Page 36 of Happy Trails & Honey Pots

Austin never did well in school. He struggled with standardized tests, but was always good when we did our homework together and I read the problems out loud to him. And I mean, come on, what teenage boy decides to get bees to make a girl honey over the summer, one they’d never even spoken to before?

“My dyslexia is what makes me good at my job.”

“It is?” AJ asked.

“Well, I mean that depends on if you think I’m good at my job.” Miles chuckled.

AJ laughed.

“I think that you can use your dyslexia as a tool. So, when you get a scene like this one, really picture it. You’re not in this living room. You are in the library or the hallway, or wherever the scene takes place. And you’re not talking to the reader, who is me, or if you decide to be an actor, it might be a casting director; you are talking to the other character in the scene. So, close your eyes and picture where you are.”

I didn’t hear anything for about thirty seconds.

“Do you see where you are?” Miles asked.

“Yes,” AJ responded.

“Okay, think about what you want from the scene. Do you know what you want?”

“I want her to like me.”

“Okay, great. So that is what you want. It doesn’t matter what the words are. That’s your goal. Okay, let’s try it again.”

I lowered down in the chair and listened as they ran through all three scenes that they were going to be filming for the audition. It was strange to hear AJ saying things his dad had said to me. But it was also incredible to hear how natural he was at saying them. He didn’t sound like Austin had. He was making it his own. It was night and day from what he’d sounded like before.

Miles had given AJ a great gift tonight. Whether he got the part or not, he’d shown AJ a different side to his dyslexia and educated me on how my son’s brain worked. I didn’t know how I’d ever repay him for that. I mean, I had a few ways I’d like to, but they were not appropriate at all. Nope. Not at all. But that didn’t stop me from thinking about them. And dreaming about them. And thinking about them again.

16

MILES

“What do you think?”Braxton ran her fingers along the surface of the large black wooden conference table in the middle of the 1400-square-foot room. On one side, there was an entire bay of floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the water. White oak wide plank flooring, several desks lining a brick wall, and two couches on the opposite side, along with exposed ventilation and pipes, gave the room a very industrial feel. “It used to be an old tire warehouse.”

This was the perfect space for our temporary production offices.

Technically, since we were only going to be shooting in Firefly for two weeks, we didn’t need an office here since the majority of principal photography was going to be in New Mexico. But since this was where Austin was born and raised, it felt right that this was where the home base forFallen Herowould be.

I wanted to be close to his friends, his family, and his neighbors in his hometown. I wanted to absorb everything. The smells, the sounds, the atmosphere. Not to mention…Zoe. She’dimprinted herself onto me, and I couldn’t seem to stop thinking of her. The more I tried, the worse it got.

When I was at her house working with AJ, I’d nearly kissed her when all I should have done was remove a dryer sheet from her jeans. But having her so close was a temptation I’d been nearly powerless to resist. Even now, if I closed my eyes, I could still feel her hands on my chest, still smell the fresh scent of her…

“Miles. What do you think?” Braxton repeated the question.

“It’s perfect. You killed it, as always.”

Braxton had been tasked with finding the space because I’d flown to Miami for the night to go to a restaurant opening for one of the investors in Ford Entertainment. I’d kept the initial buy-in small. Myself and three other shareholders were the only people with stakes in the company. I’d spoken to all three last night at the opening and let them know my plans for Braxton, which they had all approved.

“Have you seen the latest top sheet? I updated it this morning.” Braxton asked as she sat and opened up her laptop.

“No.”

I’d come here straight from the airport and had spent my time on the flight and the drive here going over the latest draft of the script. The second and third acts, which take place after Austin leaves for Afghanistan, were pretty much locked. We’d had enough source material to write those before I’d come to Firefly. But since arriving, I’d gotten more information, stories, and videos that Shania and Andy were including in the first act, which was the first eighteen years of Austin’s life, well, starting when he was thirteen, about to be fourteen. The movie opens on the scene in the library where he sees Zoe reading to four and five-year-olds. The first act is their love story. It follows them from their first date to when she says goodbye to him for the last time at the bus station when she’s holding AJ in her arms.

That was the section of the script that still needed tweaking. It had to be perfect. Zoe had agreed to give notes on it, and I had to admit, I was nervous about her reading it. It was close to being locked, and I’d sent her the current draft about fifteen minutes ago and still hadn’t heard anything. When I opened my computer, I checked my messages and saw that there was nothing from her.

“Okay, so—” Braxton began.

“Before we start,” I cut her off and pressed send on the email that had been sitting in my drafts since last night. “There’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”

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