29. Will
WILL
James was hands down the best fake boyfriend ever, and not just owing to his unparalleled leaning skills. Now that he was coming to set every day, our little boyfriend act had graduated from an occasional cocktail hour cabaret to a full-on Broadway run. It was awesome.
James was ridiculously sweet and supportive. Whenever I finished filming a scene, he’d pull me aside, press our foreheads together, and whisper unbearably saccharine things like “Holy shit, you’re incredible” and “You’re a better Vermonter than I am.”
Over the past couple of weeks, we’d gotten so used to playing our parts that it no longer felt awkward when he rested his chin on my shoulder or wrapped his arms around my waist. It was just another way to stand, the best way, in my opinion.
Plus, on our nightly drives home, we always debriefed that day’s boyfriend performance. “Did you like it when I smacked your ass?” he’d ask. “That was pretty cool, right, when I reached over and yanked that nose hair out? Did you see Derek’s face?”
I’d do my best not to melt like a crayon left in the sun, and instead of saying, “You can do whatever the fuck you want to me,” I’d respond the way someone might if they had an ounce of self-respect: “Maybe don’t smack so hard next time,” and “Don’t ever do that again.
Nose hairs are an important part of the immune system. ”
We even kept up the charade when no one was looking.
Once, during a night shoot, James lay down with his head in my lap, and I sat there for five excruciating minutes, debating whether to run my fingers through his hair.
When I finally got up the nerve, I tentatively brushed a single lock behind his ear with a single finger.
I half-expected his eyes to shoot open and pin me with a what-are-you-doing gaze, but instead, he leaned into my touch like a purring cat. “Mmm, that feels nice. Keep going.”
For ten glorious minutes, my fingers lived out their ultimate fantasy, sifting through his dirty blond waves.
The contentment was short-lived, though, replaced moments later by another dream—kissing him.
Maybe the next time he pressed our foreheads together, I would. After all, boyfriends kiss, right?
As much as I wanted to turn these fantasies into reality, promising myself each morning that today was the day, I always chickened out.
As Carmen, the head of the makeup team, dabbed the final flourish onto my costume—deer piss—I repeated the broken promise once more: This time, when he presses our foreheads together, I’m just going to go for it.
“You know I’m not actually in the movie, right?” I said to Carmen. “And contrary to popular belief, cameras don’t actually record odors, no matter how foul they might be.”
She shrugged. “Don’t you want to make your father happy?”
They were going to cut me out of the movie, so putting me in full camo and deer piss was way over the fucking top. But Dad insisted on seeing—and apparently smelling—Travis opposite him, not me, so to hell with common sense.
It wasn’t just the deer piss making me wish I’d stayed home today.
In a few minutes, I was supposed to climb a tree and sit on a chipmunk-sized seat twenty feet above the ground, holding a deadly weapon.
I didn’t even like standing on a chair to change a lightbulb.
Plus, I looked ridiculous in head-to-toe camouflage.
But James liked it when I did ridiculous country-boy things, like going muddin’ and artificially inseminating cows, and, for whatever reason, he was more excited about this scene than any other, so, despite my swamp ass, I was determined to act the shit out of it.
James was hands down my biggest fan. My only fan, really.
His eyes would light up the moment I stepped out in a new costume, and he’d stare at me the whole time we were filming, like I was in a one-person play.
As a kindergarten teacher, I had to fight for every second of my students’ attention—a fight I lost more often than I won—so to have James’s eyes on me at all times, like a spotlight, was beyond bizarre, though quite helpful.
I could tell just by the look in his eyes whether I’d hit the emotional core of a scene.
“I can’t get over how sexy you look right now,” he said. “You think they’ll let you wear your costume home tonight? We could do a little roleplay.” He waggled his eyebrows, and my stomach swooped.
“I look like the scuzz they pull out of clogged storm drains. And I smell even worse.”
He smiled, hands on his hips, his three-quarter-sleeve T-shirt and pornstache supplying all the inspiration I needed for tonight’s fantasy: Coach, I think I might need some extra batting practice.
“Show me your packing skills,” James said, nodding to the circular bulge in my pocket.
I rolled my eyes, but took out the Skoal can and thwacked it three times with my index finger the way we’d practiced. “Happy?”
“I can’t believe how good you are at that. It took me most of seventh grade to get a sound that loud.”
“I don’t know if you know this or not,” I said, “but I’m actually in this new hipster mariachi band, where, instead of castanets, I thwack Skoal cans. We’re really taking the world by storm.”
“Ooh, can I be your groupie?” He took the can and gave it a few more thwacks. “Or better yet, your manager? I can be pretty persuasive when I put my mind to it. Bet I can get you double the free drink coupons.”
“Okay, let’s reset and go from the top with Will,” Michelle said, her voice carrying through the sun-dappled forest.
Derek, who’d just scurried down the tree with ease, like a fucking lumberjack, headed our way in his equally ridiculous camo. “You’re up,” he said, already raising his arm for a high-five, his way of tagging me in. When he got three feet away, though, he froze. “What’s that smell?”
“It’s buck urine,” James said. Then, instead of calling Derek a pansy to his face, he wrapped his arm around my shoulder and kissed my cheek, which earned him a lecture from the makeup team.
“That was phenomenal, Derek,” Tony said, sneaking up behind us. He looked totally out of place in the forest in his gray suit and suede Oxfords. “I need you to sign this, and then we can go.” He pulled a pen and some papers from his briefcase and handed them to Derek.
“Ow, stop,” I said, shrugging out of James’s death grip. “I don’t need a deep-tissue massage right now.”
It was obvious James didn’t like Derek. At first, I assumed he was just getting into character as the jealous boyfriend. But one night, his jealousy followed us home.
“Why did Derek touch you like that?” he asked. “I know this is fake and all, but Derek doesn’t know that. What kind of asshole macks on another dude’s man right in front of him?”
Derek hadn’t “macked” on me. He’d merely touched my knee. “Trust me. Derek’s not flirting. He’s just a theater kid. They’re all like that. No physical boundaries.” I’d learned that lesson the hard way.
“How come he’s not like that with Ryan or your dad, then?”
“My dad hates Derek, and as for Ryan, for all I know they go home and fuck like rabbits every night.”
James flashed me a caught-in-the-act grin. “I thought you said Derek was straight.”
“He is. I’m just . . . whatever. It’s not important.”
Derek never stuck around to watch me film my takes and was gone before I started climbing into the tree stand.
“You should have a beer can,” James said as I hoisted myself up the ladder. “Real hunters would never spit their chew right on the ground. The deer would smell it.”
“Get William a can,” my father said from ten feet above. “James is right.”
My father was a perfectionist, and the moment he learned my fake boyfriend was born and raised in Vermont, he’d started treating everything James said like gospel.
According to James, no Vermonter in their right mind had a key rack.
They just left their keys in the ignition.
So, that was how we’d shot the driving scene.
The scene we were shooting that evening was important, pivotal even.
In it, Bruce and Travis are bow-hunting from neighboring trees.
Bruce sees a flash of white and thinks it’s a deer tail running away.
He draws his bow and aims just as Travis realizes it’s not a deer at all, but a child wearing white gloves.
Travis jumps to his feet and yells, “Dad! Dad, no!” startling his father as he shoots, causing him to miss the girl by mere inches.
It’s this near-tragedy that leads to the Alzheimer’s diagnosis.
“It’s kind of beautiful up here, isn’t it?” Dad said as I reached the narrow platform.
“Uh-huh,” I said, afraid to look down.
“Your ass looks incredible from down here,” James called from below. “Michelle, you’re gonna wanna get that on film.”
They’d hooked me to a harness for safety, but I didn’t trust it, and the first few takes were awful. Instead of jumping to my feet without any regard for my own well-being, I moved like a heavily pregnant woman.
“It’s just like jumping off the quarry,” James assured me from Michelle’s side. “You’re gonna be fine, I promise.”
Okay, I could do this. I wasn’t William Chapman, pathetic loser. I was Travis Young, a confident, strong hunter. Standing up quickly was no big deal. Letting my father murder a little girl? Now that was a big deal.
What if it were one of my students? Awa, with her tight braids and don’t-fuck-with-me grimace.
Armed with this new motivation, I thwacked the Skoal can to start the scene.
“Yer gonna scare the deer away,” my father said.
“Nah, they’ll just think it’s a woodpecker,” I replied in Travis’s voice. I took a pinch of the freshly packed dip and shoved it into my bottom lip. It was real dip, too, per Dad’s orders. Derek used the fake crap, which, as my head swam with a dizzying nicotine high, seemed wise.
“That shit’s gonna kill you.”
“Probably.”
After a beat of silence, “Did the check clear yet?”
“Yeah, Dad, we already talked about this. It cleared yesterday.”
“Right”—he nodded—“right. I just forgot.”
“Yeah, well, who’s scarin’ the fuckin’ deer away now?”
This time, when Dad rose to take the shot, I didn’t hesitate. I screamed so desperately that he really did flinch. “Dad! Dad, no!”
I leaped to my feet like I’d sat on a cactus, but it was too late. The arrow was already in the air, careening toward the little girl. I focused so hard on its trajectory, willing it to hit anything but Awa, that I stepped right off the platform.
Green and brown streaked past me as my stomach slingshotted into my throat. The harness yanked tight, and chewing tobacco spewed from my mouth as the air was punched from my lungs.
When I opened my eyes, I was suspended ten feet above the ground, the bow in pieces below me.
“Are you okay?” Michelle asked, whipping off her headset.
“Oh, fuck, sorry. Did I ruin the take?”
As the crew scrambled to get me down, Dad repeated the question. “Was that the one? Did we get it?”
“I think so.” Michelle hurried over to replay the shot, her face relaxing as she announced, “We got it.”
Everyone cheered, sick of shooting this god-awful scene, and I let out a huge sigh of relief, knowing I wouldn’t have to climb that fucking tree ever again.
James was there to catch me when they finally lowered me to the ground, and he didn’t seem to care that I was covered in paint and smelled like deer piss.
He just pressed our foreheads together, same as always.
“That was incredible,” he breathed, his sweaty brow melting against mine. “You’re incredible.”
Now was my chance. I should just do it. That’s what a real boyfriend would do, right? And if he got mad, I could just tell him it was for show. Then again, I probably tasted like chewing tobacco and blood. I’d definitely bitten my tongue.
“Thanks,” I said.
“I can’t believe you fell. What were you thinking? I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone as fearless as you.”
“You’re kidding, right?” My eyes traced the hem of his shirt, which barely covered the silver of his belt buckle. “I’m scared of my own shadow.”
“Yes, but you always get over it. You always go for it in the end.”
Not always, I thought. Not with you.