Page 42 of Sizzle Reel

She says she’s allergic to North Carolina.

Between shooting nights she’s sent me, like, five photos of her without makeup posing with her Chihuahua at, like, three a.m., and that just feels gay to me.

Which, okay, this is a lot of signs. But fuck if I know. It’s been like four days this week of hard-core investigation, and the only real accomplishment I’ve made is Brendan regularly makes eye contact with me as I hand him lenses.

Today we’re filming the chase scene in the house, which means we’re paying off some rich person in Studio City to borrow their home. I promised myself that if there was a good moment, I’d casually mention my ideas for this scene to Brendan. He picks me first among all the P.A.s for work. It has to mean something.

“Hey, Luna, get over here!” Brendan says.

We aren’t filming anything at this exact moment and I haven’t been assigned to grab a lens. My stomach clenches as I jog up to him.

“So Valeria’s gonna fall down some stairs today and I’ll be working A.D. stuff too. You down to be my first A.C.?”

I’ve been preparing for this moment for weeks: killing it at my menial gigs, practicing the technique if called upon at home, rehearsing my thank-you response. Yet somehow I still never thought today would be the day. My hands tremble, whether from nerves or excitement I don’t even know. I stuff them into my pockets.

It’s around then that the nerves are the dominant dog in this fight. Because focus pulling, the technical term for what a first A.C. does, is one of those things you don’t have a margin of error for. The job itself is adjusting the lens to capture exact sharpness of the image from whatever distance the focus is. So if the actor moves a millimeter, the first A.C. adjusts. If the subject of the image moves from one person to another, you have to move too. It’s considered one of the, if not the, hardest jobs on set.

It’s also around then that Valeria runs up, still in her hoodie outfit. She’s sweating, but not gross sweating. Like that sweating that shouldn’t even be legal, where it’s just making her skin glow. “Can someone feed me the line?”

Brendan laughs. “You don’t have any lines. This is when you fall down the stairs, remember?”

Valeria grins. “You expect me to know this script?”

Then, in the most casual move I’ve ever seen, she just lifts up the bottom of her hoodie and wipes the sweat off her face. I know it’s not really in slow motion, but goddamn it, it might as well be. I’ve seen preteen boys and teenage boys and college boys do the exact same move over the years, but nothing has ever been like this heart-stopping moment. She’s not wearing a shirt under the hoodie, and it’s nowhere near showing her chest or anything, but her abs are—her abs are straight-up deep enough to eat cereal out of.

She shakes her head a little, letting the hoodie creep back down to cover her midriff. Absolutely no awareness.

“Jesus, Val, you wanna stop body-shaming me?” Brendan jokes. “Do you know what kind of pressure gay men are under to look perfect?”

Please no one talk to me. I have literally nothing productive to say right now.

“Look, Bren, I’m on a team-mandated prepress slim down and am legally obligated to eat only plain chicken and vegetables while doing full-body strength training at one a.m. because of this. Get back to Yosemite with me and I’ll stop unconsciously shaming you.”

Oh. I guess that explains the pictures with her dog at threea.m.

“Do you rock climb?” I ask.

I watched Free Solo once. Alex Honnold has ridiculously chiseled abs too. Maybe it’s a rock-climbing thing.

“I did,” Valeria says, running a hand through her hair. She needs to stop. “I broke my ankle bouldering, and my partner didn’t stop laughing until I said I needed to go to the hospital.”

Okay, ignore the abs—

Partner?

Yeah, it’s getting cooler for straight people to call their girlfriend or boyfriend “partner,” but it’s still mostly a queer thing.

Fuck. This should add up to a very clear yeah, she’s gay, but I can’t decide.

The scene around me loses its sharpness as I get lost in my head. It’s like looking up at the surface of a pool from below, this growing sensation of I’m not where I’m supposed to be. I need to be at the surface. I’m about to focus pull. The hardest job on set. I’m about to do the hardest job on set and I’m thinking about Valeria and her partner.

I don’t even realize I’m hyperventilating until Brendan says, “Deep breaths. It’s just one scene.”

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