Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr. Missed Each Other by Minutes at LAX — So She Left a Sweet Surprise (Exclusive)

Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr. have been zig-zagging across the globe in opposite directions in recent weeks, but even their hectic travel schedules can’t keep the longtime couple from making an effort to show their love.

While Gellar, 47, has been filming and promoting the new prequel series, Dexter: Original Sin, Prinze Jr., 48, has been filming the sequel to I Know What You Did Last Summer in Sydney, Australia.

When asked how they’re juggling parenting their two kids, Charlotte, 15, and Rocky, 12, and making time for each other amidst such busy schedules, Gellar tells PEOPLE the sweetest story that proves why the couple, who wed in 2002, are stronger than ever.

“This is actually funny. So I came back with the kids from Australia because they had to go back to school after the holiday,” Gellar says. “And then he was still there, and then I left to go to Brazil on a Wednesday — at noon, my flight took off, and his flight from Australia landed at 12:15. Isn’t that funny?”

She continues, “We were like, ‘I think that might be his plane coming in.’ It was actually funny, though, because we shared a driver to pick us up, and so I put a little note that I wrote for him in the morning [and] I put his coffee, so it was ready when he got off the plane.”

“I had it all ready for him,” Gellar says,

Even Patrick Gibson, who plays the titular serial killer in the prequel series, can’t help but gush over the sweet story after his costar tells it.

“She’s the best,” Gibson says of Gellar. “I’m telling you. She’s the best.”

Prinze’s involvement in the I Know What You Did Last Summer sequel has prompted fans to wonder if there’s any chance Gellar might return to the thriller world, too, but she swiftly shut down those rumors in October as she reminded fans that her character is “dead.”

That doesn’t mean she can’t play a role behind the scenes, though. “My best friend [Jennifer Kaytin Robinson] is directing it, so we joke that I have an unofficial job, which is I am continuity,” Gellar told PEOPLE. “So I’m always the one telling her, ‘Well, that would happen, or that wouldn’t happen with those characters,’ so I do have kind of an unofficial job title.”

She raved of the “amazing cast” — which includes Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, Jonah Haur-King, Sarah Pidgeo and Tyriq Withers — as she said, “I’m so happy and excited for all of them. I will be there with moral support behind the cameras.”

The Buffy the Vampire Slayer alum ran into some trouble with that moral support, though, after fans got overexcited when she posted a photo from the sequel’s set during her Thanksgiving Australia trip to see Prinze Jr.

“Then I found out that they hadn’t posted any pictures from the set yet — hadn’t announced they started filming,” she revealed on Live with Kelly and Mark. “And so I got in a little bit of trouble.”

New episodes of Dexter: Original Sin air Fridays on Paramount+ with SHOWTIME Plan.