Scripted

five

five

A makeup person rushed to apply a second layer of gloss to my lips as the ten-second countdown commenced. Mason’s skin was hurriedly being wiped with a brush chalked full of bronzer, and lights were starting to blink everywhere. The makeup team dispersed from the stage, and we got the signal that we were live on air in another five seconds. Mason shot me a side-glance, and I stuck my tongue out at him. With a loud “Three! Two! One!” the camera was on, and we were back to by far one of our strangest interviews yet.

           The thirty year old with more energy than a hummingbird on crack turned back to us, and grinned widely, her bright red lip upturned at the edges. “Welcome back, everyone!” she said to the viewers who weren’t currently in the studio, but rather somewhere else watching by the means of electrical currents. “So, Mason, as we were discussing before, I hear that you and Natalie are doing pretty well. Care to elaborate?”

           I tried not to smirk, recalling the exact line that Mason was about to say. As the boy to my right picked up my hand in his, he replied with a rehearsed, “Yeah, Nat and I are dope. Last week we went out for Starbucks, and had the sickest time.” Just like we had practiced. So far in this interview, we were both being pretty conservative and trying desperately to follow the script to a T. Fred was beyond happy because we didn’t sound like complete idiots, and all of Mason’s diehard fans in the audience were also loving it because, well, he was Mason Grey and they would love him even if he committed murder.

           “Really, now?” the interviewer said, turning to me. “Natalie—actually, can I call you Nat? Is that okay?”

           “Nat’s fine,” I sighed, just wanting to finish this thing up. There were about twenty minutes left, but I was done now. The talk show wasn’t the problem, but rather the host of the talk show. She was just crazy and too eccentric and expressive and her eyebrows were weird and she was wearing neon colors and it was a show for teens but she was twice their age and I just didn’t like her. Also, she kept going off on random tangents about nothing and not asking us the questions we had prepared for. Mason didn’t like her either, so we were in the same boat. Twenty minutes. We could make it.

           “Okay, Nat, so a few days ago you told your fans on Twitter that Mason asked you to move in with him,” she said in a single breath, not bothering to look at the teleprompter that she was supposed to be following. “We’re all dying to know—have you accepted yet?”

           Though a proper answer wasn’t in our or any version of the script, that didn’t stop Mason from replying with a confident, “She has. Nat’s moving in with me.”

           “And when did we decide this?” I shot back defensively, the script I had memorized being thrown entirely out the window now.

           “Babe, chill!” Mason laughed. “It’s okay. I know you wanted to be the one to tell people.”

           “What are you talking about?” I laughed, knowing for a fact that we hadn’t settled on anything yet. I was still living in my current apartment, dreading the day that my roomie came back and decided to rob a bank and peg me as her accomplice.

           “Ooh, sorry if I brought up a sore subject!” the host apologized emptily. We all knew that she was just loving the drama, as were her producers and everyone watching the show. “Now, Mason, a lot of people have been wondering this lately, so let’s set the record straight: how’s your sex life?”

           If I had been drinking any liquid, then I would’ve done a spit take right there and then. This was definitely not in the script we had prepared. I was pretty sure that Fred was about to cry, and Rob was probably about to have a mental breakdown. Regardless, Mason still managed to reply with a casual, “You mean how’s our sex life?”