I smile at him as he sits, but I’m sure he doesn’t miss the flat disdain I can’t seem to clear from my eyes. He swallows, looking away from my face and back out to the set. “It’s amazing to watch you work.”
When I don’t say anything to this, he adds, “It’s eerie to me how good that was. You were just like her.”
Against my better judgment, I look back over at him. He’s wearing a linen blue button-down, worn-soft jeans, and the same well-loved brown boots. When I glance at his hands, I surmise that he doesn’t spend all his time writing screenplays: he still has the calloused, rough-handed look of a farmer. “I was just like you imagined Ellen?”
He stares at me for a few seconds, frowning, and then nods. “Yeah.”
I don’t want him to see how relieved this makes me, so I turn my attention away, back down the small hill to where Nick and Devon are twerking like idiots, and Liz is laughing hysterically.
“Look,” Sam says, bringing my attention back to him. “I know things are complicated between us—”
“There’s no complication, Sam. There’s no us.”
“Okay,” he concedes. “What I’m trying to explain is that I didn’t want you to do the role without knowing I was involved, but the more I thought of you as her—as Ellen—the more I really wanted it. I’m sorry that you felt blindsided yesterday, but I wanted you to know that I’m also really glad that you’re her. It’s . . . sort of perfect.”
I don’t know what to make of this, or how to process the tiny, carbonated feeling that courses down my arms to my fingertips. It feels dangerous to be this close to him, and not because I want him, or want him to want me—but because my body genuinely doesn’t know how to react to him at all. I’m cycling through a hundred feelings every minute. Am I angry? Indifferent? Happy to see him doing well? I think the fact that I never got to fall out of love with him—that I just had to keep moving forward, stumbling into something new, and totally different—means that my brain and heart don’t know the protocol here.
I keep my expression neutral. “You didn’t look like you believed I could do it though,” I remind him.
“I absolutely believe you can,” he says quietly. “And you looked right at me, and—look, I was just remembering—in spite of everything—how well we did as a team. I’m on your team, Tate.”
The way our thoughts had aligned rocks through me.
But, “That was your way of being on my team? An angry nod?”
“I don’t think I meant it to look angry.” He lets out a long breath and seems to deflate. “This is hard for me, too, okay? Really complicated.” I start to laugh, and he quickly adds, “I mean, I know it’s definitely harder for you—”
Self-preservation rushes to the surface. “It isn’t just having you here that’s stressful. It’s also having my dad.”
I think saying this out loud was a mistake; I sense it in the way Sam turns to look at the side of my face. “I thought you two were close?”
Now I’m trapped between lying and offering him something real that I’m not sure I’m willing to give. I remembered last night, while lying awake, that Sam had promised to come with me to LA to find my dad. Instead, I’ve muddled through the farce of it alone ever since.
Wait, I realize, Sam thinks he’s the hero of this story, by reuniting father and daughter, by enabling me to have a dream career. Parts of that are true, parts aren’t, but regardless, he doesn’t get to be the good guy here.
“I mean,” he says, “that’s how it looks from the outside.”
“That’s how it’s supposed to look.” I stand, swiping any dirt from the back of my skirt and get back to work.
Over the next week, we shoot the scenes leading up to the moment that Richard finally wins Ellen over—through autumn and the fake rain, to summer and the brilliant sun mimicked by a hundred intense lights aimed directly at the porch. By the time Nick stands at his mark, facing me from across the yard, the budding relationship feels hard-earned and I’m jittery in that electric, impatient kind of way to see Richard walking up my driveway, flowers in hand.
EXT. MEYER FAMILY FARM, BACKYARD—NEW DAY
Ellen looks up to see Richard rounding the house, holding flowers. Warily,