Chapter Four
Alessandra
Morning came all too quickly.
After getting the kid off to school, and grabbing a yogurt parfait in the parking lot, I walked with my head held high to the trailer to get everything set up for today.
Kandi, the girl with the blue hair who did the costumes, was finishing up her choices when I opened the door.
“Morning,” I said politely. She wasn’t a super nice person, as far as I could tell. She just popped her bubble in my direction and went back to putting outfits together.
“Okay, then,” I mumbled under my breath and went to my station. Today’s scenes were pretty easy. Well, for me. Joel was going to have to do some stunt fighting, which I found out he trained to do so he could perform them all himself. No stunt double in this movie. I was slightly impressed by the amount of work he put into these films. No one could say Joel Kline wasn’t a hard worker.
“All right, ladies, let’s make this mug into a hero.” Joel opened the door and held his arms out, like we were his fairy godmothers that were just going to wave a wand and fix him up to save the world.
I rolled my eyes, and Kandi just popped another bubble in her mouth. That had to exhaust her jaw muscles, chewing gum all day like that. I swear I never saw her without a piece smacking in there.
Joel made a face that expressed he wanted to laugh at her lack of response toward him as he walked over to his chair in front of me.
“Looking tired there, Lips. Long night?” He closed his eyes, ready for our routine. I cleaned his face, and started putting the right makeup on him. He needed to look a little bruised today, so I added nice blues, purples, and greens on his cheek.
“Just a little bit,” I answered honestly while focusing on my job.
“I’m sure you got chicks you can talk to, but I can be a pretty good sounding board, if you ever need to vent it out.”
I pulled back to look at him, to see if there was any hint of mischief in his face, but there was none. That was a genuine sentiment, and I was a little surprised by it, as simple as his words were.
“Thanks.”
Somehow, we spent our time at my station in peace. He didn’t make a pass at me, and even though my battle gear was on for it, I didn’t need to deflect him at all.
He left to change into his gear, and walked to set without a single flirt at me.
By the time our lunch break came, I was weirded out.
“Okay, what’s the deal? You’re not being your pervy self to me. Are you on drugs?” I looked into his eyes for some hint of why he was acting weird.
He let out a short laugh while making himself a plate of food.
“Miss me trying to bed you?” He smirked, and I felt better. He was still himself, just calmer today for some reason, thank goodness.
“Of course, not, I just figured if you kept all that cheesy energy inside, you might burst. And there would go my job. Can’t have that.”
He took a big bite of his sandwich, and walked back to his chair, leaving me standing there, still curious as to what he was up to.
I made myself a plate and went over to sit next to him. We ate silently, and then it was time to get back to work.
“How old are you?” he asked, breaking the quiet with a question. A normal question while I touched up his “bruised” cheek.
“Thirty.”
“Me, too,” he replied. I already knew that about him, though.
“Favorite food?”He asked another question.
“What’s with the twenty-one questions?”
“Just asking harmless questions, Lips. Maybe if we got to know each other a little better, we wouldn’t be pulling each other’s hair on the playground. Maybe we could play nice with each other.”
