‘I think I know what’s wrong with the screenplay.’ He’s pacing the room now. ‘My character needs to have suffered. Properly suffered. She needs to have been to hell and back.’ He stares at me: deep suffering represented.
‘But the character you had was all glittering perfection. Wouldn’t she make a more attractive lead?’
‘No,’ he growls, frustrated. Hands raking through dark hair.
‘Don’t we go to movies toescapeour lives—’
He frowns at me. ‘She needs to be flawed. I don’t mean adorably quirky. I’m talking major flaws, Audrey.’
Majorflaws? If this is some newfangled chat-up strategy, it needs serious work.
‘I want her heart on her sleeve,’ he says, the line echoing through the room’s acoustics as he moves closer to me. ‘All her open wounds exposed and so red raw it hurts to look.’ His eyes run along the lines of my forearm as he speaks, gaze burning along my skin, settling gently inside my wrist, despite the fierceness in his tone.
‘Is this really what you want, Beau? A majorly flawed, broken woman with exposed wounds, who’s been to hell and back?It sounds like a storm you’d want to outrun. I thought you wanted a supernova.’
He drops his arms to his sides. ‘Outrun?’
‘Your former muse lit up the sky,’ I remind him. ‘She burnt bright and exploded on impact. You’re describing a woman who might accidentally smoulder if she tripped in a pile of kindling and her phone fell from her pocket at just the wrong angle so the glass caught the blazing sun.’
He smiles at this, eyes sparkling. ‘The writer in me wants to hear you say that again.’
‘You can’t charm me into wordplay.’He absolutely could. I would fold, instantly.‘We’re having a serious conversation.’
He holds up both his hands and wipes off the smile, or tries to.
‘A flawed character could work,’ I press on. ‘But even with “major flaws”, surely she’s not atotalflop. I mean, doesn’t she scrape herself up off the floor every once in a while and do something at least mildly impressive?’
‘Audrey—’
I pull him down onto the piano stool with me, discovering, too late, that it’s really not built for duets. Cue awkward reshuffling—mine, not his—as I attempt not to press myself against hisentireside.
‘I’m sensing you have some notes for me, Hepburn.’
My posture straightens, clarity dawning on my key message. ‘I would not want to be defined by my suffering. Or by my addiction. I am so much more than those two things.’ I badly need him to understand this point, and I deliver the information like an orator—my tone unambiguously strong.
He doesn’t argue. Doesn’t speak, actually.Does he agree with me or not?My hands are shaking and here I go again, hurtling into an awkward silence as I say, ‘Nor would I want to turnmyself inside out and show someone everything only for that person to storm out and humiliate me because they cannot seem to handle my messy plotline …’
Glory, when did this workshop upgrade itself from fiction to reality?
‘I mean, if I was this character. And if you were my … Well, if you were the—’
How do I switch myself off?
‘I think the technical term you’re searching for is “hero”.’
The room sucks in its breath, piano strings taut, moment of truth having blundered across the floor. Beau repositions his body on the stool now, easily finding the room for both of us that seemed missing just moments ago.
‘The hero won’t know what has hit him, Audrey.’
‘Obviously I’m not suggesting—’
‘He won’t deserve her. He won’t trust himself around her. She’ll be all the things I’ve said, fused with this hidden strength and creativity and sex appeal that’s just …flammable—’
With his thigh touching the length of mine, hips, arms, shoulders, there is no hope that he doesn’t feel the way I am trembling.
‘Even in bright yellow Wellingtons …’
Is it possible to asphyxiate from a compliment?
