“Elliot?” I said. “How much of this script did you write?”
He frowned. “Well, it’s RJ’s concept. He did the outline, sketched out the characters, and—”
“Okay, but which scenes didhewrite?”
“Lots of them,” he said.
“Really?”
He shifted. “Well, he wrote the first few drafts and then brought me in somewhere around draft … eight?”
My eyes flicked to the draft number of the document:22. “Let me guess, he got less and less involved as time went on.”
“This past six months he’s been pretty slammed,” Elliot admitted. “He had to leave a lot of the rewrites and edits to me.”
I remembered how the final scene had moved me so deeply upon first reading. “Who wrote the ending?”
“In the draft you ended up reading?” Elliot said.
I nodded.
“Me.”
I exhaled. The script that had moved me, as imperfect as it was, had been largely Elliot’s work. RJ’s concept, but Elliot was the one who had elevated it.
“Elliot.” I stared at him. “All the best things about this script come from you, not RJ.”
Elliot’s expression flitted from gratitude to humility to shock. “You can’t say that—”
“Icansay!” I shot back. “Lin told me the first drafts were terrible – so terrible she couldn’t face reading the one I did. And that version was great – not perfect – but genuinely great. And the scenes I loved were all from you.”
“But RJ is—”
“An amazing director.” I held my hands up. “No doubt. But he’s not half the writer you are.”
Elliot’s cheeks colored. “Thanks.”
“I hope RJ recognizes that,” I went on. “And if he doesn’t, you at least should.”
“You know.” His full lips twisted. “If you’re flattering me just to get into my pants, then you don’t need to. It was already a done deal.”
“It was the moment I spat pastry on you, wasn’t it?”
“It is my weakness,” he said with a somber nod. “Women who spit food.”
“I’m not here to kink-shame.”
“Keep grinning at me like that, and my ability to keep my hands off you will be seriously depleted.”
I mimed zipping my lips into a serious line, although in reality I very much wanted him to put his hands all over me again. Luckily, for the sake of public decency, my phone buzzed with replies from Bex.
Call me when you can but not too late, I’m shattered
And what happened with Boner Rage?
Making sure Elliot couldn’t see my screen, I typed back:
Besides him being the true scriptwriter talent and not RJ? I’ll let you guess??
