Emma: Sounds dangerous…
Reid: Nope, lol. Just fun.
Emma: K. Have fun. :)
We rent three cottages and six tubes, and buy as much beer as the coolers can carry. If we’re doing this, we’re doing it all the way. Our assigned bodyguards, Jeff and Ricky, are less unhappy than Bob was about our impromptu excursion. Even though they technically aren’t allowed to drink on the job, we assured them we didn’t consider beer consumption drinking, per se. Plus they’re both legal and can buy the beer.
“How do you even know about all this?” Tadd asks, while we meander through a convenience store, all wearing hats and sunglasses, grabbing water shoes, sunblock and mesh nets to hold the empty cans.
“I used to know somebody who lived in Austin. The locals do this for fun during the summer—I figured we might as well try it while we’re here, right?”
Brooke is the somebody. Once upon a time, she told me stories about her older sisters, who planned tubing trips with their friends every summer. “They drink beer all day and float down the river, flirting with boys, and then everyone meets up at a bonfire, where my sisters trade in their Baptist roots to become river whores and hook up with every cute guy they bump into.”
“Sounds fun,” I’d said, and she punched me in the arm.
“Ow!” We were watching a movie in my trailer, something so boring we’d long since lost interest in favor of making out. At fourteen and fifteen, nobody knew who we were yet, but we wanted the fame, we craved the industry recognition, and we were willing to work like hell to get there. The movie we were filming together then was ultimately a flop, but we weren’t the stars so it didn’t reflect on us.
She leaned over and kissed the spot she’d punched. “I don’t want you hooking up with a bunch of girls.” Leaning back, she regarded me with a slight pout, an expression that had, at the time, melted me every time she did it.
“I don’t want any other girls,” I said.
“I don’t want any other guys,” she answered, leaning closer.
“Good.” I kissed her, pulling her onto my lap, my hands wandering under her shirt as hers wandered under mine. Maybe that was the first time we went a step further than making out.
That conversation went like this: “Do you think—?”
She looked at me a long moment before nodding. “Okay.”
*** *** ***
Emma
We’re filming at the Bennet house again. Graham and I have the first scene. I don’t know when he returned to Austin, only that I haven’t heard from him in the two and a half days since he kissed me. Meanwhile, the photos of Reid and me at the concert have pretty much gone viral, and considering Graham’s silence, it seems clear enough how he feels about that.
The kitchen is packed, between craft services people setting up breakfast and snacks, crew members standing around eating, discussing camera angles and scene layouts, and the cast taking bites between bits of line rehearsals. More than once I start to leave the kitchen and go to the living area, where it’s less crowded and noisy, but something keeps me hiding in the throng of people, and I know exactly what that something is.
Waiting to see Graham yanks my emotions back and forth, as though I’m either facing a starting gate or a firing squad. I’m as jittery and nauseated as I would be after four cups of coffee. I can’t quite get a grip, giving me five seconds, from the moment I finally hear his voice in the other room, to pull it together.
Epic. Fail.
He comes around the corner, sides in hand, talking with Richter, wearing jeans and a rumpled button-down shirt, sleeves rolled and pushed above his elbows. Running a hand through his hair, he glances around the room, his eyes not stopping on anything or anyone until he reaches me. Expression unreadable, he nods once in my direction and turns back to Richter.
“Let’s get you into makeup,” Richter tells him. “Fifteen minutes?”
“Sure.” I don’t see him again until right before we’re on camera.
***
I don’t recognize Graham when he comes back. My concern that they wouldn’t be able to make him look goofy enough for Bill Collins was dead wrong. His hair is slicked back with gel and he’s wearing pleated khaki pants, a coral golf shirt—tucked in—and a pair of gold-framed glasses with spherical lenses. His walk and his mannerisms are timid, yet self-important. He’s perfect.
We’re filming the absurd proposal scene between Bill and Lizbeth. The assistant director lays out the scene and we listen without looking at each other. Graham hasn’t looked at me after that first glance, though he’ll be contractually obligated to in a few minutes. I would have felt so comfortable doing this scene a week ago, before he kissed me, before he disappeared and returned not speaking to me.
“Action,” Richter says.
INT. Bennet Kitchen – Day
LIZBETH is loading dishes into the dishwasher as BILL walks in from the dining room with a stack of plates.
BILL
Lizbeth, I have something to ask you.
LIZBETH
(taking dishes from him, rinsing them in the sink)
Yes?
BILL
As you know, I am an integral part of the Rosings firm, with a lucrative career in front of me.
LIZBETH
(rolling eyes to the side)
Yes, so you’ve said.
BILL
My boss, Ms. DeBourgh, believes that a man in my position is best suited to an advantageous career if he is settled down, domestically speaking.
LIZBETH frowns.
BILL
So, I’m asking you, Lizbeth Bennet, to marry me.
LIZBETH swivels to face him, dropping a plate into the sink where it clatters and breaks.