When we arrive, my heart attempting to crack my ribs, they insist on accompanying me all the way up to her apartment.
Her bus is in the car park.
Daphne’s car is as well.
I knock politely the first time.
More insistently the second time.
By the third time, I’m pounding, and a neighbor across the hall pokes his head out of his apartment. “Dude. It’s like, after midnight.”
I glare at him.
He slinks back inside his apartment.
I bang on Bea’s door once more, and this time, a very cranky Daphne opens it just wide enough for me to see her face.
“Did you use Bea’s life as inspiration for your script?” she demands before I can utter a word.
I am so very, very fucked.
“I’ll throw it away,” I tell Daphne. “Please. Please, I need to speak with Bea.”
Daphne smiles.
It’s not a friendly smile, nor a kind smile.
This is the feral smile of someone who has absolutely no use for me. “You’ll throw it away,” she repeats.
“The entire thing.”
I will.
Fuck the script.
Fuck the studio.
Fuck the money and the consequences.
Daphne’s no longer smiling, even a feral smile. “Here’s the thing, Simon. This world you live in? The one where you have security around the clock for you and your family? The one where you can afford to throw money around and people recognize you out in public and want to be you? I’ve lived that life. I’ve known Hollywooditpeople like you before. And you can stand there and tell me all you want that you’re different, that you’ll really throw away a script that we both know you’ve already pitched to your studio, but I don’t believe you. And I’m not letting you anywhere near the woman who saved my entire goddamn life right now because she deserves better.”
I can’t catch my breath. “I will throw it away. It—it means nothing to me?—”
“Well, I can promise you, Bea’s life means something to her. Having people like you use it for your own gain—that means something to her too.Idon’t deserve her. I know that. And I’ve never stabbed her in the back like you have.”
“It won’t—I’ve fixed it. That was the wrong?—”
“You never should’ve written it in the first place. You should have asked her. You should have fuckingasked her.”
“Please. Please let me speak with her.”
“If she wants to talk to you, she knows how to find you. Until then,leave her the fuck alone.”
The door slams in my face.
I lift a hand to knock again, but Pinky grabs it. “Let her sleep on it, boss.”
“Got an audience,” Butch adds quietly.
