Page 36 of My Unscripted Life

Benny throws his arm around my shoulder and pulls me in close to his side until we’re practically cheek to cheek. I hold the camera out in front of us until I’ve got us framed up, then Benny sticks out his tongue like he’s going to lick my face while also giving me bunny ears. When I snap the picture, I’m midlaugh. It’s a good one, and despite his ridiculous expression, you can see that he’s still handsome. Naz is going to like it. I hope.

“And by the way, it’sBen!” he says, but he’s laughing. He pulls me into a giant bear hug and finishes it off by giving me a noogie.

“Hey, watch the hair,Benny!” I say. I give him a little shove. He returns the favor with a shove on my shoulder, and before I know it we’re laughing and roughhousing like a couple of fifth graders.

I hear a throat clear behind me. I turn around to see Milo is studying us, an eyebrow slightly arched, the other furrowed. “I didn’t know you’d be on set today,” he says. He keeps giving my outfit—I’m sorry,uniform—sideways glances.

I adjust my bandanna from where Benny knocked it down over my eyes and give him a final shove. He laughs and jogs away to get back to work. I give Milo a smile. “Yeah, I’m not actually working today. I just wanted to observe.”

“Ah, well—” Milo starts, but Rob steps out from the tent and calls for first team before I can make it across the grass. Milo looks like he wants to say something, but he also doesn’t want to keep Rob and the crew waiting, so he follows Lydia to replace their stand-ins while the hair and makeup crew wait just off camera to jump in and adjust between takes.

I find a spot to stand near video village. I want to be able to peek at the monitors so I can see what the camera sees, and possibly overhear some of the direction. They’re using two cameras to shoot simultaneous close-ups of Lydia and Milo. On one of the monitors I can see Milo mouthing his lines, while on the other Lydia blots her lips on a tissue a makeup assistant has pulled out of a fanny pack.

“Don’t you just love the quiet days?” Carly asks, appearing at my side.

“If only they weren’t quite so early,” I say. I let a yawn escape, and it travels to Carly, who stretches her arms wide and tries to suppress one of those yawn-moans. “How early did you have to get here?”

“Four,” Carly replies, like that’s not an ungodly hour when most respectable people should still be tucked into bed, or possibly just crawling in after a long night. Just the thought of four in the morning makes me yawn. I got up at six to be here at seven, and I barely feel human as a result.

“Hey, can I see the sides?” I ask. I know today is some kind of romantic scene, hence the scenery, but I haven’t seen the actual pages for the day. I have no idea what they’re shooting. Carly hands me the stapled pages, and I flip through them. There’s only one scene, with only Lydia and Milo playing in it. No extras, no other cast. I skim the dialogue, not absorbing a whole lot of it, but my eyes skid to a halt over a piece of direction.

THEY KISS.

It’s right there on the page, all caps, like an accusation.

Okay, I knew that Jonas, Milo’s character, was the love interest of Kass, Lydia’s character. And if I’d thought about it for two seconds longer, I would have realized that of course they were going to kiss. Has there ever been any piece of entertainment in the history of the worldeverwhere the love interests don’t kiss? Duh, of course they kiss.

But today? While I’m here and watching?

THEY KISS.

No matter how many times I read it, the words don’t go away. And neither can I. If I leave now, it’ll look suspicious to Milo, and possibly the rest of the crew. I’m just going to have to suck it up and watch my boyfriend kiss his superhot, superfamous ex-girlfriend.

Today is a new day indeed.

“Rolling!” Rob calls, and the rest of the crew start to echo the call like dominos, so that everyone gets the message and shuts the hell up. The boom mike may not look like much, but it can pick up all kinds of whispers and footsteps, none of which belong in the scene. Everyone on set pauses, like a scene out ofThe Day the Earth Stood Still,where they’ll stay until Rob calls cut.

“And action,” Rob says. Milo and Lydia launch into the dialogue, which is heavy on the flirting. I watch Milo on the monitor. He cocks his head. He gives a smile. At one point, he winks. It all looks so…familiar, and it’s giving me a serious case of déjà vu.

I try to avoid looking at the monitor with Lydia’s face on it, but every once in a while my eye drifts over to her ruby-red lips, emerald-green eyes, and the way her skin looks like ice-cold milk on-screen. The camera, as they say, loves her, and when my eyes go back to Milo’s monitor, it looks like he does too.

They shoot the scene six or seven more times, both up close and with the cameras pulled back. Whatever problems Lydia was having with her lines the other day seem to have disappeared. She’s amazing today playing opposite Milo. He seems to put her at ease, or maybe it’s that acting out a flirty relationship with him isn’t so foreign to her. I know she cheated on him, but watching them now all made up and lit the way Hollywood intended, it makes me wonder if he still has feelings for her, too.

Rob yells, “Check the gate,” which Carly tells me means he’s ready for them to move on to the next shot. This is the part I’ve been dreading. The kiss.

There’s lots of discussion happening under the tent about the best place to have the kiss happen. Apparently they were originally slated to suck face on the footbridge, giving the cameras a great view of the waterwheel in the background, but now Rob doesn’t like it. Milo and Lydia have migrated over to listen in on the conversation.

Rob trots over to a rock off the side of the creek and starts asking Cole, the gaffer, if he can light the space, and Allen, the director of photography, if he has everything he needs to get the shot at that angle. And before I know it, lights and cameras are in place and Milo is boosting Lydia up onto the flat top of the rock. He climbs up next to her, and Rob is telling him to lean back on his arm, but no, move it closer, yes, closer to Lydia, and telling her to lean into his chest slightly. It’s like a slow-motion nightmare, only it’s not going slow enough for my taste, because suddenly Rob is calling action.

I make it through exactly one take of the kiss. I watch one time as Milo cups Lydia’s chin, her head tilting perfectly as he leans in, their lips meeting. I count,one, two, three, four…and the kiss is still going.

I can feel the nausea start low in my stomach, a sort of sour pit forming and rolling around with the contents of my breakfast. I’m seriously regretting those Cocoa Puffs right about now. I drop my gaze to the toes of my sneakers and try to take some deep breaths of the cool morning air, but with the sun rising higher every minute, the atmosphere suddenly feels too heavy and too hot. I really worry I might throw up.

“You okay?” Carly asks, and that’s when I realize I’m still mostly staring at my shoes, taking deep yoga breaths.

I let myself look up at her and try to wipe the illness from my face. “Uh, yeah, I, uh, just left something in my car,” I reply. I turn on my heel and start to head back down the dirt road. I hear Carly say that Rodney can drive me back, but that seems ridiculous. Crew parking is barely a quarter of a mile down the road, and I think if I have to wait for the crew van to show up to drive me, I’ll lose my breakfast in the grass. And then I start running, know I won’t be able to stop.

Isit in my car with the air conditioning on full blast for almost an hour. I want to leave, but I also don’t want to admit defeat. And an hour feels like long enough that Milo and Lydia have thoroughly made out and finished filming the scene. At least I hope so. Regardless, hiding out in my car for more than an hour feels just as pathetic as ditching out on the day, and besides, I don’t have enough gas to sit here like this and still make it home, so I shut off the car and climb out.

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