Chapter 2: The Premiere Lie
The warm glow of the desk lamp felt like an interrogation light. Matt paced, the polished concrete floor cold beneath his bare feet. His phone was a live wire in his hand.
He’d done it. He’d given a name. Matt. A real piece of himself, however small. It was liberating. It was terrifying. She’d given one back. Dee. It suited her—short, sharp, no-nonsense. He’d whispered it to the empty room just to hear the shape of it.
Now, the silence between messages was a yawning chasm he felt compelled to fill with more. The impulse to confess it all, to type ‘You’ve probably seen my face on a bus stop ad,’ was a physical pressure behind his ribs. He’d typed seven different versions of the truth and deleted every one.
His thumb moved again, almost against his will.
Matt: You asked about my work once. I’m in the movie business.
He hit send before he could think. Then he stared at it, nausea rolling through him. Too vague? Too revealing? It was the most generic thing he could have said in this town. Anyone here was in the movie business—baristas, yoga instructors, dog-walkers. He was hiding in plain sight.
His phone buzzed almost instantly.
Dee: Vague. Very mysterious. Director? Grip? Best boy?
He let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. She was teasing him. The normalcy of it was a lifeline.
Matt: Behind the camera. Boring technical stuff. You’d fall asleep if I explained it.
Dee: Try me. I’m a journalist. We have a high tolerance for boring technical stuff. And a low tolerance for bullshit.
The air left the room. Journalist. The word landed like a stone in the pit of his stomach. Of course she was. The sharp mind, the probing questions, the way she dissected everything he said for deeper meaning—it made perfect, horrible sense. A journalist with a keen eye and, presumably, very good research skills. The fragile fantasy he’d built shuddered on its foundations.
He typed a sentence, deleted it. Typed another.
Matt: Should I be scared? ;)
The winking emoji looked grotesque. A coward’s mask. His thumb did tremble, just slightly, against the screen.
Dee: Only if you have something to hide, Matt.
He read the line five times. Was that her professional curiosity piqued, or was it just her usual, deliciously direct banter? He couldn’t tell. The ambiguity was a new kind of torture.
Matt: Everyone has something to hide.
Dee: Philosopher now, are we? Fine. Keep your boring camera secrets. For now.
For now. She’d used his own phrase from last night. A callback. A thread pulled between them. It should have felt comforting. Instead, it felt like a clock starting to tick.
He needed to steer this away from his nonexistent cinematography career. He needed to be Matt, just Matt, the man she talked to in the dark.
Matt: What do you journal about? The hard-hitting stuff? Exposés on corrupt city planners?
Dee: Sometimes. Today it was a 5000-word feature on municipal wastewater management revisions.
Matt: Sexy.
Dee: You have no idea. The drama over sedimentation basins is literally filthy.
He laughed, a real, unexpected burst of sound in the quiet office. The tightness in his chest eased a fraction. She was still there. She was still her. The job was just a detail.
They fell back into their rhythm, the easy volley of thoughts about the bookstore that was closing on Sunset, the strange comfort of rain in a city that hated it, the shared, weary disdain for productivity cults. It was easy. It was profound. He found himself telling her about the scar on his thumb—not the PR-friendly version from the late-night shows, but the real one. A childhood accident with a piece of broken bottle, trying to impress a brother who wasn’t watching. The simple, stupid shame of it.
Dee: I knew it was there.
Matt: You guessed.
Dee: I knew.
The certainty in her text felt like a hand on his, a quiet absolution. For a moment, he wasn’t a persona. He was just a boy who’d been cut once, and a woman who saw the mark it left.
The digital clock on his laptop clicked over to 1:17 AM. The city outside his window was a smear of gold and black.
Matt: It’s late again. You should sleep.
Dee: You first.
Matt: Can’t. Have an absurdly early call time for my boring technical job.
It was true. He had a 5 AM pickup for a fittings test for the period drama he was shooting. The lie, wrapped around the truth, tasted bitter.
Dee: Fine. Go be important behind the camera.
Dee: Goodnight, Matt.
He looked at his name. Just his name. Not the one in headlines or on marquees.
Matt: Goodnight, Dee.
He placed the phone on the desk, screen-down, like containing a spirit. The charge in the room hadn’t dissipated; it had deepened, grown more complex. It was no longer just the thrill of a secret connection. It was the specific, gut-level fear of being known by the one person you most wanted to know you, and the dawning realization that you were building something on a fault line.
He stood at the window, watching a lone car snake through the canyon below. Journalist. The word echoed. She was a storyteller who hunted truths. He was a storyteller who lived a fiction. The symmetry was beautiful and doomed.
In the reflection on the glass, his own famous face looked back at him, vague and troubled. For the first time in a long time, he didn’t see the actor. He saw a man who was lying to a woman he was falling for, and he had no idea how to stop.