The Road to Her (9 page)

One of the mugs slipped from my hand as I was lifting it and fell with a clatter onto the sideboard.

“So you’d never date Robbie because you work with him?” I asked, my face burning as I hastily picked up the fallen mug.

“Total nail in the coffin for any actor, that,” Elise said matter-of-factly. “I learnt that out in LA.” She pulled herself up and sat on my breakfast bar. “I mean, for a start, the press would have a blast, wouldn’t they? Actors confusing their art with real life? C’mon!”

“And that would bother you?” I asked. “The press?”

“Big time,” she said. “Wouldn’t it you?”

“No,” I said truthfully. “It wouldn’t.” I thought for a moment. “Maybe when I was younger, but not now.”

As I filled our mugs with the freshly made coffee, I thought about what she’d said. Was I really okay about all the supposition about us? I’d answered her question far too readily, but underneath it all, did I mind total strangers discussing my sexuality? An image of Grace suddenly entered my head. I could see her perfectly as if it had only been yesterday since I’d last seen her, rather than the two long years since she’d walked out of my life.

“The questions of whether we’re getting it on in real life…” I suddenly said, sipping at my coffee.

“What about them?” Elise watched me over her mug, her face expressionless.

When I saw the look on her face I immediately thought that I’d annoyed her by mentioning it, so I replied quickly to try to explain myself.

“Well, they’re funny,” I mumbled. “That’s what I meant.”

“Mm.”

Elise’s blunt reply and her earlier comments about never dating co-stars suggested that she didn’t think it at all funny, making me wonder if she was lying to me when she said she was okay about it. Maybe she really was uncomfortable with all the speculation after all. I mean, some of the comments had been very forthright, saying that Elise and I must be getting it on because of the suggestive stills released by the publicity people at
PR
. In a lot of fans’ eyes, that had to make us a couple in real life, too.

I smiled to myself, thinking that if only the fans that had written those comments knew how much Elise had annoyed me in those first few days, they’d never think anything of the sort. But now? I looked at her, sitting on my breakfast bar, and my smile instinctively widened.

“You look happy.” Elise’s voice roused me from my thoughts.

“I was just thinking how much I enjoy working with you,” I replied, shrugging sheepishly.

Elise stared down into her coffee. “We get on okay, don’t we?” she said, looking slowly up at me. “Last night was a blast.”

“We were wasted last night!” I said, putting my coffee cup down and folding my arms across my chest.

“Indeed,” Elise said slowly. She carried on looking at me, almost as if she wanted to say something else, but instead she tore her eyes away and glanced at the clock on my kitchen wall, then hopped down from the breakfast bar.

“I better go,” she said with a sigh, walking back to the sofa to collect her bag.

“You don’t want to read some more of that magazine article with me?” I asked, following her and pointing down to the magazine, still on my coffee table.

“No,” she replied. “I’ve read it. You keep it.” She walked to the door and paused before turning round and looking me straight in the eye for a few seconds. She opened her mouth as if she was about to say something else, just like she had in the kitchen earlier, then closed it again. “See you, then,” she said, opening the door and closing it tight behind her, leaving me bewildered and hurt at her rush to get away from me. After all, it had been her that had wanted to come and see me in the first place, hadn’t it?

Chapter Eight

Around a week after our night out at Bobby’s, Jasmine and Casey’s confession scenes finally aired. The TV channel we went out on had given
PR
an hour’s special that evening, with them both featuring extensively throughout the programme, and I was stoked that we’d been given so much airtime and publicity, both for me and Elise—and for Jasmine and Casey.

Once these intimate and heartfelt scenes had gone out, and it was clear to the viewers that Jasmine and Casey were definitely going to get together as a couple, interest in both the story and in me and Elise as actresses absolutely rocketed. I figured they’d rocket even more when the next ones—Jasmine and Casey’s first kiss—finally went out.

Ah, their first kiss.

Filming on
PR
was always out of sequence, and I’d known for days, of course, that Jasey’s first kiss was ready to be filmed the morning after the confession scenes had aired, and now I was absolutely bricking it.

We’d received the scripts for The Kiss a few days before, and I’ll be honest and tell you that I’d read them with a certain amount of trepidation, even though I knew I was being ridiculous. I was worried about making them seem realistic; these would be the first making-out scenes I’d filmed since Jasmine’s ill-fated and very short relationship with the boy down the road—whom she’d briefly run away to Scotland with—when she was sixteen, and I wanted to do them justice.

The scene was being shot in Jasmine’s bedroom. Elise hadn’t arrived on the set yet, so I found myself pacing up and down, playing with my phone and chatting with the cameraman while I waited for her—anything to take my mind off the butterflies that were swirling around inside me. Kevin and Stuart were busy discussing the lighting in the corner of the set when Elise finally arrived from make-up, looking slightly flustered. The sight of her looking flushed and hurried struck me as strange; Elise didn’t ever get flustered, right?

“Sorry I’m late,” she called over to Kevin, coming over to join me. She sat down on Jasmine’s bed and looked up at me, puffing out her cheeks.

“You’re not late,” Kevin called back. “Don’t worry.”

“You okay?” I laughed.

“Thought I was going to be late, that’s all,” Elise replied, kind of tightly I thought.

“You ready for this?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Elise replied. “You?”

“Yeah.”

“Nervous?”

“A bit, yeah. You?”

Elise thought for a while before answering me. “Very,” she finally said.

Elise was nervous? And there was me, thinking she had nerves of steel.

“I hope you haven’t eaten garlic or anything.” I laughed, cringing at my feeble attempt at a joke, and came to join her on the bed.

She glanced at me quickly then looked away again, staring down at her feet. “I hope you haven’t either,” she said nervously.

I wanted to say something else but didn’t know what. I hated the stiltedness of our conversation, especially after we’d been getting on so well just lately, but I honestly couldn’t think of a single word to say to her, so we didn’t speak again until Stuart finally—after what seemed like ages—called us to our markers.

We’d already filmed some other scenes in Jasmine’s bedroom that morning, where Jasmine and Casey had continued their heart-to-heart about their growing feelings for each other, and the kiss we were about to film now was going to happen immediately after they’d both admitted they liked each other.

These particular scenes were going to be aired as a two-part special, with each programme going out either side of the evening news, so that the kiss would fade out the end of the first episode, and the second episode would then pick up where the first one had ended and have us both still kissing as the opening credits rolled. It was all going to be very technical, as it was important that the continuity was just right and that the kiss lasted the required amount of time to go through one set of closing credits and one set of opening credits.

It was also all going to be very chaste, of course.
Portobello Road
went out before the watershed, so it was important that the kiss could in no way upset the viewers. The script had Casey kissing Jasmine first, and then Jasmine would reciprocate; I’d read it over and over, and although Elise and I had talked the scene over together, discussing how we would both play it, I was still nervous.

The cameras were finally ready to roll; Stuart gave us both one last instruction on how he wanted us to stand, and then we were ready. We had no words to say for the initial take—it was just straight into the kiss, and as Stuart called for us to begin, I immediately tensed up. I glanced at Elise and saw apprehension written across her face, too, so I figured she was feeling just as anxious as I was. That made me feel better somehow.

On our cue, we had to gaze tenderly into each other’s eyes for no more than five seconds, letting our eyes roam over one another’s faces, before Casey leant in and kissed Jasmine.

I hadn’t stood this close to another girl in over two years. The intimacy of Elise, standing barely inches from me—the warmth of her body, the faint aroma of her citrusy perfume, and the look in her eyes—made my pulse start to thud alarmingly in my neck as, almost on cue, an image of Grace flooded my mind.

With the cameras rolling and my heart still beating wildly, I looked deep into Elise’s eyes, then closed my eyes as I felt her lips on mine, tight and anxious. I was aware that I was standing with my arms stiffly around her, my body tense in her arms, and my own lips were clamped rigidly to hers, not really sure what they should be doing.

“Cut!”

I jumped slightly as Stuart’s voice echoed out across the silent set. He walked over to us, clipboard in hand, and looked at us both kindly. “Could we try that again?” he asked, with rising intonation. “Just try to relax, okay?”

I glanced at Elise and smiled nervously. “Sorry.”

She nodded but didn’t reply.

We were given our cue to go once more, and again, as Elise leant in, all I was aware of this time was her stiffness and anxiousness and the feel of her dry lips on mine while I stood, dizzy and rigid in front of her, wishing I could do something to make my body relax a bit.

“Cut!”

“You pulled away,” she said, stepping back from me. She stood in front of me, hands on her hips, licking her lips then wiping them, as if wiping the sensation of my lips away from hers.

“Did I?” I asked. “I thought you were pulling away from me.”

“When I leant in to kiss you, you pulled your head back,” she said. “I can’t kiss you if you do that.”

“Everything okay?” Stuart called over from behind the camera.

“Yup,” I called back over my shoulder. “Ready to roll.”

We tried again and again, the tenseness of Elise’s body against mine and her lack of emotion making it absolutely impossible to be anything other than uptight myself.

“You pulled away again!” Elise swung away from me and walked over to the other side of the set.

“If I pulled away, it’s because you’re so tense!” I called after her. “You’re not making it easy for me to get into it.”

She turned and looked back at me, a hurt look on her face.

“Do you girls want a break?” Kevin came over to me and placed a hand on my shoulder. “I appreciate this is unfamiliar territory for the pair of you, so if you want to take five and go and regroup, that’s fine.”

I didn’t want to go and regroup. I just wanted to get this scene over and done with, so that I could get on with all the other scenes I was due to film, and then go home again; the longer we drew it out, the more anxious and uneasy both Elise and I would become, I just knew it. “No, I want to carry on,” I said.

Elise still had her back to me, but she took a deep breath, then turned back and rejoined me on our marker. “Let’s just do it,” she said, smiling and revealing her deep-set dimples, which made my head swim even more than it already was.

Just think of Grace,
I suddenly thought.
Just think about how it used to feel with Grace, and imagine it’s her you’re kissing, not Elise…

The cameras rolled again, and I desperately thought about Grace, trying to remember how good it used to be when I kissed her, and that really seemed to help. I managed to let my inhibitions go a little, even if I was counting the seconds until Stuart called
Cut!
, and it must have worked as this time Elise didn’t instinctively pull away as I kissed her back.

Much to my—and Stuart’s and Elise’s—relief, that take was a success. The second Stuart called for us to stop, Elise and I immediately parted, both of us automatically taking two or three steps away from each other and avoiding one another’s eyes.

“Good!” Stuart came over to us. “That was perfect. Thank you both.”

I glanced over to Elise and raised my eyebrows in a
well thank goodness that’s over
way. She was still looking uneasy, and I briefly wondered if she hadn’t been happy with the take, but figured if Stuart was okay with it, then that would do just fine.

“You two want to take a break for ten minutes?” Stuart was now saying, heading from the set. “It’ll be open set for the next few scenes now that we’ve got the biggie out of the way.”

I watched as he walked off, Kevin following him.

“Well, I’m glad we finally got that sorted,” I called over to Elise.

“We got there eventually, huh?” Elise walked back over to me.

I looked at my watch. “Coffee?” I asked.

Elise looked at me for a second, then made to walk past me. “Thanks, but no,” she said. “I’m just gonna head back to my room for five minutes.” She hesitated. “Need to make a phone call,” she said, almost as an afterthought. She looked at me again, holding my gaze a while, then smiled tightly and left the set, leaving me standing there—not for the first time since I’d known her—alone and feeling just a bit deflated.

Chapter Nine

“Guess who’s cracked it?” Robbie’s face appeared in my dressing-room doorway, grinning from ear to ear.

It was the next day. Elise and I had managed to survive filming our final three scenes the previous day—an open set, just as Stuart had said—and now I was back at the studios the following morning, ready to film some scenes with Bella.

“Cracked what?” I put down the mascara wand I’d been darkening my eyes with and beckoned for Robbie to come in.