed, either.

Jake was still tallying the scores on the faded little card as they rounded the final bend of the course, the neon lights from the last hole buzzing faintly above them.

Ellie leaned in with narrowed eyes, trying to sneak a peek, but he turned just in time, raising the scorecard high above his head.

“Come on, Seresin,” she said, standing on her toes to swipe at it. “Take your loss like a man. No shame in it.”

Jake smirked, one arm stretched up high, the other resting lazily at his side. “That’s assuming I did lose. Bold of you.”

Ellie rolled her eyes and made another grab for it, still half-laughing.

“You’re so bad at this. Just admit it. You’ll feel a lot better. Say the words: ‘Ellie, you’re superior in every way and I should’ve trained harder for this mini putt showdown which I instigated.’”

“You practiced that speech?”

She could feel his chest rumble under her palm with a low laugh.

“Rehearsed it in the mirror,” she deadpanned, stretching again, her fingers just grazing the edge of the card. “Now hand it over. I just want to see it. Maybe frame it. Hang it over my bed.”

She was so focused on grabbing it, she didn’t notice how far forward she’d leaned—until her foot slipped off the curb and the world tilted.

Jake caught her. Quick. Solid. Arms firm around her waist.

For a second, they were just... there. Pressed together. A breath from tumbling into the water hazard.

“Whoa there, sweetheart,” he murmured, voice edged with a smile. “You trying to find an excuse to touch me, or just that desperate for a win?”

She blinked up at him, breath catching. Flushed. Flustered. Her brain still catching up to the heat curling low in her stomach.

He held her like a secret. Like a maybe. Like something neither of them was supposed to want—but did.

Her mind stalled around the response, caught between too many variables. Before she could recalibrate, Jake’s gaze dipped to the scorecard still dangling from his fingers.

And she saw it—the decision flicker behind his eyes.

A beat later, with a smirk, he let the slip of paper flutter from his hand.

Right into the stream.

“Oops,” he said, not even pretending it was anything but intentional.

Ellie stared at the little rectangle bobbing gently in the slow current. “Did you seriously just erase the only proof that I crushed you at mini putt?”

Jake tilted his head, mock thoughtful. Shrugged. “Guess we’ll never know. Life’s full of unanswered questions.”

She narrowed her eyes, lips twitching. “You’re the worst kind of sore loser.”

Jake chuckled, brushing invisible dust from her shoulder. “This was low-stakes, Rigby. Just a warm-up.”

She crossed her arms. “So, I’m off the hook then. Pool’s cancelled out.”

“Not even close.”

“And the favour?”

He was shaking his head at her, an ‘ah ah ah’ kind of dismissal, but the spark in his eye betrayed any seriousness it was meant to impart.

“I’ll be a gentleman about it,” he was already gesturing toward the parking lot. “Walk you to your car. Consolation prize.”

Ellie scoffed but followed. “Consolation prizes are for the people who lose, Seresin.”

Jake grinned, falling into step beside her. “I know. Never said who it was for.”

The walk to the car stretched longer than it had any right to—gravel crunching underfoot, night air clinging like a second skin. Everything felt slowed down. Suspended.

Ellie still felt the buzz in her chest.

The electricity of the game.

A flutter of lightness off Jake volleying banter with her like it was muscle memory. Pushing the boundaries, toeing the edge.

Her cheeks ached from smiling. Her heart was nowhere close to baseline, humming with an excitement that she hadn’t remembered feeling in a long time.

The feeling of the perfect moment in a rom-com.

The stomach drop of a poetic line delivered in a romance book. She kept talking—half to fill the space, half because if she didn’t, she might think too hard about the way this all felt dangerously close to real.

“If we reroute that second input loop and isolate the signal, I think we can cut the drag time by at least 20%. Maybe more if we calibrate it right.”

Jake hummed, low and impressed. “Look at you. Already halfway to solving tomorrow.”

“It’s a good problem,” she shrugged, trying to play it off casual—but she was trying not to beam like an idiot. “I like the puzzle of it.”

They stopped at her car, haloed in the gold spill of the lot’s overhead light. She reached for her keys—still mid-thought—when his hand lifted, fingers brushing her cheek.

She froze.

It was barely a touch. Just enough. Just too much.

Her heart was already hammering, hummingbird wild, at the base of her throat and when she looked up, he was there.

“It’s just a—uh—” he started, the beginning of an excuse, as his thumb passed over her cheek bone.

She was dangerously aware of how the palm of his hand hovered close enough to cup her cheek. His fingers ghosted her jawline.

Close. Why was he so close?

The space between them tightened, thinned to a breath, the rustle of his adjusted stance reported in the gravel below his feet.

His gaze dropped to her mouth, a flicker of intention as she hummed, acknowledging that he’d started to say something.

She leaned in. Or maybe he did. Or maybe the earth tilted on its axis, and she just felt it.

The anticipation curled low, her breath hitched just slightly, the warmth of his lips so incredibly close to hers now. She could smell the sweet, hoppy scent of the beer he’d had earlier, the subtle clean smell of his cologne. Not overwhelming, just there.

She was consumed by him, every other thought silenced as her eyes fluttered shut—reflexive, stupid, hopeful.

Then—

Click.

She felt her car door open behind her with a soft mechanical thump and when the coolness of a breeze touched her lips, the moment collapsed in on itself.

A smash of piano keys out of tune.

Ellie’s eyes snapped open.

Jake was already stepping back, his hand snaking back from behind her where he’d tugged the door handle and slipping into his pockets.

Cool.

Calm.

And Ellie? Not even remotely recalibrated.

Her chest felt like an echo chamber, all out of rhythm. Her brain scrambled to reroute like a corrupted nav system—spinning options, redistributing resources, and yet none of it made sense.

Her stomach lurched, her limbs lagged, her whole body still buffering for a kiss that never came.

For the first time tonight, she felt off-balance. Adjusting for a condition she hadn’t calculated. Failing the reboot.

“Get home safe, Rigby,” he murmured. Soft. Steady. Knife-twist gentle.

The door stood open like a boundary. A line in the sand. An out.

She got in. Settled into the seat as the old leather groaned. Because what the hell else was she supposed to do?

Her hands gripped the wheel, but her brain was still outside—tilted toward something that didn’t land. Her pulse was wrong. Her mouth still buzzed like her lips had been kissed and then left on read.

Because it wasn’t a date. It wasn’t.

But it had felt like one. Every joke. Every brush of his arm. Every second he didn’t kiss her. It cracked something open—and now she was driving away with it bleeding and raw and stupidly there.

She hadn’t said thank you. For the help. For the chance to remember there was more to life than base, home, repeat. For making her laugh like it wasn’t a survival skill.

She hadn’t said “don’t stop” when he pulled away. She could have. But that would mean that she wanted him. That would mean admitting that he lived under her skin in a way that unsettled her.

So, she started the car and just drove.

In the rearview, Jake stood beneath the halo of a single light—hands tucked in his pockets, watching her go.

A ghost of an almost. A silhouette of might’ve been.

The drive home felt like it happened underwater.

Ellie’s hands were on the wheel, eyes on the road ahead, but her mind was back in the parking lot.

Her body remembered: his hand near her face, his voice low and warm, the way he looked at her like he was waiting. Wanting.

She missed a left turn entirely and had to loop back through the next light. At a red, her foot hovered just a beat too long before the green blinked her back into the present.

She should’ve been running through the updated parameters, thinking through the way his patch suggestions could reroute the input lag and stabilize the outputs. It was a good lead. A great one, even. Maybe even fantastic enough to buy her Stark’s vote of confidence at the Board meeting.

But she couldn’t stop replaying the moment her eyes had closed.

She hadn’t meant to lean in. Or close her eyes. Or want. It wasn’t calculated or controlled—it was instinct. Trust. Hope.

She couldn’t bring herself to fully commit it to a mistake, for once...

By the time she reached her place, the chill of the late-night air had seeped into her. Still, a part of her was warm. Light. Untethered.

She climbed the stairs, her bag sliding down her shoulder as she reached the top. Voices filtered from the living room—Nic, full of laughter, spinning in a dress as Yan sat on the couch, an open bag of crunchy Cheetos nestled in the space between her crossed legs.

“Too much shoulder?”

“No, Coronado demands shoulder,” Yan punctuated her words with the crunch of an orange puff snack, “it’s on point. Rooster's not going to be able to keep in in his pants.”

“What if I wore my hair up?”

“Uhm—You have to wear it up—”

Ellie floated past the scene, barely registering more than the words wedding and Coronado.

Her eyes flicked to the dresses hanging off the back of the couch, glimmering with sequins and soft silk. Usually, she’d linger, toss out a sarcastic comment or ask Nic if the bridal party came with air traffic control and insurance to land those sleeves.

Not tonight.

She slipped down the hall, her steps quiet, and closed her door behind her like sealing herself off from gravity.

She went through the motions—face washed, teeth brushed, hair tied up. Her thoughts never quite left him. She remembered the way his eyes had locked with hers like a magnet and held. The quiet confidence of someone who could pull you in without ever raising his voice.

When she crawled into bed, the sheets were cool against her legs, the room dimly lit from the streetlamp beyond her window. Her phone buzzed once with a message, maybe Nic, maybe nothing. She didn’t check.

Her last thought before sleep took her was of him. Standing in front of her, brushing her cheek like she was made of something he didn’t want to damage.

Jake Seresin had gotten under her skin.

And worse—she liked it.

a/n: literally just so excited for these next few chapters. finally getting into the meat and potatoes of what makes these two tick is the best part.

if you love this series, reblog, comment, like!

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taglist if you want to be added/removed!

❥ playlist ♡ masterlist ♡ taglist ♡ glossary of terms ♡ previous chapter ♡ next chapter ❥

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mlqueen89 · 1 month ago

Note

Just wanted to let you know that the Playlist you have on Spotify for Jake and Eleanor is absolute perfection ❤️

Ahh! Thank you so much! I literally listen to it on repeat. It's the source of most of my inspiration. I'm glad you're enjoying it!

If you have any song suggestions for it, I'd definitely add them!

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mlqueen89 · 1 month ago

Text

Seven | Teamwork

Edge of the Earth by The Beeches

pairing: jake “hangman” seresin / ofc (top gun: maverick)

rating: 18+ (minors dni)

warnings/triggers: 🔥smut in overall series

word count: 13,095

summary: ellie plays by jake’s rules to get his help feedback. desperate times call for desperate measures.

looks like the cold front might be on its way out with ellie and jake!

long wait = long chapter!

❥ playlist ♡ masterlist ♡ taglist ♡ glossary of terms ♡ previous chapter ♡ next chapter ❥

Your destination is on the right.

The map assistant reported her arrival as her tires dropped off the road and into the gravel lot.

Jake was easy to spot.

Leaning against the side of a red pickup, she realized she’d never seen him in anything other than a flight suit, tan Navy issue uniform and... nothing.

Now, he wore a simple white t-shirt that hugged each muscle group and a pair of regular blue jeans. She noted the cowboy boots, with a raised brow.

“You’re really milking this, aren’t you?” Ellie called over as she crunched across the gravel toward him.

“Not sure I follow.” Jake smirked.

That fucker. He followed.

She rolled her eyes, adjusting the strap of the laptop bag on her shoulder.

He was really going to make her say it. Again.

Probably use the memory to pleasure himself later.

Not that she thought about that. Or him.

Except she did.

Explicitly.

She was shaking her head, an etch-a-sketch on her memory. “My asking for your help.”

Jake’s responding brilliant smile caught her somewhere in the lower abdomen, kicked up a cluster of fluttery things she quickly worked to swat away. Dandelion seeds in the wind.

��C’mon then,” he tipped his head toward the restaurant, “let’s get you your help, sweetheart.”

That was a Texan thing, wasn’t it? Sweetheart? Darlin’?

Ellie kept her head high as she stepped inside.

This was business.

Fixing the parameters to elevate the test results so she didn’t have to pack up her office in shame.

Business.

Fergus had finally found a spot on the shelf he liked, full sun. She’d finally settled into a rhythm of watering him semi-regularly. He’d grown into his pot with the plant slogan.

Did plants get traumatized from sudden moves to dark bedrooms where she’d undoubtedly wallow in self-pity if Stark voted to pull the plug?

The scent of slow-smoked meat and spice hit her immediately, warm and rich, curling in the air like an invitation.

Ellie set her laptop bag on the table, fingers already working at the zipper.

“Not even gonna take a minute to appreciate the ambiance?” Jake clicked his tongue, arms stretching across the back of the booth as he watched her.

She ignored the way his biceps flexed with the motion, focused instead on pulling out her laptop. “Ambiance doesn’t help me fix the parameters.”

“You’re really somethin’, Rigby. You ever just, I dunno—relax?”

She did.

It was just unfortunate that the last time she’d relaxed was under him, and over him, on him and—

“My work relaxes me,” she shot back with a bit more bite that she’d intended.

His smirk that had started small deepened, but he didn’t look up from the menu. She hated that it made her feel so... exposed.

“Then I think you must be the most relaxed person in this entire state.”

Ellie leveled him with a look. “Seresin.”

He caught her eyes over the top of the menu, shiny under the dim pendant light hanging over the table.

“Rigby,” he mimicked as he signaled to a passing waitress. “Two sweet teas, please.”

She frowned. “Actually, I’m—”

“You’ll like it,” he interrupted, flipping the menu over to glance at the back side. “And if you don’t, well, that’s somethin’ I’ll just have to live with.”

Ellie exhaled sharply, drumming her fingers against the table. Her laptop sat, half out of the bag. “Fine. But once the drinks come, we talk about the adjustments.”

Jake hummed noncommittally, still scanning the menu.

He probably already knew the damn thing by heart and was just trying to make her squirm.

“Tell you what, we’ll get there. But first, let’s play a game.”

Ellie narrowed her eyes at him. “I want you to know I hate the sound of that.”

Still, he pressed on, undeterred. “It’s simple. You guess things about me, and I’ll guess things about you.”

“Or, and hear me out,” she parried dryly, nudging her laptop, “we could just get to work, like we said we would.”

Jake ignored her.

Ellie blinked, caught off guard.

She huffed, but the corner of her mouth tugged up despite herself. “Oregon,” she admitted reluctantly. “West Linn.”

Jake looked pleased with himself. “Lots of trees, I bet.”

Ellie snorted. “Yeah. And rain.”

The waitress buzzed by, dropped off their drinks, and Ellie instinctively reached for hers, grateful for the temporary distraction. Jake wasn’t done.

She left out the part where moving came with her dad’s work, too. That she was from Oregon, but that she’d spent most of her life on bases in California, one in Florida, briefly.

Jake nodded like he was filing the information away, carefully. “Siblings?”

“None.”

He nodded. Took a deep sip of his own tea before he set it down. “And your dad?”

Ellie felt her stomach twist. Knot. Flip.

Jake’s eyes locked with hers across the table for a moment. She looked away. Lifted her tea, took a slow sip. Set it down. Swallowed, hard.

“Pass.”

Ms. Rigby, tell us about your childhood trauma.

Ms. Rigby, why don’t you want to talk about your dad?

Ms. Rigby, when was the last time you responded to any of his phone calls?

She’d long approached any question related to Rick Neven like a congresswoman dodging questions she didn’t have answers for.

Drink water.

Downplay.

Dodge.

Ellie huffed, already regretting indulging him. She didn’t have much of a choice though, did she?

Fuck it. She was already well up the creek, sans paddle.

“Fine. You’re from Texas. Obviously.”

She answered the question before he asked it. She’d bet her first born on Jake being a Texan boy. Mostly because she’d read his file, partly because she felt he’d wear a Stetson unironically.

Considering him for a moment—his straight face, his posture—she tapped her finger against her lip before continuing. “Probably some tiny town in the middle of nowhere. Lots of cows.”

Ellie tilted her head, elbow on the table, she propped up her chin on a fist. “I’d bet you were quarterback.”

Jake placed a hand over his heart, mocked a wince. “That hurts, Rigby.”

“So, not quarterback?”

“Oh, I was. But I don’t know I like how quick you were to assume.” He grinned. “Alright, one more. You think I’m an only child?”

“Oh, definitely not,” she said finally, her tone was almost a laugh. “You don’t give off only-child energy. I bet you have a bunch of siblings.”

Jake’s grin turned knowing. “Four. One older brother, three younger sisters.”

Ellie sat back slightly, arms folded. “Middle child confirmed then. That explains a lot.”

Somewhere, a toddler squealed and someone guffawed, notes of a jazzed up “Happy Birthday” and a clapping call and response filling the silence in between.