Page 16 of The Love Rematch
“For you to relax,” the director says. “I’m having anxiety just looking at you. It’s messing with my first-night mojo. I need to feel the romance, the ambience, the spark of new love, not your slow descent into neurotic hell.”
“Sorry.” Jake drops his arms to his sides, then crosses them, then lifts one hand to his chin.
“Jake.”
“I know. I know. It’s just—” He runs his fingers through his hair and accidentally dislodges his headset. It falls to the floor with an embarrassingly loud crash. Jake hastens to get it back in place. “It’s my first night as field producer. I need this to go right. I need this to be perfect.”
He’s only half talking about the job, but Fred doesn’t seem to notice.
“Come here.”
Jake obliges and crosses the distance between them. He’s careful to keep his head turned toward the limos, trying to delay the inevitable for a few minutes longer.
“Look here.” Fred motions toward the camera.
Jake takes a deep breath and puts his eye to the lens, a spot that usually feels like home. Instead, his pulse climbs. His palms sweat. On the other side of that camera, a fountain twinkles, candles flicker, blooming roses sway gently in the ocean breeze. What the camera doesn’t show is the massive fan providing said breeze, or the dead bushes piled up in the corner that needed to be replaced two days ago, or the spotlights scattered around the driveway. Television versus reality. Mundane versus magical. Jake knows this—he knows all the tricks. He doesn’t need to see any more, doesn’t want to look any closer.
He can’t turn away.
His eyes train on the heavy wooden door barely visible through breaks in the foliage.A countdown starts in the back of his mind.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
“You may be new at this,” Fred says, unaware of Jake’s mounting panic, “but I’m not. Romance is my calling, Jake. It’s in my blood. Even if you have thirty of the most undesirable men in America in those limos, I’ll turn them all into Prince Charming. I’ve got this.You’vegot this. Calm down.”
A sweeping motion catches his eye, the one he’s been dreading, the one he’s been waiting for—a slow-motion car crash he can’t escape.
There’s a sparkle.
Then a gleam.
Liquid starlight shifts through crimson petals, until—
Boom.
Emily emerges from the garden like Venus from the sea. The spotlights catch the crystal studs along every inch of her dress, illuminating her like some sort of fever dream. He’s delirious, woozy. Though he’s imagined this moment a million different ways, she’s more beautiful than he thought possible, more disarming, more striking, more…everything. His gaze goes straight to her mouth as she pulls her plump lower lip between her teeth, a nervous habit he remembers far too well. Her hair is swept up, revealing the graceful arch of her neck. She turns to look over her shoulder, and he chokes on his own breath as the soft skin of her back is revealed. He can’t help but follow the line of her spine, down, down, down, his imagination taking him the rest of the way, and he groans in physical pain.
She spins as if she heard.
Her golden eyes look directly into the lens, a mix of nerves and determination. They gleam with something he can’t quite place.
Suddenly, he’s back in time.
It was the first day of school, senior year. Jake leaned against the lockers, fiddling with his camcorder, while his best friend, Nate, droned on about how that year everything was going to be different, how it was finally their time. He put his eye to the viewfinder and tuned out the hum of voices, the minutiae, the noise. His world calmed. He zeroed in on the small details the camera allowed him to see—a subtle touch, a nervous fiddle, a broken smile. He swept his focus across the hall and searched for something interesting, something new, something—
Wait.
He backtracked, stopped, and waited for the crowd to part again. Then he hit record. Zoomed so close, all he could see were two golden eyes as bright as the sun. They held no shadows, no darkness. They glittered with a vibrancy Jake had never felt, but he did then. A prickle sparked in his chest like a warm ray shining directly on his heart. He zoomed out, needing to see more. A button nose appeared, then a smattering of freckles across a rosy cheek, and perfect Cupid’s-bow lips. Then—
“Dude.” Nate elbowed Jake in the side, ruining the shot. “Twins.”
He tried to shake his friend off, but it was too late. He’d lost her. Jake dropped the camera and glared at Nate, who was still looking down the hall.
“Dude,” he said again, this time grabbing Jake’s forearm and shaking it. “Redheaded twins!”
