Chapter 16
Chloe walked across to the cloisters flexing and then clenching her fingers.
She could see Sean was already there, waiting for her.
He was wearing designer jeans that flattered his physique and a worn leather jacket over the “Director’s Cut” T-shirt he’d been wearing earlier.
He swung one foot back and forth, scuffing his shoe against a paving stone.
“Hey,” he said, running a hand through his floppy black hair. “You recovered from your dunking?”
“Just about. I might have frog spawn in my ears,” she said, lifting a hand to jiggle one earlobe.
“You always did have great comic timing,” he said. “I wish I’d caught it on camera.”
They walked through the front quad, up Turl Street, toward the University Parks.
“It feels weird being back here, doesn’t it?” she said.
“Yeah, first time I’ve been back,” he said. “Nothing changes, does it?”
Nothing, and yet everything.
“Except now you’re super successful,” she said, elbowing him.
“I don’t know about that,” he said, taking off his jacket as they turned up Park Street.
“So, what’s it like, getting everything you ever wanted?” she asked. “Work-wise, at least.”
“It’s not everything it’s cracked up to be,” he said. She assumed he was joking, but when she looked across at him, he gave her a tight smile. “I know I’m blessed I get to do what I do.”
“Blessed? You’ve been in LA too long,” she said, and he laughed, a real laugh this time.
“How about you? Tell me about this film company you work for—are you writing, producing?”
“More like making coffee and booking meeting rooms,” she said lightly, but then she thought of Rob, what he would say if he could hear her diminish her role like this.
“I’m pushing to get more hands-on experience in production, see the whole process, learn the craft.
” Then she took a deep breath and pulled off the Band-Aid.
“Why haven’t you been in touch all these years, really, Sean?
Don’t tell me it’s because you were too busy. ”
Sean shook his head as though befuddled. But then he cleared his throat and said, “I guess I was pissed off with you.”
“Still? You’ve had a million girlfriends since then, haven’t you?”
“Not because of that.” He made a pfft sound. “I know I was a dick in third year. I should have got things back to how they were. I know that was on me.” He paused. “Third year was shit, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, it was, and Susie was a cow, sorry.”
“She was a cow,” he said, smiling. “But it wasn’t just her fault that I cut you out.
” He lifted his face to the sun and closed his eyes briefly.
“I think I was luxuriating in the feeling of being rejected. There’s something so powerful about unrequited love.
It was such a big feeling, and I was always chasing big feelings back then.
I’m not proud to admit that.” He crossed his arms, hugging them to his chest. “Plus, I wrote a script about it, a script that got me an agent, so I guess you did me a favor breaking my heart.”
“So why were you pissed off?” she asked, frowning in incomprehension.
“Because…It’s stupid.” He hung his head, shook his long fringe down around his eyes.
“Just tell me,” she said, and he sighed.
“That email you sent when I first moved to LA. You didn’t mention Shadow Strike, you just said, ‘Well done on all your success.’ And, I remember the exact line you used, you said, ‘It must be incredible to know so many people have seen your work.’ I know you, Chloe. I know what that meant.”
“What did it mean?” she said, laughing, because she had no idea what he was talking about.
“It meant you thought the film was bad. And I couldn’t face calling you, hearing you try to be tactful. Or worse, you’d tell me what you really thought, and I couldn’t hear that from you.”
“That’s a lot of assumptions,” Chloe said, but she felt a glimmer of recognition.
Sean started walking a little faster down the street, a bouncing gait, full of nervous energy. Chloe had to dodge a woman with a pushchair to keep up with him.
“When someone offers you a chance to make a film, you don’t say no,” he told her.
“You think, ‘I’ll do this commercial stuff for now, then I’ll go back to making real art later.
’ Then they offer you more money, and you get pigeonholed as the action guy, and ten years later, you’ve never quite gotten around to making anything real.
” He slapped his forehead in frustration.
“And I was so nervous about seeing you this weekend because you’re the one person whose opinion I still care about, even now.
When I’m awake at three in the morning, loathing myself, it’s your voice in my head telling me I’m a fucking hack. ”
Chloe shook her head in bemusement. “Sean, that’s crazy. Why would you care what I think? I’ve done nothing, written nothing. It’s incredible, what you’ve achieved.”
“So did you actually like Shadow Strike? Probe and Prejudice? Apocalypse Four? Tell me, honestly, don’t hold back.” He looked across at her with wild, desperate eyes.
“Sean, they made millions at the box office. People loved them.” She fiddled with her hair, pulling it into a hairband, feeling trapped by this line of questioning.
“But did you?” he pushed.
She wasn’t going to lie. Not now.
“They’re not really my genre, but I could tell they were incredibly well directed. That shot at the end of Apocalypse Four, where they’re running from the dust cloud, I loved that, it must have been so hard to get such a long—”
“But what about the writing?” He ran a hand through his hair again, his whole body racked with pent-up energy.
She paused, turned to face him, and said, as gently as she could, “I didn’t love the writing.”
“I knew it. I knew you hated them,” he said, pushing the heels of his hands into his eye sockets.
“I didn’t hate them, I just thought the scripts were a little…
generic in places, but what do I know?” She paused.
“I’m not your target audience.” She watched him clench his jaw, his shoulders hunched up around his neck.
She’d never seen him like this, so tense and insecure.
“Honestly, Sean, it doesn’t sound like it’s my opinion you’re worried about, it’s your own. ”
“Do you know how hard it is, being successful?” he said, letting out a whimper, and he looked so forlorn, Chloe couldn’t help but laugh.
“Sean, fuck off! Seriously? Listen to yourself.”
“I know, I know how it sounds, but money isn’t what makes you feel successful.
I wake up every day with this anxiety that someone is going to take it all away from me, they’ll realize I don’t have an original idea in my head and I only got this job because my uncle worked at the studio, which is true.
I’m just some nepo kid. And my legacy to the world is Apocalypse fucking Four, which got twenty-two percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
Twenty-two percent! You know what The Guardian said?
” She did know, she had read that review, but she shook her head, feigning ignorance.
“They said, ‘People shouldn’t be worried about AI writing movies. They should be worried about Sean Adler writing movies.’ ” He sighed and Chloe had to pinch her lips closed.
“And I know it’s not exactly BAFTA Award–winning stuff,” Sean went on, “but I gave three years of my life to that film, and it’s really hard to make something great, that’s what no one understands. ”
He was almost crying now, that nervous energy exploding on his face, distorting his features. Chloe stopped walking and pulled him into a hug.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re making stuff people want to see.
The real world can be a lot! People want to eat popcorn and escape for a while.
Plus, it’s easy to be a critic.” She pulled back and took in his red eyes, his pouting lips.
“Sean, I’m in awe of you. You know you’ve got a massive career ahead of you. ”
“Thank you,” he sniffed, wiping his eyes with a sleeve as they started walking again.
Chloe couldn’t get over this revelation, the level of self-doubt he’d carried so quietly. She’d imagined Sean waking up every day thrilled with his life. Now that assumption felt na?ve. Did anyone ever really wake up that way?
More than anything, his vulnerability cast something into sharp relief—something she hadn’t quite been able to articulate until now.
Maybe the reason she’d never felt an attraction to Sean was because they were too alike.
Both intense, emotional, prone to overthinking and spiraling—they were both drama queens, all yin and no yang.
“What exactly did you hate about the scripts?” Sean asked, after a pause.
“Sean—”
“Please, I won’t cry again, I promise. I’m just curious.
” He held up his hands as though surrendering.
She shook her head, because again, this felt like a conversation she couldn’t win.
A group of tourists, chatting in Italian, walked toward them on the pavement and she moved aside to let them pass.
Once they had the walkway to themselves again, she said, “Okay, so with Probe and Prejudice, you had all the army-versus-alien stuff, which was great, but then you had this love story going on between the army chief and the tribal warlord. And even though it was an action film, the love story was central to the whole thing—I mean, your title is riffing off a love story. They went to war with the aliens so they could be together ‘in this life or the next.’ But I just didn’t believe they loved each other. ”
“Why?” he asked, and he looked curious rather than offended.
“They didn’t know each other; we were just supposed to assume they loved each other because they were both hot.
You’re a romantic, Sean! It needed some romance.
You could have shown her meeting the warlord’s family, falling in love with his way of life, his passion for weaving.
She could have painstakingly mended the loom the aliens broke, or he could have bought back the ring she had to sell—”
“Okay, so where were you in the script meeting?” he asked, smiling now.
“Did you have any women in the script meeting?”
“No,” he said sheepishly, and they shared a real smile, the kind they used to share. He linked his arm in hers. “I missed this.”
“Me too.”
“Of course she should have mended the loom,” he said, flinging his free hand in the air. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Because you probably had a thousand other things to think about.”
He leaned his head on her shoulder, and she felt a bubble of joy, because this—talking over story, lamenting how craft could fall so far short of your original idea, figuring out how to bring it one step closer to the work it could be—was what she’d missed.
And seeing him this weekend, she finally knew she’d been right back then.
They were never supposed to date, they were supposed to be something rarer: creatively in sync.
“You know, I don’t know where you get this idea that I’m a romantic,” Sean said, as they carried on walking, past Keble and the science library. “Gracie always says I lack imagination in that department.”
“Being romantic is just being thoughtful, and you could be incredibly thoughtful. I bet you’re a great boyfriend. Honestly, the number of times I kicked myself for not wanting to see you naked…No offense.”
He laughed. “You’re talking about the Imp, aren’t you?” he asked, shaking his head.
“Yes. Maybe that’s what Probe and Prejudice needed—a little more Imp, a little less disemboweling,” she said, but now he stopped them and turned to her with a serious expression.
“Chloe. How many times do I have to tell you, I was never the Imp,” Sean said.
“Sure,” she said, turning to look at him through narrowed eyes.
“I’m sorry I let you believe it was me.” He looked guilty. “It was selfish of me.”
“Who was it, then?”
“Chloe, come on. Surely you know?” He gave her a hard, searching look.
“Akiko?” she asked. Was it Akiko all along? No, she wouldn’t have been able to keep that quiet for ten years. Sean laughed.
“John?” she asked, and some chord thrummed inside her. It was John. She wanted it to be John.
“I can’t confirm or deny anything. It’s not my place to say.
So, will you take me down from this thoughtfulness pedestal now?
” Sean asked. Then he put an arm around her, pulled her into a brotherly hug, and rubbed a fist gently against the top of her head.
“Your hair looks better curly like this, it hides your massive ears.”
“Oh shut up,” she said, laughing. But now she picked up her pace, because she wanted to get to the picnic, she wanted to see John. It was him, it had to be. Something clicked, a faceless figure in a dream coming into focus. To their left Parks Road opened out to a huge expanse of green.
“Why are you walking so fast?” he asked.
“No reason,” she said, slowing slightly.
“So tell me more about Rob. Is it serious?” he asked.
She shrugged; she didn’t want to lie to him. “He’s a good fit for me right now,” she said. “He’s a great guy.”
“ ‘A good fit’? That doesn’t sound like the romantic I used to know.”
“It’s complicated,” she said, feeling a tug of emotion behind her eyes and trying to blink it away.
“Don’t settle, otherwise you might as well have settled for me.” He grinned, putting an arm around her shoulder, and she leaned into him. “I know you, you want the fairy tale.”
“You know, I just worked out who you look like,” she said, keen to change the subject. “Henry Golding’s less hot brother.”
“I will take that,” Sean said, laughing. “He is a lovely man.”
“All right, name-dropper.”
“You named him, not me!” Sean said, mouth open wide in indignation.
“The level of name-dropping going on last night was obscene.”
“People were asking me questions!” he said, laughing, as he pushed her off the path. “Fine, no more name-dropping. My good friend Adam Sandler told me it’s not cool.”
She laughed, then remembered the script in her bag.
She should mention it now while she had the chance.
It felt like he would read it if she asked him to.
But now she didn’t want to taint this moment.
This fragile tendril of friendship, which had stretched here from the past, felt too precious to disrupt.
Plus, now the picnickers had come into view and her eyes darted around, searching for a gray dog.