“She’ll be fine,” Robinson interrupted. “The Napa retreat is always a family affair. There will be lots of spouses there for her to spend time with. The surroundings are beautiful, good food, good wine. So don’t worry about it.”
I scramble for an ironclad excuse as panic rises in my chest, but I’m coming up blank. “It’s not that…it’s just that I think she—”
“And the retreat is very much a chance for clients and peers to see your informal side. An opportunity to see the people behind the negotiations and business side of things. Without all the competitiveness and back-biting we unfortunately put up with in this—” Robinson’s phone rings loudly on his desk. He glances at it for half a second, holds his hand up as if I was the one talking, and answers it.
“Hello? Yes…of course!” He gives me an emphatic thumbs-up, a polite non-verbal translation of ‘we’re done here, so please leave now – and don’t dare ‘forget’ what you just agreed to.’
“…and then he asked what I would do to give the character a sense of integrity during the scene – you know, because it comes so shortly after the comedic exchange – and I didn’t even think about it, I was just ‘in the zone’ as you Yanks say, so I just stood up, and I started acting out exactly how I saw it going. You should have seen his face – Nate? Are you even listening to me?”
I look up from the bar as if waking from a dream.
“Yeah, shit. Sorry, Will. I’m just a little out of it today.”
He shifts a little in his stool to properly face me, takes a long draw of beer, and laughs a little to himself.
“I should have known something was wrong when you didn’t even look at that rather lovely trio in the corner there.”
I raise my eyes and look over to the other end of the empty bar. I catch the three young girls in business clothes looking in my direction, and when I return their gaze they quickly giggle and turn back to themselves shyly.
“Would you believe me if I told you I’m not interested today?”
“Not particularly,” Will responds, keeping his eyes fixed upon the women. “What’s the problem? Wait. Let me guess. You’ve suddenly seen the error of your ways and are experiencing the guilt of a thousand morning-afters at once.”
I sigh into my beer bottle.
“I’m supposed to go to a high-end retreat this weekend and schmooze with the company’s biggest players.”
“Great!”
“No ‘great,’ fucking amazing. Imagine prom, graduation, your first blow job, and your first paycheck – combine them, and that’s the kind of breakthrough this weekend could be. If it goes well, I could be one of the biggest forces in Hollywood within a year.”
Will looks at me with awe in his eyes.
“Again…great!”
“The thing is, I’m supposed to be bringing my girlfriend along.”
Will knits his eyebrows together and looks at me suspiciously.
“But you don’t have a girlfriend.”
“That’s the problem. My boss is a family man, so I’ve been pretending to be a good little boy all this time – that meant inventing a fictional girl that I love deeply and am incredibly loyal to.”
After laughing for what feels like an eternity, Will drains his beer and slaps a palm on my back.
“Sorry, Nate,” he says, with typically British politeness. “I don’t mean to laugh. It’s just…well…again, what’s the problem?”
I shoot him a confused look.
“If I may,” Will says, putting his beer bottle down on the bar and directing his full attention towards me. “You are good at precisely two things. One: Meeting women, and seducing them into doing all manner of things they never thought they’d be doing. And two: Managing the egos and whims of people in the film industry – not least actors and actresses. Put those two elements together, and I believe you’ll find there’s quite an obvious solution to this predicament.”
“It’s not a matter of finding some random girl to stand-in, Will. My boss met ‘Tessa’ a few days ago, only it wasn’t Tessa, it was…an old friend. That’s who Robinson’s expecting.”
Will shrugs. “So take her.”
I shake my head miserably. “She’s not exactly supportive of my…extracurricular activities. Trust me, there’s no way I can get her to agree to fake being my girlfriend for two days. Likely all I’d get for asking is a kick in the balls.”
Will nods. “I see your problem now.”
I groan slowly. We order a couple more beers and I start flicking through my phone contacts, looking for the number of a girl I’d met a week before – I’m going to need a hell of a stress-reliever tonight.
“Hands off, Nate. This one’s all mine,” Will says, nudging me in the ribs. I look up.
“Jessie?”
She hears me call her name and flashes me a smile before making her way over from the entrance. In her tight yoga pants, hugging the sweet curve of her hips and thighs, and her bright-blue sports bra revealing the toned flatness of her midriff she looks out of place in the night-ambience of the bar. Still, even with a thin layer of sweat on her, dorky headphones around her neck, and her hair tied back, she’s the hottest girl there. Because she’s real.