9
“I THINK I’M GOING TO THROW UP.”
Penelope inhales deeply. “Did you eat five red velvet cupcakes in a row again?”
I temporarily thank whatever god that will have me that I don’t have speaker on, considering Parker is right, these walls are obnoxiously thin. “No,” I whisper-yell into the phone. “You know I can’t look at any red foods the same way again.” I sigh, then tell her about the deal I made with Parker.
Witch laughing ensues.
I deserve it, I really do.
She shouldn’t even be awake right now, but I was the lucky beneficiary of an emoji-laden text a few minutes ago that, after much deciphering, means she just got back from her date with the doctor.
She tells me the details, promises she locked all the latches in our apartment, and then I say, “I have to go. He’s going to be here in five minutes.”
“Don’t sound so dour, Elle,” she says in a singsong way. “After today, who knows? Maybe your screenplay will be in its first trimester.”
I made the mistake of comparing writing a screenplay to giving birth once, and Penelope has never let me forget it. “Ew, Penelope.”
“I wonder if the script will have its father’s green eyes? Or a tech trust fund?”
“I’m hanging up now.”
I do, and there’s a knock on my door, and I really hope it isn’t thin enough or Penelope isn’t loud enough for him to have heard any of that.
“Last chance” is what I say in greeting when I throw the door open.
He just raises an eyebrow at me. He’s wearing a short-sleeved shirt, and I immediately make eye contact with his arms.
“You can back out,” I say, shrugging a shoulder like I haven’t spent the last fifteen minutes trying to get the top of my hair to lie flat. “It’s your last chance.”
He narrows his eyes at me. “You would like that, wouldn’t you?”
I would, I think, which I think is the problem. I’m the type of person who gets happy when someone cancels plans with me.
More time with my bed!
Doing that a thousand times in a row equals years spent inside, when all of life is decidedly happening outside of my apartment.
His eyes trace my body. “Tough.”
“What?”
“Tough luck. You made a deal. So did I. And I intend on keeping it.”
I glare at him. “I don’t recall consulting my lawyer or drafting a contract.”
He looks surprised. “You have a lawyer?”
“I’ve sold eight screenplays to studios, asshole. Of course I have a lawyer.”
His face lights up when I call him an asshole, which I’m pretty sure is the exact opposite reaction that word is supposed to elicit.
“Well, I can have one drafted if that would make you feel better,” Parker says smoothly, and his eyes are wicked. He’s mocking me. “I’ll have my lawyers contact yours. I’ll make sure that one provision you had is included. What was it? No sex?”
I give him one last glare, then sigh to myself, because I can’t believe I’m actually about to step across the comfort of my door’s threshold.
Parker looks at my shoes of choice and frowns. “Those won’t be that comfortable for running.”
I had hoped he had forgotten about the running part.
“Look, you saw me in the stairwell. I’m not exactly a cardio person.”
He’s leaning against the doorway again. He needs to stop doing that. I need to stop watching so intently. “Which is exactly why we should go running,” he says. “In case there’s another building fire and I’m not around to cradle your laptop.”
I roll my eyes. “It wasn’t even a real fire.”
“Put the running shoes on, Elle.” He’s peering inside the apartment. A pair of running shoes that have been exclusively used for walking to places within a three-block radius are sitting against the wall. Great.
“Fine,” I say, and he keeps the door propped open while I do just that. “But I’m warning you. I’m even worse at running than I am climbing down stairs.”
“I can be patient,” he says.
“Good,” I reply, meeting him at the door. “Because I’m working before we run.”
PARKER WARREN IS TRYING TO READ OVER MY SHOULDER, AND I want to stab him in the eye with my pen.
“Can you not?” I say, pressing my page against my chest. He backs up a few steps.
“Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t know you were so precious with your words.”
“No. Just my personal space.”
Prickly. That’s how I’ve been described, most of my life, by men, at least. Probably because my first instinct when being romantically approached is usually to put my barbs up. Penelope—lovingly?—calls me a cactus, when she’s not calling me an island.
I blame it on having a beautiful mom. I still remember how men would leer at her at the grocery store, at the bank, at the post office. I remember being disgusted. I remember being so outraged when one once tried to speak to her, in front of me, when I was eight, that I exclaimed, “She’s a mom!” even though my dad was long gone at that point, as if that one fact automatically precluded her from all romantic attention.
It didn’t help my case that my mother despised the male notice too. Once, I asked her why she got dressed up and wore heels if she hated when people looked, and she said, “This is for me. No one else.”
My overall presence can be summed up as unapproachable, which is why I’m so surprised Parker approached me in that club in the first place. And why he hasn’t already ended our tenuous agreement.
Instead, I’m sitting sidesaddle on the edge of a fountain where the characters in my screenplay are supposed to meet, and he’s still hovering over me.
“Bethesda,” Parker says, and I squint up at him.
“What?”
“That’s the name of this fountain.” He frowns. “Who names a fountain Bethesda? What kind of name even is that?”
I blink at him. “Your name’s derivative is literally ‘park,’ Parker,” I say. “I wouldn’t go around criticizing people’s names.”
I go back to my notes.
Parker already asked me what I was doing, and I managed to ignore him long enough to not have to explain that I like to visit locations that will be in my screenplays, if possible. I’m not an author, I don’t have to worry much about setting the scene beyond a few small descriptions, but I always feel like a place speaks to me, in a way. No matter what I think I’ll write, seeing the place in person always inspires something else.
I know the characters must meet here. But how?
I look around for a hint of inspiration.
Parker is staring at me.
“Yes?”
“What’s your name a derivative of?”
I laugh. “Why, do you want to find my Social Security number too?”
He frowns at me. “I can’t even know your full name?”
“No.”
“You’re my girlfriend.”
My skin inexplicably prickles. “ Fake girlfriend,” I say.
“We share a wall.”
I shrug a shoulder. “For a summer.”
“I’ve seen you soaking wet from the rain, in a sweatshirt with clearly nothing but a laptop beneath it, and—”
I stop him with a crazed look. I look around—a bored-looking baby in a stroller looks back at me—then stand very slowly in a sad attempt to reach anywhere close to his height. “Have you lost your mind?” I whisper-yell through my teeth.
“Maybe”—he seems to consider me—“if I’m standing in a park right now in eighty-five-degree weather, watching you doodle in your notebook, when I don’t even know your full name.”
My eyes narrow. “I am not doodling . I’m writing observations, if you’re so curious. I’m trying to set the scene in my mind.”
“You’re letting the setting dictate the plot,” he says.
“Exactly. Kind of.”
He nods. He sits down next to the place I have just vacated, and I convince myself I have no choice but to join him.
He finally goes quiet. He’s just looking at the people around the park, same way I was, only without a tiny pink flower-covered notebook.
We watch a family take a photo with a tripod that then defies physics to fold up and fit into a purse. We watch the strained smile of a bride posing in front of the fountain. A professional photographer is going into yoga poses to get the best shot. A few feet away from them, a man is taking a picture of his black Lab with his iPhone.
“She looks miserable,” I say. It’s the type of thought I usually keep in my head.
“What?”
“The bride. Look at her. She looks like she wants to run.”
A few seconds while he looks.
He nods. “She does.”
I’m staring. I’m wondering why she would go through with this. She’s not even touching her new husband. Her eyes are glazed over, she’s—
“If you’re not going to write down what you’re thinking, you could at least tell me,” Parker says.
Fine. “I’m just thinking to myself why she would go through with marrying someone she clearly doesn’t even like.”
He shrugs a shoulder. “Maybe she does like him. Maybe she just doesn’t like”—he waves a hand around—“all of this.”
Their families are making wild motions behind the cameraman. Someone is holding up a light that looks extraterrestrial. Tourists are stopping to take their own photos of the couple.
“Yeah, I mean, this seems like my own personal hell,” I admit. “But . . . they’re not even looking at each other. Not even in solidarity in this chaotic moment.”
I ask myself why a lot. That’s where the best story ideas come from.
Bride who looks miserable, I scrawl across my notebook. Why get married?
“Money, maybe,” Parker says. He mumbles it. It’s a casual statement.
I look at him. “That’s what you’re going to think, isn’t it? Whoever you marry. You’re going to think it’s because of your money.”
Parker’s gaze slides to mine for just a moment before he looks back at the bride. “Yeah,” he says. He sounds sad. “I guess I am.”
It is sad, but I don’t say any helpful words or try to tell him that isn’t true. Unless he goes on one of those telenovela shows my grandma used to watch when I was little, where women date a secret prince, his money is going to always be a factor in his relationships, whether he wants it to be or not.
“Do you want to get married?” he asks.
I shoot him an annoyed look.
“Not to me.”
“Obviously,” I say far too quickly. Then I take a moment to actually consider the question. “The idea is nice. But, in practice, no. I don’t think I want to. I like being alone too much. My independence is important to me.”
My mother treated having been married as a personal failing. The only good thing I got out of it was you and your sister, she used to say.
When my little sister used to wrap her Barbies in tissues, around and around, to make some sort of wedding dress, my mom would remind us that our great-grandma had an arranged marriage, and that her great-grandma had a husband who literally locked her in a house and forbade her from speaking to anyone except for him.
It was kind of depressing.
The best gift I can give either of you is the freedom to live your life exactly the way you want to. Don’t let anyone ever take that away from you. She was speaking from experience.
Parker nods, as if in understanding. “You?” I ask.
“Never,” he says. He laughs. “Marriage has to be the least beneficial contract imaginable.”
Contract. I wonder if spending his entire adult life building one of the world’s biggest technology brands has made him think of everything in business terms. I suppose he has to think that way, when marrying someone could mean giving them half of his company in a divorce.
We watch the bridal party for a few more minutes, until the equipment is packed up, the bride shuffles away, fabric fisted in her hands, and their spots are happily taken by a group of silver-painted street performers. A toddler has tried to hand her stuffed dog to a silver-painted corpse bride in lieu of payment, and she has taken it.
“There’s a couple in your screenplay?” Parker asks.
“There’s supposed to be. It’s . . . it’s a love story.”
He considers this. “And you want them to meet in Central Park? That’s . . . their meet-cute?”
I slowly turn to face him. “Did those words actually just leave your mouth?”
He glares at me. “I have a mother who loves rom-coms.”
“Right.”
He shakes his head. “What if they’re strangers?” he says. “What if they’re both here for different reasons, but they end up watching a wedding photo shoot together?”
I give him a look. “You mean like we were just doing?”
He shrugs. “But they’re in a movie. So they agree that if they don’t find anyone in five years, they’ll just marry each other. In Central Park.”
My head tilts. “You know, I’m starting to think that mom of yours doesn’t exist.”
“You’re right. You figured it out. I don’t have a mom.”
I roll my eyes. “So the love story continues years later, when they don’t find anyone?”
He seems to think about that. “No. I don’t like movies that pick up years later.”
“Me neither.”
“So maybe they keep running into each other.”
“How? New York is giant. They’ve never even met before that moment.”
“True. But in these movies, there’s always something that has changed that makes sure they’re constantly seeing each other. Like he’s the new guy at her work. Or he’s her friend’s brother she’s never met.”
Or he’s her neighbor, I think, then immediately shove that thought away.
My first reaction is to tell him that I’m the writer, not him, and some tech guy isn’t going to write my screenplay for me, but his ideas have unlocked new ones.
I don’t like his idea about the marriage vow, but I do like the fact that they bond over seeing a wedding.
Maybe she hates weddings?
Why?
Maybe she doesn’t believe in love?
Why? What in her past made her that way? What do the relationships around her look like?
What does he think? Does he agree? Or is he the secret hopeless romantic in this situation?
I also begrudgingly agree that forced proximity is usually a necessary trope in these types of movies. They must have a reason to keep bumping into each other. I also need a reason to use all these locations the studio already got licenses for . . .
Maybe she’s the head costume designer for a movie, and he’s the star of it? Maybe she was talking bad about the actor she has to work with, after hearing he’s a huge jerk, and then he ends up being the actor?
Damn it. Penelope was right.
Parker Warren is my twisted muse.
I shrug a shoulder like I haven’t figured out a huge part of my movie. “It’s an idea.”
“Come on, Arielle,” he says. “You can admit it’s a good idea.”
I give him a look. “My full name is not Arielle.”
He shrugs. “If you say so.” Then he gets up. He takes the miniature notebook and just-as-tiny pen from my hand and puts them into the pocket of his joggers. “Time to run.”
It’s as horrible as I imagined.