He winced in mock offense. “Um, ouch? I get that kissing me is hard work, but I don’t think it should make you sick.”
“Stop, you know what I mean.” His grin grew wider, and I smiled back, reveling in how easy this rapport felt with him. It wasn’t always like this—I’d been forced to fake it with plenty of deeply unpleasant, narcissistic actors—and I didn’t take his thoughtfulness for granted. “Anyway, I accept your pact.” I reached my hand out to shake and he gripped it in his large palm, anddamn, there was that shock of electricity again. His eyes flared, and I think he felt it too.
“I’m so glad it’s you,” I blurted without thinking, and his brows shot up. “That I’m doing this with, I mean,” I stammered, belatedly embarrassed by my candor.Why not just make a pass at him while you’re at it?
“I’m glad it’s you too,” he said sincerely, still clasping my hand. “You know when you left the room, Nate and I looked at each other and said, ‘Thank God’?”
A warm glow of pleasure swept over me. “Really?”
“He’d been looking for so long, I think he’d started to lose hope that the right Melody was even out there. He never said so, but I think he was questioning whether the movie would actually get made. But we both instantly knew you were the one.”
I squeezed his hand appreciatively before releasing it. “Thank you for telling me that.”
“What do you say we have fun these next few months, you and me?” There was a twinkle in his eyes as he held my gaze. “All you have to do is say yes.”
I laughed at his shameless plagiarism. It was Holden’s signature tagline, the romantic ultimatum he issued wheneverhe wanted Melody to be bold, to take a chance on him, to go against her parents’ wishes, to consider a life with him. In essence, it was the sentiment their entire relationship hinged upon—and the one she could never resist.
My answer came even easier than hers. “Yes.”
Later that night, when I looked at his inscription, he’d written a single line:Thanks for being my Melody.
With such anencouraging—and pseudo-flirtatious—interaction under our belts, it made what happened the first week of filming all the more perplexing.
It was standard practice for movies to be filmed out of order, andThe Lost Letterwas no exception, with everything from cast availability to location access to the weather report affecting the sequence in which scenes were shot. For our first week we were knocking out several scenes that took place at Melody’s homestead, a rural farm located about an hour outside of Seafolly, which required all the actors and crew members to be shuttled off-site every morning in a caravan of production vans.
In this particular set of scenes, Melody was teaching Holden, a well-to-do, white-collar city boy, all the chores and responsibilities of a working farm—how to saddle a horse, milk a cow, drive a tractor, and wrangle livestock—all while Jason’s character Tate, Melody’s childhood best friend and hired farmhand, looked on in jealous disapproval. The scene was meant to illustrate the wide chasm between their two worlds, as well as to showcase the lengths Holden was willing to go to pursue Melody despite his wealthy parents’ objections. It wasa lighthearted but meaningful segment that was rife with sexual tension. I had to sit on Ryder’s lap, tangle us in rope, squeal flirtatiously as he threatened to spray me with milk, and so on. I could picture the final montage perfectly, the exact moment when audiences would fall in love with Holden and Melody as they fell in love with each other against all odds. Swoon.
The thing most people didn’t realize about movie sets was just how much time was spent sitting around, waiting for various production elements to be set up: camera equipment, lighting adjustments, sound checks, animals being coaxed into place by their trainers, the list goes on. While we waited to get called to set, Ryder, Jason, and I were hanging out in chairs beneath one of the canopies clustered on the property like a tent city while makeup, hair, and wardrobe assistants milled around nearby, ensuring we were prepped and ready to shoot as soon as Nate gave the word. At the moment, Jason and I were screwing around while Ryder intently studied his script.
“I’m sorry, I just can’t do it,” I told Jason simply. He was obsessed with debating stage names.
“I still don’t see what’s wrong with J-Ham,” he insisted, throwing one of the antique farm tools up in the air and catching it. If the prop master saw him doing that, he’d be a dead man walking. “It’s catchy.”
“It’s ridiculous,” I corrected him. “It sounds like something you put on deli meat. I can’t let you spend your career being confused with a condiment.”
“It worked for J. Lo!”
I shrugged like,Sorry not sorry. “Hey, I’m only looking out for you. Someone named ‘J-Ham’ is not going to win an Oscar.”
“You got a better suggestion?”
I pretended to think about it. “Dimples Hamilton.”
He guffawed and swatted at me with his cowboy hat. “Watch the hair!” I shrieked, doing my best to shield the elaborate handiwork of no less thanthreehairstylists. If he damaged the ’do, there’d be hell to pay. I could feel Philippe’s team of assistants giving me the hairy eyeball from all the way over in craft services.
Ryder shot us an annoyed glare from his chair. “Can you two knock it off for like five minutes? Some of us are trying to prep for the scene.”
I had no idea what was going on with Ryder. He’d started off the week fine, a fun-loving, laid-back member of our irreverent trio, but as the week wore on, he became gradually more withdrawn, his conversations clipped, his temper on a hair trigger. I couldn’t figure out what caused the shift. I chalked it up to stress at first—we all reacted differently under pressure—but Nate had been nothing but complimentary about our performances. Maybe it was a Method acting thing, but that only made sense if Holden’s character was a surly jerk (he wasn’t). Something didn’t add up, but I didn’t really know him well enough to probe much deeper. All I knew was, the easygoing guy I’d shared seafood with was nowhere to be found.
“Uh-oh, Dad’s getting cranky,” Jason stage-whispered conspiratorially. I think he was as sick of Ryder’s temper tantrums as I was. Thank God Jason was a one-man comedy show, or I’d be tearing my hair out trying to navigate Ryder’s mood swings.
“Don’t blame me, blame Dimples McGee over here,” I told Ryder, jerking my thumb in Jason’s direction, sending the two of us into fresh fits of laughter. The joke wasn’t even all thatfunny, but it had been a long day, our vintage costumes were itchy and stifling, and we were both getting punchy.
Ryder huffed a breath and stood, stalking over to a deserted corner of a neighboring tent while Jason and I traded eye rolls.
“Cut! That wasperfect,” Nate said a bit later, rubbing his hands together as he came toward us from behind the camera. As a director, Nate was very animated, always talking with his hands, waving his arms around, or gesticulating wildly to get his point across, and his enthusiasm was contagious. “Scarlett, I love what you’re doing. That playful innocence is exactly what I’m looking for. I liked that thing you did with his arm at the end there, too.” I beamed at his head pat and started walking with him toward the monitors to watch the playback.
“Actually, could we try it again?” Ryder called out, and we both turned back to look at him. “I feel like Scarlett was playing it kind of exaggerated and over the top while I was going for understated. Just felt like the energy was a little off.”
