“You never laugh,” I said.
“I’m serious,” he said. “Stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“Stop doing that with your face.”
“I’m not doing anything with my face.”
“It’s making me laugh.”
“That’s your problem, not mine.”
But next, Jack broke. His whole face just shifted into a full-territory smile. Then he dropped his head and his shoulders shook.
“You’re terrible at this,” I said.
“It’s not me, it’s you.” He still hadn’t lifted his head.
“So it’s not that the first person to cry wins—it’s the first person to dissolve into giggles loses.”
“Men don’t dissolve into giggles.”
“You do.”
Jack lifted his head, eyes still bright, still smiling. “I guess it’s easier if you dislike your scene partner.”
That got my attention. “Do you dislike your scene partners?”
“Sometimes.”
“Not in the rom-coms, though. Not Katie Palmer.”
Jack made a face. “Katie Palmer is the worst.”
I gasped in protest. “That can’t be true.”
But Jack nodded, like Sorry. “She’s rude, she’s narcissistic, she’s sucks up to the bigshots. She’s the kind of person who humiliates waiters.”
I put my hands over my face. “Do not speak ill of Katie Palmer! She’s a national treasure.”
“Well, she’s a mean-ass person. And she’s a terrible actress.”
I covered my mouth with my hand. “Stop! You’re ruining her!”
“She was already ruined.”
“But that movie! You guys were so in love.”
“Guess what? We were acting.”
“But that kiss. That epic kiss!”
“You wanna know why that kiss was so good? Because the sooner we got the take, the sooner the shooting day was over.”
“But! But…” This was how today was going to go? Jack was going to ruin my favorite kiss of all time?
Then he added, “And she has terrible breath, too.”
Dammit! “That can’t be true.”
“It’s true. She’s famous for it. Her breath smells like elephants.”
“Like elephants?”
“Like when you go to the zoo and stand near the elephants. That smell. But warm. And moist.”
I just squeezed my eyes closed and shook my head.
Jack went on, “That’s why people call her ‘Peanuts.’”
Now I opened my eyes and blinked at him.
“I have great breath, by the way,” Jack said then.
I blinked again.
“Like cinnamon rolls,” he said, giving me an actual wink.
What was happening here? “But … what about the thing you said about crying—when it’s really working, you’re feeling the feelings as the character?”
“That’s a good question,” Jack said, all professorial, pointing at me. “When you’re working with someone really good, that can happen. I could totally do that with Meryl Streep.”
“Wait—have you kissed Meryl Streep?”
“Not yet. Give me time.”
I punched him in the shoulder, like Rooting for ya, buddy.
“All to say,” Jack concluded, “yes. You can kiss each other as the characters.”
“Thank you,” I said, like he’d just put the world back in its proper order.
Then he added, “But not when you’re kissing Katie Palmer.”
“Dammit!”
He kept going. “It’s all choreographed. You’re thinking about your blocking, and the angles, and hitting your mark, and not having a double chin, and making sure your lips don’t get folded up in a weird way. It’s very technical. You talk about everything beforehand. You know, ‘Will there be tongue?’ That kind of stuff.”
“Will there be tongue?”
“Almost never.”
Was that disappointing? I couldn’t decide.
“You have to block it out in advance,” Jack went on. “That’s true for all on-screen kissing, really. It’s the opposite of real kissing. Screen kissing is all about how you look. Real kissing, of course”—he glanced away for a second—“is about how you feel.”
“Huh,” I said.
“Yeah,” Jack said.
“So you hated kissing Katie Palmer…” I said.
“Affirmative. I hated kissing Peanuts Palmer.”