Page 117 of The Sun & Her Burn

We shared a look that I felt in my chest, an understanding of each other that was fundamental and harkened back to London. In this, in art and film, we had always spoken the same language.

“I thought so.” Linnea grinned. “The haughty Brit with false ideals.”

“And Linnea as Hallie,” Adam continued. “Inspired.”

She frowned, picking at a hangnail. “I’m not entirely sure I could do Hallie justice.”

“No?” I asked mildly, but my heart was galloping.

This wasit.

This was the combination of the creative medium I loved with two people I cared for more than I could properly express without writing them a screenplay to illustrate it.

Heaven, I thought, wasn’t so much a place you went after you died but a moment in time that reminded you why life was worth living in the first place.

“Why not?” Adam asked.

“Oh, Thatcher’s Hallie I can play beautifully,” she admitted with a tiny grin. “It’s Emerson’s Hallie I wonder about. She’s meant to be cold and classy when I’m…” She gestured to her oversized T-shirt and damp, rumpled waves.

How she could be so oblivious to the beauty of herself at that moment, unguarded and honest, was almost beyond comprehension.

“Why don’t you try her on for size,trottolina mia?” I suggested, nodding at Adam who handed her the tablet and gently pushed her off his lap.

She went willingly, settling at our feet on her knees with the tablet on her thighs, one hand nervously tucking her hair behind her ear.

“Which part?”

“Which part spoke to you?” I countered.

She nodded almost to herself and flicked through the pages, which I could see were often highlighted in yellow from the upside-down view. Finally satisfied, she spoke to herself under her breath and then looked up at me.

“Do you have any other notes on Hallie?”

I scratched my stubbled chin as I considered. “The only shared truth between Emerson’s Hallie and the reality of her is that she can be haughty and cool when she feels threatened.”

She hummed slightly, sucked in a deep breath, and then exhaled it loudly. “I’m nervous. I feel like I’m naked standing on stage before two of Hollywood’s biggest names.”

“You could take off your clothes if it would make you more comfortable,” Adam drawled.

Her head fell back with the force of her laughter, and I grinned at Adam for easing the tension. He reached over and squeezed my hand.

The moment he dropped it, I flexed my fingers against the tremors he left behind.

“Okay,” Linnea said, “I’m ready.”

We both settled back against the couch, our shoulders and thighs pressed together like seams.

Linnea tipped her head down so her hair curtained her face, but I could see that her eyes were closed and her mobile features were blank.

A moment later, she lifted her chin, and her entire carriage, from her posture to the way she held her expression, was completely changed.

Instead of the elastic mouth with a wide range of smiles, her full mouth was slightly pinched; the angle of her chin was tilted almost pugnaciously, the way my sister, Elena, used to hold herself when she was angry with the world. Her shoulders were pinned back and straight as a ruler, her lids just slightly lowered as if she was bored with us, the same Hollywood royalty she had espoused about just seconds before.

It was arresting.

“You do us both a disservice,” she began in a cool, lightly enunciated voice that was American but somehow moneyed. “I am a woman and an actress, yes, so by both counts I invite the male gaze to paint me in with whichever colors suit them best. But I am also unchangeably, irrefutably myself. You do not know me, and quite frankly, if you did, I think you would not wish to. The person you think you want is only a very pretty daydream.”

“I know you,” Adam said, prompting the line even though he had only read the script once. “I know you even when I close my eyes.”