“We were thinking you could film him doing something?” Georgiana suggests, luring the camera away from me. “Since this is supposed to be unscripted.”
“Right. We can get some footage of you working together.”
Finally, we’re at the point where I can do my part. I get on the trailer and within minutes, Georgiana and I are cutting the conduits for the electrical wiring. When the camera starts to roll, she prompts me to look up and I smile straight into it.
They film for a while and I’m more comfortable in front of the camera than the previous week. That can only be because Georgiana has been taking photos and videos all the time for Tic Tack Tiny. I’m still relieved when Jack cuts and we can pause. I hope we didn’t mess up those holes in the process.
“Good?” Georgiana asks as she stands and stares through the studs at Jack.
“Spot on. We should have enough footage for this week. After all, each one of the twelve episodes are only fifty minutes long and there are nine other projects.”
“How are the others doing?” Georgiana asks.
This is something we’ve been burning to know: how we’re faring in comparison to the other competitors.
“You’ll have to wait and see,” Jack says. “We’re only filming on this side. There’s another team filming on the West Coast.”
“Oh. I didn’t know,” Georgiana says. She chews her lip and gives Jack a flirty stare. “But how was our chemistry?”
Now that smile is Miami Gold. And from what I’ve come to know of Georgiana this past week, that smile camouflages the sarcasm of her question. She’s needling Jack and he is going to fall for it.
I suppress a laugh. We’ve been better than last week, surely. It wouldn’t take much.
Jack’s gaze jogs between the two of us. “Yeah. Keep at it.”
“We haven’t killed each other yet, so there’s that,” Georgiana quips.
Jack shakes his head and gives a dry chuckle. “That won’t be a murder mystery if we look at the footage from last week, but hey, there’s hope here, so we’ll see how you two do next week.”
Next week might not happen. I might be here all by my lonesome if Georgiana chooses to leave. That doesn’t even start to describe awkward.
They pack up and we see them off. I drag my hands through my hair in relief that we got through that without me being a stuttering idiot. We walk back into the barn and quiet fills the hollow space.
“That went better than expected,” Georgiana says as she rolls her shoulders back and takes a few deep breaths. Her fingers are trembling as she gathers a few loose strands of hair behind her ears.
This stressed her out too, much more than I realized. She is always so cool, calm and collected and never doubts her next move. But now…I want to ease the tension in her shoulders. I want to give her a back rub and make that rigid stance in her frame soften with my touch. “You were brilliant.” It’s all I can offer her and at least I can do so without stumbling over every word. With the pressure of the film crew gone, everything in me eases. “You were amazing with them. Without you, this—”
Georgiana glances at me. “My mom used to have a home makeover show that ran for a few years. I’ve been around this type of thing before.”
She’s never mentioned this, but one of the puzzle pieces my Miami Sunshine has been clasping to her chest slips from her hand and falls into place. This is why she takes this TV part of the process in her stride.
“Was that on your résumé?” I ask. The résumé I blindly scanned looking only for keywords. Maybe I should check with Hunter if I can get a copy.
She stares at me with a frown. “No? That was my mother’s gig, not mine. I can hardly claim my mom’s work for my own.”
There is a scratchy prickle in her voice, and I step closer to her. She steps back but the trailer blocks her from going any further. I swear she’s about to burst out crying. You don’t have two girls in the house growing up and fail to recognize a wobbly lip and a sniff for what they are.
“You okay?” I could so easily trap her between my arms right now and corner her here. Close together, our bodies bathed in the light shining through the windows, the morning heat is already swelling into the barn and not helping the slow, determined rise of longing for her that’s been building in my veins.
“Yes.”
A week in and I can tell when she is trying to brush me off.
“Either way, you were brilliant, Miami.”
She bites her lip and I swear it’s to get a grip on her emotions. She’s so not okay, but there’s no way I can push her to open up to me.
“You did great, too,” she says eventually and glances up at me with eyes that are way too moist. “You said your words perfectly.”