Page 42 of Love Scenes

That was enough to make me shut off my phone altogether.

When I park, a single paparazzo yells my name from across the street. I pay my parking meter and keep my focus on the salon, watching the pap through my peripherals. He snaps shots and calls out questions like, “Is it true that Daniel Traverson’s mom had you fired? Do you regret what you said? Will Daniel still play at your gala this year? Have you talked to Kearns Adam? What about Haven Church? Is it true you two spoke?”

Back in the paparazzi heyday, there were times when our family was greeted with forty or more flashes outside the grocery store, or my martial arts studio, or the gates of our old Bel Air complex. It was like being in the eye of the storm, the way they’d follow us with mere feet of breathing room, a perfect circular swarm of sweating men with flashing cameras, staying with us all the way into Dad’s Range Rover or Mom’s Mercedes. Not givingup until we were on a street too busy to follow on foot. They’d sell pictures of Tyler, Powell, and me in the back seat of the car, Powell crying because he was always crying as a kid, and they’d run a story saying the divorce was destroying our family. It was surreal, being followed by a herd of strangers who thought they knew my life better than I did. Mom and Dad taught me to keep my eyes down and continue on my way.

This single paparazzo is harder to ignore than forty weird strangers. He’s one bored guy chasing the big C-plot news story of the day with half-hearted interest, not even bothering to cross the street, and he manages to wedge loose a tidal wave of past memories within me.

Clutching my dad’s hand so tight the sweat between our palms made it hard to stay latched on. Staring at my shoelaces to avoid the lights, Mom saying that looking at the camera was giving them a piece of my soul. Powell tripping and falling into the crowd of men, for a moment swallowed up not just by their flashes, but their bodies.

My hands are shaking by the time I open the salon door.

“Sloane! We’re so excited to see you!” the lead colorist says when I enter. Four members of their team are waiting for me and only me. “Champagne?”

“God yes. Please.” She hands me a small flute, and I drink it down in one gulp, the pleasant fizz not as much of a balm as I’d like it to be. I feel restless. Trapped inside my mind and desperate for a break.

“Thank god. It’s a lighter brown than we thought. We pulled up clips of you from your show. This color reads darker on-screen,” the colorist says, combing through my hair with her fingers. “We can get you to a reasonable blond tonight.” She walks me over to a chair to begin.

Who should spin around in the seat next to me but one Joseph Donovan.

“We meet again as costars,” he says, doing another three-sixty for extra flourish. He’s got on a pair of black cropped denim jeans and a short-sleeve chambray shirt, a pair of tortoise Wayfarers tucked into the chest pocket. The top three buttons of his shirt are undone, showing off a dog tag necklace.

I almost drop my empty flute. “What are you doing here?”

“They asked me to come in to make sure your hair color looked good against mine.”

“You’re going to sit through a five-hour appointment with me?”

In disbelief, he looks to the colorist. “It’ll take five hours?”

“And that’s just today,” she says.

“I have to come back tomorrow to finish it. They want it as blond as we can get it in the time frame without breakage.”

The stylist musses with my shoulder-length bob. “And there might be extensions,” she adds.

“There might be extensions,” I echo.

“Christ,” he mutters.

“Thank god I’ll have some company.” I was attempting to sound sarcastic but find something far closer to the truth than I expect to hear from my own mouth, especially when it comes to my new costar.

He grins. “Right then. Let’s make an Elise outta ya.”

It’s a long process. Everyone on the style team talks about my hair like TV surgeons talk about lifesaving operations. I can’t help but feel guilty for not having the best possible texture and follicle porousness for a six-shade lightening process done on an impossible timeline.

Joseph’s presence comes as a welcome distraction. He details what he’s been doing with his off time. Taking boxing lessons inthe early morning. Trying to rebuild the engine of a classic car for a few hours in the afternoon. That’s how he got the Camaro, I learn. It was an interest of his older brother’s that he picked up on out of sheer boredom as a kid. Now it’s a bit of an escape for him, tinkering with vehicles whenever he can. He’s also been spending his nights reading through the stack of World War II novels and memoirs he got for research.

He’s someone who always needs to be busy. To be moving. It’s one of the countless quirks I’ve figured out over the last two weeks. He eats very slowly because he’s always doing something else at the same time. He seems to have a mild aversion to pigeons. And his mother was definitely his favorite person on earth. She comes up often, his grief manifesting in many fond retellings of the countless ways she filled his life with purpose and love. I notice too how little he mentions his dad, and how formal it is when he comes up. He sounds like me talking about any of the friends I made after eighth grade.

I run him through what he’s missed on set. The plan for an updated shooting schedule, putting the love scene reshoots at the very end of production, tacking on an extra week. It’s easier to discuss with him when I treat all of it as business. Powering through the awkward parts with the same direct energy I’ve seen my mom use daily.

Nothing more casual than talking sex scenes with my costar. The guy my mom thought I was so desperate to sleep with I almost gave up my life’s passion over it.

“I nearly fell off my chair when I saw the announcement,” he says when I finish explaining how we will need to get the second kissing scene and the sex scene done in one day.

“They didn’t tell you?”

“Nope. Neither did you, might I add.”