(Kitten/Ashley, Mid-August, 22 months since Kitten and Daddy started dating, three months since Chapter 9)
"Fucking Saskatchewan," I said, looking out the car window at the endless landscape of nothing.
Daddy glanced over at me from driving. I refused to look at him. It was entirely his fault that we were back in this province. I was perfectly happy to leave this place behind after I graduated high school three years ago. I was going to be cranky this entire drive. I knew it and he knew it. At least he had the sense not to try and make things better.
We were already in improv mode. Because of airline delays we didn't arrive in Regina until 11 last night. Rather than try to drive to Kipling in the dark and arrive after midnight, he decided we'd just get a hotel and head out in the morning.
I would have preferred to go to Kipling in the pitch black. At least I wouldn't be subjected to the endless fields of grain. It felt like it was closing in on me. I tried telling him it's not like he had to worry about many twists and turns in the road, but he said the hotel was a better idea, and that was that. I later remembered he didn't like driving when it was dark anymore and felt a little guilty about that. He was also probably hoping a good night's sleep might take care of some of yesterday's crankiness. My current mood and body language were destroying that theory.
The trip was a little less than two hours, which was probably just as well. It's not like I was in a hurry to get there, but much more than two hours of never-ending fields of grain would likely drive me mad.
I sighed again, took my feet out of my sandals, put them up on the dashboard, and leaned back in the car seat. Staring at the roof of the car was a better option. I had made this trip approximately 10,000 times in my life. There was nothing new for me to see.
The feet on the dashboard was Daddy's breaking point. He always had a thing about it, considering it rude. Most guys would be happy with the opportunity to look at my legs, but he does get to see a lot of them already.
"Kitten," he started.
"Better start calling me Ashley again, Ben," I said. I caught him wincing out of the corner of my eye. "If you call me Kitten in front of mom she'll call out the whole town to stage an intervention. If I call you Daddy she'll probably have the RCMP shoot you."
"Yes, I know you don't want to do this. Yes, I know this is going to be...uncomfortable for you," he said, which was the understatement of the year. "But I think your mom and I should meet at least once. You're her only child. If nothing else, I'm curious to see what she's like."
"We're nothing alike," I said. I hoped this would preemptively cut off any attempt at talking about our similarities.
"Yeah, and Beth said that about her mom before I met her, and Meg said the same thing about her mom. Every woman around your age swears they are nothing like their mom except, of course, there are things in common. It would be crazy if there weren't."
I could feel myself boiling up again and barely managed to beat it back down. We so rarely fought that we didn't know the rules of engagement. How far we could push the other before knowing we had gone too far. The instant I felt the urge to snarl something about his mom was when I knew I needed to shut up. It would be unimaginably cruel to do that.
Besides, we were just rehashing arguments that we've been having for the last two weeks, ever since he and Susan tricked me into making this trip. Aside from knowing the disaster waiting for me at the end of this highway, I also hated being guilted into doing something. What's worse, Daddy knew what he was doing and seemed perfectly ok with it, because he knew what was best for me.
He had a 99% accuracy rate on that belief. Most times I found it sexy that he believed that. But this was the 1% time where he was dead wrong.
"You'll see soon enough, Ben," I said, just to remove any doubt how pissed off I was. "There's no way this goes well."
He looked like he was going to respond, but instead turned back to focus on the road.
****
(Three weeks earlier)
After mom sent me that text back in May, Daddy had been unsubtle in thinking I should attempt to make amends with her. I understood why. Of course I did. His mom was dying, and he thought I should try and grab every moment with mine while I could.
However, I sucked at explaining my mom's motivations. We'd spent years fighting with each other. Then I had a whole year where she vanished from my life and it was amazing. I'd never tell Daddy, but part of the reason the last year had been so great was not thinking about her. A huge weight went poof.
Still, I wrote back to her and confirmed I was alive and would see what I could do about coming out for a visit, as I was pretty busy with school and work. There were a few other texts back and forth, but I was determined not to commit to going. Besides, I figured working on the tv show would keep me busy well into August. Then Daddy was taking me on vacation, and then it was back to school. Oops, no time for a trip to Saskatchewan. So sorry. I'll text you a picture of the wedding.
Three weeks ago that plan fell apart. It was late July and the tv show was getting ready to go on an extended break. We'd filmed 12 episodes, which would start airing in September. Depending on how they did, the crew would come back to work on it some more. If not, that was that.
Most of the crew seemed to think the show had no chance. Being cooped up in closets and tiny rooms sewing away from the action, I had no way to judge if that was true or not. But sometimes I got to help out with a fitting for one of the actors and most of them seemed kinda glum. One was muttering to himself and aggressively texting someone who, I guess, was his agent.
Behind the scenes, things weren't so bad. Mary was the acting head of wardrobe. She was in her 40s and had a very "do not fuck with me" vibe. A few years ago she got married and now only did productions in Toronto "to keep the peace." I could tell she missed working on some of the bigger shoots and travelling.
We got along pretty ok. During a break I went out to get some fresh air and Mary was out having a cigarette. I was curious so I asked her why, if the show was so bad and likely to be cancelled, everyone behind the scenes were so chill.
"Actors are high maintenance and fragile egos, honey," she said. "There are some on this show that are as close as they'll ever get to being famous. For the rest of us, this paid the rent and put food on the table. And in a few weeks we will get a call to go and work on something else.
"Most of us are never even going to watch this show, Kit. Just a fact of life."
I found that kinda sad, but I was happy enough to be done with the show. I'd saved up enough money to afford a small studio apartment by myself for the fall and put a dent into my tuition. I didn't need much as I would be spending three nights a week at Daddy's place anyway. Gillian and Soo want some space to themselves, although they made it clear they expected me to come and visit all the time.
I'd gained experience and Mary told me I did a good job. Susan, who initially hired me, was coming up from New York to do a post mortem with the wardrobe crew. And, I suspected, to have a chat with me.
Maybe I hadn't been 100% honest with Daddy when I told him no one was bothering me on set. In May, that had been correct. But by the end of July...
There's only so long you can wear a hoodie and jeans in Toronto in July if you don't want to die. I understood why downplaying my age and looks when I first got on set was a good idea. There was no shortage of gossip about who was sleeping with who. When I made it clear I was engaged and had no interest, people left me alone. It's a TV show; it does not lack cute and sexy people.
By the time July came around, I felt more confident being on the set; I wanted to wear something, not sexy, but at least comfortable. But comfortable in July in the heat means you're going to be showing off more skin. And showing off more skin means you're going to get attention.
I wouldn't have thought a pair of modest jean shorts, sneakers, a Batwoman t-shirt (a CW show, it was essential to wear IP-appropriate attire) and a scarf to keep my hair back made me a sex goddess.
It did make me look young and cute, but hardly jailbait. I was careful to make sure I looked 21 just so I would be taken seriously on set. However, word had gotten out that I was engaged to a much older man. The rest of the wardrobe girls badgered me for weeks about my fiancΓ©, wanting to see a picture of him. I finally showed them one. It was hardly scandalous, just a silly selfie from a Blue Jays game that Daddy dragged me to a few weeks earlier.
But it was clear he was much older than me. And that got around the set. So the next time the actor who played a father on the show came to wardrobe for a fitting, he was pretty blatant in letting me know that if I had a thing for older men, he was certainly there to help me out with that. And maybe he could put a word in for me on his next movie if they were looking for someone.
As seduction attempts go, I found it pretty laughable. Still, he could make things a pain in the ass for me as I was just a work term student. So I said I was very happy with my fiancΓ© and my career, so thanks, but I was good. He didn't push things, but he certainly made himself a minor nuisance for several days trying to be charming. Maybe I should have been worried, but I was more annoyed. Someone must have had a word with him because he magically became less of a pest.
However, movie and tv productions are a lot more sensitive about these things. I suspected it was the reason Susan was flying in. She'd also 'requested' that Daddy be there as well. I pleaded with her not to tell him what happened because he would massively overreact, and I was fine.
"Well, I also want to talk to you about a few things, aside from that. Invite him to the set and we'll arrange a tour. He should be there with you," she texted.
That didn't sound dramatic at all. I told Daddy about the set invite and he was profoundly uninterested.
"Kitten, I grew up in Vancouver. I stumbled over movie and tv shoots every other week. Seeing the set of a doomed teen drama is not that enticing to me," he said, putting together some supper for me in Meg's kitchen.
Meg vanished off to Europe weeks ago and without her around to bother, it got lonely in the condo. Daddy wasn't fond of coming back to Toronto for extended periods, but my pleas and promises of doing 'anything' for some company lured him back. Plus he wanted to make sure I was eating ok.
So he was putting together a stir fry and I was wandering around trying to look adorable so he would cave. In this case, it was my red hair in pigtails, glasses, a Ghost-Spider t-shirt that I maybe accidentally-intentionally shrank so it was tight on me and barely came past my ass. And thanks to the bliss of Meg's condo having air conditioning, I was wearing a pair of rainbow thigh-high socks. Underwear was a non-starter.