Under the Skin - part 2

The next morning, she returned to set as if walking through a minefield.

She pretended everything was normal. Laughed at jokes she didn’t hear. Kept her eyes on the ground while everyone else kept theirs on her.

The production had already released an official statement saying the image was unauthorized and condemning the privacy breach. The culprit had been identified — an intern from a third-party company, already dismissed — and new security rules had been implemented: tighter surveillance, restricted backstage access, and an express ban on cellphone use in dressing rooms.

But none of that erased the feeling of exposure.

The costume team was brief. Makeup, even more so.

“You look beautiful,” one of the makeup artists said, in a tone that sounded more like an apology than a compliment.

Monica just nodded, without looking in the mirror.

On set, the director was reviewing marks with the actor from the scene, his eyes avoiding hers. The lighting already in place. The set arranged. Everything exactly as it had been in the last attempt — except her.

One of the producers approached.

“We want you to feel safe, Monica. We’re thinking of bringing in someone from clinical care to support you. A psychologist specialized in working with casts. You can talk to her, no pressure. Just to... help you through this.”

She nodded, more from exhaustion than conviction.

She met the first therapist two days later. A kind woman, soft-spoken, with questions that felt pulled from a handbook.

“Did you feel exposed in that scene?”

“Exposure is part of my job,” Monica replied, trying to smile. “I know how this works.”

“But this time was different.”

She didn’t answer. The silence lasted long enough to become an answer.

The therapist spoke about boundaries, about how the body reacts to trauma, about dissociation. Monica listened, but felt like she was being observed through a lens that was too clinical, too distant. As if they were trying to diagnose a problem just to free the production from guilt.

“Maybe it would be helpful to explore how your personal story resonates with the character’s,” the therapist suggested in one of the sessions.

That’s when Monica froze.

Resonance. Stories. Images. A memory that wasn’t a memory, just a rigid body, a wave of nausea, and the sentence:

“You have to give in.”

“Have you ever gone through something similar?” the therapist pressed.

And like a distant echo — an old studio smell, the memory of a room with padded walls, a camera, a director who said she had ‘a special glow’. That he wanted to see her ‘comfortable’. That he needed her to trust him.

“Improvise a sensual scene. Feel it. Live it.”

She obeyed.

When he came closer, she didn’t know how to react. When he touched her, she didn’t scream. When he murmured that it was ‘part of the process’, she simply closed her eyes and pretended it was in the script.

Freezing was the only role she knew how to play.

Years later, they still called her a ‘promising star’.

She never told anyone.

But now, her body was speaking for her. Disgust. Chills. Nausea. Trembling hands, burning skin when someone on set got too close.

And that scene in The Ivory Rose, so similar, so dangerous — tearing open everything she’d spent her life trying to forget.

The therapist didn’t push further. But the session ended with Monica more shattered than before.

She felt like they were trying to fit her into a protocol, a timeline.

And once again, it all came down to how soon she could return to set. How soon she could be “functional” again.

She didn’t go back the following week.

That’s when the call came.

Filming would be paused. “Time to care for the actress’s health,” the official statement read.

When she saw it, Monica’s stomach turned.

Health. As if she were sick. As if she were contaminating the set with her failure.

She spent hours staring at the ceiling. Then hours staring at her own reflection in the mirror.

She tried rehearsing a cry, a scream, a sigh of relief — but all she managed was a desperate emptiness. A hole where only one question fit:

“What if I never can again?”

That’s when she remembered the paper.

It was still there, in the bag tossed on the living room floor, among crumpled scripts, a forgotten lipstick, and food receipts she didn’t remember ordering.

She dragged herself over with shaky legs. Rummaged quickly. Found the paper. The name handwritten, a phone number just below.

She stared at it for a while. Just the name and the number. A chance to breathe. A chance to exist without being Ellara, without being Monica, without being “the actress from the scene that went wrong.”

Then she took a deep breath. Grabbed her phone. Typed the number, hesitating before pressing send.

“Hi. This is Monica. Margot gave me your number. I was wondering if we could talk?”

The message hovered there, blinking, as if begging for courage.

And before fear could make her erase it, Monica hit send.

After that, she lay back down on the couch.

The world was still spinning, her stomach still heavy, but something inside her — something small and faint — felt like it had taken a first step.

Maybe, for the first time, she was starting to understand that the wound wasn’t new.

It had only been reopened.