One More Time(5)

I smile to myself thinking about how I’ve been working out and meeting with a coach the past few months in prep for this movie, too. Of course, I get paid a lot more to do it these days, an amount that a fifteen year-old me wouldn’t have been able to fathom. But money is not my incentive for wanting to be perfect for this role.

“Okay, we’re ready. We’re going to roll it one more time,” my director Polly calls out from her spot in Video Village.

Polly is one of the good ones, and I’m lucky to have her running the show. She started directing almost as young as I started acting, working her way up from short films shot in her parents’ Ohio backyard to a booming career making tent-pole romantic comedies for all the major studios. I respect her hard work, and I appreciate her go-with-the-flow attitude.

She couldn’t also care less about the fact that I’m famous. She’s made no secret of the fact that she’s here to build up women, not men. She doesn’t put up with my shit. She doesn’t kiss my ass.

I’ll admit my ego doesn’t always love these facts, but she keeps me on my toes, and my name wouldn’t be on the project as a silent producer if I didn’t think she was the right choice.

“Are you cool if I riff on the line a little?” I facetiously ask Polly as she settles into her director chair.

“Perhaps…but the line is ‘thank you.’ Where exactly are you thinking of taking it?”

“I’ve been workshopping a few options. Thanks. TY. Danke. Spank you.”

Polly laughs. So far everything I’ve heard about working with her has been true. She’s honest, she’s to the point and she’s all about doing whatever it takes to make her actors comfortable.

She’s also well aware that the two actors she’s working with on this particular project may need a little time to get comfortable--although she’s not very likely to worry about my comfort as much as my co-star’s.

Anyone who knows our history would feel the same.

I had a weird pang of nervousness when the call sheet got e-mailed out last night. Smack dab on the top under REASON TO LOVE was a name I never expected to see beside mine on this kind of document: Jenna Stahl. It didn’t feel real until I saw it in black-and-white, although in some ways, nothing had ever been more real.

Once upon a time, Jenna was my reason to love.

How quickly that once upon a time ended.

I immediately scrolled down the call sheet to see if we would be shooting together today, and I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t just a little disappointed to see that we were not. In fact, I haven’t even bumped into her on set yet.

But that’s about to change.

This morning we’re shooting the post office scene that only features my character, Bobby. This afternoon they’re shooting her at her character Grace’s house. But from the looks of the schedule our paths will cross right around lunchtime at the craft services tent.

It’s time for an “accidental” meeting.

Yes, I’m that mature. But, to be fair, I kind of feel like she’s put me in this position.

Six months ago, when Jenna signed on to this project, I’d proposed the idea of us getting together for a coffee or something—anything—to talk over our past or the movie or just to break the ice. Whatever she wanted.

My agent talked to her agent talked to Jenna talked to my agent talked to me. It’s like that Taylor Swift song, complete with informing me that Jenna had no interest. Zip. Nada. Not even in discussing the movie.

It’s been ten years—you’d think hearing that she doesn’t want to see me would have stopped hurting by now. But Jenna’s a wound that won’t heal.

Maybe all first loves are. Still, I have a feeling Jenna’s especially hard to get over.

I blame that on her too. She hates confrontation so much, she acts like she’s allergic to it. For as long as I knew her, she would tie herself into the most complicated knots to avoid it. I’m sure it’s why she never wanted to meet face-to-face before the shoot, but it’s also why I haven’t had closure after all these years. I’d thought when she agreed to the movie deal that it must mean that she was finally ready to talk. Ready to listen.

But maybe it just means she’s moved on.

Well, good for her. She’s lucky she could. That makes one of us at least.

And she—or maybe her agent—made the choice to keep us apart until we absolutely had to meet. Was that smart? I don’t know. Perhaps. The last thing either of us needs is to mess up Polly’s movie with our personal baggage. What if we’d met and fought? Or worse, met and realized that we no longer have an ounce of chemistry, and we were still obliged to fake it for the screen?

But our personal baggage is what the world wants to see. It’s the story they’re paying for, not the one we’re filming.

And I can’t imagine a world where Tanner James and Jenna Stahl don’t create fireworks on sight.

And those extra months without meeting did give me the chance to hit the gym. I’ve gone from muscular to ripped in some kind of attempt to either impress her, or hide my nervousness under layers of biceps. I guess in some ways I’m still that same fifteen-year-old over-prepping for the role. Only on this set, I’m also playing a second role: Jenna Stahl’s ex.

It’s the one I’ve been playing for ten years. It’s the hardest role I’ve ever played, a role I never deserved to play, though try telling that to anyone else. No one blames her for casting me in it.