Page 47 of The Love Haters

“You don’t want him sitting?”

Most interviewees sat: more conversational.

But I shook my head. “I want him standing.”

Standing like an alpha. With his feet shoulder-distance apart and his helmet under one arm. Shot from an underside angle to make him look even taller and emphasize the heroism.

But the lighting guy didn’t need all those details.

He took the chair away.

I positioned Hutch in an at-ease stance on a mark taped to the floor at a two-thirds split in the frame. Then I checked everything in the monitor.

Perfect. Except something was missing. Hutch had taken off his aviators when we came inside.

I walked back over to Hutch. “Give me your sunglasses,” I said.

“What? Why?”

“I want to try something.”

Hutch took the case out of a zipper pocket and handed it to me.

I took the glasses out, opened them up, and then stepped close to position them on his face. Wow, did all military men radiate this kind of buzzing electricity? Or was it just Hutch?

It distracted me a little. For a second, I kept my hands up on either side of his face, trying to focus and decide if the glasses were agoor ano-go.

“What are you doing?” Hutch said.

I stepped back. “Seeing if you look cooler with your aviators on.”

“I don’t,” Hutch said.

I wrinkled my nose. “I think every woman in America might disagree with you.”

“We areinside,” Hutch said then. “There is no sun here.”

“Details,” I said, waving it off.

“You don’t wear sunglasses inside a hangar.”

“Nobody knows that.”

“Iknow that.”

“They make you look cool,” I said, likeWhy are you fighting me?

“I don’t need tolookcool,” Hutch said—implying, but not actually saying,I am cool.

“Real life and video are not the same thing,” I said.

“But,” Hutch argued, “if you put on sunglasses when thereis no sun, then you’re just wearing them for show. Which amounts to trying to look cool. And I don’t know if you know this—but if you have to try to look cool, you’re not. By definition.”

Fortunately for the shot, he looked cool either way.

I flared my nostrils, stepped close again—feeling that same electrical force field of his body—and reached up to take them back off.

But just as my fingers touched his temples, Hutch said, “Did you know you have a little pie piece of brown in one of your eyes?”

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