Love Scene, Take Two

by Alex Evansley

  The knot in Bennett’s stomach has worked itself into what feels like a serious medical issue. She’s having a hard time catching her breath as she walks next to the guys carrying the door prop. When they veer off toward the main set, she finally breaks away and forces herself to head in Teddy’s direction. She puts it off to the very last second, and by then she’s pretty sure he knows she’s coming, just refusing to acknowledge her.

  “Hey—” She clears her throat when she stops in front of him. “Hey, Teddy?”

  It takes a few painful seconds before he looks up from his phone. His face is neutral, but his body language says it all: He’s angled slightly away from her, arms crossed over his chest. It’s clear the last thing he wants to be doing is talking to her.

  “Hey,” he says.

  Bennett gathers most of her nerve and points to the empty chair next to him. “Do you mind if I sit?”

  “Um.” He glances at the chair, then back at her. “I mean, I guess not.…”

  “Thanks,” she says, ignoring how much his hesitation hurts. She sits next to him and he immediately starts fidgeting—alternating between looking at his phone and looking in the opposite direction of her. She waits for him to settle in (for her own sake, mostly), but Teddy reaches up and scrubs at the back of his head for a second, then stands suddenly.

  “I’m gonna go—”

  “Wait, Teddy,” Bennett blurts out. His back is already to her and he barely twists around to look at her when she asks, “Can we talk?”

  “Now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m supposed to be studying lines,” he says.

  Bennett knows he’s been off-book for weeks now. “Please?”

  He stands there for a moment, bouncing on the balls of his feet. Then he sighs and sits back down. “All right. What’s up, Bennett?” he asks, and Bennett feels like she’s going to throw up.

  “I’m so sorry about this morning, Teddy,” she rushes out, and she’s pretty sure Teddy hadn’t been expecting her to jump right into it. His eyebrows shoot up before his expression goes neutral again. “And I really want to talk to you about why I freaked out like that, but,” she takes a deep breath, “but first I need to ask if you’ll do me a favor.”

  Teddy snorts. “Yeah? What’s the favor?”

  “Well, for starters, I got Will an extra’s role in filming today,” she says, unsure of where else to begin and a little distracted by how he’s inched all the way to the far side of his director’s chair.

  Teddy nods, still looking straight ahead. “I heard.”

  “Yeah,” Bennett says. “And I kind of had to cut a deal with Burt in order to do it—and it involves you, so I wanted to talk to you about it before I did anything.”

  She watches Teddy’s eyebrows knit together—then watches his expression harden with realization.

  “You agreed to the PR scheme,” he says.

  “As a bartering chip,” she says quickly. “The only way Burt would let me get Will in was if I agreed to it. On my terms, though. Not his.”

  Teddy’s frowns deepens. “Your terms? So, I don’t get a say in this?”

  “Of course you do, if you want?” Bennett says, caught off guard. “I just assumed that—”

  “You assumed, what? That I’d go along with whatever the hell this is and not worry about how it could possibly affect me or my career?”

  “Whoa—hang on a sec,” Bennett scrambles. “Of course you have a say in it! I just didn’t expect you to agree to this at all, let alone want some kind of say in how to do it.”

  He snorts. “Yeah, well. I didn’t expect you to ever be on board with a scheme like this, either, given that apparently it only takes a couple of tweets to set you off. But color me corrected, I guess.”

  Bennett sits back in her chair in silence, letting his words level her. She deserved it, she knows, but she honestly doesn’t think she’ll be able to recover from that one anytime soon.

  “I’m sorry,” Teddy mutters after a moment, still looking frustrated. “It’s just—I’m still a little touchy from this morning. That wasn’t cool.”

  “It’s okay,” Bennett says cautiously. “It was still warranted.”

  “Maybe a little,” he admits, and Bennett can’t tell if he’s leaning more toward joking or being serious. “All right, so what’re the terms of the favor?”

  Bennett types in the passcode on the phone Will gave her and pulls up the home screen. She taps the messages icon, then the group text she’d started earlier, then picks out Emmy’s number in the list of recipients. She sends her a quick text telling her where she and Teddy are sitting.

  “Well,” Bennett says, wading through some of the awkwardness still there between them. “I was talking with Emmy about the best way to go about this, and she and I thought it might be easiest to just get some candid pictures together. What do you think?”

  Teddy stares at her for a moment instead of responding. Bennett feels herself starting to squirm under the intensity of his gaze. He gestures toward the baseball hat Tanner let her borrow and asks, “Did you wear that on purpose?”

  “What? No—why would I do that?”

  Teddy shrugs. “Never mind. Just—never mind. So you just want to get a few pictures, then.… Any other conditions I should know about?”

  “Not really … other than Burt saying there isn’t a guarantee any of Will’s shots will make it through editing. We need to make this look as convincing as possible so he won’t have an excuse for cutting anything.”

  “Convincing, candid pictures,” Teddy repeats, and Bennett refuses to acknowledge any hidden meaning behind it. “That’s definitely some shameless self-promotion right there. And you’re seriously cool with this?”

  “It’s for Will,” Bennett says. “And it’s on our terms. I figured we’d only need a few pictures—Emmy said she could take them for us.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She should be here somewhere.” Bennett glances around. The set crew is in the middle of setting up the green screen for the raid scene; a lot of people are still rushing around, adding finishing touches at the last minute before filming. Bennett leans back in her chair and looks toward the set parking lot, right as she feels the phone vibrate in her lap.

  A moment later, the phone in Bennett’s hand vibrates with a picture of Bennett and Teddy from Emmy’s vantage point—they’re midconversation, and it actually appears sincere. The picture looks like it was taken from somewhere near the green screen being set up.

  “Interesting plan,” Teddy says as he leans closer to get a better look. Bennett’s heart skips its way into her throat when she feels his shoulder brush hers. “So, she’s going to creep around, take a few pictures of us, and then what?”

  “We’re going to post them on the Internet.”

  “Post them where?” he asks, incredulous. “My Twitter? Your Twitter?”

  The phone vibrates again with three more pictures from Emmy. Bennett shows them to Teddy instead of answering his question. “Do you like any of these?”

  “The second one,” he admits.

  It’s a picture of Bennett smiling over at Teddy while he looks down at his hands. Bennett isn’t even sure when that happened—but it’s kind of adorable, and it kind of makes her heart hurt.

  “Me too,” she says. As she waits for more of them to come through, she looks over at Teddy and asks, “Why did you ask me if I’d worn this hat on purpose?”

  “No reason,” he skirts.

  “Oh, come on,” she says, saving more of the pictures Emmy sent.

  “Nothing … I mean, it just reminded me of meeting you on the plane last summer.” He smiles as he grips the back of his neck. “I kept trying to figure out why you looked so familiar, and at first I couldn’t get a good look at you because you kept hiding behind the bill of your ball cap.”

  Bennett will never for the life of her understand why—out of all the amazing, wonderful, breathtaking things Teddy Sharpe has ever said to her�
��hearing about the baseball hat she doesn’t even remember wearing on the plane last summer causes every single feeling she’s ever felt toward Teddy to come pouring out of her with no way of stopping it, but here she is.

  “Goddammit,” she mutters, turning away from him so he can’t see the look on her face.

  “What?” Teddy asks.

  It takes her a second to look back at him, but when she finally does, she looks him square in the eye, gathers what’s left of her nerve, and states for the entire planet to hear, “I am so fucking in love with you, I don’t even know what to do with myself right now.”

  And leave it to Bennett Caldwell to drop the f-word while declaring the most important confession she’s ever made.

  Teddy freezes. Eyes wide, eyebrows raised, mouth slightly open.

  “Wh-what did you just say?” he says, lips barely moving.

  “To be honest, I’m not even sure,” she admits, feeling the aftershocks of a massive blush coming on. “It was definitely some crude variation of ‘I’m in love with you,’ though.”

  Repeating it only pumps more adrenaline into her veins. It’s probably the truest thing she’s ever said in her life, and it feels a lot more liberating than she expected (but still just as terrifying).

  Teddy doesn’t say anything else. His shocked expression is still there, but his gaze is unfocused. It looks like he’s attempting to process everything but isn’t quite making the jump. It’s almost too much for Bennett. She glances back at the phone in her lap for something to do and sees another text message from Emmy. Her stomach gives a panicked jump as she reads it.

  Bennett snaps into action. She opens up the pictures she saved from Emmy, making sure all the ones she liked are there before pushing the home button and swiping through the phone’s apps. It takes her a moment to find the one she wants, and it takes her even longer to figure out how to work it.

  “What’re you doing now?” Teddy croaks.

  “Posting pictures,” she says, accidentally hitting another wrong button. That pulls up a page with more pictures from around set that Will posted before he gave Bennett the phone. She grins at all the notes they’ve already gotten.

  “You’re putting these on Tumblr?” Teddy asks.

  Bennett looks up at his blanched expression. “Is that okay? Would you rather do something else? I won’t post them if you don’t think—”

  “No, no. This is fine,” Teddy says. “Tumblr is what you need if you really want this to explode.”

  Bennett nods, relieved Teddy is endorsing this while also trying to figure out how to create a post of her own in the app.

  “Do you know how to actually work Tumblr?” She holds up the phone.

  “Not really.” Teddy leans over to get a better look at the screen. They both realize at the same time that there’s a little pencil icon at the bottom center of the app. Bennett taps it and tries not to feel like a complete moron when it pulls up several different post-type options.

  “Look at that. We’re a couple of social media geniuses,” Teddy comments dryly.

  Six convincing candid pictures of Bennett and Teddy later (all with a caption involving #SHARDWELL), Bennett takes a deep breath as her finger hovers over the post button.

  “You sure you’re cool with this?” she asks. This is officially the point of no return.

  “I’m cool with it if you’re cool with it,” Teddy says.

  Bennett lets her eyes flick to his, holding them there as she mashes her finger down, unleashing the pictures of her and Teddy for all the Internet to see. It’s almost anticlimactic, actually.… Just a tap of her thumb. Within seconds, though, notifications begin popping up.

  “Whose account did you post those on?” Teddy asks.

  Bennett smiles over at him. “Liz’s Teddy Sharpe fan blog.”

  “Shut up,” he says, like this is the best thing he’s ever heard. “You’ve gotta be kidding.”

  “Nope,” Bennett says, stuffing the phone back in her pocket just as her cousin closes in on them. “I’ll tell you more about it in a sec, hang on.”

  Right on time, Liz comes to a stop in front of them.

  “Bennett, I need my phone case back,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest. “Will told me you have it.”

  “Hey, Liz,” Teddy says. “I heard Will got a spot in the scene today. That’s pretty cool.”

  “Yeah, supercool!” she sneers, dismissing him.

  “Jesus, Liz, don’t be such an asshole,” Bennett says, and Liz seems a little surprised by the edge in her tone. Bennett doesn’t care—she isn’t okay with Liz talking to Teddy like that.

  “Whatever, Bennett. I just need my phone case back so I can get the hell out of here.”

  “You’re not staying to watch your brother?”

  “Screw that. I’m too hungover for this shit,” she says. “So? Where is it?”

  Bennett reaches into her pocket and holds it up. “This?”

  “What else would I be talking about? And why do you even have Will’s phone anyway?”

  Bennett’s innocent expression turns into a smirk when she notices the phone’s screen is illuminated with more incoming notifications. Likes, reblogs, private messages—there are already too many to count, and Bennett only sent the pictures out a few minutes ago.

  “This isn’t Will’s phone,” Bennett says, enjoying every second of the confused look that crosses Liz’s face. “You have Will’s phone.”

  “Jesus Christ, Bennett, I don’t have time for this,” Liz says as she reaches into the front pocket of her sweatshirt and pulls out an identical black iPhone to the one Bennett is holding. Minus the phone case. She mashes the home button a few times, then holds down the power button on the side. “What the—” she mutters.

  “That’s Will’s phone that died this morning,” Bennett explains. “This is your phone. Will switched them when he asked for your phone case to recharge.”

  Liz’s eyes cut back to Bennett’s.

  “What,” she says, her voice deceptively calm. “Why?”

  Bennett stands up from her chair and takes a step toward her cousin, holding out her phone for her. “We needed to borrow your Tumblr blog for a little movie promotion.”

  Liz snatches her phone away and pushes the home button with her thumb. The home screen appears without her having to type in the passcode. Her eyes go wide. “Are you—are you serious? Why?”

  “I needed to post some pictures,” Bennett says. “And since you run a Teddy Sharpe fan blog, I thought they’d go nicely with that post you made with the time and location of our dinner last night.”

  “You run a fan blog about me, Liz? That’s so sweet,” Teddy says, barely able to contain himself. “Creepy as fuck … but kind of sweet, I guess…”

  Liz ignores him. “What the hell, Bennett?! This is my phone; you had no right to do that.”

  “Oh, sure. I had no right to do that. Do you honestly want to get into all the stuff that you never had a right to do?”

  “Oh my God—seriously? This is about payback from high school?”

  “Actually, no,” Bennett says, shaking her head. “This isn’t even about you at all.”

  “Then who the hell is it about?”

  Bennett turns around for a second to look at Teddy. He has a hand over his mouth, indiscreetly trying to cover up a massive grin. Their eyes meet and she returns his smile.

  “At first this was completely about Will,” Bennett replies, turning to face Liz again. “But then it became about me confirming to all thirty thousand of your fan-blog followers that I love Teddy Sharpe and that we’re four thousand percent dating.”

  “God, you’re such a freak, Bennett—”

  “Fine with me,” Bennett shoots back. “I’ve got family and friends and a bomb-ass career and I’m in love with a superhot, insanely talented actor.” She looks her cousin dead in the eye and adds, “But that’s no reason to be jealous, Liz. You’ve got thirty thousand fan-blog followers.”

  L
iz slowly closes her mouth, setting it into a thin, straight line, and for a moment, Bennett feels a jarring twinge of guilt as she watches Liz struggle to mask the hurt writing itself across her face. Their relationship is boiling all the way down to this one confrontation, and that’s when Bennett realizes it was never a relationship at all.

  A fact that Liz solidifies when she looks at Bennett one last time and says, “Fuck you, Bennett. I don’t regret a damn thing I ever did to you.”

  She throws one last glare at Teddy before turning and storming away.

  Bennett stares after her for a few moments, trying to slow down her heart rate. She doesn’t register how much her hands are shaking until she feels another hand close around hers. She turns around when Teddy gently tugs on her fingers.

  “So,” she stalls, dropping her gaze down to her shoes. “How ironic is it that Liz turned out to run a Teddy Sharpe fan blog?”

  Teddy tugs on her fingers again. He’s gotten up from his chair and is inching toward her.

  “God, Teddy, I’m so sorry,” she says. “Like, I don’t have words. I freaked out this morning for the same reason that I freaked out in July—because every time I’ve got something good going on in my life, it always goes sideways when too many people start to find out. And it’s awful to deal with. But it doesn’t merit me being an asshole.…”

  Teddy brings a hand up to her neck, tracing a thumb across her jaw.

  Bennett leans into it, but she still can’t bring herself to look up yet. “I just—I want you to know that for every text you sent in the fall I almost responded seven different ways. And I just, I’m really so in love with you, and—”

  “Bennett.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re hiding behind that damn hat again.”

  Bennett can’t help laughing and finally lifts her head.

  Teddy grins down at her.

  “And by the way,” he says as he pulls her all the way to him, “that was the greatest thing I’ve ever witnessed in my life.”

  And then he’s kissing her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Will kills it as an extra.

  Olivia decides the best way to ensure he’s in all the right shots is to improvise—a lot. She throws unscripted lines at him left and right, constantly deviates from the blocking standards they spent an hour going over beforehand, and even creates an entire take where she pretends to break her ankle and Will has to help her hobble around. Will handles every situation like a pro, claiming he learned it all from acting classes, but everyone on set sees through it. He has raw talent. Even Burt Bridges makes a point to tell him so.