Chapter Twenty-Five
If the subway journey had been torture, then sharing the writers’ room with Elliot and not touching him with was the next level of hell.
He was inches away, his huge presence filling the tiny room and I was overwhelmed by him to the extent I could barely type.
But we soldiered on – there was no way I could allow this inconvenient yet wonderful lust to hold back our progress – and we worked through RJ’s notes with efficiency.
The edits flowed as if they had been in our heads all along and as he read the last line of dialogue with a satisfied grin, I thought back to my first reading of the script, the inconsistency of it.
How some sections read like pure poetry, while others were stolid and wordy.
Something occurred to me as I scrolled through the document on my screen, remembering Lin telling me how bad RJ’s early drafts were.
“Elliot?” I said. “How much of this script did you write?”
He frowned. “Well, it’s RJ’s concept. He did the outline, sketched out the characters, and—”
“Okay, but which scenes did he write?”
“Lots of them,” he said.
“Really?”
He shifted. “Well, he wrote the first few drafts and then brought me in somewhere around draft … eight?”
My eyes flicked to the draft number of the document: 22. “Let me guess, he got less and less involved as time went on.”
“This past six months he’s been pretty slammed,” Elliot admitted. “He had to leave a lot of the rewrites and edits to me.”
I remembered how the final scene had moved me so deeply upon first reading. “Who wrote the ending?”
“In the draft you ended up reading?” Elliot said.
I nodded.
“Me.”
I exhaled. The script that had moved me, as imperfect as it was, had been largely Elliot’s work. RJ’s concept, but Elliot was the one who had elevated it.
“Elliot.” I stared at him. “All the best things about this script come from you, not RJ.”
Elliot’s expression flitted from gratitude to humility to shock. “You can’t say that—”
“I can say!” I shot back. “Lin told me the first drafts were terrible – so terrible she couldn’t face reading the one I did. And that version was great – not perfect – but genuinely great. And the scenes I loved were all from you.”
“But RJ is—”
“An amazing director.” I held my hands up. “No doubt. But he’s not half the writer you are.”
Elliot’s cheeks colored. “Thanks.”
“I hope RJ recognizes that,” I went on. “And if he doesn’t, you at least should.”
“You know.” His full lips twisted. “If you’re flattering me just to get into my pants, then you don’t need to. It was already a done deal.”
“It was the moment I spat pastry on you, wasn’t it?”
“It is my weakness,” he said with a somber nod. “Women who spit food.”
“I’m not here to kink-shame.”
“Keep grinning at me like that, and my ability to keep my hands off you will be seriously depleted.”
I mimed zipping my lips into a serious line, although in reality I very much wanted him to put his hands all over me again. Luckily, for the sake of public decency, my phone buzzed with replies from Bex.
Call me when you can but not too late, I’m shattered
And what happened with Boner Rage?
Making sure Elliot couldn’t see my screen, I typed back:
Besides him being the true scriptwriter talent and not RJ? I’ll let you guess ??
Bex’s reply was a series of exclamation marks and aubergine emojis, so she’d clearly got the gist. My eyes flicked to her first reply, and I frowned. Almost every communication with Bex since I’d arrived here had been somewhat low energy; she’d had that flu bug, but she was still tired?
Elliot noticed my expression. “What’s up?”
“I think there’s something wrong with Bex,” I said.
“Your friend?”
“Yeah.” I explained about her recent illness. “I have a feeling something’s not right.”
“Call her,” Elliot said.
“Yeah, think I will. You okay if step out?” I jumped to my feet.
“Sure,” he said. “She’s important. Besides, you leaving the room might mean I finish typing quicker, and then I can steal you out of here.” He flashed me a wolfish grin that made my stomach flip. “Go on, I’ll send this to RJ.”
I stumbled out to the balcony. Evening was descending and New York buzzed below me, the horns and traffic a comforting hum as I hit the videocall icon for Bex. Soon enough, her beautiful yet worryingly pale face filled the screen.
“I can’t believe you fucked Boner Rage!” she yelled by way of greeting. “Tell me EVERYTHING!”
“Hello to you too,” I choked through laughter. “And his name is Elliot.”
“I knew it,” she went on. “Knew it.”
“And we didn’t actually do anything yet,” I said. “Besides have the most incredible kiss.”
Bex arched an eyebrow. “Just a kiss? You texted me about a mere kiss?” Then she gaped. “You like him.”
“Obviously.” I tutted. “With the kissing and all.”
“No,” Bex scoffed. “You like him. This is … you’re different. Your face kind of melts when you say his name. Elliot isn’t some one-time guy – he’s relationship material.”
“I haven’t … I don’t know,” I gabbled. “It’s only just happened. I haven’t thought about it much beyond being desperate to see him with no clothes on.”
“Oh, you are.” Bex grinned in self-satisfaction. “You’re imagining how your future babies will look and what car finance plan you’ll go in on. You just don’t know it.”
“That’s mental,” I said. She couldn’t possibly be right.
True, Elliot had snared my attention from the moment I’d met him and, true, something about him caused my body and my brain to react in ways no man had achieved before.
But that was irrelevant, because I was here on a temporary visa and Lin wanted me back in London as soon as physically possible, so why was I even contemplating Bex’s theory?
“It’s far too soon to be saying any of this stuff. ”
“I don’t think so.” Bex snorted. “I would like the record to show that I, Bex Martin, totally and one hundred per cent called it.”
I gritted my teeth. “Going to change the subject now. What’s going on, you all right?”
“Yeah, I’m fine, but …” Bex’s voice wavered. A chill descended over me.
“Oh God, what is it?” My heart began to race. “Are you sick? Is everything okay? What is it?”
“Ahm.” Her face broke into a brilliant, tear-soaked smile. “I’m pregnant.”
Was she kidding? I waited for her to stick out her tongue, to laugh at my shock but she waited, eyes wide with expectation.
“Pregnant, as in, with a baby?”
“No, with a rare breed of llama. Yes, a baby, you beautiful idiot.” Bex laughed. “We weren’t trying, we didn’t mean for this to happen. I wasn’t even sure that I wanted kids, but it’s happened and now it’s sunk in, and I am really, really happy.”
“Bex.” My eyes filled with tears as pure joy flooded through me. “Oh my God, this is amazing.”
“I know.” She nodded so energetically that she almost dropped the phone. “And what’s crazy is, I’m over five months gone.”
“What?” Now it was my turn to almost drop the phone. “So you were pregnant at your birthday? You were drinking!”
“I know and I totally freaked out,” Bex said. “But the baby is fine, I’m not a big drinker thankfully.” She lifted a small black and white picture to the phone. “He/she/they … is healthy.”
“You don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “We want the surprise.”
I squinted. “Which bit is baby?”
Bex tutted. “This white blob here. See, that’s a teeny tiny foot?”
“It’s the most perfect foot I’ve ever seen,” I cooed, although I wasn’t totally sure I was looking at the right bit. But there was no way I was dampening her spirits.
“Isn’t it?” she said. “The doctor said it’s not unheard of for women to get past twenty weeks and not have any clear symptoms. My cycle is all over the place, as you know, so I just didn’t realize.”
“How’s Dan?” I knew he’d be thrilled. The number of times he’d boasted about his nieces and nephews to me, I felt like I knew them better than I knew Bex.
“He’s over the moon.” But Bex’s voice softened into a whisper and fresh tears flowed.
“What is it?”
“His parents,” she muttered. “Well, his mum.”
“Oh no.” I knew where this was going. Dan’s mum was very religious.
“Magda is appalled. She could just about cope with us moving in together out of wedlock because we were engaged, but this?” Bex shook her head.
“She wouldn’t even talk to Dan when we broke the news.
And when I said I wanted to wait until after the baby to get married, she started threatening to not come to the wedding, his dad kept banging on about how they can’t show their face at church anymore.
Never mind the fact Dan hasn’t attended in years.
” She swiped at her face but couldn’t halt the tears. “I’m raging.”
“I can imagine,” I said, fighting my own furious tears. “You and Dan will be brilliant parents and that baby will be so loved. Isn’t that all that matters?”
“Not to Magda!” Bex said. “Dan promised her that we’d get married sooner rather than later and now on top of preparing for a baby I have to plan a shotgun wedding to appease bloody Magda and it’s a nightmare.
” She wailed. “She even wants to have approval on my wedding dress to make sure I look as unpregnant as possible!”
My heart broke for her. “Why did Dan agree to such a thing?”
“It’s his mum.” She sniffed.
“When is the wedding?”
Bex raised reddened eyes to the camera. “Four weeks,” she whispered.
“Four … ?”
“I know.” Bex’s face crumpled. “And you’ll … be … in … New … York!” Her body racked as she fought past her tears to get the words out.
“No,” I said calmly. “I’ll be by your side.”
Bex paused. “What?”
“You heard me.” It wasn’t even a decision; it was a simple fact. My best friend, my family, was in a situation and she needed me. “The pitch will be done long before then, I don’t need to hang around.”
“But don’t you want to, like, network, ride out your visa to make connections and stuff? And what about Bone— Elliot?”
Now more than ever did I want to spend more time here than planned. But Bex needed me. “Don’t worry about that.”