11. SEVEN YEARS AGO
ELEVEN
SEVEN YEARS AGO
EARLY FALL, SENIOR YEAR
PAIGE
Boob to boob with Margaret Baylor first thing on a Saturday morning was a bit more than I was ready for.
Gram would probably be proud.
I shook my head, refocusing.
It would be a fun but exhausting day as we did a bunch of promotional shit for Rent, our musical theater ensemble class show, and the fun started with this photo shoot.
Margaret and I had just marked through our duet to get some still shots, and my character, Maureen, was currently pressed up against her girlfriend, Joanne—also known as, Margaret—my new boob buddy.
“Margaret, can you lift her up?” Mr. Harris asked.
Mr. Harris had recruited some film students—Linc included—to help run cameras while he directed the shoot.
A “psh” sound blew past Margaret’s lips as she glanced down at me with a silent, “Ready?”
I smiled, placing my hands on her shoulders and then went as far to squeal “Wee!” before hopping into her arms, hugging my legs around her waist. She laughed, as did a few others around us, while she easily held me up with her arms hooked around my lower back.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Martin said, loud enough that I could hear, and my eyes shot over to him.
“Fuck off, Kline,” I heard Linc jab before Mr. Harris cleared his throat.
To which Martin obnoxiously blew out a drawn-out whistle like a Pepe LePew wannabe.
“Mr. Kline,” Mr. Harris’s voice raised, but only slightly, commanding attention. “Your lack of professionalism will undoubtedly be your downfall. These two young ladies are doing their job, so if you can’t behave accordingly, you can do us all a favor and get the fuck off my set.”
I snorted a laugh, appreciating the matter-of-fact delivery—and the curse. Linc told me Mr. Harris was relaxed with it, but dropping an F bomb right off the bat won him some points with me.
Margaret laughed too, hiking me farther up, holding me in place around her waist.
I actually thought she was a dance student during our freshman orientation. She was easily just under six feet tall and obnoxiously gorgeous.
Little did I know she was a badass singer. A video Linc had taken of our duet had gotten over ten thousand views online—which wasn’t exactly viral, but still pretty cool.
Her character was a lawyer, so her costume was a dark gray pantsuit. But she weaseled the wardrobe director into scrapping the coat for the shoot, and letting her wear suspenders. So she was dressed in the gray slacks, black suspender straps, and a black tank top.
My costume was easy—I wore a plain white tank top and some black leather pants that I could feel digging into the underside of my ass cheeks as she held me up.
“Paige, can you touch your forehead to hers?” Mr. Harris said. “And if you can, kind of hold her cheek? Margaret, move one of your hands just a little higher up her back. Imagine this is the moment their relationship becomes something real.”
I took a deep breath, allowing myself a second to sink into the moment.
He added, “They’ve probably been feeling it for a while. But neither one was sure until this moment, when the veil drops.”
I wasn’t sure if I just related to that point-of-view, or if I really liked Mr. Harris’s directing style. He was very specific with the blocking. And it didn’t hurt that he seemed to have no tolerance for bullshit—even from smarmy rich kids.
But intimate scenes were the hardest for me. On top of trying to truly embody someone else, forcing affection had this way of bringing me back into myself. It was almost as if the intimacy reminded me that I was playing a part instead of letting myself fully emulate a human experience.
Focusing back, I gently tilted my forehead down against Margaret’s, taking a breath. After another second, I pulled my gaze up to meet her pretty brown eyes, her flawless dark skin. I wondered if Maureen noticed Joanne’s eyes first, or her beautiful complexion—maybe her voice—but then my mind started to wander . . .
I found my hands holding her nape, moving to cradle the side of her face, imagining . . . what the light stubble of his jaw would feel like against the pad of my thumb —his arms wrapped around me like this.
Wanting, yearning.
His eyes. Swirls of green and brown with hints of gold when the light caught them just right. Like I was running through a field of pine trees, filled with fireflies.
Running, running, running.
“Cut. Excellent,” Mr. Harris’s voice startled me, and my shoulders jumped as he muttered, “Great work, girls. We can move on.” Then he walked over to some of the other cast members who were getting ready to shoot as Margaret put me down.
I was trying to recover from the whiplash of everything that just ran through my mind as I faintly registered Margaret giggling, “That was fun, lover,” then gave me a playful swat on the bottom before flitting back toward the dressing rooms down the hall.
I released a breath with a small laugh. But as soon as my eyes pulled back from where she’d just left, I was met with the exact eyes I was just imagining.
Linc was standing on the other side of the room, watching me. My mouth felt dry as it nervously ticked up at the corner while something I couldn’t place filled his expression.
In our first month back at school, we’d both been so busy that we weren’t getting to see as much of each other, which seemed to be giving room for the ever-growing awkwardness to flourish.
Linc placed the camera he was holding on a tripod, locking it in place before he walked over to me with a casual but purposeful stride.
When he was right in front of me he looked kind of . . . tense— but not angry.
“Nice pants,” he finally said with a smirk.
My legs crossed from the full-blown tingle that tightened in the deepest part of my stomach, and I coughed, mostly to release some tension but then tried to cover it up with nervous laughter.
Good fucking God. Paige Michaels, get your shit together!
I quickly said, “At least they didn’t have to sew me into them.”
What?!
My eyes widened as his eyebrows pinched, but a glint of amusement sparkled in the corner of his gaze.
“In Grease—” I quickly added. “They sewed Olivia Newton John into her leather pants.”
The charge held his eyes for a moment more before he shrugged. “Sounds like a costly bathroom break.”
It took me just a second to register what he meant, and then I barked a laugh, grateful that he broke the weird tension, and we both lost ourselves to the laughter.
Linc’s gaze snagged on something behind me, and my eyes followed his line of sight, seeing Martin looking over in our direction—in a particularly southern region on my backside.
Fucking creep.
Linc’s hazel eyes seethed back at him, silently daring him to say or do anything.
But Martin would be an even dumber asshole than I thought to say something after Mr. Harris already put him in his place. That, and if Linc’s eyes could kill, Martin would already be six feet under.
“Hey,” I piped up, and Linc’s eyes came back to me. “With Daddy Ellis out of town we definitely don’t have the financial backing for a brawl. Just ignore him.”
Ellis had left us for a few weeks to go to Copenhagen with his dad, and his absence was already digging an unbearable void into both of us.
I moved out of the way as a couple other cast members passed behind me, putting me only an inch from Linc’s chest, and I breathed in deep.
Silvers, sea salt. Woods.
He was the only person I’d ever met that somehow smelled like pine and ocean—just a hint of his Silver cigarettes.
I’d never admit it, but the smell ran like a tide through my limbs, crashing and curling my toes.
“You okay?” he said, and it was only then that I realized my eyes were closed.
They fluttered back open, and I saw my best friend’s amused curiosity staring back at me in the way of playful eyes and an assuming grin.
Caught.
His smugness immediately lit my fuse, my lips pursing. With a lift of my eyebrows, I shrugged. “Thought I smelled something weird.”
Pitiful. Not even a good response by sleepy standards.
Linc’s eyebrow cocked as his teeth ran along his bottom lip. “Weird, huh?”
I swallowed, dipping my chin indignantly.
He stepped into me, eliminating the space between us as he dropped his lips just over my ear, “Does weird turn you on, Pip?” he said quietly, a gravelly whisper that was tickling that same deep place in my stomach.
Holy shit. Did he really just say that?
My eyes widened and pulled up to look at him, meeting his heated stare.
“Hey,” Mr. Harris suddenly said from behind us and my shoulders jumped. “Can I get you on camera two, Linc?”
“Pine beaches,” I said, abruptly. Awkwardly.
What the fucking fuck?!
Linc’s eyes scrunched in my direction, as did Mr. Harris.
“A soap—a smell—that smells . . . good.” Oh my God, my brain is actually short-circuiting.
I panicked. I was worried that Mr. Harris heard us talking, and I said the first thing that came to mind.
Linc laughed, rolling into a, “ What? ”
I growled, overwhelmed, and the confusion was fogging my brain. “Just get some soap!” I practically shrieked, storming off back toward the dressing rooms.
“I missed something . . .” I heard Mr. Harris say as I rounded the corner and then proceeded to smack my forehead for ten minutes straight.
LINC
My still untitled film project—the one my friends and I had spent nearly our whole summer shooting—was going to be the death of me.
I never thought my ending would come from trying to make a ten-minute short, based on a reimagining of The Buried Moon.
It’s English folklore, but in our version it was a noir love story. Paige was playing the Moon, a beauty in the sky that the village worshiped, while Ellis played the lonely Fisherman, who is pulled to the same hill every night upon his arrival in the village by Moon’s song.
Moon becomes curious about the handsome man on the hill—curious enough to make a journey down from the sky.
She covers her light with a cloak to blend in and falls in love with the Fisherman, and he loves her in return.
However, without the moon’s light, the world becomes impossibly dark, unbalanced, and creatures that are otherwise kept away start to roam free.
They kidnap Moon, torture her, drag her through the woods, back to their dwelling.
The Fisherman saves her, but she must return to the sky to restore balance.
The Fisherman spends the rest of his days on the hill, visiting Moon at night until he’s an old man.
When he dies, he becomes Sea, and he and Moon are reunited, forever bonded through nature.
But right now, the Moon looked like a high-voltage light bulb. Heightening the exposure of Paige’s dress wasn’t having the desired effect. I groaned as I tapped the button to remove it.
“Shit,” I muttered.
Leaning back in the chair, I whined again, rubbing my face at the computer screen in one of the smaller AV rooms.
After the Rent shoot wrapped, I asked Mr. Harris if I could try to get an hour of editing in, but this looked like shit.
Hunching my shoulders, I leaned in and clicked the next frame just as I heard, “Ah, mad scientist posture, I know it well,” Mr. Harris’s voice came from behind me.
I released a raspy chuckle. “It’s the lighting. It was a new moon. And I wanted it that way—but it’s all too dark. I never add enough—I just want it to look natural.”
Mr. Harris’s mouth ticked up at the corner as he walked over and peered down at the screen. After a moment, he made a tick sound, then said, “Damn, man. It’s a really good shot, though, the angle, the breeze, the close up—what made you do a tight shot instead of the full landscape?”
I cleared my throat, nervously. The unofficial answer was, I was obsessed with the girl who was playing the Moon, and my camera lens couldn’t help but try to capture every bit of her, but my less-weird answer was, “I prefer tight shots. And in this case, I like it because they’re about to be separated forever—physically. It felt like that should be the audience’s experience too,” I said through an awkward shrug.
But his mouth pulled up. “Very cool, man. I love it.”
The words lifted in my chest. Mr. Harris had been the one to help get me into this festival, and I really didn’t want him to regret it. Not to mention, I loved the stuff I’d seen him shoot. His opinion meant a lot to me.
“There’s gotta be a way to make it work. You already pulled up the exposure of the dress?” he asked.
I nodded. “It drowns out her face—and the glow isn’t soft.”
He makes another noise—a few clicks with his tongue on the roof of his mouth then sighs. “Can you play the scene?”
“I only just removed the external sounds, I haven’t added anything—”
“That’s okay. Raw footage is best, just play it.”
I suddenly felt nervous. It wasn’t anywhere near ready for someone to see. But I took a deep breath and scrolled the footage back.
It was a quick scene, luckily. The Moon and the Fisherman’s farewell before she returns back to the sky. But I scrolled back a little further than I meant to, landing at the end of the woods scene I’d edited last weekend.
“Just start there,” Mr. Harris said, and I swallowed hard.
The woods scene looked the best so far, but I still hadn’t added any sound. I take a breath and click play.
On the screen . . .
A close-up of a slim shoulder, beautifully flawless skin with gritty swipes of dirt as the camera slowly pulls up to her face. Her big blue eyes staring off just past the lens. Looking for him.
The beautiful Moon is covered in filth—creatures and other evil beings have covered her light with a heavy blanket of leaves and muck, dragging her away from the hill where she is to meet her beloved.
Her eyes fill slowly, and she blinks, releasing a single tear. It falls over the bridge of her nose, and she starts to sing softly, brokenly.
I’ll be, I’ll be
Waiting there for you
That’s what you don’t see
My love, I’m waiting for you
I’ll be, I’ll be
Darkness shadows the screen and then jaggedly cuts to the raw footage of Paige and Ellis on the hill.
The Moon stands, darkened, but safe in the arms of the man she’s fallen in love with, the wind blows softly around them as the Fisherman holds her cheek.
Her big blue eyes are wide and full of longing as he leans down to brush his nose with hers. “Life without the Moon is too dark, my love.”
Only a beat passes before the Fisherman kisses his beautiful Moon. The wind sails beneath their undying love.
“And that’s where I’ll fade her out. I’ve been messing with an effect, but it’s . . . extreme. I’ll have to play with it for a while to make it look like she’s not being sucked away in a vacuum.”
Mr. Harris snorted a laugh, with a shake of his head. “This is . . . this is some great stuff, Linc. The attention to detail in the shots alone are impressive.”
My posture straightened at the praise. It was the boost I needed, honestly. Between trying to get this film edited, school starting back up—my growing attraction to my best friend, and my inability to make a move—I was feeling pretty overwhelmed at the moment.
“Tell ya what,” he said. “Put it on a flash drive for me. I’ll take a look at it this weekend and see if I can mess with it. If not, maybe a reshoot with some umbrella lights. But let me take a look first.”
My eyes widened. Don’t get me wrong, I’d be lucky to have his help but, it felt like a big favor. “Are you sure? I can just try to reshoot it when Ellis gets back.”
He shakes his head. “Nah, let’s at least see. I know you’re busy—I’m happy to take a look.”
My teeth tug my bottom lip. I’m not sure why I latch onto his acknowledgment of my busy schedule, but I do.
Most of the kids at Providence didn’t have part-time jobs, or little sisters to watch at home, household responsibilities—they had help for those things.
My attention blinked back to the present as Mr. Harris handed me a flash drive.
Right.
I plugged it into the USB and synced it up to load as he leaned against the desk. “The camera loves them,” he said, his eyes flicking to the screen, still locked on a dark image of Paige and Ellis, staring into each other’s eyes.
“She mostly does theater, right?” he asked, looking toward Paige.
Any excuse I had to look at her, I did, then I nodded. “She’s amazing on stage. But I wish she’d do more with film. She’s so natural.”
Her windswept blond hair, her parted, heart-shaped lips—the fucking gorgeous yearn to her big blue eyes. I imagined her looking at me like that so many times.
Mr. Harris gave a small tilt of his lips. “Some folks—older than me, of course—would say you’ve found your muse.”
I snorted a laugh. Darlene had said it only a thousand times, and I would never argue it. It would be stupid when the evidence was literally caught on film—not just in the Moon movie but in everything I shot.
I suddenly found myself wondering, though, how old Mr. Harris was. His light brown hair was intact with no visible recession, a few fine lines around his brown eyes indicated some age, but not much. He looked younger than most of the faculty. And we liked a lot of the same movies, as I’d discovered through class—so maybe low-to-mid thirties?
It felt weird to ask, but the thought was interrupted when an alert noise from the screen pulled my attention to a prompt for the upload, and I clicked through it to safely eject the drive, then handed it back to Mr. Harris.
I stood, saying, “Thanks, again. I really appreciate it.”
He pocketed the drive with an easy smile. “No problem.”
“Liiinc,” Maisie whined next to me. “One more! One more!” She tackled me to the side of the couch, and I tickled her off of me. She giggled and squealed, and when she was a tight ball of laughter, I swiped the remote.
Another whine. “It’s Saturdaaay.” She widened her big brown eyes—evil little thing that she was. She was cute, and she knew it.
But a schedule was important. I had to be responsible. “Sorry, Loafie. An hour later on weekends. Dems da rules.”
She pouted more, crossing her arms. “You’re just making me go to bed ’cause Paigey is coming over and you guys wanna roll around and kiss.”
Whoa. “What?!”
She shrugged. “That’s what you do when you like someone, Brother. You roll around and kiss them.”
I had no idea how to respond. Paige wasn’t coming over, she had a shift at Queenie’s, but my mind was caught with— How does the little girl I rocked to sleep know what kissing is? Rolling around . . .
My eyebrows flinched and the pads of my fingers rubbed against my forehead. This felt more like a parenting moment—something I’d unfortunately had to do a few times in the small loaf’s life. But this one side-swiped me.
“Look, Mase. That’s part of what happens when you like someone. But there’s lots of other stuff before that. Lots. So no rushing into the kissing and . . . rolling thing. Got it? Not till you’re eighteen.”
She lifted her chin, squinting her eyes —a little lawyer in the making we’re pretty sure— and said, “Ahh, so that’s why you’re waiting with Paigey? ’Cause you guys are seven teen?”
I was suddenly wondering if she was working an angle. It wouldn’t surprise me if Darlene put her up to something.
But at this rate, she also wasn’t wrong—though I certainly wasn’t waiting for the golden age of eighteen to provide any sort of bravery in this area.
I was waiting on me to stop being such a pansy and just do it.
“Women like a man to take charge.”
I shook my head, instantly annoyed. My dad’s voice and the shitty tidbits of “advice” he’d managed to toss out before I was Maisie’s age didn’t make it into my head often anymore, but it still pissed me off when it did. What the fuck did he know?
I truly didn’t give a fuck that he was gone. He was a piece of shit, and we were better off without him. But every once in a while—with shit like this—I wish he didn’t suck so much.
Maisie cleared her throat, reminding me that she’d asked me a question. And I told her the easiest thing I could—the thing that would reinforce the important part of this conversation. “Sure. We’re waiting till we’re eighteen.”
Though, maybe the lie would help keep me accountable. With Paige’s birthday only a month away, and mine the month after, we’d both be eighteen soon enough.
“I think you should kiss her sooner. Make it a surprise.”
I smiled. “Ya think so?”
She nodded. After another few seconds passed, her smile stretched nervously, glancing back at the TV, then back to me.
I rolled my eyes. “Go brush your teeth, and you can lie out here and watch half of another episode.”
She squealed, hugging me tightly, then ran off toward the bathroom, and I laughed.