Aloha Lila || Milo Manheim

Chapter 6 - Lahaina Noon Amid Many Beautiful Faces

For those who have gotten into the story, thanks!! And a note that the writers own any dialogue that I use from the show.

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Wow, what a night. The guys—Alex, Matt and a few others of the cast and crew—went out to a local bar and were drinking until all hours. I highly doubted that the girls even went near a place that had alcohol, apart from the grocery store that Peyton said they would stop at to get snacks, since both she and Melissa were under twenty-one.

My head was splitting. It didn't take much for me to get drunk, maybe because I was barely old enough to do it, and I was still getting used to it. I never had the hard stuff like some of the other guys did, and neither did Matt, but we had something. And now, I was paying for it with a massive hangover headache. Thankfully, I didn't feel sick.

My phone started to ding, and, as I lay in bed staring at the ceiling around 6am, I took my phone off the nightstand and saw that I was receiving texts from the guys. Yep, they were suffering, too, but from the full hangover, mainly Alex since he had the harder stuff. Both guys felt like their head was splitting, and they felt sick, even to yacking everything up. I was so thankful that wasn't me at the moment. A couple of pills and I would be good to go. Oh, and some more sleep, but I wouldn't be able to get it now that I was awake. That was a thing with me—when I was awake, I was awake. No going back. It had been like that since, well, at least my mom said I was like that when I was really little. Nothing changed.

You guys going to the Lahaina Noon shooting today or staying back? I texted, and they both said that they would be there. They saw the previous one back in May, and since this was the last time it would happen until maybe next May, they wanted to go. They just had to take care of themselves first. They both had filming today, anyway, that they had to be at before and after the Lahaina Noon scene.

But not me. I had to be at the Sky Gate sculpture here in Honolulu, near the capital building, at about ten so we could prep for the scene, practice it, make sure people were out of the way of the shot, and so forth. I had four hours. Getting out of bed would be a good start.

"Ow, my head," I whined as I sat up and rubbed my face. I went into the bathroom and took the pain pills, drank them down, and went to the little kitchenette in the suite. I didn't have much in there, just protein bars, granola bars, cereal, instant frozen meals... I needed something more substantial if I wanted the energy to get going today and to help my head from not splitting in two. I showered, got dressed in a tan t-shirt, light-blue jeans shorts, my brown loafers and my glasses, brushed my teeth, then headed for a little place I saw near the main pool for this hotel.

It took me about ten minutes to get down there. It was a little restaurant that you could only order at and not go in, like the places at a mall food court. It smelled so good, like cooked meat. Like a dog, I followed it, and it was making my stomach rumble. Thankfully, I could feel my headache melt away.

Other people were around this restaurant, sitting at tables set up near the pool that was surrounded by palm trees and had a great view of the ocean, and some were even swimming in it since it was a bright, beautiful morning, probably around eighty degrees already, even at 7am. I ordered my food, and I went and sat at a little round table with a large cerulean blue umbrella and pulled out my phone. While other movies and shows gave out hard copy scripts, which we did, we could also get the digital version. I chose that since I literally always had my phone on me. Who didn't? I sat there and went over the lines for the Lahaina Noon scene.

"Wow. Okay, um... I thought I felt vulnerable in front of you because I was in a gown, but it turns out it's because you're gorgeous," I said as I read, and then I said it again, looking away from my phone and off at the pool at the dozen-or-so people at it. I looked back at the script and read over Peyton's line, then, "Oh, check this out. No shadow. It's Lahaina Noon. It's when the sun is directly above you, so it doesn't cast any shadows. Look. The Sky Gate sculpture lines up perfectly. Well, technically, things did cast a shadow, just straight down so it looked as if some things didn't have a shadow."