Page 85 of Beyond the Bright Lights

It’s been a month since filming began. A month of watching Mylan work his magic. He's pure art. The way he falls into the character and embraces it like a second personality. He’s doing this role justice.

I soon realized that things were changed from the book either because it was easier to film, translated better from paper to film, or to have a bigger impact. As if telling the inspiring story of a young college football player who dies of cancer and spends his final days raising money to help others isn’t a big enough impact.

The locker room scene where Tyler helps a teammate was changed to him helping a student in the cafeteria who didn’t have enough food at home. So, movie-Tyler held a fundraiser to make sure that student never went hungry again.

The cliff scenes, when Tyler proposed to me and when we met as kids, also changed. For some reason, they didn’t include him pushing me off the edge, which is the best part of how we met.

My favorite part.

If I’m honest, having that sweet moment erased from the big screen adaptation is disappointing. How will the fans react to this change and all the others? Rebecca said she had to make concessions in order to get the movie made. While she wasn’t happy about those changes, she said she’ll play along and show her support once the film is out. The production company hopes that will lessen any fallout. Rebecca also warned her fans on her social media pages that things will be different but quote, ‘good different.’

Something I also learned about filming a movie is that it comes with a lot of downtime. Mylan told me he’d normally read a book or take a nap in between scenes. But with me there, we’d fuck or cuddle or talk about nothing while talking about everything; our favorite colors (me: blue, him: black), foods (me: donuts, him: pizza), books (me: The Kit Davenport series by Tate James, him: Dune by Frank Herbert), movies (me: Titanic, him: Dune).

We shared our love of music. I was shocked when he told me his favorite band was Queen. He mostly listens to classic rock, which explains why he chose Journey to sing that first night of Rock Star Karaoke.

While John Mayer is my all-time favorite artist, my favorite song is We Belong by Pat Benatar. The song embodies happy memories for me. Every time it came on the radio, my mother would stop what she was doing and turn up the volume. She’d come find me if I wasn’t in the same room and then we’d have a dance party in the living room, twirling and jumping around until we were out of breath and sweating.

After telling Mylan that memory, he found the song on YouTube, turned up the volume on his phone, and we had an impromptu dance party in his trailer.

I love impromptu dance parties.

Mylan and I shared happy stories. Most of mine involved Tyler and Ginger.

I told Mylan about senior skip day in high school. Ginger, Tyler, and I drove to Memphis to walk around Beale Street. We stuffed ourselves with the best barbecue in the nation and snuck into a bar with our fake IDs. Tyler and Ginger got silly drunk while I stayed sober since I was the designated driver. I was always the designated driver, but that was by choice. After what happened to my parents, drinking just didn’t appeal to me. Tyler wasn’t much of a drinker either, especially during football season. The first time I ever consumed alcohol was in college. I hated the way it made me feel; out of control and sick to my stomach. People always found it ironic that I own a bar but don’t drink.

Mylan told me about some of his favorite places he traveled. He showed me pictures and videos from his trips: the beaches of Bali, the ancient city of Marrakesh, the ghosts of New Orleans, the fairies of Scotland. I admitted how I’d never been out of the country and the only places I'd traveled were within driving distance of Silo, aside from my senior class trip to Disney World. I’ve lived such a guarded life, never allowing myself to follow my dreams.

Part of that was because that dream included Tyler. We both wanted to travel the world. We had planned to take the summer after college graduation to backpack through Europe, to wade in the crystal-clear waters of the Caribbean, to hunker down in an igloo in Alaska and watch the Northern Lights dance in the sky.

Then we’d return home and begin our lives together. I’d open my bar and Tyler would get a job mentoring troubled youth. We’d adopt or foster since I could no longer have children. Now that I’m older, the idea of having my own family gets further and further out of reach, because I never found anyone to begin that journey with.

Mylan and I talked about the happy memories, while avoiding conversations about our demons—our trauma that never seemed to relent.

One month.

It went by so fast. My days stayed busy, going to set in the morning then to Lilies at night to help, despite Ginger’s griping at me that she and the staff had everything under control. I knew they did, but I still felt guilty for abandoning them.

“Spill,” Ginger says, pulling me out of my thoughts. I'd been staring at the paperwork on the counter, absentmindedly chewing on my pencil. “You’ve got the look.”

“You always say I have a ‘guilty look’ but never tell me what my face does to convey said guilty look.”

She sets the last chair on the table-top so the overnight cleaning crew can come in to sweep and mop and walks over to where I'm leaning against the counter.

She boops my nose.

“Your nose scrunches up and twitches like a bunny. A mean bunny, but still.”

I flip her off.

“The wrinkles around your mouth and between your brows also get more defined.”

I gasp. “I do not have wrinkles.” I take out my phone and throw on selfie mode to double check, frowning when I do, in fact, spot wrinkles.

Ginger bursts out laughing.

“Of course, you do, Lana Banana. You’re old, like me.”

“But you still look like you’re in your twenties.”

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