“Just give me a couple of words.”
Dawn holds the script up in front of her, peering down at it through her glasses. “Listen here, Falgon—”
“Got it,” I say with a nod.
I’ve got to get my head in the game. I will not think about Briggs anymore. I must focus on the task at hand. I am Callis, not Presley. Callis.
“You ready?” Jason asks from behind the camera, and I give him a thumbs-up.
Brock yells action, and we roll again.
“Listen here, Falgon. We don’t need to know anything about the Syndarians. All we need to do is go in there and obliterate them. And if you don’t think I can lead this team, then you can get back on your lunastrider and go back to Arcturus.”
Landon gives me an Oscar-worthy scowl. “I don’t like your ways, Callis.”
“You don’t have to like them; you just have to let me lead.” I take a step forward and put a hand on Landon’s armored chest.
“I need you to trust me, Falgon,” I tell him. “You’re second in command, but the team looks to you before me. If you show them you trust me, then they will also trust me.”
“I want to trust you,” Landon says his line, his tone low, his chest moving up and down. For a second I see Briggs in the armor, looking at me through those black rectangle glasses, pushing them up his nose because he feels uncomfortable.
I miss him so much. Why haven’t I told him that? Why haven’t I called him or gotten on a plane and just gone to him? I’ve been so busy. But also, I’m an idiot—that’s why. A chicken. I need to tell him about Betty/Deborah and apologize for everything. I need to tell him that I think I’m in love with him.
My mind is conjuring up thoughts of Briggs so rapidly, each of them tumbling over the other, that I’m not ready when Landon leans in to do the kiss, his handsome face inches from mine, and I end up taking a step back from him, making him trip a little on his feet.
“Cut,” Brock yells through the bullhorn.
Okay, yes, I need to tell Briggs all those things, but right now I really need to concentrate on this film.
Dawn comes over, and I hold out a hand. “I’ve got it,” I tell her. It’s not even a line—it’s a freaking kiss.
“You ready, Presley?” Jason asks. “Let’s take it from the top, okay?”
I give him a nod and turn back to Landon. Brock yells action, and we go again.
In the end, I finally get fully into my part and we get the scene done in a couple more takes, including the kiss, which made me miss Briggs even more. At least the jumping-into-the-canoe part went better than expected. I also didn’t get eaten by an alligator, and thankfully, didn’t even see one.
I decide, after we finish the scene, that I’m calling Briggs when I get back to my hotel. But by the time we wrap and have dinner, and I’ve showered off my makeup and the sweat and gone over the call sheet for tomorrow, it’s too late, and I commit to calling him in the morning.
Maybe I’m too late anyway. Maybe he won’t want to hear what I have to say. It’s possible I’ve done too much damage—being so certain like I was, and then not reaching out to him in the aftermath—that we might not be able to come back from it.
I have to try, though. Don’t I? I just don’t know what to do, exactly. Send him flowers? That sounds like a stupid idea. If only I could see him in person, then he could see my eyes, see the sincerity in them. But I don’t have time off in the foreseeable future to make a trip to the island. After filming wraps here, we immediately head to the Badlands in South Dakota.
I go to bed feeling frustrated and lost. But when I wake up to a call from the assistant director telling me we’ve had to delay shooting for a day because of some unexpected rainy weather and I have the day off, I know what I’ll be doing.
My assistant, Shani, makes all the arrangements, and before I can really think it through fully, what I’m going to say, how I’m going to feel when I see him, I’m on a plane to Fort Myers. It’s a one-hour flight, and from there a car will take me to the ferry.
I’ll go to the bookstore and if he’s not there, I’ll knock on the door of the princess apartment. I’ll search the entire island until I find him. And then . . . who knows. But I have to try. Briggs might be mad and he may not want to see me. But I have to try, or I’ll regret it. If I don’t, I’ll always wonder what could have been.
Briggs
“Oh, you look so pretty, Mom,” Scout says when my mom walks into the bookstore from the back entrance.
“Thank you, Scout,” she says, doing a little spin in a summer dress with a red floral print.
“You do look great, Mom,” I say, standing next to the register.
“But ew,” Scout says from the other side of the counter. “You’re going on a date with Carl.” She scrunches up her face like she just drank straight lemon juice.
My mom rolls her eyes. “Nothing will come of it, but it’s kind of fun to be noticed.”
I refrain from reminding her that those were the same words she said to me when she went on her first date with Keith. But I don’t want to freak out Scout. Plus, I don’t think anything will actually come of her and Carl—I’ve seen them together, and Carl cannot hold his own with the likes of Marianne McMannus. Keith, on the other hand, was a great match for my mom, and even my eleven-year-old self could see that.
“Where’s he taking you?” I ask.
“The restaurant at the Belacourt Resort,” she says, holding up a pinkie finger like she’s fancy.
“Gross,” Scout says, not impressed.
“I expect you home at ten thirty,” I say, making a joke. But honestly, she really does need to be back by then. There are not a lot of lights on this island. What if she falls into a ditch?
Wow. I’m going to nail parenthood.
Not that I’m going to be a dad anytime soon. But parenthood makes me think of marriage, which makes me think of Presley. I don’t know why, but that’s where my brain goes. Maybe it’s because how I feel about her is how I hope I’ll feel someday about whomever I marry: Happy to see her, always wanting to be around her, thinking of her every waking moment, and dreaming of her when I go to sleep.
