Lost in Scotland

by Hilaria Alexander

  Then anxiety got the upper hand, crippling me with fear. I worried that the series would never happen, feared that production would halt before we even started shooting and the show would never see the light of day. For a while, the show did stall, struggling to get green-lighted. It was an ambitious project, and funding was crucial. So, as months went by, the tightness in my chest caused by stress and anxiety became more pronounced.

  But now it was finally becoming a reality. I couldn’t believe I was actually visiting the sets that were getting built and training for my role. What was even more exciting was that in less than two weeks, I would start shooting.

  I was ready to show the world what Hugh MacLeod was capable of.

  Sam

  After a while, I finally made it back to the townhouses the cast and staff were occupying. I had gotten there at the very last minute and had missed days and days of preparation and whatever bonding experience they might have had going on the night before. I was going to be the new kid from a block far, far away, and I was terribly nervous about screwing it up.

  I hadn’t worked since I had basically walked out from my last job and the scandal had broken. After that, I couldn’t find another one.

  For months.

  Eric had told me he would make it hard for me to find a job, and he had kept his promise.

  Asshole.

  My career, at least for the moment, was going absolutely nowhere. My reputation was ruined. I had wanted my revenge, but now I was paying the price, and I’d had to resort to using my sister as a connection to get this job. I knew I had gotten lucky, but part of me still wished I could be in Los Angeles.

  My parents had been in the business since the late ’70s. My mother was a screenwriter before she sold her soul to Gossip Gods in exchange for a big, fat salary. My father was a cameraman, and he still loved his job as much as he had on his first day. I knew that because every time I asked him when he would retire, he’d tell me he didn’t want to because he loved what he did so much. He used to work on movie sets a lot when I was little, but in the last decade he’d started working exclusively on TV dramas. He said he didn’t mind the long hours, and he enjoyed that he got some of the summer off. That way, he always had time to travel a little bit and visit his family. I wished he’d done that when we were younger, because then me and my siblings would have had more chances to spend time with my grandma, who lived in London.

  While my mother’s family was originally from California, my father had moved to LA from London in 1976. His family had moved to the UK from Pakistan as refugees around 1965. I remembered him telling me how hard it was for both him and his family to start over. Even though Pakistan was a member of the British Commonwealth, there were so many challenges to face, the language being one of them. Although the first few years were tough, my father always told me how once he felt he had a better knowledge of the English language, he loved almost every minute of living in the United Kingdom. He had opportunities he never could have dreamed of if his family had stayed in Pakistan.

  He started working right out of high school, and somehow he ended up at a TV station. He worked his way up from the mailroom, and in a few years’ time, he found himself behind the camera. My father could go on and on about how much he loved movies and TV. He could remember hundreds of movie titles and knew all the names of the directors and actors. When Amira and I were little, we’d love to quiz him. We would browse through the TV channels and ask him all kinds of questions. He would hardly ever miss—the man was like a walking IMDB before the site was even created.

  My father loved cinema so much, sometimes I was surprised he never tried to push his passion further. I often wondered why he’d never tried to direct or write anything. He and my mother could have even worked together on a project. They would have made a great team. Between the two of them, they had plenty of knowledge and connections.

  Years later, I asked him why he never tried his hand at directing, and this was what he told me.

  “Sam, directing is a little bit like storytelling. You need to know and feel the story you want to bring to the screen. You need to have a vision. I never felt I had a story to tell. I love to capture the scene, but I never felt the need or instinct to tell my version of it.”

  My mother, on the other hand, was completely in love with storytelling. She lived to write stories. I could still remember how excited she would get when she came up with an idea and started brainstorming. Sometimes, she would talk out loud in the car while driving around LA with Amira and me in the backseat, telling us the story as she made it up. But, bringing a script to life is much harder than just writing it. My mother was a gifted storyteller, but over the years, she lost her patience with the industry, and she got sick of Hollywood politics. At her house, she had a bookshelf full of scripts that never made it past a pre-production stage. She once told me that just twenty percent of what she wrote during her career as a screenwriter made it to film.

  It was a pity to see how disenchanted she’d become over the years. So, when the opportunity came around to do something different, she took it. She started writing for scripted talk shows, and eventually, ended up with Gossip Gods right before the boom of internet gossip sites. She was now in charge of their whole social media department. Gossip Gods was one of the “friendlier” gossip sites. Its content and articles were edgier than E!, but not as ruthless as TMZ.

  Once Amira and I started working in the business, it became rather useful having someone “on the inside”. My mother would tell us which places we should avoid if we were looking for a quiet night out and which places we should go to if we wanted to be seen. As far as I was concerned, I never wanted to be seen by anyone. I was—and still am—a quiet and reserved person who happens to work in Hollywood. However, in order for Amira’s career to take off, it was helpful to be seen out and about, so a lot of times I would accompany her. It was thanks to some of the photos that circulated after one of our outings that I’d caught the eye of the only man I had ever loved.

  I still remembered the first time Eric asked me out; it was also the first time I turned him down—the first of many. It was the summer after I graduated college and I had just gotten my first internship on a new small-budget series.

  I was one of the makeup artists, and Eric was one of the writers.

  Well, he liked to think of himself as one of the writers.

  He was really more of an intern. They used him for all kinds of errands, and of course, they hardly used his suggestions or his knack for editing, no matter how much he tried to prove himself.

  But, he didn’t let any of that keep him down. Eric was driven, and he was as ambitious as he was handsome.

  He was tall and lean with jet-black hair. He had bright, piercing green eyes that looked even brighter against his tan skin. He wanted to be a writer, yet his demeanor made him look like a bad boy instead of a nerd. His mouth was full and his lips were so defined, they looked as if they had been traced with a pencil. I tried to convince myself I noticed every detail of his features because it was my job, but it didn’t work. The truth was that I had dreamed of kissing him long before he looked my way. It was true that I had noticed him before he “saw” me, but, unlike my sister, I was very shy.

  A few weeks into my internship, some pictures of Amira and me were published on the US Weekly website. Pretty soon, everyone on the lot knew I was the sister of Mira Farouk.

  Amira was just an emerging actress then, but her role in a gritty indie movie had created a lot of buzz. People were talking about her fantastic performance, and as proud as I was of her accomplishments, I was a bit uncomfortable with being put on the spot and being asked about her.

  One day, Eric and I started talking outside the lot during a break. At first, I thought he wanted me to introduce him to Amira, but then he said he’d seen my photo in the magazine and told me how beautiful I’d looked—the night the pictures were taken, I had worn a skimpy outfit and a lot more makeup than I did when I was at work
—and then he asked me out.

  As flattered as I was, I was more concerned with doing a good job and possibly get hired permanently, so even though I truly lusted for Eric, I turned him down.

  For weeks.

  He took it as a challenge. He could tell I liked him, so he made it his mission to convince me we should be together. After weeks and weeks of relentless flirting—and after I got hired to be the makeup artist on a different production that would start shooting in the fall—I caved in and said yes.

  By the end of the summer, Eric and I had had sex all over Lot B.

  Every corner, every closet. Even on the back of a golf cart.

  We had sex breaks like some people had smoke breaks.

  It was just the beginning of a mutual, unhealthy addiction that would last for several years.

  Until he decided to cheat on me.

  “There you are!” said a short blond girl with an adorable pixie cut and a thick British accent as I opened the door of our townhouse. “I am so sorry I missed you last night. I was looking forward to meeting you!” She came toward me and pulled me into a hug. I froze for a second, but then I managed to move my arms and hug her back.

  “My name is Cecilia! And you must be Sam?”

  “Y-yes. I’m Sam. Nice to meet you, Cecilia. Are you a makeup artist, too?”

  “Yes, I am. Bloody hell, your skin is gorgeous. And your eyes, too! Oh, my gosh, your eyelashes are so long! Are they fake? We need to trade beauty secrets…wait! Do you use Botox?”

  “No,” I said with a laugh. “I want to keep my face intact for as long as I can afford it. Besides, it’s not like I have to be in front of a camera.”

  “Well said! You were working in Hollywood, right? I always wanted to visit and maybe even work there,” she said excitedly, clapping her hands together.

  “Oh, well, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be, you know…”

  “Nonsense! It’s got to be far better than working in Borehamwood,” she said. I stared at her in confusion, and then she added, “Borehamwood is the name of the studios where I worked. Just outside of London. Not quite Hollywood.”

  “Ahhh! I see. But, wait…that’s where they shot Star Wars. And Raiders of the Lost Ark! It can’t be that bad.”

  “Oh, look at you, so well informed! Well, I worked on TV sets and it was a real bore. Nothing exciting ever happens. I got so sick of it, I applied for every job with every production outside of London. Have you seen this place? Isn’t it bonkers?”

  “It’s…beautiful,” I admitted.

  “It’s magical,” she said with a tone a Disney princess would use in a movie, excitement making her blue eyes shine brighter. “I cannot wait to learn some of their old legends. I can’t believe I had never been farther north than Edinburgh. Silly me! Have you ever been to Scotland, Sam?”

  “I haven’t. This is my first time here, but I have been to London. My father’s family moved to the UK years ago, and I visited my grandparents a few times before they passed.”

  “No way! I want to hear everything—but not now, because we have an orientation to be at in half an hour!”

  “It’s only a matter of time before everyone will forget about all these stupid rules—except for the non-disclosure agreement.” Cecilia pouted, flipping through the pages of our massive orientation packet.

  “What do you mean?” I whispered, brows furrowing. I didn’t understand why they would put us through hours of this if it didn’t matter.

  “I mean, sure, they have to tell you about the sexual harassment rules and what will happen if you transgress, but pretty soon everyone will start getting busy around here, if you get my gist.” She winked and then gave me a coy smile. “For example, I already have my eyes set on someone.” She pointed her chin in the direction of a handsome guy with broad shoulders and tanned skin sitting on our right side. I could see just his profile from where I was sitting. His hair was as dark as mine, and his profile was gorgeous—straight nose, high cheekbones, and a strong jaw with a delicious hint of stubble.

  Not bad at all. Well done, Cecilia, I thought, but then I worried about all the rules they had been dropping on us.

  “Are you serious? What about the rules? I’m pretty sure it said somewhere that fraternizing was frowned upon.”

  She dismissed it with a wave of her hand. “I mean, I get that they want us to keep our mouths shut about production and the plot of the show and how it differs from the books, but see, my dear Sam, sooner or later we’re going to get bored. We’re going to be holed up here for months. It’s only a matter of time before people start hooking up left, right and centre. They can’t expect us to keep our mouths shut and our hands to ourselves,” she said with a mischievous wink.

  “Will people really do that?”

  She looked at me in confusion. “Have you never worked on location?”

  “No, not really. I’ve always been in LA.”

  “Excuse me, are you trying to say crew members don’t hook up in LA? I’m not going to believe that.” She stifled a laugh.

  Well, she was right, after all. I laughed, somehow embarrassed by my own faux pas. “Of course they do.” Too much, too often. “But I guess it’s different, you know? When you get off work, you go home…to your family, significant other, and so on.” Or you stay at work and cheat on your girlfriend. On second thought, I guess the situation wasn’t that much different. I was the one who had been too naïve.

  “Well, here you’re far away from your family and friends. The staff is bound to become your family, unless you’re a hermit and you’re fine with being on your own all the time. And I don’t know about you—oh, wait! Do you have a boyfriend?”

  “No.” My response came with an involuntary sigh, but thankfully, my colleague didn’t catch it.

  “Neither do I! This is bloody perfect.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, because we will be the two single gals looking for some fun! It’ll be great.”

  “I’m not so sure about that.”

  “Oh, please! Don’t be so bloody chicken. Do you not fancy boys? Is that what it is?” I looked at her, frowning, and she suddenly looked so sorry, as if she had committed a terrible offense. “Oh, I’m so terribly sorry. I’m so insensitive. Here I am, talking about my fondness for cock and how we should make plans to score some and you—” I stopped her right then and held her wrist to get her attention.

  “Cecilia, stop. I fancy cock…very much,” I told her, a laugh escaping my lips.

  She laughed, too, but unfortunately our giggling didn’t go unnoticed. Suddenly, everyone was looking at us, including the lady who was leading the orientation, and she was saying or asking something…while looking directly at us. Dammit.

  We both apologized and remained quiet. Cecilia’s alabaster skin turned a bright red, while I was somewhat able to hide my own embarrassment.

  “Now, if you two young ladies are done interrupting the orientation, I would like to encourage you to read the paragraph at the bottom of page forty-five…”

  As the woman resumed her lecture, I glanced at Cecilia, who was pretending to read her booklet.

  “Sorry, Cece. I don’t want to get us into trouble.”

  “Cece, hey? You’ve already given me a nickname. We so are going to be best mates!” She winked then glanced at me and smiled mischievously. “You can make up for it by getting us into some trouble once we’re out of here.” I frowned, not quite getting what she meant.

  “There’s a guy staring at you. Two rows over, ten o’clock,” she whispered in my ear. A moment later, I raised my eyes and noticed a handsome guy looking my way.

  He had short brown hair and big, beautiful brown eyes. As his stare turned into a smile, my breath hitched—he had the most perfect smile I had ever seen. He had the smile of an actor, so what was he doing at a staff orientation? I smiled back instinctively, thinking about Cecilia’s words.

  Maybe she was right. Maybe soon everyone would start hooking up.

&nbs
p; In that case, I wouldn’t mind messing around with Mr. Perfect Smile.

  Sam

  After another hour and a half, our orientation was finally over. My brain was fried from information overload, and I couldn’t wait to go back to the townhouse.

  Cecilia, however, had other plans.

  “That’s it! We’re going to the pub for a pint! You need to come! You didn’t get to meet anyone last night.”

  “Yes, because I got into town very late, which also means I am severely jet-lagged.”

  “That’s such bollocks! One hour and a pint of beer are not going to make you feel any worse tomorrow. I’ll make sure you go straight to bed as soon as we get back home.”

  “Fine! One beer!” I exhaled, and at the same time she elbowed me.

  “Oh, look. It’s the handsome stranger from the presentation.”

  “Ouch!”

  “Oh, come on, Sam! I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

  “Did you? You just elbow—”

  “Hi. Cecilia, right?” the handsome brown-haired guy asked my petite but very strong friend.

  “Yes, it’s me. Did we meet last night? Sorry, I was sloshed and I could hardly remember my own name.”

  Mr. Perfect Smile laughed, and now that we were up close, I noticed how beautiful his skin was. I blamed it on my job—it made me notice all the details of a person’s face right away. He laughed nervously at Cecilia’s words and kept glancing my way.

  “No, actually, we didn’t get introduced, but everyone was chanting your name…”

  “Ohmygod! How embarrassing!” Cecilia cried, covering her face with her hands for just a second. She acted as if she was embarrassed, but I didn’t quite believe it. She simply didn’t seem the type.

  “Well, anyway, my name is Jake.” He stretched out his hand and she shook it. Jake turned my way and I stretched out my hand.

  “Hi, I’m Sam.”

  “Samantha?” he asked, a charming smile stretching across his face.