“It just sounded too easy,” I blurted.
“Huh?” Sunny grunted.
“What was too easy?” Luca’s voice asked as he stepped into the trailer we were using as a home base while shooting the church scenes.
I opened the eye Sunny wasn’t currently applying shimmery, smoky eyeshadow to. “Nothing,” I said just as Sunny said, “Probably Nolan’s full-on dismissal of her and their—”
“Sunny!” I said her name like a shush.
“You haven’t told him?” she asked, like we didn’t both fully know that Luca—despite how much we loved him—treated secrets like trading cards.
“Secrets? You havesecrets?” Luca said with outrage. “Fromme? Secrets are only sexy when I’m the one who’s keeping them.”
I looked up to Sunny with my one open eye for a moment, before my shoulders dropped and I nodded for her to just go ahead and spill. Maybe it wasn’t smart on my part, but I couldn’t imagine Luca outing our... our whatever it was.
In her best church-mouse voice, Sunny said, “Bee and Nolan are—” And then in true Sunny fashion, she made a creaking noise to mimic a mid-coitus bed frame.
“Don’t be mad at me,” I interjected, and closed my open eye before he could say anything.
“Whoa,” Luca said as I heard him sitting in the chair beside me. “Whoa. First the truth about Duluth—which I’m still processing, by the way, and have already left a voicemail for my therapist. And now this. I just... everything I thought I knew is wrong. Talk about a turn of events.”
He paused for a moment. “However, let the record show that I do maintain my healthy suspicion of Nolan Shaw, FYI—asshould you, Bee—but I really didn’t see the food-poisoning plot twist coming . . .”
Luca was having a real existential crisis about this, and I was just relieved to know he didn’t hate me for insert-bed-squeak-noise-ing with Nolan.
“I’m just having, like, a real am-I-the-villain moment here,” Luca said.
“Should you tell him or should I?” Sunny asked with a snort.
I smiled, but Sunny must have seen right through my forced expression.
She sighed. “You can’t have it both ways, right? Nolan can’t talk about how much he loves being around you and also boning you in a live interview without absolutely ruining everything for a lot of people, but I also totally get why you would be in your feelings about this.”
“So basically,” Luca deadpanned, “don’t overthink it, but follow your gut.”
“Open your eyes,” Sunny said.
I did.
She shrugged. “I mean, yeah, essentially. Luca’s not wrong.”
I laughed. “That’s awful advice.”
She frowned. “Well, it’s not the ideal situation, Bee. But, I mean, you should still get that nookie.”
“Excuse me,” Luca said with one finger held up, like he was just going to ask the waiter foronemore thing. “But did you just saynookie?”
“My dad was a Limp Bizkit fan,” Sunny said simply. “Don’t make fun of my culture.”
Luca shook his head. “Wow. Wow, wow, wow.”
Cammy opened the door of the makeup trailer and popped her head in. “We need you in wardrobe, Bee.” Then she eyed Luca with disdain. “Uh, Wardrobe, we need you in wardrobe.”
“I have a name,” he called, but the trailer door had already slammed shut.
Sunny applied some natural-looking but false eyelashes and dusted my cheeks with a soft pink blush before the three of us shuffled across the street to the church, where my dress was waiting for me in the tiny robe room behind the altar. Luca had moved my costume over here so that I wouldn’t have to walk very far in the gown or get it dirty. I never realized how much pressure was involved in wearing white.
The church was full of extras who would be strategically moved around for different camera angles. I briefly met Brian, the local theater actor in the role of Felicity’s present-day fiancé and who played Fred Gailey every year in the Christmas Notch production ofMiracle on 34th Street. When he began to tell me about his ill-fated attempts at Broadway, Sunny stepped in to powder his nose and let me escape to the robe room with Luca.
