hire a decorator. She’d taken her time pulling pieces from the various places we visited while I filmed getting it just right for us. Everywhere I look there’s a reminder of us, of where we’ve been and how far we’ve come. She loved the beach house just as much because collectively it was both our first home and investment in us. I’d gone with my gut my whole life, and it had never once led me wrong. The minute I set foot in this house with my bride, I knew.
Shoving my hands in my pockets, I stare out the window at the view I’d never tire from. When I got to LA, I’d never seen the ocean, to me it was the ultimate sign of freedom. The stopping point of running because it was the farthest. I loved the symbolism of living so far from the world I came from.
“No man, no,” Blake says, pacing our stained carpet. “You’re sputtering through the lines like they don’t mean shit to you.
Frustrated, I run a hand down my face. We’ve been at it for hours. We’re set to start filming in a week, and I have yet to get a handle on my role. He takes a long pull on his beer, eyeing me before he speaks.
“Have you ever heard of Method?”
“Don’t think so.” I sink into the couch feeling out of my element. Reading my expression, he cups the back of his neck and nods before flipping through the open script on our table and pointing to a few of my lines.
“Okay, bro, Maddie did a pretty good job teaching you some of the fundamentals, but you need to start thinking outside of the box. You aren’t playing one of her tough guy roles. You’re playing a soft-spoken introvert who turns into the tough guy, right?”
“Right.”
“You have the asshole part nailed.” He gives me a sly grin, and I give him the finger.
“You’ve got to dig a little deeper and show the change happening during this scene. This confrontation is bringing it out of him. So here,” he points out, “you’re about to get your ass kicked, and you’re laughing maniacally as he pushes you up against the wall. He’s shaking the fucking monster front and center. Get up,” he says, nodding toward the wall. “Let’s say this here,” he scrutinizes the carpet, “shit-stain is the marker.”
I follow him over and eye the stain, “my bad, I think it’s Yooh—”
Before I can get it out, he slams me against the wall, hard.
I wrack my brain and can’t remember what the fuck maniacal means. I’m instantly furious. Blake reads my confusion.
“You go from fear to laughing like you’re a little bit crazy, and the hits don’t hurt. Like you asked for it, like you wanted it to happen.”
I nod. “Got it.”
“Now, think back to a time where you just didn’t give a shit what happened. Dig and think of something that hit you hard, something painful and use it.” As he speaks, he continually slams me against the wall, before rattling off the lines. “Fucking pussy.”
I shove at his hands. “Give me a second, man.”
He shoves me again. “Camera’s rolling, and you’re wasting film.”
My back jars when he pushes me again and anger spikes as he taunts me.
“Go back, trailer trash,” he says, shoving me harder. Eyes blazing, he smirks and slams me into the wall again. “Momma was embarrassing, wasn’t she? Did she have a mullet, Joe Dirt?”
In a blink, I’m back in front of middle school swearing to my mother that I didn’t take her cigarette money while she repeatedly swats me on the back of my head. Kids in every grade line the sidewalk and stare either gawking or laughing. It’s the first time I admit to myself that I hate her and detect the shift in the withdrawal of my heart.
Once she’s berated me, she screeches off in our rust-colored minivan leaving me to walk the four miles back to the trailer. Everyone is staring, jaws slack. And with every step I take toward home I get more and more pissed off. Blake shoves me again, and I let that kid take over as I spout off my lines.
“Scene,” Blake says, breaking me out of my stupor. “Not bad, even with the improv.” There’s a glint of respect in his eyes. “Where did you go?”
“Somewhere I didn’t want to be,” I mutter before I realize my lip is bleeding.