The Love Interest

Chapter 14

Some parents force their children to sit in a lonely corner when they're misbehaving. Other parents whoop them with a coat hanger. My parents would tell me to do forty jumping jacks until I was too tired to argue with them.

Hayes Ford, on the other hand, had me recite the fine print of my acting contract, word for word, over three hundred times, on a piece of notebook paper. When I paused to give my wrist cramp some alleviation, he'd bark at me continue writing. Nearly one hundred and twenty lines into writing 'Both legal parties understand that they are prohibited from engaging in a sensual relationship off the set of the Adair Affair,' and my hand starts to twitch from both writer's block, and potential arthritis.

"Can I take a break-?"

"No." Hayes bellows, his voice a concoction of all things horrific.

"I can't feel my fingers, though."

"Good."

"I might have a hand seizure."

"There's no such thing."

My hand's ability to form coherent sentences with the ballpoint pen completely diminishes, and I'm almost certain that a two year old can write better than this. Ignoring his demands, I drop the pen and tend to my quavering wrist that had completely locked up from both sheer nervousness, and, well, writing the same sentence over one hundred twenty times. "Hayes, please."

He eyes the way I'm massaging my wrist bone indignantly, and decides that maybe just a hint of mercy would be acceptable. "Fine." He verbalizes before handing me a cleaning wipe that he stowed away in one of his multiple desk drawers. "Use this time to clean off your sins."

I grab the cleaning wipe timidly. "Yes, sir."

Opening the camera on my phone, I use the reflection to see where to wipe at, though I probably could've suspected the spot of the lip stains just by the tingles that were planted beneath them. My face was cluttered with lipstick stains, all along my neck and jaw, around my cheeks and forehead- and in every place that they were sprawled, my skin was burning.

Hayes makes a deep sound of disapproval once he notices that I'm staring at them, and I gingerly begin to wipe them away. It was difficult to get them off because lipstick does actually stain, and this cleaning wipe feels like sandpaper on my skin. Even once I finally get them all rubbed off my face, I still feel like they're there. Like they're ineffaceable.

"Feel better?" Hayes asks as I toss the reddened cleaning wipes in the trash, a somber feeling settling in the pit of my stomach.

No. "Yes, thank you." I reply, regardless. "And, I'm sorry-,"

"Don't apologize to me, Miss Hart. Apologize to yourself."

I shift uncomfortably in the leather chair that was seated across from him, not exactly sure what he meant by that.

He takes my silence as an invitation to elaborate. "I know..," and then a long, debilitated sigh, "I know that...I may seem like the antagonist in your story line at times, Miss Hart. I know." His hands clasp together in front of his face, his elbows propped on his desk, and for a moment, his forehead lazily falls against his clasped hands like he was in some sort of prayer. "Genevieve..," he finally drops his hands, regaining his usual composure in addition to the use of my first name, "I did not put that interdiction on your contract because I find it entertaining to have to do this. I put it there because, when I saw your first audition, I saw a prospect of someone who could be amazing. I still do. But, I also saw a part of you broken- and I'm not sure if it's because you lost someone, or because you were using acting as an outlet to expel all of your pent up sorrow, but whatever it was, I could tell that you used it to your advantage. You made something beautiful out of it.