Page 116 of My Lucky Star
I gave her a wobbly nod. The love story was only a subplot that emerged alongside other adventures, but I hadn’t played an intimate scene in ages. I hadn’t touched another man since...
It’s only a bit of kissing, I told myself. No big deal.
I gathered the script and my water bottle and stepped out of the hotel room doubling as my dressing room. It wasn’t the one Cem had stayed in. I wasn’t a masochist. Still, everything around here reminded me of him, so much that I had to fix my eyes on my squeaking 1930s leather shoes. Left. Right. Left. Right. Don’t look. Don’t think.
I followed Lindsay downstairs, through the reception area cleared for filming and into the sitting room that had turned into a production dump with gear, drink bottles and scripts lying on every surface.
And there, in the far corner of the crammed room, sunken into a mauve velvet Art Deco chair, bent over a script, was Cem.
“I believe you two know each other?” Lindsay beamed at me, pointing at him across the room. “He asked me to keep it a surprise.”
I stared, unable to reply. Cem looked up, but not at me. His eyes were trained on Harriet, our assistant director, who stood by his chair with a stern expression. It looked like he was asking something. Harriet shook her head, annoyed.
Lindsay touched my arm. “You guys don’t need introductions, right? I have to check on the set.” She swiveled and swept away, her shoulder catching on the light curtain, which fell like a veil over her head.
I snuck a little closer to Cem and Harriet to hear them over the chatter and footsteps.
“That’s too bad, ba-d,” Harriet said. “There’s a ‘d’ at the end. When you say it, it sounds like bet or bat.”
“That’s too bad,” Cem read again, emphasizing the ‘d’, maybe a little too hard.
Harriet frowned. “Yes, that’s the sound but try to say it naturally. I mean, it’s okay to have an accent but we shouldn’t need subtitles.”
Cem nodded. “I’m sorry. I’ll keep practicing.”
“You do that.” Harriet left the room, wearing the expression I’d become familiar with, the one that said, ‘where’s the next fire?’.
On the way, she shoulder-tapped two camera ops who followed her outside. The others had left, probably to set up the scene. We were alone.
Dozens of thoughts burst into my mind, fighting for attention. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. What was he doing here? Was he really acting in this film? Why? What had happened in Istanbul?
Above all, I had a strange sensation I was witnessing a miracle – an immortal being choosing a mortal life. He’d become one of us, sitting in a crammed room, dressed in what looked like a pair of dungarees, his dark curls trapped under a vintage flat cap, humbly learning a two-line scene, struggling with the word ‘bad’. None of it made any sense.
I took a step forward, as silently as possible.
“You can come closer, Aria. I won’t bite. At least not too hard.” He looked up from his script, a fleeting smile crossing his lips.
“What are you doing here?” I shuffled my feet, suddenly self-conscious over the 1930s dress with a giant bow hanging around my neck. My hair was pinned under the scarf and my lips were painted crimson. I wasn’t myself.
“Waiting for you.” He got up and met me at the doorway, where my vintage shoes had evidently been nailed to the floor.
I could have sworn the air vibrated, distorting my vision as he got closer. It didn’t help that he’d really been dressed as a 1930s farmhand in a beige undershirt and dirty dungarees. “Your clothes have no shine.” My mouth felt drier than sandpaper.
He laughed. “Is it working for you?”
I shook my head, as if to dispel the image. “It’s so weird. Like it’s you... but not you. I have so many questions.”
“Ask.”
“Why are you here?”
He looked at me for a long time, his expression wavering between amusement and sadness. “Do you have to ask?”
“Don’t tell me you threw away that role! After all we went through.”
After all I went through.
His eyes hardened. “It was mine to throw away.”
