2. Summer
2
SUMMER
“M otherfucker! Stupid asshole!” I gripped the pillow tighter, pressing it to my face and screaming again. “You fucking bastard!”
Usually, screaming like this helped me release whatever was weighing me down or burning inside me. Sadly, it seemed there was no getting rid of what was burning in my chest by the time I reached the cheap motel room I was renting until the studio set me up with an apartment as per our contract.
The fucking contract where I was supposed to have a year until release. Not six months . I slammed the pillow against the bed a few times, relishing the way my shoulders ached from the effort. But it still wasn’t enough. I wanted blood. Specifically, the blood of Lex Landry.
To go with the blood of so many others who’d fucked me over from day one.
“You finished?” Claudia turned away from the tea kettle on the stove, crossing from the tiny kitchenette to where I sat on one of the two double beds. My best friend knew well enough to stay out of my way when I was raging. Now, she brought me a cup of chamomile tea in hopes of soothing whatever was left.
There wasn’t tea in the state of California to do that, but I groaned and accepted the mug. “You don’t understand. He was such a prick. Strutting around the place, and why? Because he was the swimmer that reached his mother’s egg first? Congratulations, Lex Landry. You were born wealthy.” Even the honey Claudia had added to the tea tasted sour in my mouth.
“You knew what you were getting into,” she reminded me, took a seat on the other bed and tucked her black curls behind her ear. We were close enough that our knees nearly touched as we sipped from our mugs. “This is a major studio. They’re not interested in art.”
“I didn’t know what I was getting into,” I countered as indignation flared in my chest again. “I thought I was working with Alexander. The father. The one who actually has a fucking clue. But no, I get pushed off on the idiot nepo baby who’s been coasting on his last name his entire life. That goes to show you how much respect they have for me.”
“It doesn’t have to be a respect thing,” she pointed out gently.
“What is it?” I asked. “I know what everybody thinks about me. I know they figure I’m too much trouble to deal with, so why bother?”
“Word does get around,” she murmured, biting her lip as she always did when she was anxious. It took a lot to shake her, and that’s probably why we had become instant friends on the first day of first grade. We had balanced each other out for almost twenty-five years. Now, she was my assistant since she was better with people and scheduling than I could ever hope to be.
“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked. “Don’t do that. Don’t sound like them.”
“I don’t mean to. Let’s face it. You need this.”
If there was one thing I hated more than just about anything else besides arrogant nepo babies who only cared about money, it was being called out. “It’s not my fault,” I whispered.
Right away, she winced, reaching out to pat my leg. “You know I didn’t mean it that way. It’s not your fault your boyfriend was the king of slimy shits and left you to navigate the world of pervy producers and studio heads.”
I set the mug down on the table between our beds, flopped onto my back and stared up at the ceiling with its stained tiles. Two years. It had been two years since I had been stabbed in the back, and there were days like today when the pain was as fresh as ever.
His voice echoed in my memory, dripping with false sincerity the way it had when he broke the news that I was excluded from the film’s credits. “It was an oversight. That’s how these things go sometimes. No hard feelings.” It wasn’t bad enough the bastard broke my heart when he stuck his dick in another woman, he had to crush me professionally too. He had to burn every last bridge that connected us.
Even that hadn’t been enough. He also had to cover his ass to make sure his version of events got out before I could set the record straight. He wouldn’t want everyone to know I had carried that fucking movie for the better part of a year. I had worked tirelessly while he battled his so-called demons, sometimes holing up for days on end in a drunken stupor while I handled rewrites, rescheduling, and reshoots. I had sat with the editors and cobbled together the finished product that ended up sending my ex to Cannes.
A finished product that only bore the name Eric Danvers.
“ She’s difficult. She’s demanding. It’s her way or no way .” I could hear the words coming out of his mouth if I tried hard enough. I could hear how he sounded. How condescending he was. The poor, put-upon man forced to work with a woman who had standards and boundaries.
“Of course,” I whispered. “Everybody believes the man.”
“If you try to defend yourself, you look like the screaming harpy,” Claudia concluded. Then, all of a sudden, she jumped up, startling me into lifting my head to watch her.
“What are you doing?“ I asked.
“I’m going to make you a sage bundle to burn in Landry’s office the next time you’re there.”
She was probably serious, but the idea made me laugh anyway. “I don’t know if there’s enough sage in your collection to handle all that shitty energy,” I mused.
“It’s still worth trying. Anyway, whether you want to be or not, you’re on the hook for this movie. And I know you’re going to make it good.” She looked over her shoulder from where she stood at the chipped dresser, going through her stash of herbs and flowers. Her dark eyes crinkled at the corners when she grinned. “We both know you are. And we both know you can work through adversity.”
Yes, that much I knew from personal experience. “Is it always going to feel like an uphill battle?”
“Hopefully, no. But that depends on you, too, and you know it.”
“Ugh…” I groaned as my head dropped to the bed again. “Remind me why I asked you to be my assistant.”
“Because I love you.” Looking over her shoulder again, she added, “And I’m the only person who’ll put up with you.”
“I should bring you with me to my next meeting with that dickhead.” I didn’t want to say his name. It left a bad taste in my mouth.
“Don’t threaten me with a good time.” When I barked out a laugh, she shrugged. “I’m serious. I can’t wait to meet him.”
“Gross,” I groaned out, crossing my arms over my eyes.
“Listen. I know Fuck Face Eric burned you big time, and I wouldn’t blame you if you swore off men for the rest of your life. But don’t act like you can’t see how hot Lex Landry is. Remember those photos from that awards thing they threw for his dad? Whew.” She fanned herself, going back to the sage bundle.
“I might throw up.”
“That’s right, keep pretending,” she murmured as she worked. “The more you fight, the more I know I’m right.”
Objectively, the man was handsome. Hot. Tall, broad shoulders, with a killer body and a head full of thick, luscious brown hair. He had the sort of soulful, dark eyes that seemed able to bore holes through me, a jawline sharp enough to cut glass, and a mouth that could only be described as sensuous.
It was a real shame he had to be an arrogant dickhead.
“You forget, I’ve already ignored a hundred red flags because a guy was hot,” I whispered, letting my arms fall away from my face. “All his bullshit. All his pandering to me. He tricked me into believing he actually cared about art and integrity.”
“Not everybody is Eric.” The bedsprings creaked when Claudia sat next to me. There was no more humor in her voice. She wasn’t teasing anymore. “You can’t carry all that old shit into this project. It’s going to ruin everything, and you deserve better than that. Don’t sabotage yourself.”
“Like I do it on purpose,” I mumbled.
“That’s not what I said. Just keep it in mind.”
When my phone rang, there was a split second when I wondered if it was Lex Landry calling. It turned out that part of me still wanted to cling to childish fantasies. I wanted to believe he might call and apologize for starting on the wrong foot and throwing my so-called reputation in my face.
I would have to grow up at some point. “Shit,” I whispered, my heart sinking when I saw it was Mom calling me. “I have to play happy now.”
“Tell her I said hi.” Claudia ducked into the small bathroom and closed the door. I decided to step outside rather than have the conversation in the room. I needed some fresh air.
I answered on my way out the door, injecting sunshine into my voice. “Hi. How’s it going?”
Mom’s laughter rang out. “Don’t be silly. You know why I’m calling. How was your meeting at the studio?”
“It was great,” I lied, squeezing my eyes shut. Thirty years old and still wincing when I told my mother a lie.
“Really?” She sounded skeptical, to say the least. “Everything went well?”
“Just as well as it could. As it turns out, Lex Landry is executive producing. The son of the studio head.”
“That’s great news!”
“Why do you say that?” I asked with a disbelieving laugh. If there was one thing my parents didn’t care about, it was Hollywood in general. The fact that she sounded positive in the first place shocked the shit out of me. There was one thing I had been raised to resent, and it was the sort of people who made millions from the artistic endeavors of other people who had to jump from job to job, trying to cobble together a livelihood. They were the true artists, the people putting their blood, sweat, and tears into their work.
“If he’s younger and untested, you can take control. You can make sure your vision is honored, Summer. This could be the ultimate opportunity for you. Working with someone who isn’t set in his ways.”
There were a few things I appreciated more than my mother’s positivity. I was used to hearing her look at the bright side of things no matter how dark the situation seemed. Right now, though, I wasn’t in the mood to be cheered up. I was still wallowing. Immature? I knew it was. All the knowledge made me do was dig my heels in deeper, determined to sulk because I knew I shouldn’t.
“I’m sure you’re right,” I lied again, pacing the walkway near the hotel parking lot.
“Have you found an apartment yet?”
“No. There’s something in my contract about them finding one for me. I forgot to bring it up at the meeting.” There were a lot of things I forgot to bring up at the meeting. Why the hell did I walk out? My heart sank as my back hit the brick wall. I slid down it until I was crouched with my knees close to my chest. What was I thinking? I needed to get out of this damn motel and move somewhere I could spread out a little—somewhere to unpack instead of living out of my suitcases.
There was just something about Lex Landry that got under my skin. It wasn’t a great excuse, but it was the truth.
“I hope it’s soon. I would love to come out and take a look at it.”
“Yeah, that’ll be fun.” And that made three lies in less than two minutes. Not that I didn’t want to see them, but there was a reason I preferred visiting Mom and Dad rather than having them come out to see me. It was never long before they had to share their opinions on everything from filmmakers selling their talents to the highest bidder like high-priced whores to actors and actresses who’d rather sacrifice themselves on the altar of fame than nurture their creative fire in so-called legitimate theater.
As far as they were concerned, nobody was a true artist unless they were suffering somehow. People who made art for money were sellouts, a belief that had been drilled into their heads from the time their parents migrated to San Francisco back in the free-love days.
I had figured it out at a young age, watching Mom fight to sell her pottery and Dad obsess over his latest mixed-media installation which not many people ever cared about. Their failures had only hardened their opinion, which said more about their lack of success than it did about anything else. Why be happy for the success of others when resentment was more immediate and soothing?
After a while, it had become a matter of sunk cost fallacy until the demands of three growing daughters meant tucking their tails between their legs and moving to an actual neighborhood with dependable utilities and trash pickup.
“Don’t worry,” she added. “If things don’t go well this time around, remember what we told you. You can always come home. Your room is ready for you. Though I’d have to get my pottery supplies out of there,” she murmured, almost as an afterthought to herself.
Staring across the parking lot and the horizon beyond it, my resolve hardened in the rays of the early afternoon sun. Like hell. There weren’t many things that chilled my blood like the thought of moving back home did. I had sort of gotten used to the idea of living somewhere with air conditioning, a garbage disposal, not to mention more than one bathroom so I wouldn’t have to share it with my damn parents. No matter how many times I tried to remind them that an artist didn’t have to live like a pauper to be legitimate, they didn’t want to hear it. That was their choice.
Not mine.
But that didn’t make me like Lex Landry, either. I was nothing like him or the people who inhabited his world.
“I’m sure it’s going to work out just fine,” I said. Was that a lie? Not if I believed it, which I had to. I knew what this film needed, and it was me as its director. If Lex only cared about dollars and cents and getting this finished by the impossible deadline, that was fine. It meant I’d have to work harder and smarter to keep the film’s integrity in one piece.
“That’s my girl. But the offer always stands,” she reminded me. “Sometimes I wish you had chosen something a little less cutthroat. If you wanted to direct, there was that position with the local children’s theater?—”
“I’m sorry, I’d better go,” I murmured, cutting her off so I wouldn’t throw up if I heard her talk about that damn children’s theater director position one more time. Running two-week theater camps for school kids was nothing like directing a major motion picture.
“Just keep us posted, okay? Your sisters have been asking about you too. You should reach out to them.”
“I will.” Even if I had no desire to talk about Aura’s beekeeping hobby or Rainbow’s latest rescue dog, I loved my sisters, I loved my family, but I was always different—more driven and less inclined to walk barefoot through my garden on the way to the beehives or whatever it was Aura kept in her backyard.
“Tell Claudia we send our love,” Mom added, and I promised to as we ended the call.
I sighed, staring longingly toward the Hollywood Hills in the distance. It had taken a long time for me to come to grips with the idea there was nothing wrong with wanting to be part of that existence. To have a career in Hollywood, to make the sort of movies people would see instead of the kind that got buried for lack of a promotions department behind them. I wanted to sit at the table with the men who had ruled the town and industry for much too long. I wanted to make my mark.
If only that didn’t mean having to jump in the mud with these pigs and splash around, fighting for dominance.
But I would if it meant I’d finally win.
Even if Lex Landry insisted on getting in the way.