Page 20 of Love Scenes

There’s a persistent ache in my chest I’ve come to know well. Anxiety, my most unwelcome friend. It usually comes with no obvious explanation, a powerful trickster who likes to surprise me right when life seems good, staying as long as it pleases, leaving without fanfare but with the lingering promise that it will return when I least expect it. This time, it’s different. The correlation is obvious.

This goddamn movie.

Tyler hasn’t called. Mom hasn’t apologized. Powell hasn’t texted to say Mom hates me.

Mom’s words cut deep, even when I rationalize it all as some strange manifestation of her own anxieties. She’s developed a reputation for being a producer who is as blunt as she is heartfelt. Except this is different. I can’t understand what she hoped to gain by throwing out an accusation like that. Or for doubting my truth in the first place.

Still, not knowing if Joseph was able to get his lines right has me crawling out of my skin. My job isn’t trivial anymore. And thanks to my mother, I fled the set over a wink from Joseph Donovan, which is probably about as commonplace as a wave from a pageant contestant on a parade float.

It’s second nature for him to give off an effortless charm. Hell, it’s curated. Probably encouraged by an entire team of industry people coming together to build the Joseph Donovan Brand. Boozy Irish boy full of sly winks and quick cracks and tight-fitting tees.

I know this.

I have always known this.

I even know what it’s like to have everyone push a brand onto you. There was a time when my team cycled me through a handful of Sloane Ford iterations. First they wanted to capitalize on my childhood spent in martial arts training and market me as the kind of ingenue who could meet your parents at seven and kick the bad guy’s ass at eight. When that fell flat, it was because they thought I made more sense as the smart girl not next door, but in a house on a high hill, always in view but forever out of reach.

“Fitting for a child of Hollywood,” a director once told me.

Whenthatdidn’t work, it was obviously because my charms were better served in indie roles. Lean into the idea that people might find it fascinating to see me—a born-and-raised Southern Californian who came out of the womb into a birthing pool in the middle of my parents’ old Bel Air estate—as a down-on-her-luck waitress living in a small town.

Whenthatdidn’t work, they wanted me to do period pieces. Be the next Keira Knightley. She can’t make them all, they told me. And if I’m playing someone of a completely different era, my own life story may be a little less “distracting.”

That’s when I learned to refuse. I’d always hated trying tocorner any kind of market. Even more than that, I hated the idea that every part I took had to be something that worked in harmony with the narrative of my personal life. The story of Sloane Ford would always run counter to the story of whatever person I inhabited on-screen. So I ended up hung to dry on a TV show that no one in Hollywood bothers to watch, aside from apparently Joseph Donovan. That’s gone too, and I’m asking myself why any of it mattered in the first place. It was work. It was acting. It was a hell of a lot more than I’m doing now.

How did I end up nothing more than an ungrateful product of nepotism, biting every hand that ever fed me?

My phone starts vibrating, the screen lit up with a number I don’t recognize. Curiosity gets the better of me, and I answer. “Hello?”

“Sloane? It’s me, Joe.”

A shot of adrenaline zaps through my every limb. I’m off my couch and into my kitchen, hands reaching for the refrigerator door, phone sandwiched between my shoulder and ear.

“I got your number from your sister. I wanted to make sure everything was all right,” he says.

There’s a bell pepper, a pitcher of water, butter, and hot sauce in my fridge. Ice and frozen broccoli in my freezer. And half a bag of frozen strawberries. “Ah. Yeah.”

“You didn’t show up to my trailer this morning.”

Would a smoothie made of only strawberries and water taste good? It would be loud, at least. A decent excuse to hang up. “It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got time, if you wouldn’t mind sharing it.”

“I’m starving, and I’m actually about to eat, so...”

“Would you get some food with me then? I know you live in the canyon somewhere. I can pick you up.”

“How do you know that?”

“‘Fear of the Canyon’ sort of gives it away.”

Oh great. Even Joseph is playing Kearns’s new record. “Please stop listening to that music.”

“I’m not. I think he’s a bastard. But I’ve heard about it.”

If it were anyone else, I’d ask where or how, but with Joseph, I truly don’t want to know. Getting a late-night meal with him already sounds ripped from the pages of the narrative my mom has crafted for me. Talking about my ex-boyfriend feels like even more dangerous territory.

“This seems like a bad idea,” I admit, realizing too late that saying it out loud makes it even worse.