It went without saying that having a TV star show up at Maple's door before the sun was up was not a common occurrence in her life.

Yet, here she was, in Salvatore's 1960s pink sunbeam alpine, driving to set as the sun rose on Sobriquet Lake.

The car was spotless in and out. A faint smell of cinnamon and tobacco lingered in the car. Maple wondered if Salvatore smoked or if the scent came from one of the many women he dated. She'd never talked to him outside of work, and most of what she knew about his personal life she'd learned from reading online gossip. Salvatore Suárez was a fascinating mystery. His story—that he claimed he had no memory of the first fifteen years of his life—hadn't faltered over the past two decades. It sounded like a perfectly crafted story by some unscrupulous studio executive, especially when the plot of Salvatore's first job, La Saga de Emmanuel, was that of an amnesiac heartthrob. But Maple believed him because even if her moral compass had long been compromised by her mythomania, she wanted to believe there were still honest people out there, and that Salvatore was one of them. (Also, she loved a good story, and that one was too good to be fake, right?)

Saturno was Salvatore's first English-speaking role and the exposure he'd gotten from the show combined with his telenovela fame had made him into a superstar. Betteraves & Betrayals was hanging by a few threads, and the sturdiest one was Salvatore's notoriety. His newfound popularity as an activist for alien rights was bringing a younger audience to the show. Nothing was sexier than a bisexual, Latino actor advocating for a marginalized group of people. Aliens were more common these days but most humans still weren't ready to date them. Some aliens on the planet had powers that humans either envied or feared, which made relationships between aliens and humans even more complex. Salvatore, a human playing an alien, was the next best thing for people who liked the idea of extraterrestrial beings living amongst us but weren't quite ready for the reality of it.

Maple discreetly sniffed herself. Hopefully, the half-bottle of perfume she'd sprayed on her clothes before leaving her house would be enough to mask her unwashed scent. She'd changed into another version of her office uniform: skinny jeans she could barely breathe in if she indulged in too much craft service, a branded Betteraves & Betrayals hoodie, and a black cap. Just like Salvatore, she'd opted for sunglasses for their drive to the studio. His were vintage squares large enough to cover his vast green eyes. Hers were oversized and modern, hiding most of her face, exactly the way she loved it. Next to her, driving the car, Salvatore looked fabulous in a fitted white shirt and dark trousers. His long hair was brushed back, his moustache and beard neatly trimmed.

Nobody was speaking.

Maple wasn't sure what to say, and she believed the onus was on Salvatore to start a conversation. He was the one who showed up unannounced to drive her to work, something he'd never done before, and that was considerably odd since she knew it to be a detour for him. He owed her an explanation, but they'd been in the car for ten minutes already, and the actor had made zero attempts to explain his intentions. They had twenty more minutes to go, she wasn't sure she'd be able to handle this silence much longer.

"So, I heard Ms. Dutrignon is coming back to the show?"

Of course, he would choose that subject to breach the silence. How could he not? It was all over the news. Everyone would be talking about it at work too. She had to prepare herself. How many lies would she have to utter to get through the day?

"Yes, well, erm... Ermett jumped the gun on that one."

Maple flinched because she hadn't meant to tell him that. She hadn't meant to say it at all.

"How so?" Salvatore asked as if this was a normal conversation and not Maple's weirdest commute to work ever.

"I didn't want him to make the news public just yet," she said.

Because there is no news to announce, she thought but had the sense not to say that part out loud even though she somehow really wanted to. What was happening to her? Salvatore's car was comfortable, and she did feel relaxed—more relaxed than she had in a long time, actually—but why did she feel so open to a man she barely knew?

"Why not?" he asked.

Maple felt something pulling at her. It was strange and new. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, food, water, or the slow annihilation of everything she'd spent her entire adult life building. For the first time in forever, she didn't feel the need to lie. Well, that's not exact. She didn't want to say the truth either, but she couldn't think of one convincing lie. It's like someone had turned a brash spotlight on her mind and erased all the shadows her lies usually lurked in.

She focused on keeping her lips shut until she could figure out what was happening to her.

Salvatore glanced at her. "Maple? Why not?"

Maple didn't feel obligated to tell him anything. It was easy not to say anything—or at least as easy as it was to be quiet when Davenport or Loretta drove her nuts with incessant and extravagant requests. (Yes, Maple would love to accommodate the introduction of a new sexy alien species every week, but there were only so many metal bikinis and cheap prosthetics the budget would cover.)

When she spoke, Maple knew she had the choice not to. Why she decided to go ahead, fully conscious of the consequences of doing so, she was not keen on analyzing right now. It had to do with Salvatore's charm and the effect he had on her—uncharted territories she was in no shape to investigate.

"I lied to Ermett, I faked the whole thing. Daphne Dutrignon never agreed to come back. She probably doesn't even know I exist. I was trying to buy us some time."

The truth flowed out of her. It was natural, smooth, and yet, it felt forced, like it was being dragged out of her by something.

Or someone whispered a voice in her head when a glint in Salvatore's eyes caught her off-guard.

Maple lied to absolutely everyone in her life. Her moms, roommates, and even her therapist. She'd been a professional liar since she had to go through the wrong puberty and pretended every day she didn't want to kill herself. Lying wasn't like a second skin at this point, it was how she'd built herself. So, it was strange that she felt compelled to tell a co-worker she barely knew the truth about her biggest lie to date.

"When you say 'us'," he asked, his voice a low and warm rumble, "do you mean—"

"The show. They want to cancel it. That'd mean the end of my job, your job, the job of everyone else that's been working there for generations. Like, did you know Loretta's mom used to be head make-up? Loretta grew up on the set! Ending the show would close the studios down and probably trigger a recession in Sobriquet Lake since the town basically built itself around it, which, if you ask me, is really not a sustainable way for a town to exist. I'd be used as a cautionary tale and turned into an argument against feminism, trans and aliens' rights. 'Oh, look! It's the woke, trans girl who ruined a seventy decades-old show in three seasons by promoting anti-Human bullshit!' Even though I would never stand for an anti-Human message. I mean, my best friends are Humans! I'm Human! You're Human! We're all Humans! Well, except for the aliens. But if people actually watched the fucking show instead of ripping it apart for views and clicks, maybe they'd know we're not anti-Human, but merely trying to accurately reflect our society which now includes aliens. But it gets harder and harder every day to be pro-Humans when Humanity is being such a fuck!"

She almost screamed. Not only was she sharing with him every single fucking thing weighing on her mind but she wasn't even waiting to be asked now.

"There's a lot I want to unpack there," Salvatore responded as if this was a perfectly normal conversation between two coworkers and not the end of Maple's professional life. "Though, right now, I want to focus on—"

"What's happening to me?" she muttered, staring at her hands as if her fingers had taken away her ability to lie (or to simply shut the fuck up).

Salvatore said nothing. Then he said, "Sorry."

Maple opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. A rush of words and sentences flowed back into her head.

She gasped.

Suddenly the overused part of her brain in charge of her lies was back online. She could think of a dozen falsities to answer Salvatore's previous question when seconds before there had been none.

"What's happening to me?" she asked again staring at him, then back at her hands because she was shaking. Then, in a flash of clarity, she remembered what he just said. "Why did you apologize?"

He cleared his throat and pretended not to hear her. The silence stretched and Maple's nose caught on the scent of cinnamon and tobacco again. She realized it wasn't just the car that smelled of it, but Salvatore too.

When the shaking dissipated, she asked, "Why does your car smell like tobacco and cinnamon?" She stared at him, daring to ignore her once more. It was a stupid question on all accounts, but it was better than sitting in silence and reflecting on everything she'd just revealed to him.

"I like cinnamon a lot," he said with the same unreadable expression, keeping his eyes fixed on the road. For someone capable of expressing five different emotions at once on camera, he was strangely neutral all of a sudden.

Maple sighed, resigning herself not to get any answer. She didn't like it, but she was too flustered to push it.

What the fuck is going on with me? She hadn't felt this disconnected from her body since that horrendous night out at C&C (Cocktail & Cocaine for the non-initiated, the best (and only) bar in Sobriquet Lake) with Storm and Brooklyn when she'd drunken two (or five) BBBBBs (Bleach Blond Bad Built Butch Body) too many.

"The car also smells of tobacco because—"

"You 'like tobacco a lot'?" she mocked, upset to be losing control.

She was being a little shit but felt she got a pass for it since he was doing something to her and refused to tell her what. Has he poisoned her? Was she drugged or hypnotized? Something twisted was at play, and even if Salvatore appeared to be part of it, she still felt herself wanting to trust him.

"No," his Spanish accent dripped thicker when his temper warmed up and her incessant interruptions were certainly doing just that. "I mean, I do. But I don't smoke it. I eat it."

"Oh."

"I buy tobacco, and I just... eat it."

There was a long pause.

"Oh," she said again, fiddling with her hands. Her long, sleek red nails shined in the pastel light of the sunrise.

Clearly, they'd entered another dimension when they'd stepped into the car, and now Maple was stuck in a tear of the fabric of reality where she couldn't lie, Salvatore didn't answer any question truthfully, and nothing made sense. That was the only explanation, right?

She cleared her throat. "I guess I have some follow-up questions... starting with why do you eat tobacco?" She'd heard of people chewing tobacco, but always assumed they'd spat it out eventually.

"I love the taste. It's my favourite thing to eat."

"I've never seen you smoke before."

"I told you. I don't smoke it. I eat it."

"But who eats tobacco? Is that even possible? Can we digest tobacco?"

"I do."

The next logical question was why he liked tobacco so much. Maple considered herself adventurous with her food, but that was a frontier she didn't even know existed and would never explore. It reminded her too much of the rancid smoke that escaped Mrs. Parviere's window day and night. Maybe it was part of one of those secret diets stars followed to ensure flawless skin and hourglass figures. Like Marsha's diet. The actress would randomly pick two months of the year (never the same and always chosen at random to keep her body "in a constant state of anxiety that facilitates weight loss") when she followed her "divine diet," which consisted of only eating ice, mint, and cocaine (now a staple of all of Marsha's diets). Maybe eating tobacco wasn't more strange than sniffing coca dust.

The studios' gate appeared in front of them before Maple could get her scrambled brain cells together to think of asking something that wasn't about tobacco.

Salvatore slowed the car as they approached. "Who else knows the truth about Ms. Dutrignon?"

She didn't say anything right away and let the security guard usher them in. Her mind wasn't blank like earlier, she had plenty of lies ready to throw at his question. None of them benefited her though. For once, the truth was the best way forward.

"Just you," she admitted when the guard was out of earshot. "I guess eventually Dutrignon and her agent. But I think I have a week before that happens."

Salvatore drove the car to his designated parking spot. Once he shut the motor, he leaned in closer to Maple. She notices the ravishing dark curls falling on his forehead and surrounding his face like a work of art. Salvatore Suàrez wasn't a star for nothing. He was handsome and talented, and Maple was just a woman. Of course, looking at him for too long made her feel things.

"I'm going to help you, Maple," he said in that same tone he used for very dramatic lines in the show. "Pero, I'm going to need you to keep my secret."

She couldn't think straight with the warmth of his breath on her jaw. She somehow managed to ask, "What's your secret?"

A loud and terrible bang interrupted them, and the car windows exploded all at once.