Page 50 of First Impressions of You

“I know you’re scared,” Winter says, his eyes searching. “But this”—he pretends to peel off the mask he’s not wearing—“I had to put this on to protect myself. To protect my... I didn’t…” His voice shatters here, and my lips start to tremble as Melina’s emotions overwhelm me. It’s too much. It’s all too much. “I never thought I’d find you, Luiza.”

It takes the two of us a fraction of a second to realize his slip-up. His eyes widen, and he looks everywhere but at me. I close mine, unable to trust myself, but the tears won’t stop coming.

“Let’s take a break. Ten minutes,” Emily calls, breaking the uncomfortable silence that has fallen over the room. Today it’s just me, Winter, and the crew here, and I’m grateful no one else is witnessing my breakdown.

I all but run outside. I need air. I need to get away from him. From these confusing feelings. From the way my body responds to him even when all I want to do is hate him for what he’s done. To Graham. To Julia.

To me.

For the way he judged me so quickly even before he knew me. For installing self-doubt in me, as if I needed any more of that. For the way he’s making my job infinitely harder.

I need distance, but it’s the only thing I don’t get because Winter follows me outside.

“What happened?” he asks behind me. I don’t turn around.

“Nothing.”

“Hey.”

“Don’t.”

I don’t know if I’m relieved or disappointed when I hear the door close after Winter gets back inside, leaving me alone to process this tsunami of feelings. Except ten minutes are not nearly enough, and when I get back inside all I can do is put on a brave face and get back inside Melina’s mind.

We reset the scene. Winter calls me Melina this time, but when I say my lines, when Melina tells Arthur she can’t forgive him for lying to her, for hiding something so important after she trusted him, it takes much more effort for the words not to come out hollow.

“Melina, please,” he pleads. “Please, believe me. I would never hurt you. You need to believe me. Tell me you know I would never hurt you.” His words feel like a punch in the gut. “It’s me. I’m your best friend. I would never do that to you. It’s me, Melina. Please, see me.”

His smooth, low voice cracks in the last sentence and along with it something snaps behind his eyes. Like a rubber band pulled too tight. One second, he’s pouring his heart out; the next, he’s retreating behind an armor thicker than Arthur’s.

“Everything I ever did was for you,” he finishes his lines, but the words come out with no emotion, like he’d used up all he had.

It’s such a quick change from the way he just was a second ago, I get whiplash. It paralyzes me. I try to evoke emotion, a drop of it, but I can’t find any. It’s like I’m holding a mirror in front of a black hole, excepting it to reflect light. I can’t return feelings I’m not receiving in the scene.

This is such an emotionally charged moment in the play, and when Emily calls cut, I know it’s fallen flat. I know she’s not happy before I turn to see the expression in her face as she walks up the stage.

“You guys have a lot at stake here,” she reminds us, her eyes running between me and Winter. “Both of you. And you know it.”

We nod in understanding. I want to know what’s at stake for Winter, but I don’t dare ask. I know what’s at stake for me, and that’s plenty.

“I hired you because you were the best for these roles. You were the best together. Your chemistry test was off the charts, something we so rarely see in productions this size. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I had to work with leads that had less chemistry than Sandra Bullock and Bradley Cooper in All About Steve. What you two showed me…” She takes a step towards us. “It was magical. And I want to see that again. I don’t want another rehearsal like this. I don’t want to end this play without believing you’re madly in love with each other. No one wants to leave Movieland without witnessing a happily ever after, and you’re responsible for giving that to the audience. I don’t care what you have to do to get that chemistry back, you’ll do it.”

It’s not a question. She’s not asking us to do it. She’s telling us we will. The “or else” is implied.

I go back home feeling terrible and hating Winter for putting us both in this situation. If he wasn’t such an awful person, we would have no problems acting together, but it had to be him. I had to get the worst fucking scene partner for my first big job. For my one chance at the career of my dreams.

Walking home under the sun is my way to decompress. I live about an hour away from Movieland on foot, and many times when I worked at the front gate, I’d just walk instead of taking the bus.

Burbank is a nice city to live. Close enough to LA that in just a few minutes I can be in Hollywood, but far enough out that traffic isn’t insane. As I walk along a calm street, passing by Tudor, Spanish, and colonial-style houses, I try to come up with solutions to the problem at hand.

No matter what my feelings for Winter are. I won’t let him destroy my dream. I just need to find a way for us to manage our hatred of each other while we’re on stage. That’s what a good professional would do.

I think back to the conversation I had with Emily. To the story she told me of her journey from Uruguay. All the hoops she had to jump through to get to where she is now, and I can’t help but compare myself to her.

What do I have to show for myself? Other than a collection of rejections and a job at the front gate, I spent eight out of the twelve months I have accomplishing nothing, and now that I finally have a chance, a good one, I’m basically throwing it away because of a guy.

Was my mother right when she told me I couldn’t do it? Was she right all along? Am I really not going to make it?

“What happens when things get difficult, Luiza? When you realize that what you want won’t fall on your lap? That you have to work hard for it? Huh? Will you give up like you’re doing with med school?”

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