Chapter 22
“Sweet Natalie Shapiro, with a network TV show. I never would have seen this coming back when we were together, but I’m so impressed,” said Conor of the inscrutable short stories, sitting across a wobbly table from Natalie in a crowded West Village coffee shop.
“Thank you,” Natalie said, taking a sip of her cappuccino. Men always called her sweet when they didn’t actually know her. Before a couple weeks ago, her last communication with Conor had been a poem he’d sent her a month after their breakup back in 2013, something he’d written about her that was actually about him. Conor had viewed Natalie as a manic pixie dream girl sent to fill his life with sex and adoration, and she, craving his approval, had played the part he asked of her until she outgrew it.
But recently an email from him had landed in her inbox, asking for a “pick your brain” coffee the next time she was back in New York. She hadn’t yet learned how to say no to those requests. Besides, it was nice being in a position where she could help others.
And, okay, fine, she liked the idea of Conor craving her approval for a change.
“You’re not running the whole thing yourself, are you?” he asked.
“Oh, no. They hired an experienced showrunner for that, thankfully.” She straightened her shoulders, strove to appear entirely calm about the turn her life had taken even though sometimes she still couldn’t believe her luck. “But I’m second-in-command in the writers’ room, and an executive producer on it as well.”
“Man, it’s inspiring that you get to do this work. How did you make it all happen?” he asked, scratching the gray at his temples.
She pictured herself from his point of view, her hair shiny and blown out. (She could afford nice hair care products now!) Sophisticated. She’d become the kind of person who wore blouses tucked into tight leather pants. Satisfaction burned in her.
“Would you say it was mostly connections?” he continued as she opened her mouth to speak.
“Well,” she said, and cleared her throat, “connections certainly played a part. And so much of the industry is luck. But you also have to do the work on your craft so that when you’re in the right place at the right time, you’re ready to step up.” Apparently she’d also become the kind of person who very seriously said “your craft.”
“Are your connections solely on the network side?” Conor asked, scratching his chin. “Because I think my work lends itself more naturally to streaming. It has an auteur, complex, almost filmic tone, if you know what I mean.”
“Mm. Wow. Yes, we took ours out to networks first since Tyler wanted to go big and broad with the comedy. I don’t know how much you’ve watched of it—”
He nodded in an evasive way. “I don’t have regular TV anymore.”
“Right,” she said, then sat through another interminable half hour, during which Conor rerouted the conversation to talk in depth about the script he was working on, clearly hoping that she’d be so blown away by the brilliance of “it’s a Kafkaesque look at working in a big-box store, revealing the rot at the heart of the American experiment” that she’d have no choice but to connect him with her agent. Why had she ever been so desperate to keep this insufferable man entertained? Finally, blessedly, her phone dinged.
“And it would be incredibly punk rock having this show about the evil of big corporations on Amazon Prime, you know? Tricking the biggest corporation of all into spreading the message.”
Natalie held her phone up. “I’m sorry, but I have to go to a housewarming party, and my ride’s here.”
“Sure. But first, what do you think of the concept?”
She rose to standing. “I know it’s only network TV, but Superstore has been doing smart, interesting commentary on the big-box store for a while now. And as for the rest of your vision, I’m afraid I don’t quite get it.” She grabbed her coat and gave him a blinding smile. “But best of luck.”
Then she walked outside and over to the black car idling at the curb, opening the door and sliding onto the seat. “Thank God that’s over.”
“Damn, no fun?” Tyler asked, sprawled out next to her. “Then it’s a good thing we get to party!”
On the turnpike, Natalie looked out the window as they passed a billboard for Stoat Sons and then, behind it, a newer, shinier billboard advertising Meant 2B, Tuesday nights on CBS. In the foreground of the picture, Tyler mugged, a himbo unintentionally leaving destruction in his wake. In the background of the shot, two women watched—one with adoration, another rolling her eyes.
“I think we should make a TV show,” Tyler had said on the phone last year, the night that Natalie had been crying on the train.
“Of your memoir?”
“No, Apartment 2F! Don’t you think it could make a great sitcom? Two roommates, the kooky boyfriend who comes in and screws things up? We make Dennis a lead. I play Dennis. You help adapt it.”
It was all so completely strange, Natalie couldn’t stop herself from laughing. “I never pictured it as a sitcom.”
“Really? I think it’s perfect for multicam! Anyway, my agent says that because Yeo, It’s Tyler! is doing so well right now, we’ve got to act fast to capitalize on the Tyler-ssance.”
“I’m sorry, the Tyler-ssance? Like the Renaissance?”
“Oh.” Tyler paused. “Yeah. That’s what he meant.”
“I’m just trying to wrap my head around this. I’m so flattered, but are you sure about Apartment 2F? We could come up with something different, something original.”
“Nah, it’s gotta be intellectual property. Everyone’s into IP now! So, what do you say? Can I set up a time for you to talk with my agent?”
Strangely, in that moment, Natalie pictured Rob, the way he’d called her out at the wedding over her cruel portrayal of Angus. Could she really put that on television? (Assuming the show made it through the development process. Even with stars attached, plenty of projects failed. This whole moral dilemma was probably moot.)
But she could change the character of Dennis. Change the circumstances, the details, make him unrecognizable. Tyler didn’t have Angus’s energy, not in the slightest.
And how could she look this gift horse in the mouth? This was everything she’d ever dreamt about. Angus hadn’t proven to be as bad for Gabby as Natalie had feared, but that didn’t mean she had to kill her own ambitions just on the off chance this might upset him.
“Of course,” Natalie said, feeling like she was about to faint. “I’m in.”
The development process had been a fast-tracked whirlwind. Despite the dominance of streaming, it turned out there was still a market for network sitcoms in the mold of The Big Bang Theory, and Tyler had been right. If you took the most basic scaffolding of Apartment 2F—two roommates who are best friends, one falls in love with an annoying fop who the other one hates, annoying fop unofficially moves in—and added in “shenanigans ensue,” it did work as a laugh-tracked multicam.
Their unofficial mandate was “Dumb it down,” starting with the stupid, punny title. (“They live in apartment 2B, and the girlfriend thinks they’re meant 2B!”) Natalie stayed true to her vow to herself, leaning into the dopily attractive interpretation of Dennis. Surely nobody would connect Tyler’s version—always walking around the apartment shirtless—with Angus. Plus, given the title change, people wouldn’t associate the show with the book unless Natalie pushed for it, and she wouldn’t.
Somehow, each time they reached a new step where she thought the project would die, it just kept going, like some monster with regenerative powers. Maybe it had something to do with Tyler’s chill confidence. He was manifesting, he’d explained to her, and had acquired a crystal meant to guarantee success.
So, here she was, less than two years after she’d begged Gabby for a job in advertising, one of the head writers on a television show that was pulling in numbers, respectable numbers, enough that they felt secure in starting to talk about what they might do in a second season. She got to sit in a room full of other writers every day and come up with dumb jokes and ridiculous situations. What if Dennis decides he’s going to fix their clogged sink and ends up flooding the whole apartment building? What if Dennis starts a dog-walking business with apartment 2B as his home base?
Occasionally, in quiet moments, she could admit to herself that the work wasn’t the most creatively fulfilling. The Sisyphean structure of each episode where nothing changed and nobody grew might eventually bring her to a breaking point. Her pitches to have the characters deal with more complicated feelings or break out of their rigid roles were mostly shot down by the showrunner. She was inundated with well-wishes from people who knew her, but it was less that they respected her work, more that they respected that she’d gotten the chance to do it. Also, she’d had to move to the West Coast, and every time she drove herself to the writers’ room, she worried she might die on the freeway.
But holy shit, who cared? In almost all the ways, she was living the dream.
It was a delicious irony that she’d spent so much of her twenties thinking that she had to figure out her life before turning thirty or she’d be doomed. And then, at thirty, an opportunity she’d never even let herself imagine dropped into her lap.
No, she shouldn’t say dropped, as if she’d had nothing to do with it. The opportunity had come about because of groundwork she’d laid without realizing. That was the strange part about success—there was no predicting it. The things you thought would pan out didn’t, while the random job you took to pay your bills might reward you beyond your wildest dreams. It was enough to drive you insane, the unpredictable not-knowing of it all.
Now, she was back in NYC for a few days before the holidays, seeing Iman, taking some meetings alongside Tyler, who had also come back to the East Coast.
Then she’d bring her mother on a trip, just the two of them, to Italy, which Natalie was proudly paying for. And look, Greg was welcome to come if he wanted to pay his own way! A notorious cheapskate, he did not, and Ellen did not seem too upset about that. Natalie had finally figured out a way to get alone time with her mother. Maybe some night in a cozy trattoria over a bottle of wine, she’d bring up that devastating conversation they’d had all those years ago the night before her mom’s wedding. She’d tell her mom what she’d begun to learn over the past year and a half—that she’d become so much less afraid of men getting bored with her once she’d learned how not to get bored of herself.
But before all that, Gabby and Angus’s housewarming party. She’d mentioned it to Tyler at lunch that day, as they were walking out of an overpriced steakhouse where they’d met with a New York–based exec. “Ooh, can I come?” Tyler had asked.
“Really? It’s just going to be hanging out in the suburbs.”
“Yes. I love going to normal people parties! Sometimes it’s nice to be around, like, less people doing cocaine, more people eating chips and salsa.”
Natalie grimaced. “Unfortunately, Gabby and Angus are huge cokeheads.”
“Oh.” He thought hard. “Well, that’s okay too.”
“I’m joking,” she said, laughing.
“Always writing jokes, even on vacation!”
“That’s me.”
“You write the jokes, I tell them, it makes us a perfect pair,” he went on, and she shot him a look. “Pair of friends. Unless we ever decide to be something more. Which we could, but we don’t have to.”
“Okay,” she said. “I don’t know if you going to this party is a great idea.”
“It is!” He’d pulled a puppy dog face until she agreed.
Now their car pulled into Gabby and Angus’s driveway. Gabby had sent Natalie pictures of the place, but it was prettier in person, with white trim and a dark slate roof. Electric candles flickered in the windows. The front door, painted a cheery red, beckoned.
Tyler followed Nat as she strode up the walkway and tried the door handle. Unlocked. They walked into the party, which was already in full swing. The crowd spilled out of the living room, and throughout the first floor, a mix of people Natalie recognized who had come in from the city and those who she assumed were Gabby and Angus’s new neighbor friends. Gabby had decked the halls and then some. Combine Gabby’s Catholic upbringing with her stifled artistic talents, and this was what you got: garlands and lights competed for space, a Christmas tree stretched almost to the ceiling, and there were plenty of Santas ranging from stuffed dolls to an animatronic Kriss Kringle near the door whose belly shook with laughter whenever someone passed by him.
Nat had walked into rooms alongside Tyler plenty of times in LA. She’d felt the current of excitement that began to buzz when people realized a celebrity had entered the building. People’s conversations would grow more animated, as if they might draw Tyler’s attention to them, might make him think that they were fun. They’d throw their heads back in laughter, their eyes flitting Tyler’s way. But that was LA. Celebrities entered buildings all the time.
In suburban New Jersey, Natalie and Tyler walked in, and people’s conversations stopped. Not all conversations. It wasn’t like in the movies, where a hush descended over the room. But the people who noticed them poked one another and whispered. Not just about Tyler, she realized. About her too, their friend who had made good after they’d all spent years worrying to one another: Does Natalie have a backup plan? Such a shame, she had potential, the world is just so tough for creative types. She flashed them all a wide smile.
And then Gabby swept toward them. “Natalie!” Gabby yelped and hugged her. As Tyler examined the animatronic Santa, entranced, Gabby whispered shakily in Nat’s ear, “You brought Tyler Yeo? Is this my Christmas present? Am I allowed to talk to him?”
“Yes, he’s very nice,” Nat whispered back.
Gabby smoothed her hair, then smoothed it again, and attempted a calm smile as she turned to Tyler. “Welcome to our party. And house. This is, um, my house.” She let out a loud laugh for no apparent reason, her cheeks flaming red.
“Sweet place. And these decorations? We’re in a winter wonderland!” Tyler said, holding his arms out wide and coming in for a hug.
“Thank you,” Gabby squeaked as he enfolded her.
Angus came over with Christina on his back. “Natalie! And, oh wow, the Tyler Yeo? Huge fan! Welcome to our humble abode.” Angus shook Tyler’s hand heartily, then gave Nat a bear hug. “Your TV show! It’s hilarious. Appointment viewing for me, every Tuesday!”
“Thanks so much,” she said, exhaling, even as she noticed Gabby’s dreamy expression clearing, turning sour for a brief moment. But here was proof: Natalie had done her job disguising Dennis enough that Angus could watch the show and have no idea.
Angus gave Tyler a hearty handshake, then leaned forward so that Christina, on his back, could respond to Tyler’s proffered high five. “What can I get you? I have a bottle of Scotch I’ve been saving for a special occasion. Or…steak! Want me to grill you a steak?”
Angus, Tyler, and Christina headed off toward the kitchen, chatting happily. Gabby squeezed Nat’s hand quite hard. “You guys walked in here like a couple. Are you?”
“No. We’re coworkers.”
“But he came to a party in the suburbs with you. You don’t do that for a normal coworker.”
Natalie had heard that ghostwriters often fell half in love with their clients, having spent so much time thinking about them. Strangely enough, in their case, the opposite seemed to have happened. Tyler had fallen half in love with her.
She didn’t flatter herself—she knew it had started because of how eagerly she listened to him talk about himself. But now he actually seemed to respect her mind for what it could do outside of making him look good, though that was still a central feature.
“Please tell me you’ve at least…” Gabby waggled her eyebrows.
“No. Well, we went on one date. The night we found out the pilot had been picked up. We were drunk and hopped up on adrenaline, and he took me out to this fancy dinner.”
“And did you smooch?” Gabby asked, with all the seriousness of a policewoman interrogating a murder suspect.
“Yes.”
Gabby emitted a small shriek. “Why did you not call me immediately?”
“Maybe because right afterward, he said, and I quote, ‘It’s so refreshing how you’re pretty in a normal person way and not like a supermodel.’?”
“Okay,” Gabby said. “But still. You kissed Tyler Yeo! I can’t believe you haven’t told me every detail.”
“I thought it might be more fun to tell you in person and see your face, but—” Nat cut herself off, and Gabby awkwardly fiddled with her hair.
“Yeah. I’m sorry again about missing the premiere. I just figured that Angus needed more emotional support for his work retreat than you did at a fancy Hollywood party where everyone wanted to suck up to you.”
“Right,” Natalie said. Sure, the Meant 2B premiere had been wildly exciting, but it had been destabilizing too, the kind of night where she could’ve used Gabby’s grounding force. Instead, Gabby had bailed a few days earlier for some last-minute, high-pressure invitation from Angus’s boss, a retreat for Insight Capital’s top employees and their spouses. Yet another example of one of Natalie’s proudest achievements passing by without Gabby’s support.
“After going with Angus,” Gabby continued now, talking fast in an almost anxious tone, watching Natalie’s face, “I’ve got to say, it’s good I was there. Those guys are such competitive, status-obsessed assholes. No wonder Angus is always on the verge of developing a stress ulcer. Did you know that they call him ‘Sofa Stoat’? As in ‘Can Sofa Stoat handle taking on more hours, or is he preoccupied thinking about recliners?’ Which is ridiculous because futons and sofas aren’t the same, and he’s actually preoccupied being an equal partner in raising his child. I keep telling him that if he wants to quit, it’s fine by me, but—” She shook her head and pressed a hand on Natalie’s arm. “Anyways! I would have had much more fun walking the red carpet with you. Dibs on being your date to the next show you create.” She waggled her eyebrows. “Unless Tyler wants that position instead.”
“You aren’t letting this go, huh?” Nat asked.
“Nope! Now back to discussing Tyler’s mouth,” Gabby went on. “It must have been the best kiss of your life, right?”
Natalie started to confirm, then stopped. Because although making out with a movie star had been plenty exciting, the best kiss of her life had been with Rob Kapinsky in a cold, clear lake.
Where was Rob? Nat scanned the room for him, hoping he would and wouldn’t be here in equal measure. If he’d seen the show, he’d probably treat her with an icy superiority, Zuri on his arm. Last Gabby had told her, Rob and Zuri had sent out the save-the-dates for their wedding, to be held in April of next year, and Angus had been running himself ragged trying to be the best best man the world had ever seen (despite the fact that Rob had barely asked anything of him).
No sign of Rob. Well, of course not. Why would he fly out across the country for a housewarming party, especially while in the midst of wedding planning?
“Hello?” Gabby asked, bringing Nat back to earth. “Lost in reveries of Tyler? Sorry, but I still don’t understand why you’re not trying to make something happen with him.”
“Because we work together! That’s messy. I don’t want people thinking I got this show just because Tyler wants to get into my pants.”
It wasn’t just that, though. Five years ago, Natalie would have dated him anyway, gossip be damned. An actual movie star wanting to be in a relationship with her? How could she say no? But now, she didn’t want to date someone for status. She wanted to date someone who was right. And even though their date had been exciting, adrenaline-filled, and Tyler was clearly a practiced kisser, she couldn’t stop the nagging feeling that she was like a Bachelor contestant, there for the wrong reasons.
Still, the “being professional for work” excuse was an easier one. And that was what Natalie had said to him when she pulled back from their drunken kiss. Well, first he’d said the shit about the supermodels, and then she’d told him that she didn’t think going any further was a good idea.
“Cool,” he’d said. “Like, I obviously would love to get in your pants. But no presh. The show comes first. And if you ever change your mind, I’m here.”
He had been a real gem about it throughout the process. He was happy enough to wait for her to change her mind—he could get plenty of action in the meantime. She couldn’t seriously imagine making a life with Tyler. But she had to admire his persistence. He was growing on her.
“Shoot, I’ve got to go say hi to some parents from Christina’s daycare. Get yourself a drink, and we will continue this later,” Gabby said.
Natalie wound her way through the room to pour herself a glass of sauvignon blanc, making her way through the gauntlet of couples, everyone at this party in a pair besides her. Sometimes Nat felt like an ark had come by calling for the people to line up two by two just when she’d happened to be in the restroom.
But maybe that was okay. She had a lot of joy in her life, and she’d keep finding joy even if she never had a partner to experience it with her. She could discover moments of absolute ecstasy in taking herself to dinner alone, savoring the cold brine of a martini, exchanging life stories with the bartender if she was in a social mood or sitting silently with her own thoughts if she wasn’t. People said that joy was sweeter when you shared it, and maybe that was true. Perhaps she’d always have a pang of regret. But when she stretched out in her big soft bed as the morning light filtered in through her window, her joy tasted sweet enough to satisfy her.
This party too was full of joy. The last time she’d seen most of these people, she was treading water. Now she was a star and had brought an even bigger star along. She whirled from conversation to conversation, basking in praise and admiration, ready to soak it up all night long.
Halfway through her glass of wine, Natalie was talking with Becks and Shay as a man in a corduroy jacket stumbled out of the kitchen, knocking over yet another one of Gabby’s Santa figures with a clatter.
“Uh-oh, someone’s been hitting the eggnog a little too hard,” Shay said, her hand resting on her pregnant belly.
The man straightened up, then squatted down to righten the Santa. In doing so, he turned in their direction, and Natalie had to do a double take. What was Rob Kapinsky—a man who kept a tight leash on himself in almost every way—doing drunkenly wreaking havoc with Gabby’s Christmas decorations? She’d never seen him so loose-limbed, so floppy and careless, like a Muppet instead of a man.
Nearby, Gabby was looking over too. Rob regarded the Santa with a foggy mask of woe on his face.
Nat grabbed Gabby’s arm. “Um, what is happening over there? And where’s Zuri? I can’t imagine her approving of him getting that drunk.”
Gabby blinked at her slowly, then brought a hand to her mouth. “Oh my God,” she said. “I can’t believe I didn’t tell you.”