Page 33 of Unscripted

We hadn’t spoken since we were matched earlier in the day. Neither one of us had sought out the other so far, and I had barely even seen him all night.

Somehow, between our first encounter on the ferry and now, a line had been drawn in the sand, and we stood firmly on opposite sides of it. I wasn’t even sure how we got to this place of silently-but-clearly disliking each other, but here we were.

And there he was.

The good manners my mother had drilled into me as a kid took over as I stepped into the kitchen.

“Hey,” I said, immediately annoyed at how small and shy I sounded. I cleared my throat, trying to get my confidence in check.

Callum tilted his head to look over his shoulder and nodded at me before turning back to the kettle.

Was he serious? Would he rather watch water boil than speak to me?

I pressed on, moving around the kitchen and trying to appear busy. His brusqueness triggered my own stubbornness, and I was suddenly determined to proceed as if he wasn’t being a total dickhead. He could be silent and weird all he wanted, but it didn’t mean I had to follow suit.

“How’s your night been?” I asked as I opened a drawer, searching through it for nothing in particular but simply needing my hands to be doing something.

The tea kettle clicked off, and he picked it up, poured the boiling water into his cup and then, finally, turned around to face me.

“Ya, good. Yours?” he said.

Three words. What a chatterbox.

“Splendid,” I said.

I was still bustling around, opening cabinets and drawers, trying to make it appear as though I had a very important reason for being in the kitchen.

“Looking for something?” he asked, a hint of a smile cracking through his otherwise serious face. If I hadn’t been on a tear to appear unbothered, I would have commented on the fact that it was the first trace of happiness I had yet to see from him.

“Yes,” I said.

I could feel him watching me, could sense his eyes boring into the back of my head. Pretending to look through another cabinet, I suddenly felt ridiculous. The determination I had to remain indifferent to his rudeness began to wane. Now, I simply wanted to be anywhere but near him.

I grabbed a bag of chips off a shelf in the pantry. Shaking them in his direction I said, “Found it.”

“Crisps?” he asked. At least I think he was asking; he seemed to just throw the word my way with no real intention.

“Chips,” I replied.

“So American,” he said. The look on his face told me he did not consider that high praise.

I turned and walked out of the kitchen. Let him be a moody prick by himself.

***

It was another hour before Ben, Callum’s producer, appeared at the far edge of the yard. I had been sitting on the curved bench surrounding the fire pit when he seemed to step out from between two bushes just feet away. I jolted in place at seeing him suddenly appear.

“The smoking area is back there,” Chiara said to me. I didn’t smoke, so this was the first I heard of any such thing. Looking closer, I could see that what I thought was a solid wall lining the edge of the yard was really a fence, with an opening off to the side of the fire pit just far enough away from where any of the action normally went down that it wouldn’t appear on camera.

“Bellas, can you all head inside, please?” Ben yelled out.

I didn’t wait for him to say it again, happily jumping up and teetering across the lawn toward the villa. I was thrilled, having spent more hours in heels than I had in the last five years combined.

The girls got to use the bathroom first and as we all crowded into the small space, I let the hum of gossip from the others wash over me. The ping-ponging girl talk was comfortingly familiar.

“Where’s your head at with Callum?” Jess asked from next to me.

“Uh, yeah, so far so good.” I didn’t want to give anything away—that we had met before filming started, and that I found him to be the absolute worst.