XJJohnson/jpistudios.com
Still The One: Everett (Blake Berris) wears his heart on his sleeve with Stephanie (Abigail Klein).
Everett throws Stephanie for a loop when he tells her that he still in love with her.
“I remember shooting this episode. It was one of my favorites that we’ve shot together,” says Abigail Klein (Stephanie), referring to herself and Blake Berris (Everett). “Everett tells Stephanie that he has something to confess. In her mind she’s thinking, ‘What is he going to say?’ It could be a gazillion things. He’s sort of stalling, so it’s progressively driving her more and more crazy. Just when she’s on the verge of shaking it out of him, he tells her how he really feels. It sort of catches her by surprise. She didn’t expect him to be that vulnerable, but I think a part of her knew how he felt about her.”
Everett’s admission strikes something in Stephanie. “At this point, she’s established that she can only handle friendship right now,” notes Klein. “She feels like she’s expressed where she’s at, even though maybe there’s some stuff deep down that she’s not confronting. She does love spending time with him and she did really love him, but she’s trying to protect herself. She’s attempting to put up a boundary. But when Everett shares how he’s really feeling, she sort of has to confront how she’s feeling, too.”
Everett goes on to reveal more about what happened to him after the accident and his time in a coma. “The audience will finally get to learn a little bit more about what he went through, what the doctor diagnosed him with after the accident, and how he recovered from that,” explains Klein. “Stephanie’s learning all these details for the first time, too, and she’s eager to learn about what happened. We had some really beautiful moments in those scenes, because Stephanie also had a chance to be vulnerable and share how she really, deeply felt after she thought Everett had ghosted her. Even though she knows now that it wasn’t intentional, that he was in a coma, it was important for her to express her vulnerability around that, too. It brings them closer, because they’re both sharing their truth.”
The information awakens some new feelings in Stephanie. “Now that Stephanie knows that Everett didn’t leave her by choice, she maybe has regrets,” notes Klein. “She wishes that she could have been there for him. She’s now digesting the fact that the love of her life was in a coma, and she wasn’t there to help him. So that brings up guilt and pain, sadness and regret, because she would have wanted to have been by his side while he was going through that.”
When Everett asks Stephanie to stay the night, she’s torn. “Even though he has been so vulnerable about how he feels about her, there’s a part of her that hasn’t recovered from the pain of losing him,” assesses Klein. “This whole conversation has been a new level of intimacy for them. Stephanie’s juggling her self-protective nature [with] feeling appreciative of Everett’s honesty and his love. In that moment when he asks her to stay, she wants to be thoughtful. Probably everything in her body wants to stay, but she’s also really wanting to be thoughtful of where they’re at in their relationship, because it’s still a little rocky in a sense. It’s also new and vulnerable.”
Stephanie tells Everett that she’s not ready to take that step. “He’s so understanding,” reports Klein. “And that only makes Stephanie want to stay more. Everett in this episode is just so endearing and present and beautiful with her. It’s really sweet.”
On her way out, Stephanie runs into Leo, who starts grilling her about being in Everett’s room. “Leo’s trying to get something out of her,” says Klein. “Stephanie tries to nip it in the bud by basically saying, ‘There’s no story here. Go stick your nose in somebody else’s business.’ She’s very matter-of-fact and just wants to get out of that situation as fast as possible. “
After Stephanie leaves, Leo can’t resist knocking on Everett’s door. Realizing Leo won’t give up, Everett admits to him that he and Stephanie have a history.
