Page 41 of My Unscripted Life

“Are those my feathers?”

“Uh, no, these are someone else’s,” I say. She rolls her eyes, but she’s laughing. I pass them to her, and she holds each one in turn underneath the woman’s face.

“I like this one,” she says of a bright blue-and-green peacock feather. “What do you think?”

“It’s nice?” I say. “I don’t really know what it’s for.”

“Design is going to photograph her and use the image for a big banner that’s going to hang in one of the final shots. Huge, like two stories.”

I pause and really look at the makeup job and the peacock feather, along with the others now lying in a row on the table. I tilt my head a bit, then reach for a red-and-orange one that’s so bright I’m sure it doesn’t belong to any bird that occurs in nature. Positioned beneath the model’s face, it serves as the start of the rainbow in the pattern.

“Maybe this one?” I say.

“Good eye,” Joanne says, then reaches for the yellow makeup and begins working on some blending around the woman’s jawline.

She hands me the other feathers to take back to props, and as I turn to leave I notice there’s someone sitting in the last makeup chair all the way at the far end of the room. I almost missed him, because the bright lights of the makeup mirror cast a glare in the corner, but as soon as I see the scrollwork of fake black tattoos, I know it’s him.

I don’t know if he noticed me before, or if he’s noticing me now for the first time, too. He shifts in the makeup chair and inhales, like he’s about to say something, but the door to the makeup room opens and Ashley, another member of the crew, comes in with a brush and a tube of something.

“This should do it,” she says, then squirts a dollop of what turns out to be black paint onto a small palette and sets back to work on Milo’s tattoos.

He still looks like he might say something, but if it’s going to turn into a repeat of the conversation we had in his trailer, I’m not interested in an audience. I quickly make my way out into the hall.

“Dee, wait.”

I turn and see Milo coming out of the makeup room after me. His hands are in his pockets, his shoulders rolled in, taking a good three inches off his height.

“I’m sorry. I have nothing else to say in my defense except that I was an ass.”

“Yes,” I reply. I have nothing else to say either, apparently.

He shifts uncomfortably. I don’t know what he was expecting me to say, but that wasn’t it. “I really should have told you about Lydia. I have no intention of starting up with her again, so I just wanted to ignore the whole situation. But you’re right. Hiding it made it worse.”

“Yes,” I say again.

“I, um…” He starts fiddling with a string hanging off his shirt, tugging at it and wrapping it around his index finger. The hem of the shirt pulls unnaturally with the thread.

I hear my mother’s words echo in my ears.You’re a big star, too.I take a deep breath, claiming the oxygen as my own, then reach out and swat his hand away. “Gloria’s gonna kick your ass if you tear a hole in that shirt,” I say.

A smile quirks at his lips, but it’s faint. “Can you forgive me?”

He looks so impossibly sad and sorry and pathetic. Milo Ritter, his blue eyes clear and his soft blond hair falling over one eye, is seriously asking for my forgiveness. And he should. Because he definitelywasan ass.

And as soon as I think it, I know I’ll forgive him. I break into a smile.

“I guess I can,” I say. I glance around to make sure no one’s in the hall, then reach up and grab a handful of his shirt, pulling him down to me. Our lips lock, and his hand snakes around my back and pulls me closer.

When we break, he grins. “Easy on the wardrobe,” he says. “Gloria’s gonna kick your ass.”

I smooth out the fabric of his shirt, pausing to let my hand linger on the muscles in his chest. But there’s one last thing that I don’t say. I’m afraid our relationship is a deer in the woods I’m trying not to spook for fear that it’ll bolt back into the darkness.

Shooting wraps next week. Production will pack up and go. I’ll be spit out of the vortex.

And Milo will, too.

Then what?

RINGRINGRINGRINGRINGRINGRING

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