Page 15 of On the Beat

“The dinner of champions.” I drink my too-sweet, too-milky Kopiko three-in-one coffee.

“Precisely.” Ryder eats a shred of pickled papaya. His culinary palate seems to be more expansive than I’d previously thought, despite his aversion to spicy food.

I catch a glimpse of a bird outside the window, resting on the railing, and decide it might be a good opening shot for my latest music review video-slash-vlog. Maybe Iambecoming a travel influencer. “I’ll be right back.”

After snapping a quick shot of the seagull just before it soars away, squawking and flapping its wings over the ocean, I return to my seat.

Paulo and Ryder are now joking around, heads bent together and one of them slugging the other in the shoulder. I raise the camera and snap a picture without thinking. “Smile.”

Ryder doesn’t smile. Not on command—it’s become his signature trait with the paparazzi, his ill-tempered glower, the glare that launches a thousand ships.

So why would he smile now?

Ryder holds out a hand after I lower the camera from my face, and tension twists in my chest. “Can I see that?”

“Sure.” I lift the strap from around my neck. “It’s all yours.”

He adjusts one of the dials for a moment, looking down at the screen with an intensity I can’t quite place. Then he passes the camera back to me, the intensity fading into a carefully crafted blankness.

Or maybe I’m just fooling myself, thinking there’s more to this cardboard cutout pop star than there really is. “Thanks.”

Ryder Black hops off of his chair just as I realize he’s deleted the picture from my camera.

* * *

Of course I didn’t confront him about the photo.

I have to live with him for three months.

Doesn’t that mean youshouldconfront him, though? You know, so that you can make sure this doesn’t happen again?

Wasn’t he setting a pretty clear boundary?

If he didn’t want his picture taken, couldn’t he just say so?

I don’t bother to try understanding him. Instead, I just try to stay out of his way for the rest of the day.

First, I finish filming my music review—face hidden, voice modulated—of Ryder Black’s latest music video, a reaction to his song,Always and Forever. His music video is filmed on Venice Beach, and the sunny setting and colourful tourists and kids whizzing by on skateboards doesn’t reflect the moodiness of the song. At least, it doesn’t, really, until you realize that the whole ‘story’ of the music video is about being sad in a beautiful place. Ryder performs his role diligently, looking exquisitely heartbroken and soul-crushing in each of his takes. He’s not an actor, so I hardly expect any emotional range from him. But doesn’t he get tired of making breakup songs?

Avoiding Ryder, for the most part, is easy enough. He seems to either ignore me or not notice me at all. Instead, he’s preoccupied with strumming his guitar, and cracking inside jokes with my cousin that I don’t understand. They talk about UCLA and turn the city I’ve called home for the past few years into a place more foreign to me than El Nido. The way they talk about it makes it devoid of a single speck of familiarity or even comfort, talking about restaurants I’ve never been to and people I don’t know and faces I’ll never see.

I feel like an outsider, even if Ryder doesn’t kick me out.

Deciding to catch more shots of the beach, I snap a few pictures before filming a longer clip of the shore. Ryder is sitting on one of the Adirondack chairs by the sand, singingAlways and Foreverto himself, but in a more plaintive, mournful tone than before, if such a thing were possible. Why not throw that clip in there, even if I never put it on YouTube and only save it for my own critiques of his work? I’m so engrossed in what I see beyond the camera lens, looking away from him, that I barely notice when Ryder stomps up and snatches the camera out of my hands.

“What the heck?” I lunge for the camera, but he holds it above his head. I roll my eyes. A classic schoolyard bullying tactic. Didn’t we progress past this ten years ago? “Give back my camera, please.”

“Stop filming, then. I didn’t come here to be dissected for a documentary or whatever you’re doing.”

Deciding to wait until he gets tired of holding mypossessionsover his head, I fold my arms over my chest. “I was just filming the beach.”

He pushes the buttons on the video camera until it plays back the last few clips. “Then what were you doing with a video of me singing?”

“You’re paranoid,” I say. “I’ll ask you one more time to give me my camera back, please.”

“I’m notparanoid.”He sneers. “You have no right to film me. This is private property and I don’t care if you’re a journalist. If you act like paparazzi, that’s how I’ll treat you.”

“You happened to be in the way of my shot. Maybe if youmovedor didn’t take up so much space, I wouldn’t have filmed you.”

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