Page 41 of Take Two

Cameron checks the sidewalk behind us twice before his pace finally eases.

“We’re clear.”

Cyaire nods and reaches up to pull off his sunglasses, pressing two fingers briefly to the bridge of his nose.

“Sorry,” he says.

I look over at him. “For what?”

He gestures vaguely in the direction we came from. “That.”

“You didn’t plan it.”

“No.” A small, humorless sound leaves him. “I usually manage things better than that.”

I glance pointedly at the hoodie. “The disguise was flawless,” I say.

His head turns toward me slowly. “You have been waiting to say something about the hoodie all night.”

“I showed considerable restraint, actually.”

“You called me Clark Kent,” he says, pointing at me with mild indignation.

“That was earlier.” I lift one shoulder. “That barely counts.”

Cameron snorts audibly behind us.

Cyaire’s laugh finally surfaces, quiet at first, and then more genuine as it settles in. He shakes his head, something loosening back into place across his expression, the tightness from before not entirely gone but retreating.

“I knew you were judging the hoodie.”

“The hoodie was doing its absolute best,” I say. “The sunglasses at night, though.” I cannot help it. The laugh gets out before I can catch it.

“All right, all right, I hear you.” He gestures at the sunglasses and the hoodie with an air of resigned dignity that makes it worse. His smile holds a little longer this time, and I am glad for it. Glad that I could find the angle that brought it back.

In the quiet street around us the pause that follows feels larger than it probably should. The market is still close enough that I can catch pieces of it, voices layered over traffic, the distant cry of gulls, the low ambient rumble of an evening crowd working its way through the city. Out here, it is just the three of us and a narrow street and the kind of stillness that only exists in the gap between one thing and the next.

This is the part where we should probably say goodnight.

The evening has already run well past anything either of us planned for. He has Cameron. I have whatever version of my evening remains. Common sense, which I am normally quite good at, says wrap this up now, before the night stretches into something neither of us can honestly call casual.

The problem is that common sense has been losing ground consistently since the moment I agreed to take a walk with him. I can’t identify exactly when it started conceding territory, but it has been at it for hours now.

Cyaire shoves his hands into the front pocket of his hoodie and looks toward the line of cars along the curb. He looks tired in a way that has nothing to do with the walk or the hours on set, I think. It is a specific kind of tired. The kind that comes from being recognized, from managing it, from pulling yourself back behind the appropriate walls in public and carrying the weight of that constantly. I recognize it without fully understanding it.

Neither of us makes any move to say goodnight.

I am aware, in a very clear and unhelpful way, that I should find that more concerning than I do. I really should, but it doesn’t stop me from opening my mouth and saying the first thing that surfaces.

“You want to come back to my place?”

Cyaire’s head turns toward me, eyes widening just a fraction. “Your place?”

I shrug, reaching for casual and landing somewhere in the approximate vicinity of it.

“No crowds. No phones. No strangers recognizing movie stars while they’re trying to enjoy a nice stroll.”

His mouth curves at one corner. “That’s your sales pitch?” he asks, and I hear the callback to the arena in it immediately, the shape of my own words returned to me.