“That was foolish of you,” he says.
I give him my best what am I going to do with you? look. “I’ll figure out your middle name, you know,” I tell him.
“I have no doubt,” he says. “So, are you ready to get out of here?”
“Sure. What . . . exactly are we doing?”
“It’s a surprise, of course,” he says, a little twinkle in his eyes. I should have never told him that I hate surprises. But I don’t mind them so much when Briggs is behind them. And so far, they’ve been exactly what I needed.
“Okay, Briggsy, let’s get out of here.”
“You have a little bit of . . . um . . . chocolate on your face,” Briggs says, pointing to my mouth.
“Where?” I say, knowing full well there’s a big glob right by the corner of the left side of my lips. But I’m in a silly mood tonight as we sit by a gas firepit in his mom’s backyard, roasting marshmallows and making s’mores.
“It’s right here,” he says, pointing to the spot on his own mouth.
“Here?” I purposefully point to the other side.
“How can you not feel that? It’s practically half of a candy bar.”
I laugh before swiping the melted chocolate from my face with a napkin.
“So how is your first marshmallow roasting experience?” he asks before taking a bite of a graham cracker, marshmallow, and chocolate sandwich. The firelight reflects off his glasses and casts an orange hue onto his face.
“I like it,” I tell him. “Thanks for being a good teacher.”
Apparently, there’s an art to roasting a marshmallow, at least according to Briggs. You have to hold it just right, just above the flames, so that you get a nice golden color to it. The first time, I’d just gone for it, sticking the fluffy thing right into the fire and blackening the outside. It had a very bitter aftertaste—because of course I ate it. I wasn’t about to waste a marshmallow.
“Is this your first time having s’mores?”
“Of course not,” I say, my tone mocking. But then I think about it. “Actually, I . . . don’t know.”
He shakes his head. “How have you missed out on one of life’s greatest treasures?”
I hold my half-eaten s’more toward him. “I mean, this is good, but I don’t think it’s that good. I give this an eight point two out of ten.”
He feigns shock. “That’s sort of blasphemy, you know.”
“My apologies to the s’mores gods,” I say before cupping my hands with my mouth, angling my head toward the sky, and yelling, “I’m sorry if I offended anyone.”
Briggs laughs, and it makes me feel a little wobbly on the inside.
I pull my legs up, my feet now sharing the seat with my butt, my arms wrapping around my knees. It’s a stance that makes sense when I’m cold, to use my own body heat, but right now I’m not cold. Not with the warm, summer night weather and the low heat emanating from the gas fire. It’s more of a steadying pose because I’m feeling things for Briggs. Bigger things than I should be feeling. Bigger things than I want to be feeling. No, that’s not true. I don’t mind the feelings. It’s just not the best idea. I will inevitably get my heart broken—or worse, I’ll break his. Because I think my feelings are reciprocated. It’s in the way he held my hand on Tuesday.
Or right now, as I look over to find him staring at me.
I try some levity. “What are you looking at?”
“You,” he says, no apology in his voice. “You’re just . . . surprising.”
“How’s that?”
He looks away, his eyes on the fire now. “It’s that you’re not like I’d expect.”
“Seen too many movies with bratty, entitled actors?”
He nods, looking back toward me. “And real stories on social media.”
“I wouldn’t put too much stock into those. Fame is a weird thing. Most everybody wants a piece of it, and if they can hitch themselves up on your downfall, they’ll do it.”
There are so many TikToks now of people who’ve said I was rude to them at restaurants and stores, and it’s all a bunch of lies.
He crosses a leg over the other. “That’s the thing, though. The video—”
“Oh gosh,” I say dramatically, looking up toward the sky, cutting him off. The truth is, I’ve hardly thought about that stupid video over the past few days. And it’s not because I’ve been avoiding it—it simply hasn’t entered my mind.
“Hear me out,” he says. “That video of you is more like what people expect of stars, what we’re, I guess, taught to expect. But spending time with you, that’s not you at all.”
I shake my head. “That video was me, Briggs. One hundred percent. I wish I could say it was AI or a body double or something. But it was me having a moment, a real, human moment where I just . . . lost it. I haven’t done that in fifteen years, since I started working.”
Since I’ve been working nonstop. Which is why I’m now currently on an island, sitting with a man I’ve just recently met, eating roasted marshmallow-and-chocolate sandwiches and feeling contented for the first time in a long time. Maybe instead of working so hard, instead of taking every role that came my way to keep my career on an upward trend, I could have taken more time to do things like this. To just be.
“You’d never lost your temper until that moment?” Briggs asks, his brows peeking out from behind his glasses.
“No,” I say through a chuckle. “Of course not. But I’d gotten really good at holding it in, and then letting it out when I’m alone. I have a very nice soundproof closet at my place in LA that gets the brunt of it. And when I’m on set, which is a lot of the time, the bathroom in my trailer is usually a good place. Although I have to be more cautious there. People are always around, always listening.”
