Page 29 of Love Scenes

Mom appears beside us with her arms crossed and one eyebrow raised. “Would you look what the cat dragged in.” She kisses Dad on both cheeks, then takes another scan of him from tip to toe. “Color’s coming back to your face. That’s good.” Her attention shifts from Dad to me. “Is he the reason we’re on break before noon?”

These are her first words since our fight. It’s bone-chilling in a way, how easily she slides into using me to start a little snip with Dad. So comfortable I almost accept it in lieu of an apology, because it’s the most familiar she’s been all week.

“Tyler wanted Haven to clear her head a little more before we kept shooting.” I’m fumbling, not wanting to be involved. It’s not necessarily a lie. More like a flexible version of the truth.

Mom shakes her head. “I takeonemeeting off set, and the rope goes slack.” She narrows her eyes at Dad. “I’m sure you swinging by unannounced hasn’t helped much.”

“I thought you told me I could stop by whenever I wanted?” he asks.

“Didn’t Melanie tell you we’re already behind schedule?”

“Is ten minutes really going to derail the whole shoot?”

“Don’t act like you don’t know the value of ten minutes, Alex.”

They are in their groove now, tossing quips like they’re playing a lazy game of catch, daring the other to drop the ball.

“I’m here to watch, Kitty,” he says, as if he isn’t aware of the effect he has on a crowd. As if production didn’t come to a complete halt at the mere sight of him. “And to get a family dinner on the books for this weekend. It’s been too long.”

“We’re busy.”

“Not on Sunday night you’re not. Sarai knows the schedule through Melanie.” Dad smiles, knowing he’s caught her. “I’d like everyone to come to my place around six. We’ll finish up early.”

Mom takes a step back and looks out at the crew, pointedly ignoring Dad’s request. “Does everyone here want to make a movie, or are we all still gaping at my ex-husband?”

There’s polite laughter from most crew members and then a lot of hustling, each person hurrying to their appropriate place on the set.

Joseph makes a pit stop to where I’m standing. Under his breath, he says, “I can see where you get it from.” He pats me on the shoulder before returning to his mark.

Mom takes an extra glance at the space where I can still feel the warmth of his hand, her face caught between a grin and a scowl.

7

Week Two of Production

Two skyscraping white columns frame the front door of Dad’s estate. The older I get, the more I recognize this entire aesthetic as excessive. It’s very Dad. He loves things that look important. His collection of antique pianos. His Tesla. The family Christmas cards where we all wear black turtlenecks.

Some of it is done in a tasteful way. That’s thanks to the long list of powerful women who have loved him enough to rein in his vision over the years. The latest is a twenty-eight-year-old comedian named Daya Suvarna, who stands between the columns, waving as I drive up.

Daya is the freshest voice to enter the comedy game in a long while. Way too funny for Dad, and obviously too young, but his resurgence as a genuinely hilarious sitcom star has placed him into a whole different dating pool. Daya cast him on the sitcom she writes and stars in:Lucky Strike. It’s about the daughter of two Indianimmigrants forming a bowling team with her parents and some of the locals in town. Dad plays the owner of the bowling alley.

Never in my life would I have thought he’d agree to play such a lovable, airheaded doofus on camera, but he’s brilliant on it. The closest he’s ever come to playing someone like the real him, the one that exists when there’s no one around with a press badge or a camera.

“Sloane!” Daya cheers when I get out. “You’re right on time.” She has her long black hair up in a chic topknot, and she’s wearing a cream mock-neck tank under a black flare-leg jumpsuit, bright red lipstick perfectly popping against her brown skin. She looks so effortlessly casual and cool I can’t help but feel a bit ridiculous about the fact that I’m running five minutes late because the jeans I really wanted to wear still had that smoothie stain on them.

“Is everyone else here already?” I ask.

“You want me to tell you no, but the truth is, most of them were an hour early.” She leans in closer. “Your mother got here at three, just to prove a point.”

“Welcome to life with my parents.”

I thought it would be impossible not to focus on the fact that Daya is two years younger than me and dating my father, but she’s so confidently herself that she won me over almost instantly. The rest of my family was a tougher sell. She convinced them to like her in the hospital room after Dad’s heart attack, when she filled up a bout of tentative silence by saying, “Guess my poison finally got him.” It was a statement that should have crashed and burned, but her delivery was dry and full of so much sarcastic conviction we all cracked up. If there’s one thing my family respects, it’s guts.

And levity. That was the first time we’d smiled since we got the news.

“Your family is really hard to know,” Kearns once said. “I feel like they all hate me.”

I never told him that they did. Now that he’s singing songs about me on every late-night talk show that will have him, I wish I had.