As a drama enthusiast, Maple found fitting she should die crushed by a stage light.

It wasn't the most dramatic death there was-that title was reserved for Alianor Betterave's death in season 45 who after being kidnapped three times in a row had impaled herself with a fork at her long-lost-yet-recently-found twin's wedding after finding out she'd lost the baking competition she'd dedicated her life to-but it was dramatic of an exit enough for Maple.

Of course, murder or timely disappearances were often the most satisfying dramatic options to go, and Maple had written enough plot twists in her lifetime to know that nothing beats a good old assassination, but she had never dreamed of them for herself. She had never been as bold as to assume she would die of old age and instead had hoped she would go drowning (like how she was sure she'd gone in a previous life where she had been a 19th French prostitute) or die from ingesting mango (which she was deadly allergic to and wanted to try at least one in her life).

Having her five foot seven bone structure pulverized by a klieg light one of the electricians had forgotten to secure seemed more of a violent death than what she'd hoped for herself, but here she was.

Oh, well.

She closed her eyes, exhaled, scolded herself for not sending that text to her moms about how much she loved them, and waited to die.

She didn't die.

And, not only did she not die, she didn't suffer. (Maple's masochist tendencies were no more developed than the average person's (everyone rejoiced in a good spanking once in a while), but she'd assumed there would be some pain.)

There was none. Instead, there was a sharp, electric feel in the air around her.

She opened her eyes.

A few things were suddenly very evident to her. She wasn't dead, she wasn't in pain, and the light that'd been supposed to kill her was flying above her-well, it was floating in the air, which basically means it was flying. It was twice as large as she was and stuck mere inches from her face.

She moved slowly, afraid her movement would somehow remind the object of gravity. Maple wasn't sure why she was still alive, but now that she was and realized it had been a possibility all along, she didn't delight in the idea of being crushed to death.

She stepped away from the light. Once she'd cleared the path, it trembled and crashed on the floor next to Maple's feet.

A shrill escaped her lips, but she was left untouched. The light had simply halted its fall to ensure Maple's safety.

Only then did Maple notice the large shadow standing next to her.

She recognized the scent first-raspberry and pinewood. Then, even meters apart, she felt the warmth of his body. The way her skin prickled when he was close. She was aware of her breathing, rushed and stressed, and his, steady and slow. He always seemed to relax when he was around her, and when he was around, she mutated back to the horny teenage boy she'd been a long time ago.

"Saturno?" she croaked, her mouth dry.

"Soy Salvatore, belleza," he responded.

Because Maple couldn't remember when her last orgasm had been, and because an incredibly attractive man was speaking to her in Spanish, it took her brain a few additional seconds to realize how dumb she was being.

"Fuck, yes, no, sorry!" she babbled, turning red.

Someone flicked a switch on and brash light bathed the room, rendering her fully visible to the man standing in front of her. The star of her show, Salvatore Súarez.

Maple blinked. "Sorry, Salvatore, it's-you surprised me."

He had so much so that she'd call him by his character name-a character she'd created from her deepest and most secret fantasies. Her mind knew Salvatore Súarez and Saturno Gonzalez were two different people. Her endocrine system had a tougher time making the distinction.

Saturno had been the first major character introduced by Maple after she'd taken over the creative reigns of Betteraves & Betrayals. She'd written him as the perfect match to Evelyn Betterave, (played by known cocaine addict Marsha Marshweld) the heir of the Betterave fortune. After a few months of dating, Saturno revealed to Evelyn and the audience his true nature as an alien.

Maple had relied on the soap legacy of super-couples to reflect the tense conversations happening all across the country after a seventeen-year-old from British Columbia had introduced himself to the rest of the world as being from another planet. Betteraves & Betrayals had always been at the forefront of social progress-from Adele's 1960s abortion to the introduction of Gaetan in 1982, the first recurrent gay character on daytime TV (Gaetan had since turned straight, and as of last season, had left town to hunt the remnants of his sombre days as a homosexual porn actor).

When Bōøbol had offered the show and Maple a chance, based on her success as a sexy alien romance writer, she'd decided Saturno would be the perfect fit for the story she wanted to tell.

Salvatore had long dark and wavy hair he always wore in a messy bun when it wasn't covered by the dark emerald wig Bōøbol executives had forced Loretta-the head of the costume department-to implement to Saturno's outfit after viewers complained that he looked "too human."

The actor received daily professional shaving and yet nothing seemed to defeat the stubbles that grew on his firm, square jaw. His eyebrows were thick and shaped, his lips full of promises and bad dirty things he could do to Maple if-

Oh god, she had to stop. Saturno was not Salvatore. If the former was a fantasy she'd created for herself and all the lonely, horny nerds out there, the latter was a human being who hadn't consented to his boss over-sexualizing him.

He smiled at her, as he always did when she lost her composure around him. A broad and honest smile. Of course, he was a professional, so she knew he was probably reflecting exactly what she wanted to see. That's how these people did it. That's how actors took over the world.

He glanced behind her at the smashed light on the ground. "What happened?"

"The light fell," Maple said, keeping the flying part out, because she didn't want to lie to him and didn't want Salvatore to think-realize?-she was insane. "I got lucky. It fell right next to me."

She didn't sound or look like someone who felt lucky. She kept staring at Salvatore's watercolour green eyes and the filaments of gold that flecked his iris. His eyes were a tiny galaxy she could lose herself in a galaxy far away where she wasn't in charge of a crumbling show and where Saturno wasn't a product of her imagination. A different timeline where she could be his and he could be hers.

"Maple?" Salvatore repeated and she understood she had dissociated again. It happened quite often, mostly when her moms were lobbying for her to find a "good Jewish wife."

"You sure you're okay?" he asked.

She was (she wasn't dead) and she wasn't (Ermet was going to ruin her career).

Nuance was not the forte of mundane conversations, so instead she said, "I need to find Maurice and report this to him."

Maurice had been the show's gaffer for over a decade now. He took his job so seriously that she was afraid her near-death experience would rattle him. What would she even say to him? Who would believe her tale of flying lights? Yes, they all lived in a different world now that aliens weren't just creatures living in their collective imagination, but as far as she knew, nobody on Earth had the power to make an object fly. (Some aliens had been discovered as having hydrokynesis powers, but that wasn't relevant since there wasn't water in klieg lights...)

Maple heard herself say, "I have to go," and sensed her legs moving away. She wasn't entirely sure why, but as peculiar catastrophes kept being thrown her way, she had a feeling that staying in Salvatore's orbit was not going to help.

Then she stopped.

Behind the chaos, the hormones, the lies, and everything else, her mind had somehow picked up on a detail-the tiny thing that didn't add up.

She turned to face Salvatore again. His eyes were devouring her.

"Why are you here?" Maple asked, willing herself not to read too much into the look he was giving her. He was Mexican, that's how they looked at everyone. "You shouldn't be here. Why aren't you in make-up?"

"I was on my way to make-up," Salvatore responded, as if that made perfect sense.

It didn't. Hair & Make-up & Costume was on the other side of the building, with plenty of entry doors over there.

"This is an interesting itinerary," she commented, pushing oversized glasses up her nose, her right eyebrow raised.

He grinned, sharp and deadly. "Someone told me about a shortcut. I was testing it out."

She wondered why he was lying to her, and if he was being a bad liar on purpose or if he was one of those actors who couldn't lie to save their life once the cameras were off.

"Did you find it?" she asked. "The shortcut."

She waited for what felt like forever for an answer.

"Not yet," he said, just slightly wetting his lips with the tip of his tongue. "But I'll keep looking."