Page 17 of My Unscripted Life

“Dee, I hate to break up the party, but Drew over there says a gentleman just stopped by the hardware store looking for your friend here,” she says with a nod of her head toward Milo. I turn and see Drew Walker, clad in coveralls fresh from the job site, leaning over Thelma’s counter. The buttons on the material are barely hanging on over his ample stomach, a by-product of eating every one of his meals at the Diner. He’s glancing our way, his face showing signs of triumph from having delivered some good intel.

“What kind of gentleman?” Milo asks. He sounds weary, like he already knows the answer.

“The kind with one of those cameras with a lens bigger than God,” she says. She turns to me. “He’s working his way down Poplar Street. Should be here any minute. If I were you, I’d go hang out by the dry goods until I can tell him where he can shove that camera.”

Milo curses under his breath, then stands up. “Come on, Dee.”

I’m temporarily frozen by hearing him say my name, but then the enormity of the situation hits me. Those grainy photos of Lydia? They come from situations just like this. Milo hasn’t been photographed in weeks, and a shot of him post-Lydia will beeverywhere,never mind a picture of him having dinner withme,a nobody. I’ve read enough DailyGoss to know how that would go. I’d get called a “mystery girl” in the headlines, and a target would follow me for who knows how long. It’s the very thing that turned Milo into a misery monster, and I want no part of it.

I rise from the table and follow Milo behind the counter and through the door to the kitchen, pausing to look around when I’m on the other side. All these years of burgers at the Diner, and I’ve never once been on the other side of the counter, much less in the kitchen. I feel like I’m treading on sacred ground, but I don’t get long to genuflect. Milo grabs my hand and drags me through an open door just off to the right. The pantry, which is about the size of my bathroom at home, is filled with cans of tomato sauce, chicken stock, and bags of sugar and flour. Milo nods at me. “In here.”

I want to tell him it’s okay to relax. We’re safe back here. Only about three people in the Diner saw me with Milo, and none of them are talking. Roy barely says two words to anyone, and while Melanie can talk a blue streak, she’s really particular about what she calls “outsiders.” She’ll say hi to me because I was born here, but she still shoots suspicious looks at my parents, New England natives who she refers to as Yankees.

Still, I’m not complaining about being in a confined space with Milo Ritter. A tasty mealandespionage with someone who recently sang on late-night television? Um, awesome. Granted, I got to eat only a few bites of said tasty meal, and the fine layer of flour that coats everything in here is making my nose itch. But it’s far superior to what I would otherwise be doing right now, which is wandering around my house ignoring my sketchbook and wondering where my life went. I’ll take hiding in the dry goods storage over that any day.

As soon as I squeeze in after him, I hear the bell on the door tinkle. There’s a man’s voice, but I can’t make out what he’s saying. The words “musician” and “magazine” drift through the doorway, but that’s about all I get.

Milo leans over me, his ear toward the door. That’s when I realize we are close. Like,close.The room isn’t that small, but the abundance of products leaves very little space for two people to stand in here. While his attention focuses somewhere over my head, trying to listen in to the conversation out front, I take the moment to look at him without embarrassing myself.Reallylook at him, without getting caught, for the first time since he wandered into the prop room that first day.

I must have seen his face staring out at me a thousand times from magazine racks, TV screens, blogs, and billboards, but now I’m close enough to study him. I start with his face, going over the lines, contours, and quirks like he’s a model I’m about to sketch. I notice that his left eyebrow has a little cowlick, so the hairs stand up at odd angles and make him look a little rascally. I notice two dark freckles marking his tanned skin, one under each eye, nearly mirror images of each other, the one under the right eye just a fraction of an inch lower than the one under the left. I notice the way his jaw, which looks like it was chiseled out of marble, tightens as he strains to listen for the reporter.

I keep studying him because I’m afraid that if I stop, my heart will start beating loud and hard, a one-man band going to town in there.

I hear more mumbling, but I still can’t catch a word. Finally, Kristin’s voice chimes extra loud.

“I’m sorry, but the most famous people in Wilder are up at the college. If Milo Ritter passed through here, it was just that—passing through. Probably on his way to Savannah. You should head down there,” she says. A bit more mumbling, then the bell on the door jangles again. I start to back out of the doorway, but Milo grabs my arm, sending an electric current down to my feet that curls my toes. He holds up one finger and mouths, “One more second.” I nod, not that I’m in danger of moving at all. I’m practically rooted to the floor, the rubber in my sandals melted there by the heat of Milo Ritter’s chest. Then there’s a knock at the door.

“All clear, but I’d leave out back if I were you,” Kristin says. She hands me two Styrofoam to-go boxes with our meals in them.

“Thanks, Kris,” I say. Milo gives her a quick hug, and she pats him hard on the back.

We end up in the alley between the Diner and the hardware store. Milo glances around like a CIA operative, but there’s no one in sight. When he’s satisfied that the coast is clear, he leans back against the brick wall and sighs. Now it’s my turn to want to help him, but all I can come up with is “I guess we should probably call it a night?”

He nods. “Yeah, probably a good idea.” He looks down the alley toward where his car is, and I can tell he’s already nervous about what—or who—might be waiting for him down there.

“Hey, I don’t live that far. I can totally walk home,” I say.

He barely waits for me to finish before he’s shaking his head, but I hold up a hand to halt his argument before it begins. “Seriously, I walk here all the time. It’s not far, and to be honest, I don’t want any part of whatever that was in there.”

I can tell he doesn’t want to let me walk alone, but my argument wins out over whatever sense of chivalry he has. He nods. “Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says, and though his voice is sad, there’s a spark somewhere in my chest at the words. It’s a connection, an acknowledgment of more, and I desperately hope for it.

There’s an awkward shuffling where it seems like he might go in for a hug, but instead he raises his hand in a sort of half wave, half salute that makes me smile. I wave back, and we head off in opposite directions, out of frame of any lenses that may be watching.

The walk home takes a good twenty minutes, but I barely notice it. I’m practically floating.I think I made friends with Milo Ritter.The thought singsongs in my head the whole way.

When I get home, Rubix, our big old yellow rescue dog, is waiting for me. When we adopted him as a puppy from the shelter four years ago, they told us he was a yellow Lab. But then he grew and grew until we became convinced his dad was a Great Dane (that, or he was bitten by a radioactive spider that turned him part giant). He’s absolutely enormous and as sweet as he is large. When he spots my takeout box, his tail starts thumping loudly on the wood floor. I flip the lid and offer him a chunk of my burger, which he swallows without chewing.

“Did you even taste it?” I ask as I ruffle his ears. I drop the to-go box in the fridge, then head toward my room. Mom’s office door is shut, which means she’s either hit her stride or she’s in megaprocrastination mode and doesn’t want anyone to know it. Either way, her closed door meansdo not disturb. And since the sun hasn’t quite set yet, Dad is probably still out on his nightly run, which means I don’t have to worry about either of the parental units noticing my blissful attitude.

I crash onto my bed with my phone for my nightly scroll through SocialSquare and a few of my favorite news (okay, gossip) sites. But tonight I’m so tired, I feel like I won’t even make it halfway through before my eyes start to drift closed. Maybe it was the painting, or maybe the roller coaster of emotions, or maybe just the walk home. Whatever it is, I’m exhausted.

The first thing I see is a story about Moriah Mann, who’s just been dropped from her supporting role in the latest Robert Lewin movie. Which is…Holy crap. I’m reading gossip about the movie I’m working on! I think back to the blank spot next to the name Kass on the cast sheet. Was that supposed to be Moriah Mann,theindie starlet? Her long blond hair and thin frame manage to make her look both like a supermodel and your very best friend next door. Her last movie got her a Golden Globe nomination, and everyone expects her to get an Oscar pretty soon. She’s always seen skulking around New York or LA on the arm of one of many studly indie rockers with greasy hair. I read further to find she’s off to rehab, so that must be what Rob’s been freaking out about. All the stomping and yelling and hushed conversations are because she got fired, and they’re trying to replace her after we’ve already started production.

Next I switch to SocialSquare and start flicking through my feed. I pause on a shot that Naz posted that looks like it’s inside the library. The tabletop in front of her is arranged with a stack of books, notebooks, and pens all in perfect right angles. The filter gives it a hazy glow, and underneath is the hashtag #myhappyplace. I feel a swelling in my chest. I miss Naz, my favorite nerd. It’s weird not having her around to talk stuff out. Texting just isn’t the same. I want to call her, until I notice the second hashtag in the caption: #donotdisturb.

Instead, I flick my finger across the screen and watch as beautifully filtered images drift by. I once tried to make my feed look that beautiful, but it was so much work to edit and export and import and filter that I gave up. Most of the time I don’t edit at all, since my feed is mostly pictures of my own artwork. I use it as sort of a mobile gallery, with silly selfies of me and Naz or me and Rubix mixed in.

My finger pauses over an image of a blond woman wearing a flower crown made of pink peonies while standing in a field somewhere. It’s Natalie Bond, who starred in a reality show about being young and fabulous in LA calledThe Boulevard.As I wonder who took the picture and how she came to be standing in a field wearing flowers on her head in the first place, a tiny itch of an idea starts forming in the back of my brain.

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