Reel Love – Cut scene
Heads up! This is a deleted scene from Reel Love. If you haven’t read it yet and you don’t want spoilers, you may want to save this tab for later. Okay, with that warning out of the way, here we go!
This scene happens right after Jaime bails Ethan out of an uncomfortable conversation with his ex-girlfriend. Ultimately, my editor didn’t feel like we needed the scene–and we didn’t technically speaking–so I cut it. However, I loved it so much because it showed Jamie letting loose and being a little messy with her friends!
And, a heads-up: this is unedited, so forgive my typos!
*****
Ethan let go of my hand to reach for the door to the karaoke lounge. I knew he would have to let go at some point, but that didn’t stop a little piece of my heart from splintering just the same.
Three seconds later, I was glad that he had when Nittha buzzed around the corner of the lounge, wearing a giant pink, fuzzy jacket and clutching Cricket in a pink fuzzy hat. Catching sight of me, she yelled, “Jamie! We’ve been waiting for—Oh!” Her eyes went wide as she looked from me to Ethan as if that would compel an explanation from the two of us. “Ethan is here.”
“Yeah, turns out he was free tonight and since I missed the DJ Court, this seemed like a good sorry-my-grandma-ruined-my-face party.” I tried to sound casual and prayed she didn’t ask any questions like, why he was free or how I knew he was free. Or worse, could she see my engagement ring.
“Right.” Nittha nodded. She said the word as if I just communicated to her in some special code, which I absolutely had not done.
I widened my eyes at her, as if using the real facial expression code for chill-out might help. It did not. Nittha still looked like there was a chance she might squeal and throw her arms around one or both of us in a death grip style hug. Poor Cricket would get her little hat smushed in the process. She didn’t deserve that. She was too good a dog to be crushed.
Ethan looked between the two of us, confusion washing over his face. “Is it cool if I join you?”
“Yes. Absolutely. Gabby is gonna flip when she sees you two.” Nittha bounced and grabbed Ethan’s arm with her freehand, then began dragging him into the karaoke lounge. Ethan looked back at me and smiled the kind of smile that easy going people use when they are not exactly sure what is happening to them but are willing to go with the flow. If he hadn’t been 100 percent committed to this experience, he now had no other choice. Nittha officially had hold of him and there was nothing I could do to save him short of shutting down the Las Vegas power grid.
The sounds of a dozen pop songs being sung wildly off key all at once filled my ears as I followed Nittha down to the very end of a black lit hallway to our karaoke room.
“Hey,” Gabby said, only half looking up from the remote control she was using to select a song as we walked into the room.
“Look who Jamie found,” Nittha crowed, which got Gabby’s full attention. As soon as she saw Ethan, her eyebrows disappeared under the bucket hat she was wearing. Luckily, she was smoother than Nittha and recovered quickly.
“Hey, Ethan. Jamie didn’t mention she was bringing you.”
“Hi. Is it cool if I crash your party?” Ethan gave a nervous wave at Gabby as if she might throw him out. To be fair to Ethan, if anyone in our group was ever going to throw someone out, it was Gabby. Nittha was too friendly and I was too shy. Okay, or Cricket, but it is hard to take the bouncing capabilities of a Yorkie in a hat seriously.
“Of course. The more the merrier.” Gabby smiled and gestured at the couches for the rest of us to sit down. Putting on a mock casual expression, she turned back to selecting a song and asked, “How’d you hear about this?”
“I ran into him on my way here,” I said, trying to pretend like it wasn’t a big deal.
“Uh huh,” Gabby said, sounding like she wasn’t buying my act for a second. Turning her attention back to Ethan, she added, “Well, you better get ready for some competitive karaoke. Best song choice gets to eat all the pineapple on the fruit tray.”
“You may as well just give me the fruit now, I do a killer Maneater,” Ethan grinned, dropping onto the edge of the couch diagonal from Gabby.
“Maneater?” Nittha asked, bouncing over to the other end of the little couch next to Gabby’s chair. I’m sure she was trying to be slick, but the implication was obvious, the spot next to Ethan was for me.
“Hall and Oates.” Ethan’s eyes went wide as if this should have been obvious to us.
“Never heard of it,” I said, sliding into the spot between Nittha and Ethan. My thigh brushed against the rough material of his jeans, and my mind instantly flashed back to last night and the make-up removal. I carefully readjusted myself on the couch, putting a little space between us under the auspices of fixing my skirt. Gabby narrowed her eyes at me. I swear she could smell my thoughts, that girl’s intuition was next level. My cheeks heated up and I looked down at my hands, hoping to hide my blush from her and the rest of the room.
“First, they are an extremely talented musical group, not an it. And you are gonna hear an award-winning rendition of their music tonight.” Ethan grinned and reached for the binder of songs on the table, completely oblivious to the non-conversation Gabby and I were having.
“Well, before we listen to the musical stylings of a group that sounds like a breakfast cereal, I will be singing. Then we’ll see how confident you are,” Nittha said, snatching the remote from Gabby and punching in numbers.
As soon as the first synth notes of a One Direction song came on, the room’s regular lights went down and a series of red and purple lights from under the chairs came on while a disco ball began to rotate overhead, turning our little room into a private night club.
“Dude, I was obsessed with them when I was like eight,” Gabby laughed over the sound of Nittha’s painfully off-key rendition of Best Song Ever.
“Who wasn’t obsessed?” I laughed as the rest of us joined in and screeched along. Above the lyrics on the screen was a bunch of random footage that had nothing to do with the song, which somehow made everything that much funnier.
As one song bled into the next, all of us began to loosen up–and ate the random fruit that was supposed to be our prize. By the time we got to Ethan, I’d almost forgotten about his unknown song, which turned out to be extremely old and very 80s sounding. Next to me, he acted out the lyrics while being only slightly behind the words on the screen. Nittha started dancing with me and Cricket, our hair going everywhere as the room swirled in neon colors. I saw Gabby take out her phone and for a second, I considered hiding or sitting up straight so all of her followers wouldn’t see me being a complete silly wreck. The little voice that played my parents warnings about being too messy in public ran through my head.
But unlike all the other times I’d heard their warnings in my head, this time was different. We were having fun. Who cared if my hair was a mess, or Nittha’s eyeliner was smudged and Crickets hat had gone from a jaunty angle to just plain askew? Maybe a memory of tonight that wasn’t perfect was okay.
Ethan threw his arm around me and leaned in towards Cricket and the camera. Instead of hiding, I made a silly face at Gabby and went back to dancing. Tomorrow, I’d ask her to text me the video. Not to do anything with it. Just to have something that reminded me that imperfect but happy could be fun, too.
*****
And, there is a little more to this story, so if you are really curious to know how BamBam reacts to all of this, check out Part 2!
Addie Woolridge 