Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
J ust as Sophie had feared, Derek avoided the catering stand over the next several days. Sophie kept her head down, working diligently and pretending, even to herself, that she was just fine. But anxiety ate at her heart.
Despite that, Silver Bells had found its footing, and filming was fluid, so much so that Mike, Beck, and Isaac had begun to talk of it like "the easiest job they'd had all year." During breaks, Sophie pestered them for more information about the difficult jobs they'd had, and Isaac described a time he'd been stuck inside a cave for more than twelve hours when a director had sent him down there to try to "assess the sound" for a future scene.
"Needless to say, we didn't film down there," Isaac said. "Mike was throwing snacks down at me and promising he'd take care of my girlfriend when he got back to LA." Isaac jabbed Mike in the side with his elbow, and Mike doubled over with laughter.
"What's this I hear about spelunking?" A familiar voice rang out through the set.
Sophie turned as her father, Joe, meandered toward the catering table, wearing a funny smile.
Mike, Beck, and Isaac perked up. "There he is! The man of the hour!" Mike threw his arm around Joe and led him the rest of the way to the catering stand.
Sophie was surprised. She knew they'd met her father at the Christmas party, but their friendship seemed even stronger now.
"We ran into Joe last night at The Thirsty Bucket and told him to come by this afternoon," Mike explained to Sophie.
"We told him his daughter has been causing a lot of trouble on set," Beck said, winking.
"I already knew the director hated you," Joe said, "but I didn't realize you were such a menace!"
Sophie giggled and hurried around the table to hug her father. She hadn't seen him since last weekend.
"Now that you're retired, you think you can just bother everyone else at work?" Sophie asked.
"Put me to work if you have to," Joe said.
"Never," Sophie said.
Joe chatted with the sound guys as Sophie, Fiona, and Randy prepped for the midafternoon snack service—nachos with cheese, chicken, and beans.
"Don't go too light on the cheese," Joe hollered, watching Sophie.
"That's the first rule of nachos, Dad," Sophie said, pretending to be annoyed and rolling her eyes.
"Joe says he's coming to The Thirsty Bucket with us tonight!" Mike announced proudly. "We told him you haven't been there with us for weeks!"
"Weren't we just there together like a week and a half ago?" Sophie scratched her head.
"That was a lifetime ago," Beck said. "Say you'll come with us tonight?"
Sophie sighed and glanced back at Randy. That morning, he'd shown her the presentation he'd made for tomorrow's Christmas Festival meeting, and she'd called town hall to secure their alcohol permit for the wine stalls. They'd said, "We already did that for you, Sophie. We know you're in over your head with the film."
It meant Sophie had a little more time than she'd planned for. "I guess I can swing by for one glass of wine," Sophie offered. "But just one! I have a Christmas Festival meeting tomorrow."
"That festival basically runs itself," Joe said.
"That's easy for you to say," Sophie said. "You just show up, eat, drink, and sing!"
"And I'll do it again this year!" Joe cried.
Mike, Beck, and Isaac cackled.
"Man, you have got to come out to LA when this is over," Isaac told Joe. "You'd be a riot out there."
Sophie laughed, imagining her father out on the West Coast, running around with a bunch of guys less than half his age. But it was true that Joe's age seemed to get lower by the day. Retirement had kickstarted a new era for him.
He was carefree again.
It was a surprise to all of them when Derek Brownlee said his final "cut" of that Friday a full hour before they'd been told he would.
"Pack it up for the weekend, guys," Derek called. "You did great this week. We're going to finish this thing with flying colors."
Randy muttered to Sophie under his breath, "It always freaks me out when he's nice. I always wonder how he'll make us pay for it later."
Sophie laughed nervously and hurried to clean up the catering table. Already, Mike, Isaac, and Beck were making faces at her, urging her along.
Her idea was this—go to the bar with the guys and her father, have one drink, then head home to relax on the sofa by herself.
But the minute The Thirsty Bucket opened its doors, she heard a familiar voice.
"Sophie!"
Cindy sat at the bar, waiting for her with an enormous smile.
"Dad told me you were coming here," Cindy explained as she wrapped her arms around her. "I convinced Vic to watch the kids for a couple of hours. I told him you've been a stranger lately!"
Mike, Isaac, and Beck were pleased to see Cindy. "The sister!"
"That's right," Cindy said, rolling her eyes. "That's all I'll ever be to you guys. The sister."
"No," Isaac assured her. "You're the mysterious one!"
"We know all about Sophie," Mike agreed.
"We know she's Christmas-obsessed," Isaac said.
"We know that the creepy traffic guy is obsessed with her," Beck said.
Sophie winced. Cindy gave her a look.
"Is he being weird?" Cindy demanded.
Sophie didn't want to talk about it—that she'd caught Jeremy staring at her several times this week, and he'd tried to corner her and converse with her when she'd been rushing to and fro, trying to finish lunch.
"He's fine," Sophie lied.
"He's never fine," Cindy shot back.
"Let's get a drink," Sophie said, her voice bright. "Who wants what?"
Alan poured beers for the boys and a glass of chardonnay for Sophie. Cindy left the counter to sit with the rest of them at a long table, where Sophie and Cindy caught up briefly as Joe, Beck, Mike, and Isaac fell into easy banter.
"It's like they've known each other forever," Cindy said, raising an eyebrow.
"Right?" Sophie laughed. "Dad's one of the guys."
Cindy explained that Annie had been sick lately, and now Peter had whatever Annie had. "It's a nightmare at home," she confessed. "As soon as I get back tonight, I told Vic he could go out for a few hours to meet his friends, too. We have to take turns, pushing each other out of the house to maintain a semblance of sanity."
"A semblance of sanity," Mike piped up from the other side of the table. "That's what Sophie brings to set every day!"
"I don't know if that's sanity," Isaac said. "She's clearly insane about Christmas. But Mr. Director is insane in far more sinister ways."
Sophie grinned inwardly and took a sip of wine. She wanted to drag Cindy to a private corner to tell her what had been going on—that Derek had eaten and fallen in love with her pancakes, that he frequently looked at her a little too long with a little too much urgency in his eyes, that her invitation to the Christmas Festival had turned his face gray.
But already, Cindy was finishing her drink and saying, "I'd better get back. Vic sent me a HELP text message." She sighed and hugged Sophie from the side. "Have a great night. Don't do anything I wouldn't do." She wagged her eyebrows.
Sophie realized that Cindy thought she and one of the sound guys would wind up together.
But Sophie thought of Mike, Isaac, and Beck like chaotic younger brothers.
Her heart ached for the dark and brooding Derek.
She wished she could refute her feelings.
It was just like when Jeremy had broken up with her. She'd willed herself to fall out of love with him. But her love for Jeremy had been too powerful. It had swallowed her up.
Cindy buttoned her coat and opened the bar door. The bell jangled overhead. "Oh, sorry. Hi." Cindy's voice wavered.
Just as Cindy had tried to leave, someone else was entering the bar. Sophie turned to see Cindy's curious, smiling face.
The man on the other side of the door was Derek Brownlee. He held the door open wider for Cindy, who blushed as she thanked him, then turned to make eye contact with Sophie. Sophie could read her mind: The Grinch is here!
Sophie thought she might faint. Derek Brownlee closed the door against the chill and unbuttoned his coat as he strode toward the bar. It seemed as though he was making a conscious effort not to look at Sophie or the sound guys. Mike’s, Beck’s, and Isaac's faces were difficult to read.
"Hi, Alan," Derek said. "Can I get a whiskey on the rocks, please?"
Sophie felt flushed. She could feel her father's eyes on her. She sipped her wine and tried to think of a way to enter Joe and the sound guys' conversation. But they were chatting about a nineties band she didn't know anything about.
And then, Derek hovered over the table like a shadow. The sound guys' conversation with Joe became more forceful. They didn't know what to do.
It wasn't like Derek to want to join in on the fun.
Sophie felt anxious. Her palms were sweating. Finally, she got up the courage to raise her chin, look at Derek, and ask, "Do you want to sit down?"
It was a normal thing to ask. A typical thing you might ask a colleague. And what was Derek if not their colleague?
"Thanks," Derek said. He sat across from her and raised his glass of whiskey. She clinked, and the sound guys and Joe followed suit.
Derek looked out of his element. The sound guys waited for a few seconds, maybe thinking he had something to say to them. But when Derek remained quiet, Isaac launched back into the nineties band topic, and Joe said, "You know, I saw them live in LA in 1997."
The sound guys were impressed.
Sophie forced herself to look across the table at Derek. Did she have anything to say to him? Anything that would save them both from silence as the sound guys and Joe went on and on?
Already, Mike was ordering the sound guys and Joe another round. They were caught up in their night.
Why had Derek come out tonight? Usually, he escaped set and went to his cabin and remained alone till the next day. Usually, he kept to himself.
"Mike said he worked with you earlier this year," Sophie said. Her voice was high-pitched and strange. "A crime drama thing?"
Derek's face relaxed. He looked grateful she'd taken control of the conversation. "That's right. It was just a little indie film thing. We had a tiny budget. But sometimes, I think a tiny budget is more interesting to play around with. You can only do so much, and you make do with what you have."
Sophie smiled. "Maybe it's kind of like cooking, then. You can make incredible meals with only a few cheap ingredients. That's why I never believe people who say they can't afford to cook well."
Derek snapped his fingers. "It is the same! Although I have to admit, I'm guilty of microwave dinners."
"Who doesn't like a good microwave dinner?" Sophie joked. "The microwave dinner recipes have gotten insanely good over the past decade."
"It's night and day," Derek agreed. "I really don't know how to cook for one person. But the microwave is made for one-person dinners."
Sophie gave him a soft smile. "When I went through my breakup—the one I was telling you about—I really struggled with that. I didn't know how to cook for one person. I always had buckets and buckets of leftover food in the freezer."
"You were stocked up for the end of the world," Derek joked. "A prepper."
"Something like that." Sophie laughed.
"I wouldn't last two days," Derek quipped. "I make movies. And I don't even know if I do that well. Not anymore, at least."
Sophie was surprised at how open he was about that. She took a sip of wine and made sure the sound guys and her father weren't paying attention.
A part of her wanted to invite Derek to a quiet corner so they could hear each other better. But she knew that would sound the alarms.
She thought, Mike, Isaac, and Beck wouldn't let me hear the end of it. And Dad would tell Mom, and she'd call me immediately and beg me for details.
Nothing in Willow Creek was private. Nothing ever really belonged just to you.
"You've had an incredible career," Sophie reminded him, remembering what Cara had said about studios writing Derek "blank checks."
Derek offered a sad smile. "I had a brilliant career. I'm pretty sure it's over."
"Because you're making a Christmas film?" Sophie furrowed her brow.
"No," Derek said. "Because I just don't have it in me anymore."
Sophie pressed her lips together. She couldn't pull her eyes away from his.
"You mentioned my wife's name," Derek said softly. "That day you called me out."
Sophie was flushed again. Stuttering, she said, "I'm sorry about that."
"No. It's okay." Derek spread his hands out on the table between them. "I hadn't realized how miserable I was making myself until that moment. I was fighting against her vision for a cheerful, heartwarming Christmas movie. You know, Silver Bells is unlike any of her other screenplays. It's optimistic. It's joyful. It isn't 'difficult art,' so to speak. When she first wrote it, I asked her why. I'll never forget what she said."
Sophie couldn't breathe.
"She told me she wanted to celebrate everything about life in her art," Derek explained. "She wanted to talk about the difficult times, the disappointments, the heartbreaks. But she didn't want to leave out the beautiful moments, the Christmas cheer, the second chances. She died shortly after she finished writing Silver Bells . I wouldn't have remembered it if I hadn't moved houses recently and found the script among her things. I told a studio friend about it, and he assured me this was my big return to big movies. We got millions of dollars worth of funding like that." Derek snapped his fingers. "I was amazed. It was like Georgia was trying to tell me something from beyond the grave."
Sophie closed her eyes. She couldn't believe Derek was bringing her deeper into his world.
"I'm so sorry for your loss," she offered finally. "I can't imagine."
Derek's eyes were wounded.
And then it occurred to her.
"Can I ask a question?"
"Sure," Derek said. His voice was soft.
"Is she the reason you hate Christmas?" Sophie asked. "Did she love it so much that losing her ruined it for you?"
"Partially," Derek offered. "But it's a bit deeper than that. It was just a few days before Christmas that she passed away. At the time, we were finishing up auditions and preparations for a brand-new feature film, and everything was rushed, and we were both panicked and frantic. We wanted to fly to Hawaii the day after Christmas to relax and recoup before filming started.
"She called me about an hour before it happened. She had new edits on a script, and she was headed out to meet our producer Jack. I wasn't so sure of her edits, and I told her that. I could feel her rolling her eyes through the phone. She was like, 'You have to trust me, Derek. You know I'm always right when it comes to the scripts!' Which was true; she was always right and I was always wrong, and it was impossible for me to learn that. Even now. We had a brief spat about it. I don't even know if we said we loved each other. And then a few hours later, I got a call that she'd died in a car accident on Sunset Boulevard."
Derek swiped his hand through the air. His eyes glinted with tears.
"One minute, she was here, and the next, she was not. I canceled everything after that. I sat around in our mansion in Beverly Hills, bemoaning life, avoiding Christmas. I had the maid take down all the decorations that Georgia had lovingly put up. And I resolved never to celebrate Christmas again. Because what good is it?" Derek sounded breathless. "How can something like that continue without Georgia on the planet with us?"
Sophie had been so captivated by his story that she hadn't realized her father and the sound guys had gotten up to play darts in the corner. She was relieved they hadn't overheard.
Derek looked exhausted after that. He put his face in his hands. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have just told you all of that."
"No. It's okay," Sophie assured him.
"I don't know," he offered. "I haven't said it out loud to a stranger before. But you're also not a stranger. We work together. It's unprofessional."
Sophie wanted to run around the table and throw her arms around him. She wanted to tell him that Christmas could help with the healing process if you opened yourself up to its magic.
But instead, Mike was back at the table, begging the two of them to play darts. "We can't do it without you. Beck is miserable at it, and Joe has had one too many beers already to get any points."
Sophie and Derek met one another's gaze for a soft and beautiful moment. Could Mike sense what had just passed between them? Could he feel the shimmer in the air?
"I'd better get back home," Derek admitted after a long pause. "I want to prep for tomorrow."
"All right, boss," Mike said. "See you tomorrow."
Sophie remained seated. She and Mike watched as Derek got up, buttoned his coat, and walked into the swirling snow.
"He's so mysterious," Mike said with a laugh. "Did he tell you anything about himself just now?"
"Nothing," Sophie lied.
"It's weird that he came out," Mike said. "It's like he wants to pretend to be an ordinary person, but he forgot how."
Sophie tried to laugh and followed Mike back into the corner, where her father handed her a dart, and Isaac took her shoulder with his hand.
"Focus, Sophie," he said. "We need all the points we can get."
So distracted by Derek's story, Sophie hit the wall with every single dart.
Don't you dare fall in love with him, Sophie Masters.
But she realized too late that she already was.