“Get up,” I hiss at myself, swallowing my sadness down. “Get up and get to work. Seth is already established, he’s already the perfect guy. It’s time to prove that you can be the same for him. It’s time to show Seth and the rest of the world that you are worthwhile, and you can do this.”
That’s good, it gives me something to focus on. Something to work with. Something to keep me distracted from the negative green monster that threatens to swallow me up whole if I let it…
I just won’t let it, that’s all. Easy.
Chapter Twenty-One
Seth
January 5th
“Are you sure that you are going to be okay?” Sierra asks me with all kinds of nerves edging on her voice. She takes a moment to dust off my shoulders, to try and tidy me up which is silly because it isn’t in line with my character at all. Not at this point in the movie anyway. I need to be a mess. “This is going to be a big change.”
“I can do it,” I chuckle with laughter. “Me and Winter have been rehearsing for days. We got this.”
Sierra’s eyes glance nervously over to Winter and we watch for a few moments while she flexes her mouth, doing her warm up vocal exercises. Admittedly, right now she looks a little crazy, but I’m not worried. It’s been amazing. We have a great chemistry which will drive audiences wild. I have worked with actors who I don’t have the same chemistry with, and it always ends badly. The reviews and the revenues suggest as much. But this isn’t going to be a problem with this one. I just know it. That’s why I can’t wait.
“Okay, well I would love to tell you that it isn’t too late for you to pull out. But it is.” She pats me on the arms. “You have signed too much paperwork for me to negotiate with, so instead you need to kick ass.”
“I’m going to, don’t you worry about that.” I give Sierra a winning smile. “Just wait and see.”
It’s at that moment the director calls us on to set to start with the very first scene, the ironic meet cute between the two main characters, which isn’t going to be typical. I like that this script goes in a new direction for most of the other films out there. So, me and Winter take our first positions and I slide away from me. I become Richard Ramirez. The character who is going to consume me for the next few weeks. Maybe even a little longer if needs be, but I’m assuming that since most of this will be done in one take, we’re going to be fine.
Before we’re told to get going, Winter shoots me a reassuring smile and I allow myself to feel good for a moment. I’m doing this for Darcy, for our future together, to ensure that the both of us are happy. She kissed me as I left this morning, wishing me well as she went on her way to the makeup show she’s attending today, giving me all the confidence that I need to get myself in the right frame of mind.
I’m doing this for you, I think as I send her off a silent message. I just hope that you do as well as me. New year, new opportunities, new us… we can do this, Darcy McNeill, we can.
“And…” the director calls out, snapping me back into my character. “Action…”
My eyes want to close, the exhaustion is bursting through my body, but I get myself ready to shoot the scene again. The first few scenes that me and Winter did were fantastic, some of the best that I have ever been a part of, and I was absolutely over the moon. I got the confidence that I needed to keep on going. Internally, I made the naïve and stupid decision that we were going to get this done even quicker than I first imagined… but then at some point in the afternoon, and I can’t exactly pin point the exact moment that it happened, we began to suck. I don’t know who is doing worse, me or Winter. In some scenes, I certainly isn’t me, but in others it is.
Where is the chemistry that we shared when rehearsing? Where is that magic from this morning? I can’t understand it. I want to grab hold of it to see if I can find it all over again. It must be buried deep inside of us somewhere. We just need to try and find it again. If we both work hard enough, we can locate it, right?
“You need to wrap this up soon,” Sierra grumbles, clearly not happy with me at all. “The director is just pushing you too far when clearly, he isn’t getting anything out of you, so we need to halt this.”
“You can go home,” I insist to her, not wanting to put her through this as well. “You don’t have to stay.”
“I need to check that you are making the right moves. You know this makes sense.” She glances over my shoulder. “I might go and have a word in a moment. See if this is really beneficial to everyone.”
I want to let out a laugh because Sierra is behaving like an overprotective mother, but I’m too tired to let it out. Instead all I can do is weakly smile at her. “I will be fine. It should be done this time.”
But as I look over at Winter and I see the weariness in her eyes, I think that Sierra might be right. We are done today. I would like to get back home to see Darcy. I’m sure she must be expecting me since it’s getting pretty late. But I’m hoping that she understands I can’t do anything about the schedule.
“Right, get back out there…” Sierra pats me on the back and sends me back on to the set as Winter does the same thing. “Get it done this time. We all want to go home by the look of it. Nail this, okay.”
I nod and smile, hoping that I can follow through on what she wants, but it isn’t just me, is it? It’s Winter as well and I don’t think that her heart is in it. She looks done with the day, so that sucks.
Oh God, this is a nightmare. This day is never going to end…
I stagger through the front door to my house, feeling drunk because I am so tired. After all of that, we didn’t even get the shot that we needed, so I can’t help feeling a little deflated by the whole thing. I’m just glad that I’m not coming back to an empty house, and that I have Darcy here to comfort me. Hopefully a very happy Darcy because today has gone well. I really hope that she has sold lots of makeup.
“Hello?” I call out weakly, moving slowly towards the living room. “Darcy, are you here?”
She doesn’t answer me but I soon finding her sitting at her little desk that I set up for her, with her laptop on. My first assumption is that she is working on some orders that I hope she picked up today, but as I get a closer look at her expression, I immediately know what she’s doing. The one thing that no one in the public eye should ever do… looking online. I warned her about this the other day after the New Year party, but she couldn’t seem to resist. Now, I worry that it might have become an unhealthy addiction for her.
I can’t watch Darcy all the time to make sure that she isn’t on the Internet, she needs to make that choice herself, just like we all do. I have been through it myself, but it’s agonizing to see her experience it. I want to wrap Darcy up in bubble wrap and try to protect her from the dog eat dog world of social media where keyboard warriors think that it’s okay to say the most disgusting things. But of course, I can’t. That’s something that I have to stand back and watch however much it kills me. All I can really do is support her and hope that she is okay.
Her mother tried to protect her too much anyway, and that didn’t exactly work out, did it? It sent Darcy running. Albeit with me, but I don’t want to do a similar thing, so I need to bite my tongue.