Page 83 of Love Scenes

“Is my face blotchy?”

“You don’t want me to answer that.” She runs a finger under my eye, then pulls it back, showing me a watery smudge of eyeliner and mascara mixed together. Then she takes it to her own face and paints a line under each eye.

“Nowyoulook ridiculous.”

“And people always say we don’t look alike!” She grins. When I don’t cave, she turns serious again, dipping her chin to get me to make eye contact. “Talk to me. What’s going on?”

I tell Tyler everything. The whole truth about Joseph. No more hiding. I’m exhausted and overwhelmed and I fucked everything up by trying to control it all, like I always do. I’m terrified about what happens when this movie is over and we have to go back to real life. I’m scared I’ve pushed everyone away.

Tyler and I haven’t talked like this in months. I keep trying to pin it all on her, but I’ve pushed her away too. Like I’ve done with everyone else.

It all makes me a babbling mess, apologizing and sobbing and saying things like “I ruined everything” and “I should’ve told you sooner.”

“This is probably the wrong time to tell you this, but everyone already knows about you and Joe,” Tyler interjects.

“Because of yesterday?”

“Um.” She’s hedging, afraid to say more.

“What?”

“We’re always listening to you guys talk on the headsets inbetween takes. And I mean, I lived with you and your old boyfriend. I know you when you have feelings for someone. And then thegala.” She loads the last word with meaning, no longer meeting my eye. “When you finished your set, Mara turned to me and said, ‘You didn’t tell me Sloane and Joe started dating.’ Mom overheard her and said, ‘Oh yeah. For at least a few weeks.’ Then Daya was weirdly insistent that it wasn’t true and you guys were just friends. Then Powell said something about Sarai telling him about some flowers and chocolates Joe gave you or something? Then you guys came back to the table and we stopped talking about it.”

She has the guilt-stricken look I know well, like the time she admitted she spilled black nail polish onto a favorite shirt of mine I thought I’d lost.

“I figured you’d tell me when you were ready to, and everything we were shooting was turning out so great that I didn’t press it,” she finishes.

“So everyone knows?”

“Maybe not Glori?” she suggests, hoping for a laugh.

We sit without speaking for a minute, letting a cool breeze wash over us. Tyler’s gnawing on her fingernails, a nervous tic Mom only halfway scolded out of her as a kid. I’m twirling a piece of hair around my pointer finger, wrapping and unwrapping until it forms a proper coil, the hitches in my breath slowly evening out.

“Do you ever think about why we don’t have any friends?” Tyler asks suddenly.

This is what finally makes me laugh. This and the two black mascara smudges still under her eyes. “Literally every day.”

“Do you think it’s from growing up with a life full of strangers always making assumptions about us? Like it’s easier to be aroundpeople who’ve lived it. Then we don’t have to worry about always trying to explain things. You know?”

“I do.”

“I think we forget that sometimes we have to explain things anyways. Even to the people who’ve lived it with us.”

“Probably. Yeah,” I mutter.

She turns to me. “Shit. Okay. I’m working on being direct. Like you. I’m trying to say I’m sorry for how I stopped showing up. That’s what I mean.”

“I really needed you after Kearns left,” I find myself saying, surprised this comes up first, bursting out with no warning. “It wasn’t that he left me. I know now that was a good thing. It was that I was alone. For the first time in my life, I was completely alone.”

My tears resurface. God. It’s so exhausting to cry. It takes such effort, every facial muscle squeezing and tightening and contorting to accommodate all these emotions. This is why I do the single teardrop stuff on camera. The reality is way too draining.

“And you were falling in love,” I continue. “So I didn’t press it. I didn’t ask you any of the questions I should have. I stopped showing up too.”

Tyler’s crying now. She wipes a hand across her cheek, forgetting about her mascara war paint. Now it’s smudged all the way to her earlobe.

“We never used to do this,” I say. “No matter what. It was always you and me.”

“Why did it change?” she asks. Forever trusting that I have an answer.