Page 9 of My Unscripted Life

I don’t realize that I’m staring at him until he glances my way and narrows his eyes. I can’t tell if he’s squinting into the sun or shooting me a death glare. He shakes his head slightly, then disappears inside the studio door. I try to give him the benefit of the doubt, remind myself that he’s heartbroken, but it’s hard. He’s being kind of a jerk. Which may just save me from the romantic lobotomy Naz warned me about.

I wait a beat before heading in so Milo doesn’t think I’m following him and give me another signature dirty look. Once I’m satisfied that I won’t run into him, I head inside.

Carly sends me back to props, which she also tells me will be my home until further notice. I assume “further notice” is until I do something that makes Ruth decide I’m totally useless. She scares me, but I like the challenge of trying to impress her. As I walk into the prop room, I decide to make it my mission to earn some praise—and maybe even an honest-to-goodness smile—from her before filming is over.

I spend the next two hours checking things off lists and packing boxes. It sounds mindless and boring, but I like it. It’s something I can finish, something I can accomplish. It’s not going to reject me. And by lunchtime, I’ve even leveled up a bit in Ruth’s eyes. Or at least I think I have. So far an appraising look and a brisk nod appear to be her highest forms of praise.

When Ruth calls lunch and bolts for the door, I retrieve the lunch I packed for myself this morning. I make my way back down the hall, through the set, outer office, and lobby, all of which are completely empty. Everyone seems to have gone out for lunch today. Outside I head to the picnic table where I ate lunch yesterday, take a seat in a spot that looks mostly free of bird poop, and unpack the brown paper bag. It’s not much. We’re in desperate need of provisions at the house, but Mom is deep in deadline mode on the sequel to her new novel, the first of which comes out in two weeks. She’s doubly stressed because apparently this book is different from what she’s written in the past, but that’s all I know because as soon as she starts talking about writing her books, I start tuning out. I made the mistake of cracking the spine on one of them a few years ago and ended up flipping directly to a page that contained way too many euphemisms for male anatomy. I’m no prude, but no one likes to imagine her mother writingthat,so I mostly stay out of it.

All that means I’m going to have to remind Dad that he’s on grocery duty. Otherwise it’s going to be cheese-and-mustard sandwiches all week. And not even good cheese, just two limp squares of individually wrapped “cheese product” that I found in the back of the deli drawer of the fridge. I try not to think about when we actuallyboughtthose singles as I take a bite of my sandwich. It’s not what I would call good, but it’ll do. Turns out all that packing and moving and stacking will work up an appetite for just about anything that can legally be sold as food.

A car door slams behind me, startling me and sending a bit of cheese product down my windpipe. I cough and gag, knowing in my head I need to chill out and take a breath but unable to convince my body to actually do it. I feel tears springing to my eyes as my coughing fit grows, and that sense of panic that wells in your chest when you’re wondering where your next breath is going to come from.

There are footsteps behind me that I can barely hear over my wheezing, and then a hard slap on my back, followed by another. The shock of it stops my coughing long enough that I can get a breath in through my nose. A bottle of water appears on the picnic table in front of me, already open, and I grab for it and toss back a gulp. I feel the bite dislodge, and then I’m able to get a good deep breath.

“Oh my God, thank you.” My voice is hoarse and scratchy from my near-death-by-cheese-product moment. I turn and see a tall shadow backed by the sun. It takes a minute for the tears to clear from my eyes before I recognize my savior, all tall, dark, and broody.

Milo.

“You’re welcome,” he says. He stares down at my sad sandwich, the little baggie of tortilla chips that contains mostly the broken bits from the bottom of the bag, and one carrot, peeled and chopped into thumb-sized bites. He grimaces, as if he’s caught me eating out of a Dumpster. “Why are you eating that?”

“Um, because it’s all I had at home?” What I really want to say is,Why are you judging my lunch, you pretentious prick?It’s a sentiment I’m glad I’m able to keep to myself.

Milo reaches down and sweeps my entire lunch into a pile in the center of the table, then wads it up and tosses it into the nearest trash can.

“Hey! What the hell?” Granted, it wasn’t the greatest lunch in the world, but it wasfood,and it wasmine.We can’t all have personal chefs or reservations at whatever restaurant is hot at the moment.

“Come with me.” He doesn’t wait to see if I’m going to follow, just assumes I will. He’s halfway across the parking lot in a few long-legged strides before I’m able to shimmy out of the picnic table and follow him back into the studio. I’m at his heels through the lobby and the main office, which is completely deserted.Whereiseveryone?

When we get to the end of the hall, instead of going through the warehouse, where set and props and everything I know is, he turns left down another short hallway that dead-ends in a pair of fire doors. He leans into one of them and it swings open.

The first thing I notice is thatthisis where everyone is. I see Ruth at a table in the corner, and Carly at another table laughing with a bunch of other people her age. The guys who were building the sets are all at another table, their tool belts hanging off the backs of their chairs. And at the table against the back wall, I see Rob sitting with an older woman with thick black glasses and wild curly hair. They’re leaning in having a very intense conversation, Rob tapping hard on the table with his index finger, his mouth turned into what is becoming a permanent frown.

The second thing I notice is that the room is filled with delicious smells, salty and sweet, smoky and spicy. I don’t think there’s a single cheese-and-mustard sandwich in this entire room.

“Come on,” Milo says, a few paces ahead of me, so I follow him to the end of what turns out to be a buffet line. Rows and rows of silver chafing dishes are set up on folding conference tables laid end to end. Yummy-smelling steam is rising up from pans of barbecue, wild rice, baked beans, some kind of seasoned vegetable medley—and that’s just the first few trays. The tables go on and on, the entire length of the back wall. My stomach growls.

“I didn’t bring my wallet,” I say, wondering if I can find my way to props and back before I fall over from hunger.

Milo rolls his eyes, then gives me a look like maybe the air supply was cut off from my brain during my choking attack. “It’s craft services,” he says, with a don’t-you-know-anything shake of his head. “It’s free?”

“Seriously?” My voice squeaks a little, maybe because my mouth is spontaneously watering at the realization that I’m going to get to load up a plate.

Milo nods. “Yup. You work, they feed you. It’s part of the deal.”

“Crew too?”

“Crew too.”

“Wow,” I say. I follow his lead and pick up a heavy plate and some silverware. “I thought we worked, and they paid us.Thatseemed like a pretty good deal.”

He gives me a side eye, but I swear I see the hint of a smile, the tiniest glimmer in his eyes, just enough to make my breath catch in my throat. But it quickly disappears, his face rearranged back to the blank expression I’ve grown used to. He turns back to the food. He scoops some of the pork onto his plate, then moves down the line adding coleslaw and baked beans and a warm, fluffy roll.

I make my way down the line, which is long and impressive. There’s a makeshift salad bar filled with fresh, brightly colored vegetables and an array of dressings; an overflowing basket of warm, yeasty bread; and at the end, the pièce de résistance: an entire table of dessert. There are fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies and tall slices of layer cake, chocolate and carrot and red velvet. There are brownies and lemon bars and some kind of granola-looking thing, and it all looks absolutely amazing. It takes all the restraint I can muster not to pile my plate with one of each. Instead, I take a plate with a piece of chocolate cake, and at the last second also take a lemon bar, which I attempt to hide underneath my napkin so I don’t look like a total glutton.

When I reach the end of the buffet, my plate perilously full and balanced on one hand, I look up, but Milo’s gone. A quick glance around the room tells me that he’s not at any of the tables, either. He just…left. I feel disappointed, and also embarrassed that I let myself think, even for a moment in the back of my mind, that he might be waiting for me. What, like, we were going to hold hands and skip to a table, sit down, and tell each other secrets over lunch? Please. Yes, he rescued me from sad cheese-product hell, but that was apparently just charity, and it wasn’t like he was falling all over himself to help me. He did a nice thing, but he certainly wasn’t very nice about it.

I shake off any lingering disappointment, aided by the memory of yesterday, when he treated me like something he’d stepped in, and make my way to an empty table near the front of the buffet line. As I take a seat, the only person in the room sitting alone, I can’t help feeling like the new kid on the first day of school, only I ate my lunch in a bathroom stall because I didn’t even know therewasa cafeteria, much less where to find it. I probably could have gone to sit with Carly; I doubt she would have turned me away. But she and the other PAs are laughing and joking, loud and in the shorthand that comes from the kind of close quarters you find on a film set, even after just a few days. It feels impenetrable, and it makes me miss Naz like crazy. I unwrap my silverware and tuck into my plate of food. I choose to focus only on the fact that while I may still be eating alone, at least it’s not a disgusting homemade lunch.

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