Page 19 of Love Scenes

Tyler’s gone pale and her face is slick with a fresh layer of sweat. “Sloane.”

“No? What did I miss?”

Tyler leans in even closer. “It sounds really bad. And I see now how wrong it was. I should have told you.”

“Yeah. You should have told me a lot of things. But at least now I know how much my family values my feelings.” I stalk off to craft services to eat an apple I don’t want. I won’t be like my mother and leave. I committed to this job, and I will complete it. Headfirst and silently panicking.

This will not break me.

By the timethe actors are ready, I feel like a freshly sharpened knife, waiting for a chance to cut someone clean through.

Mom does not return.

There’s only the bare minimum crew as requested. Of the people currently on set, only Tammy the AD witnessed my mother’s blowup in person. Word has traveled, though. It’s in the eagerness to appease Tyler. The quiet, gentle way everyone addresses me, like they know I’m wounded. All the glances. It’s impossible for me to miss them.

Of course Joseph saunters onto the soundstage oblivious to it all. He’s always been impervious to on-set drama. There’s no other explanation for how he could’ve endured our entire shoot in Ireland. There was a point when we were having cast and crewmeetings about his behavior almost every single morning, and he’d still waltz onto location with a shit-eating grin, asking who catered lunch and what time we were having it.

Right now he’s in a white undershirt with suspenders clipped onto forest-green slacks. A tendril hangs down on his forehead. They’ve touched up the brown rinse in his hair, liking the contrast of the darkness against Haven’s bright blond. She wears nothing but a peach-colored slip.

“Hey,” he says, putting a hand on my shoulder. “Thanks for helping me earlier. I think today’s gonna go pretty well.”

His palm stays pressed onto the open skin beside my tank top strap. I can actually feel the crew making note of it, as if the action is somehow bolded for emphasis.

“No problem,” I say quickly, brushing him off and walking toward a shadowy corner to sit down.

Before he can react, the intimacy coordinator brings him into a discussion with Haven over what they’re about to shoot.

Right before the scene, Elise has been through hell, and she’s realized that she’s pushed Calvin away for the wrong reasons. He’s just fought for her honor against a date gone wrong, and she’s worked up the courage to come clean about her true feelings, the ones she hedged around during the first, lighter kiss scene we shot earlier. This second moment between them is very sweeping and most certainly over the top. It will only work if both actors fully commit. If there’s even a hint of reservation or a wink at the absurdity of it all, the whole sequence will crumble into unbearable cheesiness.

I take a deep breath and lean back, enveloped by darkness. Ever since I was a young kid, I’ve preferred to watch from the floor. It feels more interesting somehow, to see the actors work from this angle instead of spending the whole day staring at a small-screenmonitor version of the action. Watching here is like being a front-row voyeur to a stranger’s most intimate moments, while knowing you have their permission to watch. And in today’s case, it keeps me out of most everyone’s eyeline, which is about the only victory I’m going to get.

My script sits in my lap, open to the second kiss, all my highlights and markings like codes I try to imprint onto Joseph’s mind through willpower alone.

Mom’s accusation echoes in my head as I watch him go through the blocking with Haven, our intimacy coordinator discussing their boundaries.

With Joseph, I’ve been stern to the point of rudeness, not accepting compliments or allowing our conversations to veer toward the truly personal. I have not had a single thought about sleeping with him. In fact I’ve held myself like my mother does with almost every single person on this set, and she’s the one who attacks me for it.

My gaze traces the set from left to right, stopping when Joseph locks eyes with me. He smiles, warm and friendly, another of his countless attempts to wipe the slate clean between us.

I smile back, because I can smile at him. It doesn’t have to mean anything.

Then, unbelievably, he winks.

Before I can scrape together a cohesive thought, I pull myself off the floor and gather my things. Hurry to Tyler’s side. “It’s better if I’m not here.” The adrenaline pulses so hard through me that my hands start to shake.

Does everyone assume I’m going to end up sleeping with Joseph Donovan,includingJoseph Donovan?

“What? Why?” Tyler’s energy juggles between frantic and angry. We haven’t had a blowup like this in years, and we’re obviouslylacking practice in how it should all go down. “I know you’re mad, and you have every right to be, but I really need you here.”

“If Joseph doesn’t know this scene by now, it’s his fault. I don’t want to make everything worse by being on a closed set when I don’t need to be,” I explain, knowing it doesn’t make much sense, but there’s not enough time to craft an excuse with more sound logic behind it.

As I stalk off set, I swear I hear Joseph call my name.

I don’t take the time to glance behind me to be sure.

5

The silence from my phone is more unbearable than the quiet in my house, where I’ve shut myself inside, driving straight from set yesterday and not looking back. I have now officially missed an entire day and a half of production.