Chapter 3 — First Date, Cameras Rolling

Luca

“You asked for her,” Beckett said, for the third time, like repeating it would eventually make it make sense. “You had Marlene put an actual literature major’s name on an actual list weeks before any of this happened, and you didn’t think that was worth mentioning to your best friend?”

“It wasn’t a big deal.”

“You don’t put someone’s name on a list because it’s not a big deal.” Beckett dropped onto the bench across from Luca’s locker stall, still in half his gear, helmet under one arm. “You put someone’s name on a list because some part of you has been thinking about her since a mixer that happened, what, two months ago?”

Luca focused very hard on his skate laces. “I remembered her. That’s all it was.”

“Man.” Beckett shook his head slowly, grinning like he’d just watched Luca skate into the boards for the second time this week. “You are so cooked.”

“Shut up and give me the schedule.”

Beckett handed it over, still grinning. Filming Schedule: Week 1 Levi’s Diner, 7 PM, “First Date.” Trent Coleman’s name was on the email as producer, along with three paragraphs of notes about camera blocking, lighting, and a line that made Luca’s stomach twist: Keep dialogue natural but steer toward vulnerable disclosures where possible. Authenticity performs.

Authenticity performs. Like the whole point wasn’t to actually be honest, just to look honest enough for a camera.

He texted Isabella at 6:15. Still on for 7?

The three dots appeared and disappeared twice before her answer came.

I signed the contract twenty minutes ago. I don’t have much of a choice, do I.

Fair. He deserved that.

I’ll be nice. Promise.

You spilled a drink on Middlemarch and called it a big book about nothing. Your definition of nice is doing some heavy lifting.

He was smiling at his phone like an idiot when Beckett leaned over his shoulder and read it upside down, which earned him a shove hard enough to nearly knock him off the bench.

Levi’s Diner had a cracked red vinyl booth by the window that Trent had apparently decided was, in his words, “very Rockwell, very heartland, very relatable.” Two cameras were set up discreetly near the counter, and a boom mic hovered somewhere above the ketchup bottle like a very committed fly.

Isabella was already there when Luca arrived, sitting stiff-backed in the booth, wearing a sweater the color of the inside of a good bottle of wine, a paperback tucked pointedly beside her water glass like a small act of rebellion. She didn’t look up when he sat down across from her.

“You’re reading during our date,” he said.

“I’m reading during our filming. There’s a difference.”

“Trent’s going to cut that footage and it’s going to look like I’m so boring you’d rather read Hemingway.”

“It’s Woolf.” She finally looked up, and something in her expression was more amused than she probably meant it to be. “And honestly, that tracks.”

“Ouch.”

“You’ll survive.”

A production assistant leaned in from behind the camera and murmured something about starting the scene, and Isabella’s whole posture changed in the space of a breath spine straightening, chin lifting, a soft, warm smile arriving on her face like she’d flipped a switch. It was, Luca had to admit, genuinely impressive. If he hadn’t spent the last twenty minutes watching her real, unimpressed face, he might have believed it.

“So,” she said, voice pitched a half-degree warmer, eyes bright, performing beautifully for an audience of four million strangers who’d never met either of them. “Tell me something real about you, Luca. The public’s dying to know the man behind the scandal.”

He almost laughed at how easily the line came out of her, how good she was at this, how unsettling it was to watch someone lie that fluently with a straight face.

“Careful,” he said, matching her tone, leaning forward like a man in a rom-com. “You start asking for something real, you might actually get it.”

“I can handle real.”

He studied her for a second really looked, the cameras a dull hum at the edge of his attention and found himself saying something he hadn’t planned to say at all.

“I have a sister. Gia. She’s seventeen, she’s applying to colleges right now, and she’s the only person in my family who’s never once asked me if the hockey thing is going to pan out, because she’s just she believes it already. Doesn’t even occur to her it might not.” He shrugged, suddenly aware he’d said more than the scene called for. “If this whole scandal costs me my draft position, I’m not scared of losing hockey. I’m scared of what it does to her face when she finds out I let her down.”

Isabella’s performed smile faltered just slightly, just for a second, before something more careful slid into place behind her eyes.

“That’s not what I meant by real,” she said, quieter now, not performing anymore. “That’s actually real.”

“Yeah.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Guess it slipped out.”

For a moment neither of them said anything, and the diner noise coffee machine hissing, someone’s fork against a plate two booths over filled the space where the script should have been. Isabella looked down at her water glass like she was recalibrating something.

“My brother’s name is Nico,” she said finally, so quietly the boom mic probably barely caught it. “He’s fourteen. I’m basically paying half his school fees right now, which is the actual, unglamorous reason I’m sitting in this booth instead of some noble desire to fix your reputation.” She looked up, something fierce and a little defensive in her expression, daring him to make it a joke.

He didn’t.

“That’s not unglamorous,” he said. “That’s the least fake thing anyone’s said to me in a week.”

Something shifted between them small, wordless, dangerous. Isabella looked away first, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, and Luca had the sudden, unwelcome realization that he wanted to know a hundred more true things about her, cameras or no cameras.

Then the diner door chimed, and a woman’s voice cut cleanly across the restaurant, bright and delighted and entirely unscripted.

“Luca? Oh my god, is that you?”

He knew that voice before he turned around. Every muscle in his shoulders locked at once.

Sofia Marchetti stood in the doorway in a coat that cost more than Isabella’s tuition stipend, phone already rising to record, a slow, satisfied smile spreading across her face as she took in the scene the booth, the cameras, Isabella sitting across from him looking, for one unguarded second, like she’d been caught doing something she wasn’t supposed to be doing.

“Perfect timing,” Sofia said, sliding into the empty end of the booth like she’d been invited. “I heard you got yourself a fake girlfriend. I just didn’t realize it was going to be this fun to watch.”

Behind the camera, Trent Coleman’s face broke into the first real smile he’d worn all night.