Page 21 of Home to Me

At least it sounded smug to her ears.

“I’m guess I’m just full of surprises,” Lauren said dryly.

Ben laughed a little and smiled a slow, sexy, melt-your-panties-off smile. “Oh, I bet you are.”

Lauren's breathing quickened, as it was developing a very annoying habit of doing around Ben. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the rest of the candidates looking at her like they wouldn't mind if she suddenly became the victim of spontaneous human combustion. This did absolutely nothing to ease her discomfort.

Just then, an AD came through the door and rescued Lauren—although she was sure that wasn’t his intent—by announcing that Ben was needed on set.

“See you in there, Ms. Harrison,” Ben said with a mischievous glint in his eye.

Lauren just nodded, not trusting her voice lest it betray the rush of lust that was currently flowing through her body.

As the doors shut behind Ben she noticed that all of the women in the waiting area were now staring at her blankly, their hostility somewhat less overt now that they knew she could see them.

She ignored them and continued checking her e-mails.

The same AD came back through the door again and started to call the women in the waiting room one by one. Lauren felt as if she were in an Agatha Christie novel as she watched the other candidates disappear through the door one by one, eventually leaving no one in the waiting room but her.

She had a sneaking suspicion that there was a good chance that Ben had intentionally left her for last as a way of tweaking her, of messing with her mind. She didn't think that it went so far as wanting to throw her off her game. No, he didn't seem mean-spirited, just self-centered. She wouldn't put it past him to do something like this just to tease her.

Each audition seemed to be taking ten to fifteen minutes on average. Lauren wondered if it was better if it went longer or if it was shorter. She would guess longer, because if they liked your look and how you sounded, it seemed like they would want to put you into different situations to gauge your responses, to see how easy you were to work with, to see how directable you were.

She guessed an argument could be made for the opposite point as well. If they didn't like you at all, why bother even keeping you for ten minutes? These were busy people, after all. Maybe, in the shorter auditions, they’d seen what they needed right away and in the longer auditions, they were trying to tease what they were looking for out of someone who was not ever going to get there.

Lauren shook her head. She needed to get all of this guesswork out of her head. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered but focusing on doing her best. She could never get inside their heads, and trying to do so was not going to help her give a better performance. In fact, it might even distract her. She just needed to think about running her best race.

Finally, as Lauren sat alone in the reception room, the AD came back in for the final time and gestured for her to follow. When they arrived at their destination, she was placed in front of a green screen, and there was a PA holding cue cards beside the camera. The cards held the lines she’d been instructed to memorize.

That's odd, she thought. Why would they put those up if they told us all to commit them to memory? Hmm, Hollywood. She would never understand it.

The AD came over to her. “How you feelin'?” the man inquired in a tone of voice that told her that how she was feeling was not even in his list of top thousand or so concerns.

Lauren just smiled in response.

“Yeah, great, great,” he said, although she hadn't actually answered. “So here's the rundown. We're gonna do one take of you solo and then one take with Ben.”

Lauren nodded. She knew all of this. It had been explained in detail when she checked in.

The AD moved behind the camera and began to count down, beginning with three, two, and then mouthed a silent one as he pointed at her. At the same instance that he pointed, the red light on top of the camera flashed on.

Lauren froze.

Her mind was a complete blank. She opened and closed her mouth several times, hoping that starting the physical act of speaking would jog her brain into remembering what she was supposed to say, but that didn’t happen. In fact, all that happened was that she felt like a trout on the bank of the river, flapping its mouth open and shut.

She couldn't remember what she was supposed to say. She couldn't remember what she was supposed to do. She didn't remember that there were cards next to the camera that she could read from. She barely remembered there was a camera. She was completely and totally frozen.

Lauren had never felt this way before, and she hated it. She was paralyzed with fear. Her palms were sweating; her heart was racing. Worst of all? She had no idea how to stop it.

She heard the director yell, “Cut!” from behind the camera, and then he walked over to Lauren and asked if she was all right. As soon as the red light turned off, Lauren's brain cells started to function again and she was able to explain to him that, yes, she was perfectly fine.

“I'm so sorry,” Lauren apologized profusely. “I have no idea what came over me. Honestly, it was the strangest thing. I'm mortified.”

“It happens,” he sympathized. “So you think you're okay to go again?”

Lauren nodded decisively. There was no way in hell that she was going to let this thing get the better of her again.

She felt fine as she heard the countdown—actually sensed herself getting more confident as the numbers crept closer to one. That was her competitive spirit coming out. She wanted to win.

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