You Look Different in Real Life

falls.”
    So I did, and we did, and suddenly we were a couple. Everything about it was fast and unexpected. Which now makes me extremely, heartsickeningly suspicious.
    Now, Ian takes the Love Actually DVD out of my hand and looks at it. “Oh, yeah. The one with all the English people.”
    It would be so easy for me to stay in this scene with him. We could look through movies and make smart-ass comments, and it would probably come off pretty funnyand entertaining. Something Lance and Leslie would keep in the film. Maybe my story could be a love story. And whatever happens with it, at least it’s happening.
    I picture the suits around their big conference table, watching the next crop of footage. Liking the romance angle.
    And then the notion hits. This moment isn’t meant for me. It’s meant for Ian and for Lance and Leslie and also for the money people, and I’m just some kind of device.
    I grab the DVD out of his hands, stuff it back in the bin, and march out of the store. Ian follows. Lance and Leslie follow. I look up at them, ready to tell them to ease off, to leave me alone for a few minutes, but the sun hits me so warm as I step outside and the light blinds me a little, like an instant reminder of here and now and in those two seconds I lose, Ian and the crew have caught up to me.
    “Justine! What’s going on?” he asks.
    Okay, Ian. You want this? You got it. I spin to face him.
    “Did you go out with me because of them?” I motion to Lance, Leslie, and Kenny.
    “What?”
    “The film. Did you do it because you wanted to be part of the film?”
    Ian looks horrified. “God, no! What kind of asshole do you think I am?”
    “That depends. What kind of asshole shows up in a store he hates because of their overuse of unrecyclableplastic, just because there’s a film crew with the ex he dumped for no good reason?”
    Ian steadies himself with a long breath in, then out. “I was in the bookstore,” he says, pointing across the street, “and I saw all of you go in and . . . I don’t know. I was curious.” He looks down at the ground now. “I thought it would be fun to be on camera with you.”
    “And before . . . when we got together . . . ?”
    Ian closes his eyes and scrunches up his face, and his body seems to want to be very small. “Look,” he says as he opens his eyes and they meet mine. “I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t crossed my mind. The film itself, I mean. But it didn’t matter one way or another to me. I was like, whatever, about it. I’ve just always thought you were so cool, in the movies and in real life, and I wanted to get to know you.”
    “But then you didn’t like what you found when you got there.”
    “I told you that night. I just feel like we were meant to be friends. Can’t it be that simple?”
    Ian now looks over my shoulder at something far away. Maybe the ridge, where he wishes he could be hiking with a girl who doesn’t wear high-tops and complain about her knees.
    I don’t know how to answer this question of his. Simple for him, sure. Simple for me . . . no. If he had said, Yes, you got me. I’m an evil schemer who hooked up with you because I thought you were going to be in a movie, then dumped you when it looked like the movie wasn’t happening, then started hanging around again when shooting started . . . I would have been devastated, betrayed, all that. But I also would have something else to blame.
    Something else to blame besides me.
    “I don’t want to be friends with you,” I finally say. “It hurts too much.”
    Ian takes one slow step toward me, then freezes. I guess it’s all he dares offer now. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
    Now I just shrug, not willing to meet him in that raw place. “I didn’t mean to disappoint you.”
    Felix has edged his way onto the sidewalk in front of the store now, and I can see he’s in Fierce Protective Friend mode. He doesn’t even care that the camera’s strayed from him on his Follow Day. “Let’s go,” says Felix, and takes me by the hand away from Ian. I’m so glad for the assisted exit, I want to wrap myself around his arm.
    After we’ve walked a few storefronts down, I turn to check on the crew. They haven’t moved, and they’re not shooting us. The camera’s pointed at Ian, standing by himself on the steps of the store, staring again at the mountains in the distance. I know, as surely as I know anything, that I will never speak to him again.

NINE
    O n one of the main country