Chapter 2 #2
Nico made Grammie and me wait in his trailer for an hour while he was in hair and makeup and running lines with the acting coach.
Then finally he came back and told me to hurry up and come with him to meet the cast before they all had to do a big scene together.
Most of the stars of That’s So Wizard were hanging out around a big snack table, but Shane Miller was nowhere to be found.
I got everyone to sign the cover and back of my magazine, saving the article pages for Shane.
I made Nico take a picture of me standing behind the empty director’s chair that had Shane Miller’s name embroidered on the fabric.
When I asked him where Shane was, he just shrugged and said he was “probably flirting with some girl somewhere or taking a dump; who knows.” And that was that.
I had to go with Grammie to her foot doctor appointment soon, so it didn’t look like I’d even get to meet the boy who Tiger Beat had confirmed should be my boyfriend.
Fighting back tears, I let my jerk of a brother lead me back to his trailer, when I heard someone say, “Hey, is this your sister?”
From the dark recesses of the sound stage, Shane Miller emerged in his character’s trademark blazer, white button-down shirt, loose tie, black jeans, and high tops.
He was even cuter in real life than on TV, and he was smiling and walking straight toward me.
I could no longer move. My hands began shaking. My right eye started twitching.
“Yeah, this is her,” Nico said. “This is Willa. Willa-Shane. Shane-Willa.” I felt my brother’s hands on my shoulders as he tried to move me forward, but I wouldn’t budge.
Shane slid the script that he was holding under his left arm and held out his right hand for me to shake. “Hey, Willa. It’s good to finally meet you,” he said. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
I didn’t say anything, I just thrust the magazine and pen into his chest.
“What is wrong with you?” Nico muttered.
“Tiger Beat!” Shane exclaimed. “Hey, you got everyone to sign it, That’s so cool.”
I grabbed the magazine back from him and opened it to the page with his picture on it.
“You want me to sign this?” he said, laughing. “They totally misquoted me in this article, by the way. I did not say that blue is my favorite color. I said I like the color of faded blue jeans. Guess they ran out of space.”
I tried to giggle at that, but it got caught in my very dry throat.
“It’s tough being a misunderstood star,” Nico said as he nudged my arm. “You gotta get going, Will.”
That’s when a guy with a headset came over and told my brother that the director needed to talk to him, so he got dragged off and left me alone with the cutest, most famous boy I had ever met.
“When do you need me on set?” Shane called out to the guy.
“Five minutes!” the guy with the headset yelled back.
There were probably at least seventy other people in that soundstage, but it really felt like just the two of us all of a sudden in this empty space between the snack table and the black curtains that hid the exits to where the trailers were parked on the lot outside.
Shane smiled down at me. I swear, he was so friendly, even his hair was smiling at me.
“You having fun in LA?”
“Yeah.” I had found my voice, now that my brother was gone. My hands were no longer shaking either, and my eye had stopped twitching. It was like I was meant to be alone with this guy. “It’s sunny. It smells like skunks, but people seem happy here.”
He looked amused. “Yeah. They do seem happy, don’t they? Are you happy in Michigan?”
“I guess so. But I won’t be there forever.”
“No? You coming out here to be an actor too?”
“Hah! No way. I’m going to live in Paris and make perfume.”
“Perfume in Paris, huh? You do smell nice.”
“Thank you. It’s sweet pea. The flower. P-e-a. Not pee like urine.” Phew. Good thing I cleared that up.
He grinned. “Got it. I’ve never met anyone who wanted to make perfume before. How do you do that, exactly?”
“Oh, well, I haven’t learned all the different ways yet. I have to study chemistry in college and stuff, but you can use essential oils too. It’s just mixing things together until you get the smell you want.”
“That makes sense. Where do you learn that stuff? Potions class at Hogwarts?”
“I wish. My parents won’t let me spend money on all the stuff I need yet. But I want to have my own company.”
“Good for you. I bet you will…” His brow was furrowed, like he was really thinking about this. “How did you—why did you decide to be a perfume maker?”
No one had ever asked me that before. “My grandpa smoked a pipe. The tobacco smoke smelled like cherry vanilla. Every night, after dinner. It’s the most delicious and comforting smell, and you’d smell it as soon as you walk into my grandparents’ living room.
And anyway. He died. He had a heart attack two years ago. It sucked.”
“Oh yeah. Nico told me about that. Sorry. Your gram’s really cool. But she seems sad sometimes.”
“I know. It still smells like my grandpa’s pipe in her living room.
It makes her happy-sad. She doesn’t always want to feel happy-sad, which is partly why she offered to come out here with Nico.
But that smell reminds her—and me—of Grandpa more than anything.
It’s instant. It’s like he’s there. That’s how I know how important smells are.
And I want to make them. I want to make important smells that make people feel things. ”
“That’s really interesting, Willa.”
“Thanks.”
“Well, they’re gonna call me to set soon.”
“Okay.”
“Hang on. I’m gonna sit down to write on this. It’s W-i-l-l-a, right?”
“Yes.” I loved how important it was for him to spell my name right.
He sat down cross-legged on the floor, placed the magazine on top of his script on his thigh, uncapped the marker, and began writing and doodling on the magazine.
I sat down right next to him, close enough that my knee touched his. The scent of a metallic Sharpie marker would always remind me of him. He smelled like soap and spearmint, some hair product that I didn’t recognize, and Tide detergent. Cute Guy smell.
The rest of the cast had only signed their names, but he was writing other words too, on both pages of the article.
“Yo! Superstar! They need you on set.” My brother jogged over.
“Be right there.” Shane put the cap back on the pen, closed the magazine, and handed them to me.
I was surprised by how serious his expression was.
He stood up and then held his hand out to help me up.
I took his hand, and he lifted me up, his index finger touching the inside of my wrist. Right on the pulse point.
In the time it took me to stand, I didn’t see our future life together, but I felt it.
It felt comforting and exciting and romantic and light and important, and there was a home and kids and… I swear I felt it all in that moment.
I didn’t know if he felt it too, and I didn’t care. That tiny touch of his finger fired up my pulse, and if I had been anywhere near the same height as him, I would have kissed him on the mouth. But I was a foot shorter than him, so I did the next best thing.
Or the worst. Depending on how you look at it.
Before he let go of my hand, I lifted his hand to my mouth and kissed the back of it.
I didn’t make a kissy sound or anything, I just kissed his hand like I was some actor in a Jane Austen movie.
I had never done anything like that before, but it just felt like the thing to do.
I wasn’t even embarrassed about it. I let go of his hand, looked up into his stunned face, shrugged my shoulders, and said, “Okay well, bye.” Because I knew I’d see him again.
We’d have our life together, eventually.
“Yeah,” he said, cocking his head to one side and staring at me quizzically. “Okay. Bye.”
He turned and jogged away, past my brother, swatted him on the arm with his script, and disappeared from my view as he was surrounded by makeup and costume people and other crew members.
My brother was now the one who couldn’t move.
Because he was doubled over laughing so hard.
He covered his face and shook his head. “That was the funniest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.
” He sighed and wiped a tear from the corner of his eye.
“I am never introducing you to my friends again.” He finally walked over and patted me on the back.
“But that was awesome. Let’s get Grams, and then I gotta do a big scene, and we will never speak of this again. ”
I didn’t care what he thought, or if we never spoke of it again.
I clutched the magazine to my heart and waited until I was alone in the foot doctor’s waiting room to read what Shane had written.
He had drawn a cartoony speech bubble above his photo, and the words inside it said, Hey Willa, you’re cool and you smell nice!
with his autograph below, near one of his legs.
He drew an arrow that pointed to the other leg and wrote, Faded blue jeans.
Fave color. On the other page, he wrote Nice to finally meet you!
Hope you always get the smell you want when you mix things together. Is that weird? You know what I mean ;-)
It was weird. And I did know what he meant. He meant that he knew he was meant to be my boyfriend too.
I may have re-lived that encounter one to five thousand times for a year—or five—afterwards. I wore nothing but faded jeans for the next few years. I only told a couple of my friends about meeting him, once I’d gotten home. It felt like every time I talked about it, it became less real.
So I’d kept it to myself, knowing that we were a match—the performer and the perfumer.
I knew that I would see Shane again.
But I didn’t.
Six years later, when I found out that Nico was going to be the best man at Shane’s wedding to his costar from that CW show, I burned the Tiger Beat magazine and gave away my V-card to the idiot who’d taken me to prom.
Then I was off to college, and I never spoke the name Shane Miller out loud again.
Still, part of me believed that his marriage to Margo Quincey couldn’t possibly last.
When I heard that he had become a father, I tried so hard to make all thoughts of him disappear.
I had met him one time. It was just an adolescent girl’s celebrity crush.
He was just being nice to me, the way he was nice to everyone.
But it’s like trying to remove the dried-down middle and base note scents of an oriental perfume from your skin once it has been absorbed at a pulse point.
Even when you can’t smell it anymore, others can.
I wore my heartache like an invisible veil.
When I heard that he had gotten divorced, well…I was in France. I was just starting to mix things and make them smell the way that I wanted them to. But the heat of my body still emits activated molecules of Shane Miller where he touched me, twelve years later.
It wasn’t love, but it was my imagination about what love could be that came alive when he took my hand.
It bloomed and reacted with the warmth of my body, and suddenly I felt like the girl that I wanted to be.
It’s chemistry. I’d tried to smash against the molecules of others, but they’d all been volatile top notes that faded and evaporated almost in an instant.
“Yo. Earth to space nerd.” My brother snaps his fingers in front of my face, bringing me back to the conversation.
I suddenly realize that I’ve been absentmindedly sniffing my wrist and the palm of my hand like a weirdo. “I just meant that I’d almost forgotten you guys were friends,” I say to Nico. “I haven’t thought about him in so long. But I’ll hang out with you guys, sure. Whatever.”