My Psycho Friend

26.) Deliberation

**

I read over the script again and shook my head. 

"Does Grace really need to be so..." I struggled to find the right word for the character I was playing. I didn't want to call her any names and badmouth her, she was a fictional character after all and I was the one going to play her.

 I did have to say that she was very indecisive though. 

"So what?" Sandra asked looking up from her laptop. 

"Grace gets around, is what Jasmin is trying to say." Alex said sitting on a recliner chair with his leg propped up on an arm rest, shrugging at what he was saying.

"No, that's not what I meant. I just mean-" I couldn't think of anything good to say. I glared at Alex to which he just smiled back at me innocently.

"I know what you mean, but this makes it good when she doesn't know what she wants. So her going back and forth between the guys really adds to the plot and drama of course." Sandra explained. 

I slowly nodded understanding her. 

"But um... This one part here." I flipped through the stapled pages to find the one I was talking about. "Page 18, its says to kiss Alex's character... Like kiss on the cheek or...?" I looked at Sandra expectantly, hoping she meant just a kiss on a cheek or maybe nothing at all.

Sandra had a look of realization. "Right, I originally wanted it to be an actual kiss but I know that would probably be awkward so it could just be a kiss on the cheek or something." She said, I instantly felt relief.

"It wouldn't be awkward for me." Alex chimed in. My eyes darted to look at his serious face with a slight grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. 

I gave him a flat look. "I'd rather kiss a dead corpse than kiss you." I said.

Alex raised an amused brow. "I can arrange that." He said almost cynically. 

The look on his face made me shiver a little knowing he was capable of that, if he really wanted to. 

Sandra chuckled which had me looking back at her. "You guys have such an interesting friendship. I guess that's what it's like being friends since you guys were children." She commented. I tried smiling at her.

"You have no idea." I  mumbled then glanced at Alex again, he looked back at me with hooded eyes and the corners of his mouth twitching. He honestly looked evil right then. 

"Okay, so do you guys wanna rehearse your parts with each other?" Sandra then asked. I sighed to myself. I didn't feel up to it but I didn't want to disappoint Sandra, this project was important to her. 

"Sure, Alex?" I looked at him, waiting.

"Whatever you want 'beautiful'." Alex said with a wink. I internally cringed when I knew he was already in character. Chase, the character he was playing called Grace 'beautiful' one too many times in the script. 

Sandra of course clapped him on, impressed by him.

What was there to be impressed about?

Don't tell me he was going to be a good actor too, was he just gonna be good at everything he does?

Alex and I started doing a read through together with Sandra sitting down in front of us, making some last minute corrections with the dialogue.

I fidgeted with the hem of my shirt while my other hand held the script that I had been reading off of for the past 15 minutes. Page 18 was nearing and I didn't want to have anything to do with Alex that involved the word 'kiss'. Him calling me 'beautiful' had already made me cringe multiple times while reading through the parts with him and I together.