With a huff, I gave in. “What project is it, Brody?”
“The Wunderkind,” he said simply.
My mouth dropped and the phone slithered down my shoulder and onto the table.
The volume was turned up enough that I could still hear him speaking, but my brain couldn’t translate what he was saying into anything meaningful.
I’d been staring at my half-eaten granola bar for a long moment when he finally paused. “Vera? You there? Vera?”
My hand trembled as I picked the phone back up and held it to my ear. “You—you can’t buy a script that doesn’t exist, Brody.”
He was quiet for a beat. “I had it recovered,” he finally said. “After you drove off, the laptop fell off your car just outside the gates. When I came to see you, I had brought it with me, but then... then I don’t know. I guess after how everything went down, I thought keeping it to myself would punish you in some kind of way—”
“That’s—”
“Fucked up,” he said. “I know. I felt awful about it, which is why I found the most expensive IT company out there and had them take a look to see if they could recover the files.”
“Did they?” I asked quietly, trying to hold on to some bit of indifference but failing hugely, even though I already knew the answer.
“Vera, it’s so good. I could practically hear you reading it aloud to me in my head. It’s everything you said you would write back in college. It was like we were sitting in your dorm all over again. We could attach two fresh faces with incredible chemistry to play Poppy and Arlo.”
I hated myself for it, but my chest swelled with pride. It wasn’t just about the script being good. It was that Brody thought it was good.
My god. I deserved an ass kicking for even caring.
He chattered on about casting ideas and taglines and alternative titles.
And all I could think was that I had to get off the phone before I agreed to something I might not be ready for—or that Brody couldn’t actually deliver on. Because that had been the last twenty years, hadn’t it? Brody dangling a carrot in front of me so that I would stay the course.
“I need to go,” I blurted.
“What— Oh. Okay. But please check your email, Vera. There’s a formal offer letter there.”
A formal offer letter? I didn’t know Brody was even capable of using that kind of business jargon. “Sure.”
I was already pulling the phone away from my ear when he said, “You promise?”
“Okay.”
I hung up before he could say another word or, even worse, before I could.
His attention was a flowering weed. So beautiful. So invasive.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Brody was right. The offer was more than fair. It was nice-place-without-a-roommate money. It was eat-out-as-much-as-you-want money. It was buy-a-new-car-with-seat-heaters money.
Marlon circled at my feet as Eli walked into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes. Wearing gray sweatpants slung low on his hips, he kissed me on the top of the head before starting his morning espresso ritual.
After he was fully caffeinated, he sat across from me. “I think I’m going to pick up some boxes tonight. Maybe start taking over a few things this weekend.”
The house. I nearly forgot.
He waited for me to weigh in with my plans too. But all I could think of was Brody’s offer and Leonard’s box of script drafts. Pages upon pages that he’d pored over for decades.
Maybe it was overly sentimental, but I couldn’t help but wonder what pieces of my life would be forgotten as trash when I was gone. I wanted to think that I could have Eli and my unbelievable opportunity, but that felt so naive now. What was I going to do? Disappear into the desert and write? If I wanted to be in the film business, I needed a foot in the door. I needed to be in the Hollywood bubble, and working for Brody as more than an assistant could be the opening gambit I’d been waiting so long for.
What would Eli say? I couldn’t stay here only for him, could I? It couldn’t be that simple.
