Page 43 of Sizzle Reel

And literally all I’m doing is putting the camera in focus. Brendan does the rest. I’ve done this job hundreds of times in school. I can do this even while distracted by Valeria.

The camera notes are already planned. They’re doing a wide shot for the fall. The camera is new enough that there’s a monitor for me to look at to put the shot in focus without putting my eye to the viewfinder. I adjust the aperture, the white balance, etc. By the time I’ve got that done, I’m working twice as hard to suck breath in, so focused I stop feeling my fingertips.

Brendan takes my place, nods, and shit, that’s it.

But then Brendan frowns after the take.

“It’s”—he squints—“not quite there. Luna, come here and give it another shot.”

My heart bangs against my rib cage as I redo my work. It looks perfect to me, so I’m adjusting for the sake of adjusting. The crew’s eyes are on me as I tinker. Stupid knew-someone hire, they must be thinking.

I pull away, hoping well enough is good.

We do another take.

“Hey, I want to try something different,” Valeria says. “One more take.”

I move to adjust the camera, but Brendan stops me.

“Hey, all good,” he says. “I got it for this one.”

By the time I’m placed back on camera P.A. duties, I can’t even feel the rubber of my shoes hitting the wood and tile that’s all over this house. Brendan’s glances at me go from friendly to furtive, pitying. My insides melt and slosh, fingers shaking with every tiny task.

And when he delegates the first A.C. duties to another camera P.A., my guts have pooled into my shoes and my body is nothing but an aching shell.

I lost Brendan’s interest.

By the time the shoot ends, I’m officially back on coffee duty. We end so late that there’s no traffic on my drive back to K-Town. I’m physically spent, but my mind is racing. If I can’t get back into Brendan’s good graces, I officially don’t have a job in less than a week. I have to pay rent, I have to follow my dreams, and everything ends in a week. There’s no more room to mess around with Valeria on set.

Yet this may be my only time with Valeria too.

“So you still want your bedroom, right?” Romy says as I drop into the chair in her room. For some reason we always end up hanging out in each other’s bedrooms when it gets late, despite having a tiny but perfectly fine common space. Old dorm habits die hard, I suppose.

I smile wryly. “We’re not turning my bedroom into an arcade, no matter how good of a stress reliever it would be.”

After having shared a bedroom dorm style for years, it’d more been our parents who thought it was time for us to have separate rooms. And don’t get me wrong, I appreciate my own space, but sometimes I miss the days when we didn’t even have walls to separate us. It just felt like we knew everything about each other in those times. And okay, an arcade would be fun.

I glance at her bedroom door, wondering if I should kill this conversation to go change into pajamas or leave the door open to continue it. Prior to my coming out, we had no shame, going full locker room. And, of course, if Straight Me was fine with changing in front of Romy no matter her sexual orientation, why should I act differently now that I’m aware of the fact that Romy’s body is attractive? It feels like such a ridiculous conundrum that I don’t even want to voice it out loud.

The moment, naturally, is stolen from me when Romy throws off her barista T-shirt, crumples it into a ball, yells, “Kobe!” and throws it into her laundry basket. It makes it in. She whoops, cheesing. I smile, but then my stomach turns into knots when she unhooks her bra. She wrinkles her brow at me and turns around, grabbing a shirt out of her drawer. I wipe my palms on my sweat-stained shirt. At this point I’m just waiting for an opportune moment to go quickly change.

“These ended up in my stuff,” Romy says, tossing me a shirt and pajama shorts of mine.

I glance at her door and exhale. Turn around. Shirt off, bra off, nightshirt on. I step into my pajama shorts. Finally, I look at Romy. She’s got little fried eggs on her shorts and a matching shirt with fried eggs right over her nipples. A present I got her.

“How do you keep coordinated pajamas together?” I ask.

She flops onto her bed stomach-first, curling up to look me in the eye. The shirt isn’t revealing at all, but I still paint the lines of her body as she sinks into the mattress pad. “Any cool girls on the apps?”

I want nothing more than to spill what happened at work to Romy, but I can’t process that right now. I need a distraction. I don’t even know where to start with Brendan, and I don’t want to make Romy shoulder it all anyway. She’s doing enough with the Valeria thing.

I open the one dating app I’ve decided I don’t hate this month. I’ve gotten three girl matches, one who’s chatted me up. “Why don’t the girls talk to me?”

“Girls are less likely to be aggressive than guys.”

“Even though I’m a bottom?”

“Luna, look at me: a sapphic who has the confidence and the top energy to pull you along the way an alpha dude will is rare. No one will stop liking you because you pursue a little. Promise.”

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