Page 4 of Happy Trails & Honey Pots

After securing the rights, I’d spoken to the producers who had been attached to it from the beginning, and they’d forwarded the emails they’d exchanged with her. From the very first correspondence, she’d stated unequivocally she’d wanted no part of it.

I had hired two writers, Andy Carpenter and Shania Thomas, and they were working on the final draft. We needed the script locked by the end of the month. But I still felt like there was something missing. I needed to include Austin’s childhood in the film. Although the story was predominately focused on his heroic efforts in Afghanistan, where he saved both civilians and his fellow Marines’ lives, I needed to show what shaped him into the hero he was.

The other thing his fellow Marines mentioned was his grandfather Walter, who raised him after his mom left when he was three years old. None of them knew anything about hisfather. They talked about how much he loved his hometown, Firefly Island, and his friends there. A few of them remembered their names from when they spoke at the funeral: Harlan Mitchell and Jack Dawson.

I knew that Austin’s story would not be complete without digging deeper. If I was going to inhabit Austin James and do his life and his story justice, then I needed to get to the heart of the man, who he was, and that meant learning about his wife, his son, his grandfather, his friends, and his hometown.

Braxton’s phone vibrated, and she turned off her alarm. “Okay, we’re up. Last looks.”

I stood and glanced in the mirror. My brown hair was a little longer than I typically wore it. And my trademark clean-shaven square jaw was peppered with stubble. It was part of my attempt at rebranding myself as a grown man and not a teenager.

“All good?” I turned to Braxton.

“You don’t have food on your teeth or anything in your nose, which are really the only things that can make you look bad since you are nauseatingly attractive.”

“Aww, thanks.” For Braxton, that was actually a very sweet compliment.

“It’s so sad that it’s wasted on you.”

“Wasted?”

“All this.” She waved her hand up and down. “Wasted.”

“What?”

“When’s the last time you’ve had a date?”

I tried to remember the last time I’d gone out with someone. My last relationship was with my co-star, Courtney Simms. That was two years ago. But that ended up being more of a showmance, at least on her side. I thought it was something more, but as soon as we wrapped the movie, she called a wrap on our relationship. I was sure I’d seen someone since then, but I couldn’t remember who.

“If you have to think that hard about it, then it’s been too long.”

“What about you?” I turned the question back on her. “When’s the last time you’ve been out with someone?”

“Last week,” she quickly shot back.

“Seriously?”

She tilted her head to the left. “You don’t know my business.”

Apparently not.

Three rapid knocks sounded on the door.

“Come in.” Braxton called out.

Marissa stuck her head in. “We’re ready for you.”

Braxton and I started toward the door, and Marissa did a double, then a triple take.

“I’m sorry.” Her eyes were wide as she stared at Braxton. “Has anyone ever told you that you look exactly like Rihanna?”

“Yes, they have.” Braxton glanced in my direction with a twinkle in her eye.

Braxton was named after the singer Toni Braxton, who was her mother’s favorite R&B artist, but she was the spitting image of Rihanna. We had a running tally of how many times she was told that she looked like the singer. When I first hired her, she said she’d be rich if she had a dollar for every time someone told her that. So, as a joke, I started sending her a dollar every time someone did. Last year, it ended up being close to five thousand dollars. One day alone, at the Sundance Film Festival, there were over two hundred people at an after-party who all chimed in about her look-alike appearance.

We followed Marissa out of the trailer. On the way to the red carpet, Braxton walked beside me. During these junkets, she stayed close so she could feed me facts about each interviewer before I stepped up to the mics. Something I learned a long time ago was that the press treated you a lot better when you treatedthem well. They had a lot more power than people believed they did.

If it were up to me, I would take the time to get to know each person I met, to learn their life story, and save it in my memory banks. But unfortunately, that was impossible to do with the sheer number of people I met on a daily basis. Which made Braxton even more indispensable to me, considering she had a photographic memory.

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