The Other Side of Unrequited Love [JustWriteIt]

Chapter 10- The Many Joys of Acting

"Alright, gang, today we're filming the scene everyone's been waiting for," Tim announced. "The kiss scene!" 

The cast cheered and Myra's stomach twisted. She didn't want to kiss Gabriel. He was like her brother. It would be too weird.

Not to mention, she had never kissed anyone before. So this would be interesting.

Gabriel caught her eye from across the room and made a silly face. She giggled. At least he wasn't going to make it weird.

They walked over to the set. The scene was happening on the balcony on Lily's house (even though the actual set was just the balcony). Myra climbed up the stairs to enter the balcony from her "room". She was alone up there. It was kind of surreal to see the grass end only a few yards away.

"Okay, listen up guys," Tim said through his megaphone. "Here's what's gonna happen. Camera on Lily, sound cue of the cell phone ringing. Myra, take it out, look at it, see that it's Daniel calling, and smile. Pick up. Then we play the track of Daniel talking we recorded earlier. Myra, there's an inset in the phone so you can listen to the lines and react to them like you would in real time. It's all ready to be played, just press the big red play sign in the middle. The camera won't be able to tell what you're pressing. We'll edit the recording into the film later. Don, can you hand her her phone?"

A props assistant quickly climbed the stairs and handed her the phone. She thanked him. True to his word, Tim already had someone set up the recording.

"Okay, so have the conversation. At some point, turn around so you're facing the house. Then Daniel will come up behind you, yada yada, do the scene, kiss, and cut. Got it?"

Myra raised her eyebrows. Tim had a tendency to under-explain scenes and let the actor's raw intuition lead the way—it was what he was known for—but this was bad, even for him.

"Gotcha!" Gabriel said from down below.

"Okay!" Myra shouted, waving from the balcony. She struck a pose leaning against her house staring at the stars.

"Okay, lights...camera...action!"

Myra gazed dreamily at the "stars". It was almost scarily easy to pretend she was actually outside and not on a set. The sound cue for her cell phone rang. She jumped a bit and fished it out of her back pocket. She smiled at the screen. She pressed the play button, tossed her hair back, and held the phone up to her ear.

"Hey, beautiful," said Gabriel's recorded voice. 

She blushed and looked down, walking forward a bit. "Hey, yourself."

"Aw, I don't get a compliment?"

"You haven't earned one," she said jokingly.

"Can't argue with that. Hey, you see the sky right now?"

Her grin widened. "Yeah. I've been outside for the past hour, just looking. It's beautiful." She looked up again at the bare studio ceiling which would later be CGI-ed into a beautiful night sky.

She turned towards the house. "Remind me why you're calling me again?"

"What? I can't call a beautiful girl when I want to?"

She put a hand to her mouth and took a moment before responding. "Daniel, seriously, why are you calling? You never call me, except that one time to threaten my team."

"Oh yeah...that happened. Uh, sorry about that. Well, I just thought it'd be nice to talk to you. No reason."

Myra smiled. "Well...okay then. What do you want to talk about?"