Off-Script

Celia’s POV

Evelyn and I took separate Ubers back to the hotel.

It was better that way. Cleaner.

I went straight to the shower, washing off the day, scrubbing the scent of her from my skin—not because I wanted to, but because I knew I should. 

By the time I crawled into bed, exhaustion was pressing through my muscles, into my bones. Between long shoots and sex with Evelyn, I was tired. The sheets were cool, the room was quiet, and for the first time in weeks, I thought maybe I’d get some real sleep.

Then my phone buzzed.

I almost ignored it.

Most of my notifications were off—no Twitter, no Instagram, no endless texts from people I didn’t care about. The only exceptions were my agent, Roger, and Evelyn.

I reached for my phone lazily, flipping it over, expecting some late-night bullshit from Roger or maybe a cryptic, tipsy text from Evelyn.

Instead, in all caps:

HELP ME. PLEASE. DON.

My heart slammed against my ribs as I practically threw myself out of bed, yanking on the first clothes I could find—sweats, a hoodie, whatever was closest. My hands were shaking as I fumbled with the zipper.

I sprinted down the hall, not even bothering to knock before shoving open her door.

Unlocked.

The room was dim, lit only by the soft, flickering glow of the TV. But from the bathroom, light spilled, sharp and yellow. First, I saw her mother. She was curled into the corner, her arms wrapped around herself, shoulders shaking, sobbing so hard she couldn’t make a sound.

And then came Don. His white tank top was stained—pink in places, like blood diluted with water. His pupils were blown wide, his hands balled into angry little fists by his sides. He shoved past me, shoulder knocking into mine, and I turned just in time to see the empty, glassy look in his eyes. Like he wasn’t even there. Like he wasn’t human.

The door swung shut behind him. I forced my legs to move, barely aware of the sound of my own breathing as I rushed toward the bathroom.

Evelyn was slumped against the sink, her hair damp, matted at the temple. A split lip, blood smeared against her cheekbone. Her robe hung loose around her shoulders, fabric bunched in places where he had grabbed her.

She looked up at me, eyes unfocused, blinking slow like she was trying to register if I was real. I dropped to my knees beside her, my hands hovering over her skin, not knowing where to touch, what would hurt.

“Evelyn,” I whispered. My voice cracked. I didn’t try to hide it. “What did he—”

“I have to leave him.”

The words came out strangled, like they had to fight their way free. She wet her lips, winced as the movement cracked the blood at the corner of her mouth.

“I’m…” Her throat bobbed as she swallowed. “He’s going to kill me.”

She said it the way someone might say it’s going to rain tomorrow. A certainty. A fact.

A sick, twisted rage unfurled in my chest.

“I’m calling the police.” My fingers fumbled for my phone. “Right now. And we’re going to the hospital—”

“No.”

She barely moved her head, just a fractional shake, but it was enough to make her flinch.

“No,” she repeated, breath shallow. “I don’t want a scandal.”

The words hit me like a slap.

I could’ve screamed. Could’ve told her that scandal was the least of her problems, that no career, no reputation, no fucking headline was worth dying over.

But what good would that do? She knew that already.

And still, she was saying no.

I inhaled slowly, through my nose, pushing down the helpless fury creeping up my throat. She needed something else from me. Not outrage. Not panic.

I grabbed a towel from the counter, turned on the tap, and soaked it under warm water.

“This is going to sting,” I murmured, kneeling beside her.

She nodded, just once, and let me press the cloth to her cheek.

Her jaw went rigid, a muscle jumping near her temple. I worked carefully, blotting at the blood drying along her cheekbone, the bruise blooming beneath her eye. The cut at her lip reopened, just slightly, fresh red beading at the surface.

I could hear her mother still crying in the other room, soft, uneven sobs. The TV was still on. It sounded like some late night talk show.

I felt like I was in a dream. Or a nightmare—one of those where you try to scream but nothing comes out. Where you try to run but your feet won’t move.

And Evelyn—

Evelyn looked like she was waiting to wake up, too.

I wiped along her jaw, the curve of her neck, the tops of her shoulders where finger-shaped bruises were already surfacing. Her breathing slowed, steadied. Eventually, she let me help her up, moving like a marionette with its strings cut, limbs heavy, uncooperative. I guided her into the bathtub, turning the faucet on low, letting the warm water creep up around her ankles, then her calves. She sat there, knees drawn to her chest, watching the water rise slowly.

I lowered myself onto the cold tile beside the tub, close enough that our shoulders almost touched.

I murmured something—nonsense, really. Soft reassurances, like she was a baby. She didn’t answer, but she didn’t tell me to shut up either, so I kept talking.

She looked small. Not in the way she made herself look in photoshoots when she wanted men to think she needed protecting. No, this was different. This was raw, stripped down, real. I realized then that I had spent so much time flattening her in my mind, reducing her to something simpler than she was. A sex symbol. A shameless, calculating opportunist. A slut with nice tits.

It had been easier to think of her that way. Maybe I needed her to be that, because it meant I could keep her at arm’s length. It meant I could want her body without wanting her.

But that wasn’t Evelyn.

It had never been Evelyn.

I exhaled, letting my head rest against the edge of the tub.

I hadn’t wanted to fall for someone like her.

But I had never really stood a chance, had I?

•••

Evelyn’s mother wouldn’t look at her.

She stood stiff in the corner of the hotel room, arms wrapped tightly around herself, her whole body coiled like a snake in winter. When I guided Evelyn toward the bed, she took a step back—flinched, almost—like she couldn’t bear to see her daughter this way.

I didn’t know much about her. We’d crossed paths once or twice, exchanged polite nods on set, but never more than that. I didn’t know what kind of mother she had been, what kind of childhood Evelyn had walked out of. But somehow, she had known to text me instead of anyone else. I didn’t understand how. But I was glad she had.

I helped Evelyn ease onto the bed, moving slowly, careful not to jostle the bruises still darkening on her skin. She let me tuck the blankets around her.

Then, in a voice so soft it almost wasn’t there—

"Mamá," Evelyn murmured, turning her head toward her mother. "Vete a tu cuarto."

Her mother inhaled sharply. But she didn’t move.

Evelyn licked her lips, her eyes dull, exhausted, but firm.

"No tienes que quedarte aquí."

Still, nothing.

I looked between them, unsure if I should say something, if I should leave, if I even had the right to be here for this moment.

Evelyn’s mother finally spoke. "No quiero que cometas el mismo error que yo."

"¿Qué error?" Evelyn asked, voice hoarse.

Her mother met her gaze, and there was something devastating in it. Something that said, You already know.

"Quedarte con un hombre que te destruye antes de que puedas ser algo más."

A silence fell between them, thick and heavy. Evelyn swallowed. "No me quedaré," she whispered.

Her mother gave a slow nod, then took a step toward her, hesitated, and finally reached out, brushing a hand over Evelyn’s hair. It was quick, almost hesitant, but it was the first real tenderness she had shown all night.

Then, without another word, she walked out.

The door shut softly behind her.

Evelyn exhaled. I crawled into bed next to her and cradled her until she fell asleep.

•••

The next morning, I ordered room service for Evelyn: coffee, croissants, and a plate of fruit. While I was on the phone, I made another request.

“If Don Adler tries to come up, don’t let him past the lobby.”

The concierge hesitated—Don was Don, after all—but my voice left no room for debate. I hung up before they could offer any excuses.

When the food arrived, Evelyn barely acknowledged it. She sat propped up against the headboard, her hair still mussed from sleep, staring at the table as I peeled an orange and set a few slices in front of her.

She picked one up, took a slow bite. We ate in silence. I didn’t ask her about Don. Didn’t ask what he said, what he did. Didn’t ask what her mother had told her before leaving. I didn’t speak Spanish, but I didn’t need to. I had seen the look on Evelyn’s face. Whatever had been said, it had mattered. And I wasn’t going to ask her to unravel it for me. Not yet.

When we got to set, the air shifted. A slow ripple of awareness passed through the crew, whispered reactions spreading like radio waves. Some people tried to act normal, keeping their shock contained in polite nods and hushed conversations. Others just…stared.

The director called off shooting within minutes.

The makeup artist—who had spent the last few months treating Evelyn’s face like a goddamn museum artifact—stood frozen in front of her, clutching her brush belt, eyes glassy with something close to devastation.

I couldn’t blame her. Evelyn looked bad – even worse than the night before. The bruises had deepened overnight, settling into their final shape—blooms of purple and blue along her jaw, a sickly yellow creeping at the edges of her cheekbone.

Her bottom lip was swollen, the cut at the corner stark against her skin. It was the kind of damage no amount of foundation could fully hide.

For a moment, I thought Evelyn might waver under their gazes, might shrink under the weight of their pity. Instead, she squared her shoulders, lifted her chin, and said, “Someone get me a fucking iced coffee.”

And just like that, she was back.

•••

Evelyn’s POV

We spent the day running lines. The crew had already lost one full day, and while that wasn’t catastrophic, I knew how these things went—every delay had a domino effect. But no amount of rehearsal was going to speed up the healing of my face.

Bruises don’t respect tight production schedules. They settle in, deepen, bloom like rotten fruit. No amount of ice or arnica gel was going to erase the evidence of Don Adler’s hands in twenty-four hours.

I prayed my makeup artist had a miracle tucked away in her kit.

But even if she did, even if she managed to make my face camera-ready by some stroke of magic, it wouldn’t change the fact that I felt like a walking wound.

That day, I carried only two things with me:

A raw, unfiltered rage toward Don. For what he had done to me, for the way his violence had made my body something separate from me, something he had decided belonged to him in that moment.

And shame.

Not because of him. Never because of him.

But because Celia had seen me like that.

Celia, my co-star. My fuck-buddy. The girl with the red hair pooled on my pillow.

She had seen me on the bathroom floor, bruised and bloody and gutted of whatever power I pretended to have. Celia, who had only ever seen me as sharp, untouchable, something to want but never something to pity.

I could still feel the way she had touched me afterward—not like I was delicate, but like she was afraid of breaking something that was already broken.

I spent the rest of the day pretending Celia wasn’t there, moving around her like a cat avoiding a puddle. It was petty, and I knew I’d have to drop it eventually, but irritation sat low in my stomach, stubborn as a stone. My mother had let Celia in. That part stuck with me. I couldn’t decide if I was more annoyed at her for doing it or at myself for being glad she had. Because Celia had cared—really cared—and that had caught me off guard. It should have been my mother there instead, but she wasn’t, and somehow, that made everything sit even stranger.

The gossip machine roared to life right on schedule, chewing through half-truths and spitting out a story before I’d even had a chance to catch my breath. A photo surfaced—my face swollen and bruised. Then came the TikToks. Some college girl swore she saw Don Adler slumped over a whiskey glass at Somerset Bar late Thursday night. The internet played detective, connected the dots with the fervor of people who had nothing better to do, and by morning, Don wasn’t just in trouble—he was radioactive.

I can’t say I lost sleep over it. Though, if I had it my way, I would’ve finessed the messaging a little better. My publicist put out a statement—clean, professional, infuriatingly vague. Said Don and I were going our separate ways and that I had no intention of pressing charges. That part didn’t sit well with people. The comments flooded in, full of righteous fury, demanding that I take him to court, that I ruin him. They wanted a public execution, and I—still working through the sharp, private edges of what had happened—wasn’t ready to hand them the axe.

The fallout came fast and merciless. Don’s name, once synonymous with Hollywood royalty, curdled in the mouths of executives and sponsors. A few industry relics tried to salvage his reputation—old men who still believed a strong jawline and a famous last name were enough to buy redemption. But the proof was there, impossible to spin. The photo of my bruised face. The eyewitness accounts. His sloppy, whiskey-drenched unraveling. No one wanted to be in his corner when the walls caved in.

The film he was set to headline? Shelved indefinitely. His lucrative brand deals? Ghosted him overnight. Six months later, even the house—the sprawling, soulless glass box I once called home—slipped from his grip.

I had already grieved for Don the first time his hand hit my cheek. Everything after that was just confirmation of who he had always been. So when he finally disappeared from my life, I didn’t mourn. I exhaled. And I hoped—fervently, selfishly—that I’d never have to lay eyes on him again. The way I never saw my father after I left the Bronx.

•••

Celia and I gave each other space in Cincinnati. Not in any tense or awkward way—just a natural sort of pause, like we both understood we’d stepped into something uncertain and didn’t want to rush it. I needed time to sort through things, and she seemed fine letting me take it.

When filming wrapped, I packed my things and went back to Los Angeles. I rented a big house in the Hollywood Hills for me and my mother. I decorated the house with all my favorite things – which meant spending an arm and a leg. But it was all worth it to get to live the life I’d dreamed of for years. The kitchen got Kelly Wearstler barstools in deep emerald velvet. A La Cornue range sat in the center of the kitchen, even though I barely cooked, and the fridge was stocked with Erewhon smoothies and Casa Dragones tequila for late nights.

My bedroom was an altar to excess in the best way—Frette sheets on a Minotti bed and a Hollywood-style vanity, ringed with old-fashioned yellow bulbs.

For my mother, I chose quiet elegance—a Ralph Lauren Home four-poster bed, Matouk linens, a Diptyque Baies candle to replace the scent of the Bronx. A Sonos speaker on her dresser played the Spanish ballads she used to hum over the sink. In the bathroom, a Jo Malone bath set sat untouched. She wasn’t used to luxury yet, but I figured she would be, given time. Her daughter was famous. She’d come around to the finer things eventually.

I didn’t speak to Celia for two months. Not out of anger, not even avoidance—just uncertainty. I didn’t know how to reach for her outside of Cincinnati, outside of the closed-door world where we had first let something happen. In Los Angeles, I didn’t know her intimately. We weren’t really friends, but she had seen me raw, exposed. She had seen the damage Don left behind. And yet, I couldn’t pick up the phone.

Thank God for Harry. He was the one who helped me stitch myself back together after Don. We became inseparable. I trusted him. More than that—I needed him. And when he helped land me the lead role in Modesto, an upcoming A24 film, I realized just how much he believed in me.

The film was a strange, quiet thing—a near-future coming-of-age story about a teenage boy, Emil, and the AI humanoid he falls in love with. My character was the robot. Not quite human, but programmed to mimic everything human beings needed—warmth, companionship, the illusion of love. I spent weeks fine-tuning the way I moved, the way I spoke—just human enough to be convincing, just artificial enough to unsettle. 

The role wasn’t devoid of sex, of course. Nothing ever was. Lillian, the robot, was engineered to be desirable—an impossible mix of precision and fantasy, designed to be looked at, wanted. But there was more to her than that, and I made sure of it. Beneath the glossy exterior, I carved out something deeper. Because if people were going to watch me, if they were going to project their desires onto me, they were damn well going to see the layers underneath too.

Harry became my go-to, the person I could sit in comfortable silence with or trade dry one-liners that only we found funny. The internet ate it up. They labeled him the “perfect gay best friend” and turned him into a meme, a commodity—straight women swooning over him like he was a designer bag they suddenly needed. We found it ridiculous. He was good-looking, sure, in that effortless, well-moisturized way, but the thought of anything beyond friendship had never crossed my mind. What we had was easy, uncomplicated. A relief. That was exactly what I needed. For a while, anyway.

I was between takes, balancing a cup coffee in one hand and my phone in the other, when I felt the weight of absence settle over me. Celia. I hadn’t seen her in months. I hadn’t had sex in just as long. I told myself it was the sex I missed, not her. The simple, physical pleasure of it. The convenience. But even as I framed it that way in my head, I was already unlocking my phone, typing out a message.

ME: It’s been a while. Are you free this weekend?

I set my phone down, let it disappear under a stack of marked-up script pages. On set, I lost myself in the work—new lines, new emotions. I didn’t think about my phone until I came back to my dressing room, peeled off my jacket, and caught the glow of the screen in the dim light.

Two missed calls. Both from Celia.

I called her back and patiently waited. She picked up on the third ring.

"Evelyn," she answered, her voice softer than I expected. "Sorry for calling so much. I just—"

"It's fine," I cut in before she could over-explain. "I was on set. And yeah, I know it’s been a while, but…I’d like to see you.”

A beat of silence. Then a laugh.

"Oh, so you’re the one begging this time?"

I could picture her perfectly—reclined in her dressing room chair, vape dangling between two fingers, watching herself in the mirror. 

"Begging?" I scoffed, leaning back against my vanity. "Hardly. I just miss what we had…in Cincinnati."

"‘We’ll always have Cincinnati,’" she drawled, laying the Casablanca reference on thick.

"You are so obnoxious."

"And yet, here you are, calling me."

"Rapidly regretting it," I said.

Celia laughed. "Sorry, sorry," she said, still grinning through it. "Honestly, I didn’t expect you to call. Thought you were over… whatever it was we were doing."

I shrugged, knowing full well she couldn’t see me. "It was good sex. No reason to retire it early."

She made a small, pleased sound, like she was tasting something she liked. "Okay. Here’s the deal—I’m having a birthday party, and I want you there. And after, we can… you know, relive Cincinnati."

"Just say ‘fuck,’ Celia."

"Fine. Fuck. We can fuck afterwards."

I smirked. "You’re inviting me to your birthday party? What are you turning, twelve?"

“Twenty-three,” Celia corrected. “And don’t be such a grouch. It’s going to be fun.”

“Is this some overpriced rooftop thing, or am I expected to suffer through a dinner with your agent and three people from Disney who pretend they still like you?”

“Wow, the hostility.” She exhaled, probably blowing out a cloud of mint-tinged smoke. “It’s at my place. Small. No agents, no industry dinosaurs. Just people I like. Which, apparently, for some bizarre reason, includes you.”

I turned it over in my mind, rolling the decision between my teeth like a cherry pit. Since Don, I’d done my best to keep my head down. I skipped the usual Hollywood parties, ignored the invites that used to feel like oxygen. I told myself I was being smart, that I was putting my energy where it mattered—into the film, into my career.

But, God, I missed sex. I missed the scent of Celia’s perfume, the way it clung to my sheets, my skin, the inside of my jacket long after she’d left. I missed the way she fit against me, how she curled into my shoulder like she was meant to be there, like she—

Fuck. No. No. Not that.

I shook the thought loose, pressing my fingertips into my temples. "Maybe I’ll swing by," I said, keeping my tone casual. "But I don’t want anyone seeing us… together. Alright?"

"We’re not together," she said, her voice cool and unreadable. "We just fuck."

I exhaled slowly, tapping my nails against the side of my coffee cup. The silence stretched, offering me an opening for something—a proper goodbye, or maybe something more honest—but I let it pass. Instead, I hung up.

•••

At the last minute, I decided Celia’s party wasn’t worth my time. The whole thing—sneaking around, slipping into the shadows just to touch her—felt juvenile. What was the point? There was no shortage of men who wanted me, men who would do exactly what I wanted, when I wanted it. I could have one tonight if I wanted. A good-looking one. Someone eager, someone who’d say yes before I even finished the question.

But then Harry showed up at my door.

“I’m not going,” I told him, arms crossed.

He barely looked at me as he straightened his jacket in my hallway mirror. “Well, I am.”

I narrowed my eyes. “What?”

“One of Celia’s friends—John Braverman—is going to be there,” he said, smoothing a hand over his hair. “Him and I have been…talking.”

“Talking,” I repeated, leaning back against the kitchen counter. “As in?”

“As in, I like him.”

That caught me off guard. I studied his face, searching for something unserious in his expression, some sign that he was just bored and looking for an excuse to drag me out. But he wasn’t joking.

“You like him,” I said, slower this time.

Harry let out a breath, shaking his head like I was being difficult. “Is that a problem? I know you don’t want relationships, Ev. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want one.”

A flicker of jealousy stirred in my chest—irrational, undeserved. He was his own person, with his own wants, his own quiet longing for something I couldn’t give him. Most people didn’t want to be alone forever. I couldn’t fault him for that.

“Fine,” I said, exhaling as I grabbed my purse. “Let’s go.”

Before we could make it out the door, my mother shuffled into the kitchen, wearing an old house dress and the slippers I’d bought her months ago that she insisted were too nice for everyday use. She glanced between us, her face lined with that familiar skepticism she reserved for my social life, then gave Harry a small wave. She liked him. Always had.

“Mrs. Herrera,” Harry greeted, offering her a nod, ever the gentleman.

She eyed my outfit—a silk dress, a little too fitted, a little too low-cut—and switched to English. “Where are you going?”

I could feel the unspoken concern in her voice. I went out less these days. After Don, after everything, she watched me closer.

“Just a party,” I said, keeping it vague. “Celia’s birthday.”

My mother’s expression shifted. “Celia! Celia is a good girl.”

I paused, one earring halfway in. “You like Celia?”

“She helped you that night, didn’t she?” My mother switched to Spanish, her English strong in short sentences but still hesitant in longer ones.

I nodded, the memory surfacing whether I wanted it to or not. “Yes. She did.”

I didn’t like thinking about that night, but ignoring it wouldn’t change anything. It had happened, and thanks to the internet, it was now an inescapable part of my mythology.

My mother sighed, smoothing down the front of her dress, then ushered us toward the door like she was done with the conversation. “Go to the party and have fun. And tell Celia she is welcome over here whenever.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You do realize this is my house, right? Not yours?”

She smiled at me, a little too pleased with herself, and shut the door.

•••

Celia’s place was smaller than mine, but it had more character—a rental in the hills with uneven floors, a balcony too small to be useful, and a front door that stuck when you tried to close it. Inside, it was cluttered in a way that felt intentional, like everything had been chosen with a story in mind. A worn leather couch, a modular bookshelf stuffed with vintage paperbacks and old magazines, a turntable with a stack of records that ranged from Fleetwood Mac to some indie band that probably only had 30,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. The walls were a mix of framed film posters—mostly 70s and 80s, the kind you’d see dissected in a Letterboxd review—and Polaroids taped up haphazardly, a few of them curling at the edges.

It smelled like expensive candles, weed, and menthol. In the corner, a cat sat perched on the arm of a chair, watching the party unfold with the judgment of someone who had seen it all before. 

The crowd was the kind of people you saw at every industry thing in LA—actors between roles, a couple of musicians who hadn’t released anything in years but still got invited to everything, influencers who made their rounds in their best “oh-this-old-thing” outfits. A few recognizable faces, but not the ones who got hounded at Nobu. 

I found Celia alone, tucked into the corner of what passed for a sunroom—a narrow, glassed-in extension of the house that was probably an afterthought, cluttered with a mix of thrifted furniture and abandoned plants someone had stopped watering. She was perched on the edge of a vintage armchair, a blunt in one hand, a lowball glass in the other.

She wore a navy-blue suit, tailored to her frame. The blazer sat open, just enough for me to notice what she wasn’t wearing underneath. Bare skin, freckled across the collarbone, the dip between her ribs.

I swallowed.

“Celia.”

She turned at the sound of her name, slow and deliberate, like she already knew I was standing there. Her gaze landed on me, cool, unreadable at first, then sharpening with something else entirely. She took a slow drag from the blunt and exhaled.

“Evelyn.”

I felt the heat rise up my neck, but I forced myself to keep my expression neutral, stepping further into the room. The walls of the house buzzed with the sounds of the party—laughter spilling in from the kitchen, the bass from whatever playlist someone had put on vibrating through the floor. Harry had already run off in search of John. In that room, it was just me and her. 

I flicked my eyes down, just for a second, then back up. She smirked, catching it.

Fuck me.