Powerful [TOM HOLLAND 2] [DISCONT.]

THIRTY-SEVEN

OFFSCREEN

"Matt!" Katy exclaimed with a smile, then was unexpectedly taken into Matt's embrace as he greeted her with a hug. It was brief, and he released her quickly to turn to Tom.

Holding his hand out, Matt grinned at Tom. "Hey, nice to finally meet you officially, man." Tom, being the nice guy he is, shook Matt's hand and put a friendly smile on his face, trying to act as though he didn't want to punch Matt right in the nose. "I'm so psyched to be back."

Furrowing her brows, Katy stared at Matt with a puzzled expression. "I thought you were done with filming?" Tom looked at Matt in the same state of confusion, to which he chuckled.

"You guys haven't read the full script yet?" He asked them. Katy and Tom both shook their heads. They'd both been a bit preoccupied to read the rest of the script. "So you guys didn't know that my character makes a comeback?"

Katy felt her cheeks flush in embarrassment. She finally gets her own movie and she doesn't even know what happens in it. She needed to start taking things more seriously, but with things going so great with Tom, she kept letting herself get distracted. "No, we didn't. Sorry, Matt. It's good to have you back, though. What a nice surprise."

Tom flickered his gaze over to her at her last words. This was definitely not what he would've had in mind for a good surprise. "Yeah, welcome back." He gave Matt a slap on the shoulder, before sliding his arm around Katy and pulling her closer to him. The action was a clear claim of territory, Tom's way of showing Matt that Katy was not available for the taking. While this could've easily flown over Katy's head, she was a lot smarter than people took her for.

"We should get back. Still have a movie to make." She told Matt, stepping out of Tom's arm so that it fell at his side. This action was another one that hadn't gone unnoticed, by both Tom and Matt. It was a simple, wordless way of saying 'I'm not a toy you two can fight over.' And she hoped she'd made it clear. She hadn't intended for it to be a stab towards Tom, as though she was telling him that she didn't care he didn't feel comfortable with Matt's reappearance, but unfortunately, that's exactly what happened.

Matt nodded, and smiled once again. "See you guys around then."

Returning the smile, Tom replied, "Definitely." With that, he followed behind Katy as they both walked back to set, leaving Matt to attend to whatever business he had to. Once they were a safe distance away, Tom turned to Katy and raised his brows. "You seriously didn't know he was coming back? This is your movie."

Stopping in her tracks, Katy looked at Tom in bewilderment, and shook her head. "I swear I had no idea. If I did, I wouldn't have stood there like an idiot, asking him why he was here."

"That's why you read the script, it's part of being an actress and having your own movie, actually reading the script." He hissed, and for a moment, Katy was taken aback by the tone of voice he was using with her. He was angry, or simply irritated to say the least. But she didn't understand why he was taking it out on her.

"Well at least they let me read the script." She shot back. "I don't understand why you're so mad right now, this isn't really that big of a deal. I thought we went over this before. I don't have any feelings for Matt."

Tom sighed softly. "I know, I just- I still don't trust him after what he did and I still don't understand how you could forgive him or let him audition for this part for that matter."

Katy scowled at him. "What was I supposed to do, tell him he couldn't audition? I wouldn't ask you to do that if your ex-girlfriend was thinking about auditioning for a part in one of your movies."

"This is different." Tom said shaking his head. "I'm not still friends with any of my ex-girlfriends, and that's because I'm not naive enough to trust them after they've hurt me. You do remember how he hurt you, right?"

Shaking her head, Katy let out a huff in frustration. "I really don't want to talk about this right now, and I wish we didn't have to talk about it at all because there's really nothing to talk about in the first place."

"You don't think we should talk about this?" Tom questioned, to which she sighed at.

"I just don't want to talk about it right now." She answered. "I was supposed to be waiting to show you your surprise but I guess Zendaya coming back won't fix this, will it?"

Despite the good news of their friend's arrival, Tom couldn't find it in himself to be happy about it. "Guess not." He murmured, turning his gaze away from Katy to stare off blankly, but her eyes remained on him and no matter how long she looked at him, it was like she wasn't even there next to him to acknowledge her.

Once again, Matt was doing something he'd done before, come between Kate and Tom.