One More Time(28)

Both of us were frustrated with the constant distance, but I had the sense Jenna was also jealous. I got it. I would have been too, if I’d been in her shoes. She’d confessed to me that she wanted to act early on in our relationship, and I think it was getting harder and harder for her to see me in the world she wanted but couldn’t yet have. Modeling is impossible as is, but she was half in that world and half in mine. I knew she preferred my lifestyle to her own, and I knew it was hard to just be the girl on the arm of some movie superhero that people were fawning over for no reason. I felt bad for her.

But I was frustrated with her, too. She was frequently turning down opportunities to audition so she could be with me, so she could be part of my movie lifestyle instead of building one of her own. I didn’t argue with her about it—of course I didn’t, she never let us have a conversation that was at all heated—but there was an underlying tension that seemed to bleed into our days away from each other. I wanted her with me, but I didn’t want her with me if it was taking her away from her dreams. So sometimes I made excuses that I was too busy to see her, hoping she’d take a bit part or book a role that might lead to something bigger. More often than not, she just felt like I was pushing her away.

It didn’t help that my publicists wanted me out every night of the week. Apparently the producers were nervous about launching the sequel in a year already hyper-crowded by comic-book movies. They needed me to be as visible as possible to help drive people to the theater.

“People don’t go see movies,” I remember the head publicist at the time saying, “They go see movie stars.”

I’ll be honest. I was riding high with the thrill of being that star. I’d hit the sweet spot where guys want to be you and girls want to screw you – Celebrity Magic, my agents explained. I couldn’t risk losing that momentum, especially with a huge movie on the line.

That was where my head was when Natalia Lowen approached me about the kiss-cam charity event. I was thinking about my career, not my relationship. I was thinking about my job.

The setup was innocent enough. Pairs of celebs were selected to compete against each other in an on-camera kissing contest for a big cash prize they would ultimately donate to the charity of their choice. At the time I’d just started working with St. Anselm’s Children’s Hospital, so this felt like a great way to start the relationship off on the right foot.

Of course, that meant I had to win the contest.

And winning meant being one half of the hottest kiss among twelve sets of celebs.

I was paired with Natalia, which did not help matters when it came to Jenna ultimately finding out. Natalia was a model who had successfully transitioned into acting--living Jenna’s dream. She was also smoking hot, objectively speaking, and the opposite of Jenna looks-wise. Natalia had blonde hair to Jenna’s deep brown and dark blue eyes to Jenna’s soft blue. But that’s not where my mind was when I agreed to kiss her for this dumb charity.

Her looks weren’t anything I thought twice about, because the most beautiful girl in the world was already mine.

I specifically asked if the shot was going to be on TV, and the crew that approached Natalia said, no.

That was a lie.

Actually, the whole thing was a lie. There wasn’t a kissing contest. There wasn’t even a charity event. The film crew were just pranksters who’d convinced Natalia they were doing a good deed so they could get scandalous celebrity footage and sell it for top dollar to TMI.

Not only did it air on TMI’s primetime show before I had the chance to explain the whole charade to Jenna, but also it looked completely like I was kissing Natalia for real.

It was all over their website too. Is Janner over?! Tanner James makes out with Natalia Lowen while Jenna Stahl is lonely in New York. They paired the really hot, kissing video—when I make it good, I make it good—with footage caught of Jenna walking alone, makeup-less, wearing sweats and a ragged sweatshirt I used to wear in high school. It made her look lonely and pathetic. It was brutal and deceiving.

I later tried to get TMI to air my rebuttal, but no one wanted to pick up my side of the story. Cheating scandals earn more viewers than misguided attempts at raising money for charity. That film crew, whoever they were, knew just what would sell. They orchestrated the whole event perfectly.

And I fell for it, hook, line and sinker. I had to be the best. I had to win. So I really went for it with Natalia. The footage of me kissing her looks incredibly real.

I would have believed it were real if I were Jenna.

Within hours of the video hitting the Internet it was absolutely everywhere, including Jenna’s phone. I tried to call her, but she wouldn’t answer my calls. When I wrapped The Jet sequel a few days later and got to our apartment, she’d moved out.

I had another shoot right away back home in Australia—a movie I’d been looking forward to because I’d get to be back home for a period of time for the first time in years. The timing with the video was the worst. I was pissed that I was too busy to deal with it. I was pissed that Jenna knew my schedule was crammed and still wouldn’t answer my calls. I was pissed that she’d given up on us so easily, so I decided to just give myself a few days to cool off before I tried to figure out how to best reach her. Then I heard through the grapevine that she’d booked a spot as a judge on a reality show. Even mad as I was, I was excited for her. It wasn’t the acting break she wanted, but it was something. It was a beginning. I’d been out of her life barely two weeks, and she’d landed her first real non-modeling gig.