Chapter 33
CHAPTER 33
M ONDAY MORNING ARRIVES IN A MORE PAINFUL way than it usually does. It’s six a.m. and I’ve barely slept. I am raw. Raw and empty. I’ve scheduled a meeting with Nathan for noon and I plan to come clean. I have both Dan and Clem in my head telling me I need to face things head-on. I’m not ready to face everything, but this one is unavoidable. I have lost so much in the past few days; I cannot lose my job too. I’ve run through the story a bunch of different ways, but the only one I can easily tell is the truth: I lied. I totally made it up.
“There she is,” Nathan says when I’ve been announced. “Come, sit. Tell me everything.”
I stop before I sit, just to feel this. It’s what I’ve been hoping for all along. Nathan thinks I’ve caught a tiger, that I’ve jumped through the hoops to make the big thing. Nathan is finally looking at me like I’m a player. And I realize that Clem is right. It changes nothing. I am not better or worth more in these few minutes that Nathan believes this.
“Everything,” I say and take the seat across from his desk. “Everything would really be a lot.”
He laughs. “Tell me about Quinlan.”
“I saw him and we spoke about the movie.” I reach down to arrange my skirt over my knees in that way I do to buy time, and I see that I am in jeans. “I’m in jeans,” I say out loud. “What a weird thing for me to do.”
“Are you all right?” Nathan asks.
“Yes, sorry. So I saw Jack and he’s a no. He’s not going to write us a song, wants no part in the movie. Honestly, I was a little desperate to get this green-lit and exaggerated the extent of our relationship. So it was probably never happening.” I pause and wait for some sort of admonishment. When I get none, I go on. “I have racked my brain and can’t come up with anything that makes this commercial enough for what you need, so I guess that’s it.”
Nathan sits back in his seat. “Fine. Let it go.”
“What?” I feel Ruby’s hand in mine, and my heart squeezes at the memory of her arms swirling through the air and the sweet sound of her singing voice. I spin the beads on my bracelet.
“The option, let it expire,” he says. “Find something else.”
Find something else. Like that’s an easy thing to do. Fly first class and then spend the rest of your life riding the bus. Meet a one-in-a-million guy and then get back out there and swipe for a partner with dental insurance.
“Are you all right?” Nathan’s asking me. “You seem a little out of it.”
“Do I? Sorry.” I look right and left and run my hands over my jeans. “The next script I bring your way will be chosen with an eye toward tigers and explosions.” The emptiness spreads inside me. This is not the work I want to be doing. Creating a bunch of nothing to try to get something.
“All right. Sounds like you get the assignment,” he says.
“I do.” I get up and head to the door, but stop and turn around. “Did you love the script?”
“I did.” He’s holding a sharpened pencil with both hands.
“Do you wish someone else would make it?” I ask. “Because I do. I’d just like to see it. Like it’s a movie I’d want to watch with my mom.”
“Our option’s expiring in a couple of months. Maybe someone will pick it up.”