“What do you meanremains? We just started. And anyway, how does the author?—”
“We will never get to the end of this damn book if you can’t reliably show up for work?—”
“Unreliable? Vivian, I left my house before the sun?—”
“I’m not callingyouunreliable,” she snapped. “But this arrangement is… untenable.”
Bryn took a breath. She tried to put herself in Vivian’s shoes. Tried to understand her frustration. Understand why Bryn being a little late disrupted a highly regimented person. The accident was as much Vivian’s fault as it was Bryn’s and derailed her morning just the same.
“I appreciate the offer,” Bryn said calmly. “But I can’t just?—”
“It’s not for you. There’s always going to be a crash or a closed road.” She dropped her voice and muttered, “Everyone here drives like they want to surviveThe Purge.” She cleared her throat. “And we’re going back to zero today. We can’t lose anymore time. My production schedule is already suffering?—”
Bryn choked down her frustration at their information gap and focused on the point. “What do you mean back to zero?”
“We have not met expectations. We’re starting over,” she said flatly, but Bryn heard the restraint. There was something in Vivian’s tone that made Bryn picture a silent scream. Made her imagine Vivian’s head tossed back in soundless rage. “Your commute is a liability we cannot afford. You will stay here, we will work late, and we will get this done. Pack a bag. The gate will be open when you get here.”
The line went dead because, apparently, what Vivian del Castillo had to say was the only thing that mattered. Bryn stared at her phone and considered Vivian’s offer. It wasn’t an act of kindness or generosity. It was a command. One that made her feel more like a scolded child than a colleague. Trapped in traffic, Bryn let her head fall back against the headrest.
It wasn’t Vivian’s unhinged invitation that she kept repeating; it was the implication behind her words. What Bryn had made wasn’t good enough. Had Vivian told Harvey about her one-act-at-a time approach? Was he mad? Vivian sure as hell sounded mad. Did the author, the creator of a world she entrusted to Bryn, hate her work?
Bryn’s stomach churned. Her first shot at a career-making book and she’d blown it in a single day. She blasted the AC, vents directed at her face, but it didn’t stop her sweating. Didn’t slow the speeding train of thoughts yelling about her inadequacy.
Breathing in through her mouth and out through her nose, Bryn left the past she couldn’t change and focused on the present. They didn’t fire her. She was getting another shot. And that shot had to count.
She thought about Vivian’s offer again. It was a chance to eliminate the stress of commuting. It was an opportunity to be immersed inMagpieswith the only other person who mattered right now. Maybe with that proximity, Vivian might impart some of her knowledge. She couldn’t recreate Vivian’s decades of experience overnight, but Bryn had never shied away from hard work. If Vivian was willing to teach, Bryn would swallow her pride, her ego, and anything else required to learn. She would do whatever it took to prove she belonged in that booth.
When the line of cars finally moved, diverted away from the wreck, Bryn took the first exit. On her way back to her parents’ place, she reframed her situation. By the time she was tossing old clothes into a bag, she had convinced herself that she was going to infuse so much emotion into her performance that Montoya was going to laugh until she cried and cry until she laughed.
It was mid-morning by the time Bryn arrived at Vivian’s house. Iris had shown her to the guesthouse, but Vivian wasn’t waiting in the booth. Instead, on a couch that pulled out into the plushest sofa bed Bryn had ever encountered, sat an iPad with a Post-it note:read the entire damn thing.
Bryn plopped onto the bed, note in hand, staring at Vivian’s incredible penmanship. Of course even her freaking handwriting was intimidating. All perfect cursive, like she’d spent a great war writing letters to keep soldiers full of fighting vigor.
Bryn cringed internally but refused to let herself get distracted. She unlocked the tablet and started reading.
* * *
Hours of careful reading took Bryn through lunch and dinner—both brought to her by Iris with no sign of Vivian. It was late when she finished reading and nearly midnight when she dropped into bed, body buzzing. Vivian had been right. Understanding the entire journey gave her such a deep understanding of Maggie’s character. Gave her the color and contours she didn’t know she’d been missing. She understood Vivian’s metaphor about the musician knowing the music, and she was ready to play her heart out.
After showering and applying her drugstore moisturizer, Bryn knew she should get to sleep. But the strangeness of staying under Vivian’s roof, or one of them at least, was too much. She couldn’t force her eyes to stay closed.
Bryn reached for her phone on the side table. Without overthinking, she googled:Vivian Taylor TV show. Immediately, video clips and articles forGimme a Break, Already!filled her screen.It was apparentlythesitcom from ’91 to ’95.
She clicked on a clip of a teenage Vivian being interviewed on a red carpet. With braces and a wild gleam in her dark eyes, Vivian was excitedly discussing what it was like to be fifteen and the star of a sleeper hit show. Bryn couldn’t help but smile at Vivian’s contagious exuberance and bleach-blonde hair teased for the gods.
She scrolled through articles and images before opening a video that claimed to be of the show’s most viewed episode of the entire series.
The clip opened on a brightly lit living room set, painfully 90s in its floral patterns and oversized furniture. The laugh track roared as seventeen-year-old Vivian, playing the character Cyndi, walked down the stairs.
Bryn’s breath caught.
Cyndi was dressed in the infamous gold bikini Carrie Fisher had once been forced to wear. The metal was clearly plastic, but there was no mistaking it. On Vivian, the costume looked like a crime. The studio audience whistled and catcalled, their reactions folded into the canned laughter.
Bryn’s lip curled and it was all she could do not to turn it off. But she wanted to see where the hell the scene was going.
The doorbell rang. Cyndi opened it to a man in his mid-forties. Context clues made it obvious that the man was a neighbor and recurring character. He did a cartoonish double-take, his eyes raking over Vivian’s body.
“Whoa, momma!” he boomed, wiggling his eyebrows. “Any closer to that eighteenth birthday?”
