Page 168 of My Five Daddies

I grin at her. “I’m not that kind of guy. Besides, I know I lookgood.”

She rolls her eyes and starts walking. I fall in beside her as we head across theset.

“Fact is, I’m new to all this,” I say to her. “I don’t really know what I’mdoing.”

“You seem pretty confident to me,” shesays.

“It’s easy to fake. I mean, two years ago, I was fighting on a battlefield in Syria, risking my damn life. And now I’m here, in front of cameras all daylong.”

She hesitates for a second. “That must be weird foryou.”

“Very weird,” I say. “Bizarre, actually. I was hoping…” I trail off a little bit as we walk though a group of stunt guys coordinating the nextscene.

“You were hoping what?” she asks, stopping and facingme.

“I was hoping you could help me. You know this business better than Ido.”

“You don’t need my help,” she says, not even thinking aboutit.

“I think I do,” I answer. “I’ve gotten lucky so far, but if I’m going to do this job for real, I need to learn how to be an actualactor.”

“And how can I help with that?” she asks, not batting aneye.

“You know how to act on these sets. I have no clue, I’m just fakingit.”

She watches me for a second, and I can’t help but look into her gorgeous deep eyes. I keep seeing that strong, serious girl that I knew so long ago. She’s still there, just buried under the years and so many experiences that I don’t know a damn thing about. I barely know Tara anymore, and yet I feel like I know her so well. She’s barelychanged.

“Sorry,” she says. “Ican’t.”

“Just have dinner with me tonight. We’ll talk about it, let me pick yourbrain.”

“No,” she says, shaking her head. “Sorry.”

Before I can say a word, she turns and walks off. I think about going after her, but I can’t see the point inthat.

The conversation bugs me for the rest of the day. I figured we had reached some kind of truce and maybe we could start being friends. But she was a little distant, maybe even a littlecold.

Maybe I’m stupid, but I can’t see where this resentment is still coming from. I know she’s still angry about what I did to her all those years ago, but this feels like it’s fresh or something like that. I don’t know what I’m doing to push her away, but it’s not like she’s going to open up and tellme.

I spend the rest of the day slightly distracted, but I get through shooting. We have a bunch of action sequences to get through, which is actually good for me. I like to get physical when I have a problem, and I find that doing these scenes over and over is pretty cathartic. By the end of the day, I’m tired, but I feel productive and my stress isgone.

At the end of a shooting day, the crew cleans up the set and starts to prep for tomorrow’s scenes. I take a shower while that’s happening, and by the time I’m done, people are usually heading home. Sometimes I go back to my apartment, have some scotch, and get some sleep. Sometimes I meet the crew guys out for a fewdrinks.

Today, I go looking for Tara. I’m not happy about how that conversation earlier went, and I want to know what the deal is. I asked her for help and she just outright turned me down. I want to get through that shell she has, and I can’t keep waiting for her to come tome.

I find her chatting with some extras near the catering tent. I walk up to the group with a smile on myface.

“Hey guys, mind if I steal her for a second?” I say tothem.

She looks at me with narrowed eyes but doesn’t say anything as I steer her away. We walk over to a more private part of the set. Above us, an enormous clock is ticking away, part of the scenery for tomorrow’s shoot. The face is glowing yellow, casting an eerie hue down on top ofus.

“What’s up, Jackson?” she says tome.

I watch her for a second, measuring her. “Why did you turn me downearlier?”

She sighs. “We don’t have to get intothis.”

“No, we do. You said we had atruce.”

---