Kissing Me Harder, Stepbrother novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Kiss Her Harder
On the set of the show she wrote, Gigi's ex orders the new co-star to kiss her harder, then fires her and gives her role to his girlfriend; she walks off with the only copy of the ending, and the co-star tells her their parents just got married.
"Cut. Kiss her harder. She's supposed to want it."
Dallas said it into the megaphone, so the whole beach heard.
The crew heard it. The neighbors on their decks heard it. The surfers paddling out heard it.
I was standing in the sand in my grandmother's yellow silk scarf, with a stranger's hand on my waist.
The stranger had been hired three days ago to fall off a surfboard.
Now he was my leading man.
"Sorry," he said quietly.
His hair was dyed the red of a fire truck.
His white shirt hung open over a chest covered in black ink.
"Don't be sorry," I said. "Be better than the last guy."
That got half a smile out of him.
Our real lead had walked off at lunch.
Two weeks without a paycheck, and he'd finally thrown his script into the ocean.
Dallas had looked around the beach, pointed at the surf double, and said, "You. Shirt."
So here we were.
Episode twenty-eight of thirty-eight.
The first kiss my character had waited twenty-seven episodes for.
I'd written that kiss at my mom's kitchen table at two in the morning.
I'd written every word of this show.
"Rolling," Izzy called from behind the camera.
She gave me a look over the top of it.
It said, I'm sorry, and also, I will kill him for you.
"Action."
The stranger didn't wait for me to lean in.
He put his hand flat on the small of my back and pulled me in until our hips met.
Then he kissed me.
Not a camera kiss.
Not the careful, lips-closed kind where you count to three and think about your light.
He kissed me.
His other hand slid up under the scarf and into my hair.
I forgot the camera.
I forgot the sunset we'd waited an hour for.
I grabbed his open shirt in both fists and kissed him back.
Somebody on the crew whistled low.
"Cut," Dallas said.
The stranger let go slowly, like he wasn't sure my legs would hold.
They almost didn't.
His mouth was red. Mine felt swollen.
"Okay," he said, a little hoarse. "That one."
Dallas stood up from his monitor.
He walked down off the deck in his white linen shirt, sunglasses pushed up in his hair, clapping slowly.
Dallas Zeller. Thirty-four. Founder of Zeller Shorts.
My boyfriend for two years, until three weeks ago.
That was the night I found Sasha Orr's earring in his bed.
Sasha was sitting on the deck steps right now, in a silk robe, eating grapes.
"That," Dallas said, "is the kiss we needed. Great work. That's a wrap on Gigi."
I laughed. I thought it was a joke.
"We have ten episodes left," I said.
"We do." He turned to the crew and raised his voice. "Quick announcement, guys. The app loved the dailies. Season two is a go."
The crew cheered.
They were sunburned and unpaid, and they still cheered.
"Starting tomorrow, Sasha takes over the lead. Episodes twenty-nine through thirty-eight, and all of season two."
The cheering died.
Sasha lifted a grape at me.
"Viewers won't notice," Dallas said. "It's vertical. They watch it on the toilet."
"It's my part," I said. "I wrote it for me."
"About that."
He pulled a folded paper out of his back pocket.
"Writing credit goes to the Zeller Shorts writers' room. Sign this, and I pay your day rate for all nine days."
"There is no writers' room. There's me."
"There's a room," Dallas said. "You're just not in it anymore."
Sasha laughed.
I unfolded the paper.
Two thousand dollars for every right to my show, forever.
"And the last ten scripts," he said. "Email them tonight. Then you get paid."
That was the thing he didn't know.
I had never sent him twenty-nine through thirty-eight.
He'd asked for them every day for a month. I'd told him they were still rough.
They weren't rough. They were finished.
They were on the laptop in my bag, and nowhere else.
I'd been waiting for him to sign my writer's contract first.
He never had.
I folded his paper in half and handed it back.
"No," I said.
Dallas smiled the way he smiled at waiters. "Gigi. Don't be a baby in front of the crew."
"You have twenty-eight episodes of a show with no ending," I said, loud enough for the deck. "And you sold the app thirty-eight."
His smile slipped.
Behind him, Izzy lowered the camera.
I picked my bag up off the sand and put it on my shoulder.
"Good luck writing it," I said. "Your room can start tonight."
"You walk off this set, you never work in this business again."
"Pay your crew," I said. "Then threaten me."
I walked up the beach stairs in my costume, past Sasha and her grapes.
I didn't take off my grandmother's scarf.
Halfway up, I heard someone on the steps behind me.
The stranger, shirt still open, carrying his boots in one hand.
"You don't have to quit because I did," I said.
"I'm not quitting because you did."
He passed me on the stairs.
"I'm quitting because he just made me kiss you for a joke."
"What joke?"
He stopped at the top, beside an old blue convertible with the top down.
He looked like a man about to jump off something very tall.
"Dallas knew exactly who I was when he hired me," he said. "He wanted that clip."
"Who are you?"
My phone buzzed in my bag.
It was a text from my mom.
Since the wedding, she'd changed her contact name to Cheryl Pascoe, with three hearts.
"Baby!! Did you finally meet Lennon?? He said he'd be on your show this week. Be nice. He's family now!!"
I looked up from the screen.
The stranger held out his hand.
"Lennon Pascoe," he said. "Your mom married my dad."
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