Semi-Scripted: A Wanderlove Novel

by Amanda Heger

  She plucked it from the slit and unfolded the paper. “Afternoon interview cancelled?”

  No explanation. No promise to reschedule.

  She flipped open her portfolio and rifled through the papers, searching for someone to call. There had to be someone who could explain. Or fix this. She was not going down without a fight.

  “Hey,” someone said. “They cancelled you, too?”

  She turned and looked into the face of an angel. An angel in a suit, with dark brown eyes and a darker brown beard. Under normal circumstances, Marisol would have assumed he was a celebrity on a break from a movie. Or a model who’d just finished a shoot.

  She glanced at his nametag. CLINT MCINTYRE, DELLA SIMMONS GRANT FINALIST.

  These were not normal circumstances. He was the enemy.

  “Yes. I am going to call them,” she said. “They will reschedule.”

  “Good luck. I couldn’t get through.”

  She narrowed her eyes. If this guy was as tricky as the Pubes, he’d probably put the sign up himself. All in some twisted attempt to tank her chance at the money.

  “Clint. Clint McIntyre. Appalachia Together.” He pointed at the name tag. “You’re with Ahora, right? I did a little online research. Impressive. Do you—”

  Very tricky indeed. He was going to try to woo her with flattery. And his high cheekbones. Get her off guard and then swoop in for the kill. Everyone here was in for the kill.

  “Listen to me, Clint. I know what you are up to. I will find out where this interview is supposed to happen. I only need to call them.” She flipped another page, and the portfolio tumbled from her hands. Papers and business cards scattered around his perfectly shined shoes.

  “Huh? Seriously?” He tucked in his shirt—even though it was already perfectly tucked.

  “Very seriously.”

  “They cancelled on me too. Actually they kicked me out.” He sighed. “You know what? Never mind. Everyone here is a jerk. I get it.” He picked up a handful of her belongings and handed them over with an eye roll. “Here. Good luck.”

  Marisol watched him take two steps before the weight of her outburst pressed on her shoulders. The stress of the interview process was crushing her soul. Two weeks ago, if she’d run into a guy this good looking she’d have had him wrapped around her pinky finger—no all her fingers—in ten minutes flat. Now she was the asshole. “Wait. Please. I am sorry. These interviews are making me crazy.”

  Clint turned to face her. “No kidding. I was just trying to help.”

  “I am blaming the Pubes.”

  His eyes widened. “Maybe we’re having different interview experiences…”

  “People United for—”

  “Body Euphoria. Of course. The Pubes.” His shoulders relaxed half an inch.

  Marisol gathered the rest of her belongings. “Your interview was cancelled, too?”

  He nodded. “Not that it matters any more. But you should call. Maybe they’ll answer if you call.”

  A few swipes at her phone later, and Marisol knew he’d been telling the truth. Straight to voice mail. At least she could breathe again. She wasn’t the only one being blown off. “Do you think they will reschedule?”

  “I hope so.” He tugged at the sleeves of his suit jacket. “Those first two interviews were brutal. Number three was supposed to be my big comeback.”

  Sounds familiar.

  Her unease slipped away, replaced by the creeping in of camaraderie. She wasn’t the only one who’d flubbed a few things so far. “Mine, too.”

  “This morning, they sent my boss an email. Apparently, a bunch of our paperwork went missing. Said we’re being disqualified unless it shows up.”

  Marisol’s heart stopped. “Is he sending it?”

  “My boss can’t find it. Maybe he never had it to begin with. Things are sort of disorganized.” Clint sighed. “I need at least a gallon of coffee to deal with this day.”

  So not only had she stooped to Pube level, but she’d kicked him while he was down. “Let me buy you some,” she said. “Since I was such a jerk.”

  His forehead crinkled, as if he were deciding whether to trust a snake.

  “I am really sorry,” she said.

  He grinned. “You’re not trying to lure me to a second location are you? So you can murder me?”

  “No promises.”

  “I saw a Starbucks at CityWalk.”

  The bright lights of Universal CityWalk—even at midday—obscured the sky. People lumbered along with giant shopping bags, tripping over the kids running from store to store. Across the open-air plaza, a band filled the afternoon with the thump of bongos, and Marisol couldn’t stop her foot from tapping along.

  “My mother was supposed to come to the conference. But she hurt her back a few weeks ago and could not travel.” She stared at the overly sweetened, overly sugared coffee in front of her. “Hold on.” She fished out the brand new orange and pink case from her bag. It had been more than a decade since she’d been diagnosed, but sometimes whipping out a lancet and canister of test strips still made her self-conscious. Especially in a new place filled with new people. But she did it out in the open every time, ignoring the sidelong glances and stares.

  Because maybe somewhere there was a little girl watching who was too scared to test in front of her friends. And maybe that girl needed to see someone like her, smearing her blood on a thin strip of paper out in the open. Ten years ago, Marisol could have really used the company of a few more people like her.

  And today, she really wanted the coffee monstrosity.

  “Does that hurt?” Clint asked.

  “Sometimes a little. Mostly no.” Marisol mentally calculated the carbs in the drink while the meter worked its magic and then adjusted her pump accordingly. By the time she’d finished, her coffee was cool enough to drink.

  “So your mom…”

  “She hurt herself on one of the brigades.” Marisol shook her head. “She decided to challenge our dentist to a very intense game of UNO.”

  “The card game?”

  “Our dentist is very serious about UNO.”

  “Clearly.”

  “And we are having some financial troubles, so we could not say no to the grant. Entonces”—she waved her hand toward the breezeway—“I am here.”

  “Your mom must really trust you then.”

  She did. Too much. Her mother seemed to have complete faith that Marisol would return home with both the grant and a foolproof plan to fix Ahora’s troubles in hand. “And what do you do? Are you a doctor?”

  He laughed. “Hardly. I build stuff. Wheelchair ramps mostly.”

  “You are a lumberjack then, yes?” Between the beard and the broad shoulders, he did seem like a sexy, magazine-version of Paul Bunyan.

  “Something like that. I technically work for a rural medicine clinic, but most of my work is on private homes. Patients of the clinic who need help making their homes accessible or even just livable.” He’d obviously given this blurb a dozen times in the past few days.

  “So you show up at someone’s house with a hammer and your truck, then start building?”

  “No. We have a whole project with a summer camp for ‘problem’ kids. They come down for the summer and do most of the work. They learn to build things. It increases their self-esteem. They stay out of trouble and do some good. That kind of thing. I mostly supervise these days. A supervisory lumberjack. Maybe I’ll change my résumé when we get back to the Hilltop.”

  Speaking of getting back—Marisol glanced at the clock on the wall. It was much later than she’d realized. “I am sorry. I have to go back to the hotel. I have a…” How exactly to explain this? “I am going to the making of a television show.”

  Not quite a lie.

  “Really? Which one?” He stood and followed her through the crowd back toward the Hilltop.

  “So Late It’s Early.”

  His face brightened, and his eyes crinkled at the edges. Back at the hotel, if he’d lo
oked at her like that, she would have assumed he had one thing and one thing only on his mind.

  “I love that show,” he said. “Doesn’t get nearly enough credit. The host is hysterical. A friend of my little brother works there. Well, he’s an intern. Small world.”

  Marisol drained the last of her coffee. “I have never seen it.”

  “Seriously? How’d you score the tickets? Maybe I can grab one for next week. If they aren’t sold out. Did you have to pay?” He looked like a toddler about to stick his hands in a birthday cake for the first time, and Marisol couldn’t help but laugh. Clint was the first person she’d met in LA who didn’t want something from her.

  And she had exactly what he wanted.

  Except—kind, attractive, wheelchair-building lumberjack or not—he was still her rival. Assuming his boss found the paper that had gone missing. She couldn’t afford to let him in on her Hollywood coaching session. Not with Ahora on the line.

  “I got the ticket months ago,” she said. “I heard they go very fast.”

  “Bummer. Well, bring me back a full recap.”

  Marisol nodded. Now she’d have to find a way to watch the show. And pray Clint wouldn’t watch it online before the presentations next week. And—her feet stuttered as they descended the last rolling hill, bringing the hotel into view—hide the giant So Late It’s Early Show van idling in the parking lot.

  • • •

  Evan ignored the fact that Marisol had dressed like she was going to a business meeting instead of a “date.” He ignored the giant leather folder in her lap, even though papers shot out at every angle. But he couldn’t ignore the paranoid, cops-are-on-my-tail look she kept throwing over her shoulder.

  “Are you secretly on the lam?”

  “Lamb? No, I do not eat lamb.” She didn’t take her eyes off of the side-view mirror. “We should go, yes?”

  He pulled out of the parking lot, and with every mile that passed her harried glances slowed. By the time they’d fully immersed themselves in traffic, Marisol seemed perfectly normal. Except the wrinkled suit and the folder.

  Julia was going to lose her mind.

  “So, how was your interview?” he asked.

  “Cancelled.”

  In his periphery, Evan saw her deflate. “Is it going to be rescheduled then, or…”

  “I do not know.”

  Silence thickened the open space in the van. He should have let it go. Maybe she needed time to stew. Or a change of subject.

  “So when you go on the medical brigades, you camp in the villages?” Evan hadn’t been camping in years. Before his mom died, his family spent half the summers exploring hiking trails, roasting marshmallows, and rolling out sleeping bags in the field behind their house. But once she was gone, his dad packed up all their gear and shoved it to the farthest corner of the attic.

  “Sometimes. If there is no one to let us stay in their house.”

  “So, when you get to the villages you don’t even know if you’ll have a place to sleep?”

  “There is always a place to sleep.” She shrugged as if it were nothing to uproot her life every few months for a wild adventure that was certain to involve saving lives.

  “That’s really cool.”

  Marisol didn’t respond.

  A guard waved as they turned into the studio parking lot, and Evan gritted his teeth as he navigated the van between the maze of sports cars and luxury SUVs. Above them, the studio towered like a worn warehouse. In Peoria, a building like this would be filled with tractors and piles of manure. Here it was filled with egos and Botox and—apparently—a lot of fake dog poop.

  So either way, full of shit.

  Inside, the So Late crew clomped and paced in circles. Julia stood guard over a camera and boom mic. Andrew paced beside her, muttering over the stack of pages in his hand.

  “What took you so long, Cocktart?” Julia’s short hair stood on end. Never a good sign.

  “Traffic.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Go find Jim. He has a shirt for you.” She shoved a handful of papers at his chest. “And look this over. We made a couple of changes, but read it quick because we’re late.” Julia pushed, and he stumbled forward. By the time he pulled himself together again, Julia had Marisol by the arm and was oozing charm. “We had a pop star here a few weeks ago, and she left behind the cutest dress. Let’s see…”

  Two minutes later, Jim the wardrobe guy had shucked Evan’s T-shirt, tossed it into a pile, and threaded his arms into a button-down. He tugged Evan’s arm and shook his head. “Orangutan arms.”

  “What?”

  “You’re like Stretch Armstrong. We’ll have to roll these sleeves.”

  One more thing to add to the list. Evan’s nerves were already working overtime, knowing he was about to be on camera—again—when he was solidly a behind-the-camera type of guy. Plus, the piece of paper Julia handed him? Full of his ideas and jokes. They’d actually listened to him.

  And now he wanted to puke. His jokes would probably land. Crash-land, taking down the show in a firestorm of flying pieces.

  “Julia. Hey.” He scrambled after her, rolling up his own sleeves. Someone should tell her this was a bad idea. Insist they do a sketch written by professionals. “Julia, I—”

  Her eyes roved until they landed on him. “Great,” she said. “Let’s go. We’re in a crunch. Someone bring Marisol when she’s out of makeup. Someone should have told her to come date-night ready.”

  Evan dragged in a deep breath. How was he supposed to know what to tell her? No one on this show knew what they were doing. He was supposed to be learning from them.

  Julia herded him outside and across the street to the hole-in-the-wall dim sum restaurant. The neon red lights on the front of the building screamed WONTON QUEEN, and even from twenty feet away the smell of dumplings and soy sauce permeated the air. Inside, the restaurant was as barren as ever. Of the fifteen or so tables in the narrow restaurant, only two had customers. The humidity clung to his skin and clothes, and within a minute, Evan felt like he was swimming in MSG.

  He waved to the owner, a slight woman with hair she was always untying and then retying in her bun. Her entire face crinkled when she smiled, which was every time the So Late crew walked through the door. Evan was pretty sure their afternoon lunch runs and late-night brainstorming sessions kept the restaurant in business.

  “Sit.” Julia shoved him into one of the vinyl booths. Lately, she had two modes: barking orders or soothing celebrities. And today she sat at a full 90 percent barking orders.

  “I…” The table wobbled under his drumming fingers. He didn’t need to make sure they didn’t screw up his shot. He’d done it himself with this stupid idea. “These D&D jokes are going to appeal to about five middle-aged guys in their moms’ basements.”

  “Who do you think our primary audience is? Besides, that’s the point. It’s comedy. The best way to get people to laugh is to let them feel superior to you.” She rolled her eyes. “I have to go talk to Edna. She needs to put up the closed sign. We can’t have half of LA coming in here to watch you dry hump this poor girl.”

  “Dry hump?” Marisol’s eyes widened as she slid into the booth opposite him. Someone had curled the front pieces of her hair so they brushed away from her face and the ends landed at her collarbones. Which were perfect, delicate lines on her chest. Someone from wardrobe had shoved her into a dress with a considerable amount of cleavage on display.

  “Perfect, Evan. Don’t lose that look,” Julia said. She stormed toward the front door and flipped the lock.

  Why did he keep looking at Marisol like that? She wasn’t the first attractive person he’d ever come into contact with. Hell, he had entire conversations with the Who’s Got the Coconut models at least once a week, but he never acted like he was on the verge of a stroke.

  He sat up straight and forced his face into a relaxed state. “She’s being sarcastic. No dry humping. Well, I won’t dry hump you. I can’t promise anything about
Edna over there.”

  The owner waved to them from behind the counter. “Evan, you need to poop? You look like you need to poop,” Edna said. “The bathroom was just cleaned.”

  He begged the earth to swallow him whole. “I’m good Edna, thanks.”

  A boom mic appeared over their heads and a camera over Marisol’s shoulder.

  “Alright. Let’s do this,” Julia said.

  Marisol looked at the producer. “I do not know my lines.”

  “That’s okay.” Julia flipped through the script as she talked. “The basic idea is that this is the date you mentioned on the show. So remember you asked Redneck Romeo here to dinner with your gift certificate, and he’s a complete idiot.”

  “Evan is an idiot, got it.” Marisol smiled at him.

  The effect was almost immediate.

  “Perfect, Evan. Don’t lose that expression,” Julia said. “Marisol, order whatever you want off the cart. Other than that, you don’t actually have to say anything. Action!”

  Evan pushed his lingering self-doubt out of the way. Like it or not, he’d put his money on the table, and now he had to stick around to see where the ball landed. Hopefully it wouldn’t land them all in the cancellation line.

  Edna strode to their booth with the dim sum cart. She lifted the lid and steam sprang out, leaving behind dozens of tiny dome-covered plates. “Chinese broccoli? Sesame balls? Shrimp rolls? Noodle plate?”

  “Noodle plate and shrimp roll,” Evan said, doing his best to ignore Marisol.

  That dress was not making it easy.

  “Can I have the sesame balls?” Marisol asked.

  Edna put two plates in front of Evan, one in front of Marisol, and began wheeling her cart away.

  He tore into his food, stopping to glance at Marisol every few bites. “Do you have plans after this?”

  “No.”

  “I’m the Dungeon Master tonight. You can come over if you want.”