Page 60 of Love Scenes

Our workday consistsof his character, Stuart, asking mine out on a date outside the grocery store. Lucas’s bright-eyed enthusiasm gives the right hint of something vaguely sinister beneath the surface. His nervousness is a surprisingly hard beat to play without seeming like a parody. He improvises a bag fumble that Tyler loves so much she asks him to repeat it for every take.

If Joseph and I dance, then Lucas and I swim, lapping around each other in casual free strokes, our characters hiding their abilities to glide underwater like sharks. Tyler has a way of making me find Elise’s backbone sooner. To let her enjoy seeing Stuart sweat a little. It’s freeing to embrace Elise’s confidence. My instincts were to make her a little shy. Tyler won’t let me.

Elise is a shark. A smart, capable shark who chooses exactly who she allows near her.

In between takes, sitting in my designated chair under a tent—sweaty and bored and fully out of things to discuss with Lucas outside of the work itself—I contemplate texting Joseph. Something about saying hello on an off day feels like revealing too much.

Maybe I’ll ask how his guitar rehearsal is going.

But I can’t let on how desperately I need him to come through for me this weekend.

I opt to open Instagram instead. Someone on Joseph’s team made him an account, and I would bet my life he’s never logged on to it himself, but it’s still something that feels like him. He must at least approve these posts. The latest one is from a week ago. It’s a short teaser trailer for a movie he shot last year.Swiped, a techie action flick in which he’s wearing a long brown wig and has a light goatee. I play it without the sound, watching his facemouth words I can only imagine are of a similar quality to my dialogue onThe Seeker.

Seeing him in this ridiculous clip isn’t the same as talking to him, but it’s close. Enough to tide me over until I decide how to nonchalantly slide into his messages.

I’m about to click out of the app altogether when I see something on my timeline that makes me toss my phone up like a hot potato.

It’s a post from Kearns.

In what can be viewed as either a move of great dignity or great pettiness, I refused to unfollow him post-breakup. That felt like too much of a concession.

The fist-clenching rage that swamps me at the sight of his face—casual, laughing, in calculated profile—is a stark contrast to the pure dopamine hit that came from looking at Joseph in a dorky-ass wig pretending to know shit about coding. It’s unsettling how this person who used to take up so much real estate in my heart has now become someone who can make me actively angry on sight.

I do a furious swipe up to escape Kearns’s presence. My eyes still manage to catch the last lines of his caption. Something about a benefit concert. I scroll back up, trying to make it so I can read the text without having to look at him.

My face must turn pale. Or maybe my entire body has gone so still it pulls attention toward me. Because Tyler is at my side within seconds.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, panicked.

I show her the screen.

Kearns is holding a benefit concert in Los Angeles. The same night as my gala.

“Are you kidding me?” Tyler asks.

My hands have started shaking so hard I can hardly hold my phone. Tears threaten to fall, but I cannot give him the dignity. Not anymore. Notever.

Instead I take as many cleansing, slow breaths as I can, my eyes clenched shut to redirect the tidal wave inside me. “We will make him pay,” I say, hardly recognizing the low-toned threat in my own voice.

Tyler’s grin is sly. The face of a person who has been waiting for a statement like this. “Tell me what I can do to help.”

“You can message Emmy Carter,” I blurt.

The idea that comes to me is immediate and fully dimensional. Emmy is a folk singer. Kearns’s ex-girlfriend. The subject of his first album. I’ve never spoken to her before. Something tells me that’s okay. She will be more than happy to join my impromptu plan.

“Ask her if she’d like to be a part of my gala performance,” I say.

While Tyler drafts a message to Emmy via Twitter, I find the resolve within me and text Joseph.

How’s rehearsal going?

Within minutes he sends back a video of him playing our third song choice, “Rock’n Me.” It sounds perfect. A little unpolished but bursting with sincere effort.

Kearns may have taken the low road, but I will build a tunnel beneath him until I emerge so far ahead he can see me as nothing more than a distant mirage he can only dream of reaching.

16

We finish our last half day on location with pickup shots. Elise reading the newspaper at a coffee shop. Her walk from the apartment to the grocery store. And finally, her frantic, running escape from her date gone wrong. There’s no dialogue for any of this, which should make it easy. Unfortunately for me, sprinting barefoot down the sidewalk while holding back tears, over and over, isn’t as effortless as I’d like it to be.