“Logan,” she says. “I just wanted you to know...this is the best fake date I’ve ever been on.”
The sun is setting behind her, painting her in oranges and lavenders, and I can’t help the words I say next, any more than I can help my aching erection or still-hot jealousy. “Me too, but...I guess I just also wish this were a real date.”
Maybe it’s the faint bitterness in my voice or the obvious lust, but her eyes widen and as they do, I realize what a giant fucking mistake I’ve just made. She thinks she’s here as a peer, a colleague, a friend maybe, but I’ve just made it clear that I have feelings for her, and that’s so unprofessional, not to mention dick-ish, and fuck fuck fuck.
“Logan?” she asks.
I have three options. I can run away—pretend I have to piss or something—or I can ignore her and mess with the camera some more. Or I can face her and apologize. And as much as I itch to run away, I turn to face her. “I’m sorry,” I manage. “That wasn’t okay for me to say, and I shouldn’t have said it, and we should just forget it. Can we just forget it?”
Her mouth opens and closes, and she looks away, and I feel even worse about myself, and more unprofessional bullshit pours out from my mouth. “You remember our scene three years ago?”
Her expression shifts, a flash of exposed hope immediately schooled into something closed-off and cautious. She gives me a single nod that, yes, she remembers.
I know what I want to say. I think about it all the time—I think about you all the time. I’ve had a crush on you for three years, and now in the span of two hours, I’ve decided that I’m falling for you.
But my sense of self-preservation finally reappears, and I think quickly, equivocating around the truth. “I’ve wanted to do another scene with you ever since then.” That’s the truth, at least, if only part of it. “You are so fucking sexy, Devi, and that’s why it had to be you for this project. I’ve been wanting to film with you again for three fucking years.”
If I was hoping this explanation would distract her away from the I wish this were a real date, I was wrong. It doesn’t satisfy her questions, I can see it in her eyes, in the way she gives me another nod as she presses her lips together.
She gives me a thin smile as she turns back to the movie. “I’m happy to be filming with you, too,” she says, facing the screen and not looking at me. There’s a solid six inches of empty blanket between us and she hugs her knees to her chest, as closed off as a person can possibly be to another.
She looks so young again, young and vulnerable. It only makes me more miserable.
“Good,” I say faintly, pointlessly, and try to turn my attention back to the movie too. Except there’s this new distance between us, this new strangeness, and I can’t tell if she’s angry with me for so obviously being dishonest with her or angry with me for being so unprofessional. For all I know, despite her sweet flirtatiousness, she may look at this as just another job and I’ve just made her extremely uncomfortable by confessing my feelings. I’m like the 1950s boss ogling his secretary.
Shit.
I turn the camera on and occupy myself with filming for the rest of the evening. And even though she’s obviously upset and distant, she turns it on for the camera, smiling and bantering in all the right places. I film her jumping at the movie’s scary parts, toasting champagne with me, lying on her back while I rub her bare feet with one hand. Night of the Living Dead ends and Shaun of the Dead starts, and I get several great shots of her laughing, of her watching the movie with her head in my lap.
But it’s all with the camera on, all for the project.
When I plotted out this project, I planned for tonight to end with our first kiss, but I can’t imagine it will happen now. I don’t even want it to happen when there’s this weird tension between us...it will have to be later. Another day, when she’s forgotten how I creepily came on to her when we were supposed to be working.
Around midnight, the movie ends and huge floodlights come on, illuminating every blade of grass and tree trunk in sharp, harsh relief. Together, Devi and I pack up our things and I carry them back to the Shelby, and I make sure I open the door for her when we get to the car.
The drive back to El Segundo is quiet. Devi finds some Halsey on my phone and plays it through the car stereo. The freeway is wide and easy, white light pooling on the concrete, the sky a gentle purple above us. We drive through the city and down to her neighborhood, which is still fairly awake at this time of night.
We don’t talk.
I back into her driveway, putting the car in park, and the ensuing silence has the kind of weight that can collapse bridges.
“I, um.” My voice is loud in the quiet car. “I need to film us saying goodbye.”