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Seven
Darla
Ihave a date with Jesse Hendry.TheJesse Hendry: famous heartthrob and man of a thousand abs. When I spin and walk away from him, our date arranged, I feel like the sea breeze could snatch me right up and toss me around beneath the white puffs of cloud.
We still have a full day’s work to go first.
And damn, it takes forever.
First, one of the sound booms breaks in the middle of a take. It ruins the footage, and makes the sound department grumpy as all hell. Next, the radios go on the fritz, making Franklin’s instructions extra crackly and confusing.
There’s a mid-morning rain shower that delays filming for an hour; then the sun comes back out and one of the actors gets mild heat exhaustion.
We run out of cookies at the snack table.
It’s a whole-ass day.
By the time we’re packing up the set in the early evening, everyone is crabby and short-tempered. The actors flee to their trailers or to the extras tent, leaving the crew to their manual labor, and there are a lot of sunburned faces and tired eyes all around.
Not me. I’m bouncy and bushy-tailed, too excited about tonight.
“Do I want to know why you’re beaming like you’re in a toothpaste commercial?”
Franklin drops the bulky gray backpack he brings to the set everyday into the sand by my feet. He grabs a trash bag, then starts stuffing it with used cups and abandoned bottles from the actors’ rest area.
He’s the director. He doesn’t need to lift a finger to help with the clean up if he doesn’t want to, but that’s not Franklin’s style.
Our dishwasher at home, now, that’s another story. But hey, nobody’s perfect.
“I have a date tonight.”
My uncle grimaces, his mustache shifting. “Ugh. No details, please.”
As if. The big baby. And he makes it sound like I talk his ear off with these things, but the truth is, I hardly ever date. I’ve never evenkissedsomeone before. Not an adult kiss. Nothing beyond awkward middle school pecks during the school dance.
I refuse to count Jesse’s scripted kiss of life. It’s too tragic, and besides: those damn thumbs.
“Do I know the guy? Or gal?” Franklin adds, hedging his bets.
Hmm. To tell or not to tell?
It’s no use. The gossip on a TV show set is worse than in a small town church.
“You do.” I watch my uncle out of the corner of my eye. Will he give me a hard time over this? “It’s Jesse.”
Franklin stills. He stares at the trash bag in his hands for what feels like an age. Then slowly, so slowly, he starts grabbing paper cups again, stuffing them into the crinkly recesses of his bag.
“You’re surprised.”
Franklin grunts, and I bury the pinch of hurt. There’s no point coddling myself: if Jesse and I ever date properly, lots of people will be surprised to see a guy like him pick a girl like me. And they’ll have plenty of loud, ugly opinions about it too.
“Well, he likes me.” So there.
My uncle’s mouth twists. He grabs an empty bottle of soda and shoves it in the bag. “That’s not the surprise, Darla. I just didn’t think… didn’t think Jesse would be your type.”
Um. Why not? What’s not to love?
His sweetness? His sly humor? Thosemuscles?
