Chapter 8 #2
I couldn’t resist ordering the burger with a maple syrup-infused bun.
Tate ordered a regular hamburger with double patty, extra cheese, and a basket of fries to share.
The waitress got us settled with our drinks and promised the food would be out soon.
Tate tore the top off his straw, slid the wrapper halfway down, and blew it at my face.
“Alright, Rawlins. What do you have so far?”
I made a face and held up my blank notebook. “You’re looking at it.”
His eyes widened a touch. “What are your plans for it?”
“Let’s start with my boss’s demands first—so you know what I’m working with.”
I opened Elaine's email and began reading.
We need you to throw everything you’ve got at fall romance and cozy vibes.
We’re talking pumpkin patches, fall festivals, maple farms, horse rides, apple orchards, even Halloween, if you need it.
Whatever you can put in this story, do it.
Give us just enough personal depth to not go crazy, but nothing too steep. Light. Happy. Fluff.
Tate pretended to snore.
I kicked him lightly.
“What’s your outline?” he asked.
“It’s about a woman who recently got a divorce and is coming home to reset.
She’s going to move into town and get a job at the library, and then she sees her ex-boyfriend.
I’m thinking that, in the past, two guys wanted to date her, but she chose the wrong one.
Now she’s back, divorced, and just trying to keep her head down.
But she keeps running into the other guy—the one she should have picked in the first place. ”
This point furrowed Tate’s brow. He didn’t look as impressed as I would have liked.
“This sounds like high school.”
“Um…no. She’s divorced. And coming back home to regret her life choices. That’s legit.”
He waited before saying with an air of uncertainty, “Alright. Now what’s your plot?”
“Huh?”
“The plot.” He looked at me like what he was saying should be obvious.
I mirrored his facial expression. “I just told you.”
“No, you told me the romance stuff. What’s it about? What’s she running from?”
“Her past marriage.”
He paused. “Is her ex after her or something?”
“No. It’s a romance.”
“I get that, but…” He trailed off, gesturing with his hands as though I wasn’t getting something. “What’s the fight? Do they just go pick out pumpkins in the pumpkin patch or something? What gets people’s blood pumping?”
“Wrong genre. The plot is romance. I mean, there will be other things they’ll have to work on together…like saving an inn or something. I still need to figure out how to work that in.”
“Why would they need to save an inn?”
“Because it would be historical and old…” I trailed off, trying to think of what I’d seen done. If it wasn’t broken, I wasn’t going to fix it. “Maybe somebody wants to tear it down to build condos or something,” I rattled off.
“Who?” His voice sounded confused.
I gave him an exasperated look. “The bad guy in the movie. You are so annoying. Go watch a romance. That’s your homework for tonight. And the stuff that gets blood pumping is romantic tension. Like…little touches and stuff.”
“Little touches?” By this point, his face had crumpled in disgust.
“Okay, you’re making this worse,” I said, trying not to laugh. “I don’t need your help.”
He had an incredulous look on his face. “I think you do.”
I sucked in a breath and moved my notebook out of the way while our waitress began to set our food down in front of us. A few minutes later, over a steaming basket of waffle fries and a hamburger almost as big as my head, Tate was right back to it.
“Can you have some mystery? What if your girl is out in the woods, walking through a pile of leaves, and she steps on a body?”
“No bodies.”
“Huh?”
“No bodies,” I said again. “It’s a family-friendly romance.”
“You wrote family crime dramas on the same channel. Were there no bodies?”
“That’s different. People don’t want bodies in their romance.”
We both sat, chewing on waffle fries, with that statement hovering in the air.
“At least…not dead ones,” I added, somewhat painfully.
“Okay, fine. What if we pull a page from your book? She’s out walking, and she feels somebody watching her and—”
“No stalking.”
He let out an exasperated sigh. “Did she specifically say no stalking?”
“No, but it’s in the same category. People watching this channel don’t want to be thinking about falling in love when a potential crazy person could jump out at any second. Trust me, it ruins the vibe.”
“No. It will raise the ante. It doesn’t have to be stalking, but think about it. If she’s hiding from something while falling in love at the same time? It’s a no-brainer. It will be double the viewers, guaranteed. Guys will actually want to watch it with their girlfriends. Everybody wins.”
I opened my mouth to say something when it slowly closed again—my mind busy calculating the risk.
The problem was, I liked what he was saying.
I understood it. It wasn’t groundbreaking.
There were lots of romance movies out there combining suspense and dead bodies with romance, but it was definitely darker than the very specific happy-go-lucky vision Elaine had painted me.
I didn’t want to like the idea. Tate Walker had no right to waltz in and take over my screenplay.
And he was looking a little too self-satisfied for my taste.
“You like it.” I could hear the smile in his voice.
I kept intensely focused on taking a long drink of my Dr. Pepper.
“Why a librarian? That’s the most boring occupation ever.”
I looked at him in outrage.
“Why don’t you make it something cool?” he added, enjoying my obvious distress.
“It is cool. And you’ve got to know your audience. It’s a dream job for a lot of people. Me included. But either way, I have no time for anything cooler.”
“Why?”
“I’ve only got six weeks to write this thing. It’s got to be something I’m already familiar with.”
I was awaiting his reply, ready to go to battle, when Tate’s gaze narrowed to something past my shoulder.
I followed his line of sight until I spotted a man who’d just strode through the door.
He had a medium build and light-brown hair and seemed like he was searching the room, looking for something.
Or someone. On the outside, he seemed pretty average.
It was the brown pants and wrinkled yellow shirt that had me clutching my napkin tightly in my fist.
He finally turned toward us and waved, coming immediately in our direction.
I let out a sigh. It wasn’t Leroy.
And he hadn’t been waving at us. Other than the clothes, he didn’t look that much like him when he got closer. He joined the woman and two kids eating in the booth next to us, who both squealed for their daddy. I turned back around to face Tate. His eyes were already on mine.
We ate in silence while I waited for my heartbeat to slow. I hated that my palms were sweaty. I hated what Leroy had done to me. I hated that normal interactions that most people wouldn’t notice, I now had to think twice about.
I also hated this broken silence between us. So I attempted to fill it with the one thing that always came to mind each time I thought I’d spotted Leroy.
“When I was in college, I took this film class, and the only thing I remember from the whole class is this Alfred Hitchcock quote, where he said: ‘There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.’ I can’t speak for the actual bang, but some days, I’m ready to prance through the streets and let him find me and get it over with—whatever it is.
The waiting for something to happen is torture. ”
“What would you do if you saw him?” Tate had finished his burger and was leaning back in his booth, studying me in a way that made me feel hot and itchy.
“What?”
He motioned to the man behind me, who I could hear happily chatting with his toddler. “If that had been him, what would you have done?”
“Is this a trick question?” I asked, eyeing him warily.
“No.”
“I would kick my bodyguard underneath the table and tell him to get to work. What am I paying you for?”
I wasn’t sure why it always felt like a win when I got him to smile, but it did. And then I was taken away by a vision of Tate upending the table before running across the room to tackle Leroy, fists flying.
“And here I thought I was just doing this for the fun of it,” he said, a smile playing on his lips.
There was a casual intensity behind his gaze that unnerved me. Like he was playing detective, trying to piece together a puzzle. Before I could change the subject, my phone buzzed on the table.
We both glanced at it in surprise. It was a new number I’d only given to a few close friends. Instead of Spam Risk, like it usually said with unsaved numbers, this time the caller ID just said Unknown Number.
I froze, ready to ignore it.
“Answer it,” Tate said.
“Why?”
“Just answer it.” He slid my phone so it sat in front of me and clicked the answer button, switching to speaker mode, so we could both hear.
My eyes on his, I said, “Hello?”
The line was quiet. Almost sterile. There was no click. No five-second delay before a spam call. Tate leaned his ear down close to the phone. I did the same, my heart in my chest for some reason.
And then I heard it—the faint sound of raspy breathing.
Tate grabbed the phone. “Who is this?” he demanded.
The line went dead.
My eyes flicked to Tate’s. He was watching me.
“Was that him?” I asked, already fearing I knew the answer.
He breathed out a sigh. “I don’t know. Could be anything.”
“Liar,” I said.
He smiled tightly. “It’s probably too early for him to have gotten your number. It could be spam.”
I took a small bite of my hamburger, annoyed that my heart was still pounding.
“What would you do?” he pressed again. “If he came into the restaurant right now?”
Mild agitation coursed through my veins. The question bothered me. It needled and pricked at something I couldn’t pinpoint. I remained determined to keep this light. To get us back to the lighter tone between us when we first arrived.