Page 48 of The Love Haters

I held still. “Yes.”

“Not really a pie piece, even, because the edges are blurry, like it was airbrushed.”

I hadn’t thought of it like that before.

“Does it have a name?” Hutch asked then.

“Does what have a name?”

“When part of your iris is a different color like that?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Probably?”

Hutch kept staring straight at my eyes. My finger pads were still touching the sides of his glasses. “Well,” Hutch said, like he was summing everything up. “It’s cool.”

“Cool?” I asked.

“Your pie piece,” he said. “It’s cool.”

“And I didn’t even have to try,” I said.

I was supposed to be taking off his aviators. So I did.

“Exactly,” Hutch said. “You’re a fast learner.” Then, before I turned away, Hutch had another question. He lifted the sunglasses and said, “Why didn’t you just ask me to put these on myself?”

Huh. I thought for a second. Whyhadn’tI done that? “I guess I’m just used to handling the props.”

“These aren’t props. These are my actual glasses.”

Bit of an overly fine point. “Now that you’re in a video,” I said, “they’re kind of both.”

TIME TO GETstarted. I checked the frame again and sent a silent prayer of thanks to the heavens that Hutch looked even better on camera than he did in real life. There are people in this world you just can’t help but want to stare at, and Hutch was definitely one of them. Frown and all.

Good for him.

But also good for my career.

Plus, he turned out to be appealing. As a person. Pilots and flight mechanics kept walking by, catcalling him and teasing him with “Work it, baby!”—and he’d duck his head in the most irresistible aw-shucks way and smile at that spotless concrete floor. He clearly disliked being the center of attention—but he was also a really good sport about it.

Not to mention the moment when—and I swear this has never, ever happened before—I caught my foot in one of the lighting cables and knocked over one of the big lights—and myself. The lighting guy caught the light just in time, and Hutch, out of nowhere, caughtme.

“Got ya,” Hutch said. Before I even registered that I wasin his arms, he had me back on my feet and was picking up his helmet and returning to his mark.

As if rescuing people was as no-big-deal as breathing.

Which I guess maybe it was—for him.

“Thank you!” I called, brushing myself off. Then adding, “That never happens, by the way.” Right? I knew my way around a set. I didn’t just go around from job to job, tripping on lighting cables like a loony bird.

I blamed the weirdness of this weird day. And Hutch. And his aviators.

I got back to work and checked the monitor one more time—noting that drab green and Coast Guard orange were complementary colors.

Sometimes you just know when you’ve got a project in the bag. Hutch looked so good on-screen, I’d have watched that interview with the sound off. This video was going to rock, I thought. I had no option but to crush it. This guy wasbornto be interviewed.

Until the interview actually started.

Let’s just say that Hutch turned out to be… not exactly a natural.

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