Unscripted (30 page)
Authors: Natalie Aaron and Marla Schwartz
“Oh my God, you guys, that’s so amazing. I’m so happy for you,” Zoë says excitedly.
“Bravo,” Douglas says as he tops off my first wineglass. “This really does call for a celebration. We need champagne.”
Will laughs breezily and takes a sip of wine as if this life-altering hug didn’t just occur.
For the next half an hour, he barely even looks at me. And I know it’s sort of pathetic and paranoid, but I can’t help feeling stiff and uncomfortable again. Did I just imagine a connection between us? Am I delusional? Being partners with someone you secretly love is probably a really stupid idea. Leave it to me to jump from the smoke into the flames of hell itself.
I reach over the table and drain the last few drops from my now empty wineglass. The minute it touches the table, Douglas reaches over and refills it. This is going to have to be the last glass. I’m going to have to pace myself here. I do not want things to get out of control.
Pain. Head is pounding. Nose is completely stuffed up. My tongue feels thick and sticky and there is an unpleasant taste in my mouth. I open my eyes and close them immediately. Light is bad.
I flop my hand on my forehead and begin to rub it.
How did I get here?
I look down. My black dress is twisted around my knees. My shoes are off and my pashmina is folded on top of my dresser.
Oh God. Please tell me that Zoë put me to bed. Not Will. Not Will.
Little bits of memory are trickling in, teasing flashes that only offer a glimmer of the story. Douglas constantly filling my wineglass, Zoë telling Will about the time I locked my keys in the car while it was still running (she’ll pay for that later). I also remember the moment of no return, when I felt the rush of blood to my lips, a warning that I was entering the danger zone of drunkenness. A warning I apparently did not heed.
I sit up and look at the clock. 8:42 a.m. The room begins to spin so I lie back down, taking deep breaths. I cannot believe I did this. It was my grown-up, fancy night out with Will and I acted like a college student at Mardi Gras. I can’t remember the last time I blacked out. I can’t remember the last time I drank more than three glasses of wine in one night.
I strip off my wrinkled dress and put on my sweats and a ratty old T-shirt. I need to brush my teeth, take an Advil and call Zoë to find out what the hell I did last night.
As I step out into the hallway a smell penetrates the stuffiness of my nose. Coffee. “Zoë?” I call.
“No, it’s Will. You alive?” His deep voice answers from the kitchen.
I hear his footsteps coming toward me and I duck into the bathroom. “Just a sec,” I say from behind the door.
Will is here. In my house. After tucking my drooling, drunk, possibly vomit-producing body into bed. I could die.
I look into the mirror and gasp. I look like Alice Cooper after a ten-day bender. My hair is matted and pointy and there’s a pool of black mascara and kohl eyeliner under my eyes, staining my cheeks.
I open my mouth to find the dreaded post-red-wine purple teeth and stained lips. Horror show. I scrub my face pink and brush my teeth twice. Not much I can do about my hair until I shower, so I shove it into a bun and wrap an elastic band around it.
I open the door to find Will waiting with a cup of coffee. He looks at me sympathetically.
“Have you regained your power of speech?” he asks as he holds out the cup for me.
“Barely.” I take the cup without looking at him. I blow on my coffee to stall for time. “How bad was I?”
“Not that bad,” Will says as he looks away from me.
So it was bad.
I feel awkward standing by the bathroom door, so I lead Will into the living room.
“Couch will be here next week,” I say apologetically as I sit on the floor.
“I’m going to get my coffee. Do you need anything from the kitchen?” Will asks.
“No thanks.”
Just a big sharp knife. Or a time machine.
He returns with his coffee and a bottle of water, which he hands to me along with two Advils. “You should have taken Zoë’s couch.” He sits cross-legged across from me. He’s so close our knees are almost touching.
“What? How do you know about that?”
“Oh, you and Zoë filled me in on everything.” He smiles as he takes a sip.
Everything?
“How did I get here? I mean, I’m surprised Zoë didn’t just take me to her house.”
“She wanted to, but she was worse off than you, if you can believe it. So I figured Douglas already had his hands full and that you would prefer to wake up in your own bed. You were fully mobile until we got to the car, then you conked out. So I carried you upstairs and put you to bed.”
Will smiles as the flush shoots up from my neck to my forehead. I cover my face with my hands and shake my head. “I am so sorry. You didn’t need to stay here. You should have just left.”
“I couldn’t leave you, I was afraid you’d pull a Hendrix.” He laughs lightly, totally enjoying my discomfort.
I look around the couch-less room. “Where did you sleep?”
“On the floor by your bed.”
I nod slowly but my throat is tightening. By my bed? What kind of drunken symphonies did I subject him to? Did I snore? Or worse? It’s too much to fathom. So mortifying.
“I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine what you think of me. I never get that drunk. Ever. It’s just that I didn’t have anything to eat all day, and then I downed Zoë’s martini, and Douglas kept filling up my wineglass, and I was so nervous so I kept drinking, and then there he was again with the wine… I’m really embarrassed and I’m so sorry I put you out.”
“What were you nervous about?” Will sets his coffee cup down and puts his hands on his knees.
Will can’t hear my heart speeding up, and I know my face can’t get any redder, so I try to cover. “Just seeing Zoë for the first time in a while, you know…”
“Were you nervous because it was our first date?”
“Our first date?” I say stupidly.
We were on a date and he didn’t tell me?
“When I invited you to my house, it was a date.”
“You said work. And pizza.”
“Well, yes. But I intended to turn it into a date.”
“Were you going to tell me?”
“No, I knew that if you had any advance notice, you’d get the chicken pox or burn your house down or find some way to dissect it all into oblivion. A sneak attack was the only way to go.”
“How long have you…?” I ask. Forming complete sentences seems impossible right now.
“Since the first day of shooting, maybe before. All I know is when I saw you with Grant at the house, I didn’t like it. But I was your boss, and, well, I thought you two were dating, so I tried to let it go. That didn’t really take.”
“You thought I was dating Grant?” Grant? He’s like that annoying older brother who gives you nuggies and hides your doll heads. My brain is trying to focus. Will Harper is saying he likes me. “That’s okay. I thought you were dating Lisa,” I confess, ducking my head slightly on my shoulder.
Will places his hands on the floor and begins to move toward me. “No, I was never dating Lisa. I definitely got the vibe that she wanted to be, but it was never her.”
I want to run away and tackle him to the ground, all in the same instant, but I sit there, immobilized by his eyes as he inches closer and closer.
Will brushes my lips with his lightly until I touch his cheek with my hand, and then he kisses me. It’s a movie kiss, a fantasy kiss with Will Harper. But it’s not a fantasy. It’s real and it’s happening right here on my living room floor.
Will pulls back and smiles at me. “Let’s make breakfast.”
“Okay,” I say, bemused as he takes my hand and pulls me up from the floor. We walk hand in hand into the kitchen. He steers me to one of the barstools and heads to the fridge. I dragged myself to the store yesterday, so he will find actual food items in there.
Will looks at me with that familiar crooked smile as he pulls out eggs, cheese and bread and places them on the counter.
As I watch him rummaging around in my kitchen I feel a surge of some foreign emotion. Sadness? No. Fear? No. Any lingering worries about the future or regrets from the past? Nope. For the first time in a long time I can say it.
I’m happy.
Natalie Aaron
was born in Kansas and raised on the quick wit of
The Simpsons.
When she realized show business wasn’t going to relocate to the Midwest in the foreseeable future, she loaded a U-Haul truck and headed to L.A. Based solely on her astrological sign, she was hired to work as a PA on commercials and music videos—only confirming that what she had heard about L.A. was true. Next, she graduated to
Taxicab Confessions,
where she witnessed drunken Las Vegas hedonists signing away their dignity for a chance to appear on TV.
Natalie went on to such critically acclaimed shows as
Behind the Music
and AMC’s
Movies That Shook the World,
where she learned the delicate art of coaxing compelling interviews from reluctant celebrities. Her recent producing credits include
The Judds, Ruby, Sweet Home Alabama
and
Little People, Big World.
Natalie lives in Los Angeles and hardly ever wonders how she wound up doing this for a living.
Marla Schwartz
was born and raised in Los Angeles but moved to England to pursue a graduate degree in medieval studies. Though Marla’s head was turned by the dazzling array of career opportunities awaiting a medieval studies graduate, she instead put her academic skills to work as a Historical Content Analyst for Steven Spielberg’s Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation. Two years of rewarding labor on that project led to her employment as Head Researcher for Dreamworks Animation, as well as for writer/director Andrew Niccol.
Marla’s extensive credits as a reality television producer partially include
Blind Date, Starting Over, Making the Band, Bands Reunited, Bad Girls Club, Dane Cook’s Tourgasm
and
Wanted: Ted or Alive,
an assignment that required her to screen footage of a deer being shot, gutted and cooked. Marla lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter and hardly ever wonders how she wound up doing this for a living.
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ISBN: 978-1-4268-9269-1
Copyright © 2011 by Marla Schwartz and Natalie Aaron
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