“Sure,” he said. “Theyassist. With, like … stuff.”
“Right,” I snarled. “Do you want to know what I do? Aside from booking lunches and dry-cleaning and conference calls, you know, thestuffas you so eloquently describe it? I’m a publicist and a budget adviser. I’m a strategist and a negotiator, I’m a counselor, and a chauffeur. Do you think I do all that for the measly thirty k my boss grudgingly pays me?”
“No,” he said. “Thirty—?”
“Yeah, you try living in London on that,” I said. “Not easy. All I want to do is be more than a ‘fucking PA.’ And this really feels like my shot.”
“I hear you.” His eyes were solemn. “I do. But that doesn’t change the fact that I think you are woefully underqualified for this.”
“Well, RJ disagrees, so I guess we’re at checkmate, aren’t we?” I shot back.
“Do you mean stalemate?” he said with a sigh.
Yes, I did. He’d got me so flustered I was talking nonsense, but no way was I going to give him the satisfaction. “Or, I’m playing chess, you’re playing checkers?”
“The fuck?” Elliot laughed.
“Look.” I folded my arms. “Last time I checked, RJ was your boss. RJ wants me here, so you’re stuck with me. So how do you want to do this?”
He sighed. “You are so goddamn sure of yourself, aren’t you?”
I thought about my career, how everything hinged on me getting this right and I lifted my chin. “Well, in mydecade of experience, the best thing I have learned is that I can only, really, bet on myself.”
“Seems to me like we need to bet on each other right now,” he admitted with a groan.
“We don’t have to tell each other all our secrets and braideach other’s hair,” I assured him. “But when it comes to this script, we just need to have each other’s backs.” I straightened my spine and stuck my hand out. “Deal?”
Elliot regarded my hand as if it were a ticking bomb, then slowly, reluctantly, took it, the rough warmth of his touch sending unexpected thrills through my skin.
I shook it, my smile stupid with relief. “I think this is going to be great,” I said, with more confidence than I felt.
Elliot withdrew his hand. “I think you’re going to be trouble.”
Chapter Eleven
Elliot leaned back in his seat. “Well, I’d like to say we made progress, but I’m honestly not sure what we made.”
I was so jetlagged I could barely speak. I felt out of my body, my brain whirring uselessly. “We agreed on a delivery timeline,” I said weakly, downing the last drops of my sixth coffee. Unfortunately the timeline might involve long days and late nights if we were to deliver the final draft in time for the pitch, but we’d factored in regular catch-ups with RJ to review our work to ensure he could sign off on it. When it came to the actual edits needed, that was another story. Elliot hadn’t budged on any of my editorial points. “We did at least identify some scenes where the character of Marla could be better realized.”
“Youidentified,” Elliot corrected me. “Me? I think you’re still very very wrong.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll convince you.” I drew myself up as tall as possible, hoping I looked formidable and competent.
“Can’t wait,” he growled as I stifled a yawn. “You should head home. You look wrecked.”
“Wow, thanks,” I said.
“No, I mean, I’m not saying you look bad, you look …” He gestured vaguely and I wondered what he thought about how I looked. Then I wondered why I cared. “But jetlag can be killer and it must be what, 11 p.m. in your time?”
I yawned so widely it hurt my face. “Yup.”
“So rest up,” he said. “We continue tomorrow. Act One, Scene One. Where we meet Marla, and you try to convince me how to make her a more well-realized character.” He shut his laptop with a vicious thud. “You’ll almost certainly fail but, hey, we’ll have fun wasting time to get there.”
I was too tired to bite back. “We’ll see” was all I could manage. I shoved my laptop into my tote and trudged out of our makeshift office, too deranged with tiredness to say anything else to him. Although we’d managed to evolve from full-on arguments to snarky comments, we were miles away from best-buddy status. If I had to spend what little time we had left until the pitch fighting to get my point across, when would we get any actual editing done? “He’s impossible!” I blurted to myself as I jabbed the button for the lift.
“Gotta be talking about Elliot,” Ralf’s voice echoed from behind me. I turned to see him in a smart blazer, his wheat-colored hair swept back.
“Oh, sorry.”
