I laugh. “You’ve clearly never been to one, then. They’re boring. Stuffy. You just sit there all dressed up and have quiet little conversations about the weather or whatever. The whole thing is just a pain in my ass. I hate wearing suits, for one thing. Tuxedos are the worst. I’m an actor and an athlete, not a wine-and-dine and be all haughty and hoity-toity kinda guy, you know? I like beer and football, not champagne and golf, and that’s all these sorts of events are about. Everyone is drinking expensive fucking champagne, which is gross if you ask me, and talking about golf and the latest gala in Beverly Hills, and gossiping about who cheated on whom, and who got funding for their latest script. It’s boring and stupid.”
“So you’re just an average guy that gets dragged to fancy events against his will, huh?”
I laugh. “Yeah, pretty much. I swear, you act in one blockbuster movie, and everyone goes fucking nuts.” I deliver the line casually, but I’m trying to feel Des out, see how she feels about my status as a relatively famous movie star.
“Price of fame, or something like that, right?”
I nod. “Pretty much. You do a movie, and then you have to do the junkets and the press release events, and these fundraisers and whatever. I just want to shoot the film and be done, but no, that’s not how it works. Gotta play the game their way, I guess.”
“What are you shooting?” She’s pivoted slightly toward me, now. Finally her posture and body language is relaxing and opening up a little.
“I can’t really talk about it, actually. The whole project is on the down low. The script is super-secret. I have to check my script in and out every time I take one. You can’t just walk around with it, can’t risk someone getting a look at it. The whole thing is crazy secretive.”
“Really? Why?”
I hesitate, unsure how to answer that with really giving anything away. “Well, it’s one of those things where the director and producers don’t want any spoilers or leaks, just because of the nature of the project.”
She grins at me. “Nice non-answer.”
I duck my head and laugh. “Well, I told you I can’t talk about it. I’ve gotten good at not really answering interview questions by now, I suppose.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want you to feel like I’m interviewing you or anything,” she says, and then slides a food menu toward me. “We eating, or just drinking our dinner?”
I scan the options as I answer. “Oh, we’re eating. I’m fucking starved, and this is a cheat weekend for me.”
“Cheat weekend?”
“My trainer has me on a wicked strict diet. Like, when I started training for the shoot he gave me a one-page list of things I could eat, and when, and how much.”
She seems to find this hard to believe. “That’s nuts! Why?”
I curl my arm up, flex my bicep, and slap it. “Gotta look a certain way for the role, babe. You don’t get guns like these by accident.”
“Oh my god,” she snorts. “You did not just say ‘guns’, did you?”
“I believe I did.”
“That’s just…I can’t even. I just can’t even.”
“Can’t even what?” I ask, glancing at her.
She laughs into her vodka tonic. “It’s a meme…white girls who just can’t even…’”
I shake my head. “Not familiar with that one.”
She sits up straight, and her face twists into a prim and proper expression. She flips her hair. “Like, ohmygod, did you see her shoes? I just can’t even.”
I choke on my beer as I laugh, picturing the exact stereotype she’s mimicking, the kind of girl who populates L.A. so thickly you could hit six of them every time you throw a stick. “That’s a good one. I know exactly what you’re talking about now.”
“But seriously. You don’t really call them guns, do you?”
I frown at her. “I hope to fuck I’m not coming across as that type of guy.”
She shakes her head. “No! No, I’m just—I barely know you. I just met you. You never know, you know?”
“Fair enough.” The bartender swings by and we both order burgers and fries, and when the bartender leaves to put in the order, I turn on the stool to face her. “So anyway. Be assured I am not that guy. You will never, ever, hear me in any seriousness refer to my arms as guns or pythons or anything fucking stupid and vain like that. They’re just arms.”
“But they are very nice arms,” she points out. “Just saying.”
I grin at her. “Thanks.”
Another awkward silence descends, because I’m not sure what I can ask her about. From the way she froze up over me asking about her focus on foster care, I’m guessing questions about family are going to be off limits at this point. And that’s usually what I lead with, to get conversations going.
“How’d you get into acting?” Des asks, eventually.
I lift my beer in a signal for another. “Well, it wasn’t something I ever thought I’d do. It just wasn’t on my radar, you know? I was an athlete. Football. I played football from the time I was ten all the way through college. Played in school. Stanford. That was really what I thought about. But then, my senior year at Stanford, a friend of mine who is a filmmaker asked me to be in his movie. ‘You don’t have a lot of lines,’ he promised. Only, the other guy he had as a lead quit halfway through, and Rick conned me into taking the lead role. It was just this tiny little thing, you know? A film school project, that’s it. But it was fun. A lot of fun. Rick was raving about how good I was, but whatever, I just had fun doing it.”
Our food arrives, and I pause to take a few bites, relishing each morsel. Burgers and fries aren’t exactly on the approved list. “Anyway. I got drafted after I graduated, and played a season in San Diego. But then Rick got hired to direct a bigger project, and he wanted me in it. So during the off-season, I worked on his movie. And this one got the attention of a director who was looking for a male support who looked a certain way, which I just happened to fit. And that role? It was a big deal. Big. The kind of thing that could start a real career, you know? And I knew at that point that I had the chops to maybe really act, so it was a dilemma. Training season was about to start, and I had a role on the table. I had to choose, you know? Football, or acting?”
“When you say you played a season in San Diego…” she trails off expectantly.