One More Time(13)

But before Jenna even has her first line out, Polly leans forward and calls, “Cut.” She walks over to have a quiet word. “Jenna, you seem...annoyed. Take a deep breath. Let go of any personal or real life emotions. Okay?” She breathes in and out with her star a few times, then nods for the second take to be called as she walks back behind the camera. “Action!”

This time Jenna gets the line out, but I’m the one who looks tense.

The third time, Jenna doesn’t look at me.

The fourth, I’m talking too loudly.

Well, of course I am. We’re three feet apart, the only two people in this fake lobby, we’re talking to each other, and yet she still doesn’t seem to see me at all.

“Cut!” Polly calls again, clearly exasperated. “You know what? I tried to do it your way, but this is a waste of everyone’s time. We’re all going to take five, and you two are going to talk this out.”

Jenna crosses her arms and hangs her head as she blows out a long sigh through pursed lips. She seems embarrassed, and I get it. I feel chastised too.

Polly’s right.

It’s one thing for a director to use multiple takes to get the best possible performance, but we haven’t even made it through those damn four lines. It isn’t fair to her, it isn’t fair to the crew, and it isn’t fair to us. This is Jenna’s big break, and rumors are going to start that she can’t act, which couldn’t be further from the truth. I started this bullshit earlier, and I’m the one who needs to end it.

“Look. I was an asshole,” I say. She doesn’t look up at me, but her arms uncross.

“You were.”

“I wasn’t—” My voice lowers, in both volume and pitch. “I didn’t mean it like it came out. I just keep remembering my first day on set in a lead role and how uptight and nervous I was. Any second, I kept expecting someone to tell me I didn’t belong there. I threw up twice between takes. I guess I was just thinking maybe you felt the same.”

She doesn’t say anything for a long moment. It stretches between us like taffy.

“I guess I understand that,” she finally says. When she looks up, when her eyes meet mine, it’s then I see something real behind her mask of indifference. I see the hurt and confusion and anger of three thousand six hundred fifty days in those bottomless pools of blue.

She doesn’t let it stay for long.

With a blink, the mask slips back into place, but I’m strangely comforted. I may have ruined everything back then, but I didn’t imagine that I meant something to her. It’s not much, and it doesn’t change anything now, and yet it does all the same.

“Anyway, maybe it isn’t a bad thing to be visibly nervous right now,” she says. “First kisses are nerve-wracking.”

“Do you remember our first kiss?” It’s out of my mouth before I can stop myself. I’m insane. We haven’t had a conversation about normal stuff, and I’m already bringing up the past. I’m a total asshole.

I start to apologize again, to tell her never mind, but I hesitate when I glance over at her. She’s looking away from me again, but her lips quirk up, and I know she’s thinking about it. Thinking about our first kiss.

And now I’m thinking about it, too. It’s as vivid to me as the green of her dress.

That night at the party on Mulholland, after our eyes met, after I’d recognized that single-minded intensity on the face of the most beautiful creature I’d ever laid eyes on, I’d started toward her. I had to know her name. Had to be near her.

I walked around the pool, around bodies and drinks and people trying to get my attention. It was all on her, and my eyes never wavered once from their target. She watched me the entire way. Her friends chattered around her, and she ignored them. Finally, I reached her. She pulled her lusciously full lower lip into her mouth, and bit gently. I could smell her perfume, something that reminded me of Southern California sunshine encompassed in a flower. Orange blossom, that’s what it was. I opened my mouth, and--

“I dove backward into the pool,” Jenna giggles at the memory. “I just knew you were going to use some terrible pickup line, and I couldn’t bear it.”

“I was just going to tell you my name,” I protest indignantly, and not for the first time.

“I knew your name. Everyone did. And I wanted you to be as perfect as you looked in the picture I’d clipped from Hollywood Hotties and glued in my journal. And I knew you were going to ruin it by speaking. But there you were in the pool with me when I came up for air, opening your mouth again. So I—”

“Kissed me.” I pressed my lips together, recalling the soft, yielding pressure of hers on mine, tangy with chlorine and sugary lip gloss. “You were so sure of yourself. So confident. This perfect girl. I was blown away.”

“My heart was pounding out of my chest. I was kissing my movie-star crush. Everything else disappeared.”

We aren’t touching, but in this moment, we are completely together.

“Break’s over, come on, we’re burning—well, twilight!” Polly yells, and the spell is broken. Everyone scrambles back onto the set, noise flooding back in. We take our places again, and this time, I feel like myself, the self that has complete mastery over his career, if not his personal life.

“Camera speeding,” the DP says.