Reese

Author's Note: Originally there was much more to this story, but as I began to write, the word count grew much higher than I anticipated and as a general rule, I like to have no more than 3 pages per story. Therefore, I only included a portion of what I originally intended this story to be. So if there's any interest, another chapter may result. As always, votes and comments appreciated. Enjoy.

***

I check my breath, my shirt and my hair before I knocked on the door; I appeared presentable enough. The truth is I'm not usually this nervous when it comes to women. But this particular woman deserved a bit more attention than the average girl at the bar. I knock three times; nothing. I knock three times more; a muffled response and hurried footsteps. I raise my hand to knock one more time when the door swings wide open. She stands there with her long trademark blond hair soaking wet, wearing a hotel bathrobe that hugs her curvaceous figure nicely. Reese Witherspoon, as I live and breath.

'Am I early?' I asked, trying my best not to stare at the hint of cleavage showing at the top of her robe.

'No, I'm late. I only got back to the room about 20 minutes ago. Come on in Nate,' she said in that casual southern voice of hers.

I walk past her into the hotel room; a room which was clearly more expensive that the one studio had gotten me. But then, she is the A-lister, I'm just the borderline unknown supporting actor. She continues to talk, I barely listen as I marvel at the view of the New York skyline.

'Larry insisted on doing 23 takes for that restaurant scene. I know he's supposed to be a great director, but he's driving me insane. We went overtime today by well over an hour. I was hoping I could hop into the shower before you arrived. So I apologise in advance it I'm still covered in soap suds. You want something to drink?' she asked, gesturing at the mini-bar.

'I'm fine thanks,' I replied, turning my attention back to her.

'You sure? It's all on the Warner Brothers Studio's dime,' she said as she dried her hair with a towel.

'In that case,' I said as I grabbed a bottle of vodka, and a bottle of Coca-Cola and brought them to the coffee table.

Reese smiled and grabbed two glasses and followed me to the couch where we both sat down. I quickly mixed the Coke and vodka before handing a glass to her.

'Cheers,' we both said, almost in unison.

We both took a sip before she leaned forward and grabbed a large script from the table. She opened it up to a page somewhere in the middle which was completely annotated with her own hand written notes. She turned to me and said,

'As I told you over the phone earlier, we have to go over the conference room scene. I was thinking we could run through it a few times before we moved onto other things. But even then, I think we both have a firm grasp on the dialogue. We just have to learn the scene off by heart seeing as Larry wants this filmed in a single long unbroken camera shot. Come to think of it, maybe we should start off with the scenes at the bar and the office and leave the conference room scene till last. It does have the least dialogue after all. What do you think?'

I sat there speechless for a moment, realising in that moment I wasn't half as devoted to this film as she was. When Reese didn't hear me reply, she looked up and saw my expression.

'Something wrong Nate?' she chuckled.

'I'm sorry, I didn't realise we had been set homework.'

She laughed. 'No I'm sorry, I can be a bit controlling and overbearing. That's my maternal side creeping into my professional life.'

'I'm still not sure how you could have 2 kids and still look great in a two-piece.'

'I do not look great in a bikini,' she said embarrassed.

'I was less than 5 metres away when you filmed that swimming pool scene yesterday, you looked fantastic. Very sexy.'

'Thankyou, that's very sweet,' she said, clearly blushing.

'Truth is, that was probably the best part of the movie,' I mumbled, more to myself than to her.

Reese clearly heard what I had said, but she debated for a second whether to follow up on it. After several seconds of silence, she asked,

'You don't like this film much do you?'

'I don't like it at all,' I replied without a beat. 'How can you tell?'

'Well for starters, for the past two weeks on set, you've keep saying the best part of the movie is when I'm in the bikini and our upcoming sex scene.'

I struggled to suppress a wry smile but couldn't quite pull it off. I looked at Reese, half expecting her to be fuming, but instead, her expression was similar to mine.

'Does it bother you when I say crap like that?' I asked, genuinely concerned about possibly making her feel awkward.

'Well, technically it's borderline sexual harassment, but somehow when you say stuff like that, it comes across as endearing.'

'What a lovely sentiment, I think. Cheers,' I chuckled, raising my glass.

'Cheers,' she laughed and to my surprise, drained the entire glass in one go.

Without asking, she took the mostly empty glass from my hand and refilled it, half with coke, half vodka. We clinked our glasses together once more before each taking smaller sips. It hit me almost immediately that the balance of coke and vodka had definitely shifted to the latter's favour during the refill.

'Seriously though, what's you problem with the script?' she asked.

'The dialogue is just sooo badly written and the story is by-the-numbers drivel,' I explained.

To my surprise, Reese laughed and nodded in agreement. 'I have rolled my eyes more than once in between camera takes.'

'You know, I'm just a small time actor from Australia. To me this is just a job and a stepping stone to bigger and better things. You're Reese Witherspoon, Academy Award winning actress who's getting paid $20 million.

'Your point?' she inquired.

'What's your excuse for taking this role?'

'Okay, for the record, I'm only being paid $10 million for this film, and I signed up for it very early on. It was actually a very good script once. But it's gone through so many rewrites that now it just boils down to a sleazy romance film. I was contractually obliged, pure and simple.'

'Yeah, it's going to be a train wreck by the time it's finished.'

'Oh stop your whining, you're not the one who has to strip down in front of the camera,' she scoffed.

'You're not nervous are you?'

'I've only ever done one nude scene before; and I was panicked throughout the whole thing. I'm not exactly looking forward to filming something that'll become a masturbatory aid for lonely men world wide,' she said before pausing to take another sip. Suddenly, she turned and looked me straight in the eyes and said, 'You know, you've barely been in my hotel room for 5 minutes and we're already talking about my getting naked in front of the cameras. How do you do that?'

'It's a gift,' I smiled. 'If you're uncomfortable with nudity, why did you take the role in the first place? This was always a pretty sexual movie, regardless of any rewrites.'

'I don't know, I'm a divorced mother of two who has barely had a date since my divorce. It seemed like an easy way to get groped without feeling bad the next morning,' she said casually.

I lowered the glass from my lips and looked at her, she wasn't laughing or even smiling and I detected no sarcasm in her voice. I lowered the glass even further and placed it on the coffee table. Reese was absentmindedly flicking through the script when the silence hit her. She caught me staring, jaw on the floor. She raised her hand to her face and laughed quietly to herself,

'Seriously? What is it about you that makes me talk about this shit?'

I leaned back on the sofa and laughed with her. I got the feeling that a lot of this laughter was only there to delay my next question which inevitably came when I asked her,

'That can't be the only reason you took the role? Because that's just sad,' I said, still laughing.

'In hindsight, I'm starting to wonder if that's the only reason too.'

'Reese Witherspoon, actress, Oscar winner, horny MILF,' I muttered under my breath.

But once more she heard me and waved her finger at me like one would to a misbehaved child. 'You're a sweet guy Nate, but every once in awhile, that sexist, misogynist streak of yours rears its ugly head.'

'Ugly but endearing?' I asked, trying to push my luck.

'Oddly yes.'

We both laughed and finished our drinks one more time. I was drinking faster than usual, no doubt to make up for my nervousness. Reese and I had been working together for several weeks now, but somehow I still find myself to be awkward and clumsy around her. Almost like every meeting is a first date. Meanwhile, she was casual but professional as always. She exuded this calm, confident quality, even as she sat there, less than a metre away wearing only a bathrobe and I imagine, nothing else underneath.

'This can't have been the first time some has called you a MILF,' I said, not even thinking the question through first.

Reese laughed and almost spat out her drink. I could tell she was more amused than angry. Reese and I had this natural rapport. Part of which meant she didn't call me out on my faux pas, most of the time anyway.

'Okay, I'm willing to discuss my onscreen nudity with you. But my status as an MILF is off limits,' she laughed.

'I'm just saying, you're 34 years old, mother of two, you look amazing in a bikini,' I chuckled.

Reese rolled up the script and playfully slapped me in the arm with it. 'Alright Mr Shepherd, enough chit chat. We should get to work. Scene 23, interior office, daytime, you have the first line,' she said as she sat up straight and turned to face me on the couch.

I continued to smile as I reached into my jacket and pulled out the folded script I had in the inner pocket. I found the right page before I got into character, turned to her and said, reading from the first line,

'"There can be no mistakes, if we fuck up this deal, the company is dead in the water."'

Reese paused and looked at the script and then to me. 'You're not going to say it like that are you?' she asked me, out of character.

I shook my head and smiled. 'Such a slave driver.'

'Mother of two; I have to be.'

'Those poor kids.'

Reese laughed and swept her long blonde hair back behind her head. It was the single sexist thing I had seen all day. She had no idea the effect she had on men. I put these thoughts out of my mind and went back into character, repeating the line more convincingly.

'"There can be no mistakes, if we fuck up this deal, the company is dead in the water."'

Reese nodded approvingly and without looking at her script, she said with conviction, '"I'm not a little girl. I can handle this. I will do this."'

'Such bad dialogue,' I muttered.

Reese laughed again. I loved making her laugh. For the next 40 minutes, Reese and I went over the various scenes we had together. Most of it was very pedestrian and mainly consisted of banal and occasionally, hilariously laughable dialogue, exchanged in various bland settings, but Reese, always the profession, managed to not seem bored by it all. Meanwhile, the only reason I agreed to come to her room and practice these scenes in the first place was to spend more time with her. Truth is, I always had a crush on Reese, but obviously I never expected anything to come of it. I never even expected to meet her. So naturally when my agent called me late last year and said I had been offered a role opposite Reese Witherspoon in what was apparently a very sexually charged film, I agreed almost immediately without even reading the script. Although after referring to Reese's character, Bianca, as "babydoll" 4 times in the past 2 pages, I was beginning to wonder whether it was the best career move.

Finally, after much discussion and much delay, we had come to the conference room scene. The reason Reese had not too subtly been delaying talking about it was because this was our sex scene, and thus, the first piece of on screen nudity she would perform in more than 10 years. Reese slowly flipped the pages of her script until she reach scene 64 and said slowly to me,

'Alright then. Scene 64, the office conference room, interior, night time, our characters find themselves alone in the office after a successful video conference with their international clients.'

'International clients who are being played by Americans with terrible fake European accents,' I joked.

Reese forced a smile but was clearly distracted as she read over the long, unbroken passages that described the sex scene. Without pulling her eyes away, she fumbled blindly on the coffee table for her glass. I leaned forward and nudged it into her hand. She mumbled her thanks and kept reading. As I watched her drink, I looked back at the table to see that my glass was full of vodka. I turned to her and asked,

'We were drinking coke and vodka when I came in right?'

'Yep. Why?'

'Well, there's only vodka now.'

Reese chuckled. 'Yeah, we ran out of coke about 20 minutes ago. It's been straight vodka since then.'

'You handle your liquor well,' I remarked.

'Please, I'm small time compared to some of the people I knew growing up in the South,' she said before flipping the page and reading from the script out loud, '"Paul reaches up Bianca's skirt and begins to finger her."'

I smiled without even realising it, as Reese furrowed her brow and reread the line out loud once more, this time with a hint of distain in her voice. She finally looked up and me and raised an eyebrow.

'Jesus, normally a screenwriter just writes "they make love". They don't usually go into so much depth. Look at page 98, almost half the page is dedicated to the sex scene.'

I flipped to page 98 and saw for myself that she was indeed right. I started reading from the script out loud in a mocking tone,

'"Bianca moans loudly at his touch. Paul tears her blouse open, buttons bouncing across the table as he lays her flat on the conference table and removes her bra with his teeth,"' I said before turning to Reese and casually saying, 'FYI, that's actually very hard to do.'

I stared over the top of my script, Reese was taking another large drink from her glass. She returned my gaze and said,

'A 138 page script, and the only page that happens to be eloquent and well written is the sex scene.'

Reese suddenly tossed the script onto the coffee table and took another large drink. It was rare to see her be anything but happy and cheery. I followed her lead and placed my script down on the table and picked up my glass. We looked at each other over the top of the crystal glasses, none of us really wanting to push the issue. Eventually, after seeing she clearly had no intention of breaking the silence, I said,

'You know, we really don't have to run through this scene now.'

'Actually we do. We're filming this in three days and we haven't once talked about it so far. I'm sorry, it's my fault. I have this shy and demure streak about me sometimes.'

'Well, you have the first line, so whenever you're ready.'

Reese poured herself another glass of vodka and most of the refill before saying, 'Okay, the dialogue isn't the issue here. It's the actual sex that's the problem. Larry want there to be a lot of panting and moaning and thrusting involved.'

I raised an eyebrow, surprised at her choice of oddly crude words. Reese, off my look, replied,

'Larry's words, not mine. "Steamy", was how he described the scene. Come on, let's do this,' she said leaping off the couch.

Reese was already at the kitchen counter by the time I stood up. The first thing I noticed were that my legs almost gave out beneath me. Clearly my tolerance for alcohol was still very low. Nonetheless, I followed Reese to the kitchen counter. She rapped her knuckle again the black marble and said,

'Okay, this is our makeshift conference table. I'm suppose to be leaning against it when you walk up to me. You've just completed your brilliant seduction.'

'Calling a woman "babydoll" several times may be the worst seduction technique ever,' I chuckled.

Reese laughed loudly, and motioned for me to come over. With the script in one hand, she quickly took a peek at the page before turning back to me and saying,

'And now you come over and kiss me, despite my unwillingness. I don't return the kiss but you don't care.'

I stood there awkwardly for a few moments, not wanting to cross the line between practicing lines and kissing her without her permission. Reese waited for a moment before laughing softly and waving me over,

'Oh go ahead, plant one on me.'

Not needing any more encouragement, I took a few steps forward and wrapped my arm around her waist and kissed her square on the lips. True to the script, Reese's lips didn't move beneath mine, not that I cared. My grip on her waist became tighter as I felt her soft, moist lips beneath mine. I stood there, kissing her motionless lips for several long moments, even trying to part them open, convincing myself that it was for the good of the movie and not just me getting caught up in the moment. To my surprise, she began to slowly open her mouth and slid her tongue in my mouth, the smell of vodka on her breath. For the briefest of moments, we both kissed passionately. I felt Reese nod approvingly as she placed her hands on my chest, forcing me to back up a few steps.

As I looked up at her, I could've sworn that she had a wide smile on her face, but just as soon as it was there, she had the script held up in front of her and was reading it out loud,

'"His hands begin to roam her body aimlessly for several longs seconds before Paul decides to reach up Bianca's dress and finger her."'

Once more, I stood there with an expression that basically said, "for the good of the movie". Reese smiled at me and nodded. I stepped forward once more and planted my hands on either side of her body, my right hand landed almost directly beneath her left breast. Through the fabric of her bathrobe, I could already feel the warmth of her body and her heart beating increasingly quickly. Reese tossed the script on the kitchen counter behind her and reached down, hiking up her long bathrobe to make things easier for me.

I could feel the weight of her breasts on the top of my fingers as I felt myself become more and more aroused. I grudgingly pulled my hands away from her body and clumsily slipped my right hand up her bathrobe, placing it flat against her inner thigh. Reese, surprised by the physical contact inhaled sharply. Despite what was written on the page, I decided against doing anything. Our eyes met, her body held against mine, my hand placed against her bare thigh. She then, very matter-of-factly said,

'Let's t just skip the part where I moan in pleasure and skip to you forcing me up onto the conference table.'

'Sure.'

I bent down slightly moved my hand from her inner thigh to the back of her knees and did likewise with my other hands. Reese was surprisingly shorter than she appear on the big screen, so I had no problem holding her up by her thighs and lifting her onto the kitchen countertop. I hauled myself up onto her and pressed her body down until she was lying on the black marble surface with me on top of her. Our bodies touched, her warmth of her body seeped through her robe and my clothes, warming me up wherever we touched. The smell of vodka and expensive perfume filled my nostrils once more. I watched her as she adjusted herself beneath me to make herself more comfortable. My eyes moved up and down her narrow frame as my hands returned to her body.

'Spread your legs,' I said, almost unconsciously.

Reese's breathing increased, and soon her breasts were heaving with every breath she took. I felt her legs spread beneath me, as she took my left hand and guided it up to her left breast. Surprised, I looked down at her. She shrugged and said,