‘Shut up, Cece. I don’t have time for you to get in your feelings about this.’
‘That’s what you’re saying, though! That I’ve ruined your perfect love story because no one would believe someone like Dylan would fall in love with someone like me?’
‘That’s not what I’m saying at all!’
I slapped my hand against the mantel. ‘I can tell a Cinderella story! That’s the easiest story in the world to tell. People fucking love an underdog! But I don’t have the right pieces!’
And I had told Lily that. More than once. Every time she told me it would be a better story to let the two couples that had fallen in love just be in love, I had told her why that wouldn’t work.
She’d sat in bed with me, naked, whiteboarding out ways to get to my endgame, the endgame I’d broken myself in half trying to achieve – and all the while she’d been working against me.
‘I’m not committing to Dyl.’ Romeo-Dylan’s body was tense, like he might dive in front of Cece to take a bullet.‘She’s great, don’t get me wrong, but you can’t make me shoot that scene, Murray. I won’t do it.’
‘You are not in a position to tell me what you will and won’t do right now.’ I only just resisted the urge to slap the mantel again. The sharp sting was overwhelmingly preferable to the crawling mass in my stomach. ‘You’ve broken your contract. You’re going to be paying back a shit-ton of money.’
‘Don’t yell at him!’ Cece protested. ‘You think he made this decision lightly?’
‘And you!’ I snarled, furious that she’d clearly take a bullet for him too, that they’d known each other for six weeks and they’d already fucking figured everything out. ‘Don’t get me started on you! “Oh yes, Murray, I’ll be your next Juliet, whatever you say, Murray!”’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry doesn’t help me, Cece!’ I gave in to the urge and slapped the mantel again, sending a vase rattling dangerously close to the edge. ‘Your love might be pure and true and eternal or whatever the fuck you’ve been whispering to each other behind my back, but it doesn’t give me a love story you can tell on TV!’
‘So film one, dipshit,’ Lily said.
I glared at her.
‘Don’t pull that face, Murray, it doesn’t work on me,’ she said. ‘There’s no point in getting angry and hitting things when you could be finding a solution. If you don’t have what you need to tell a love story between these two saps, then work out what you do need and film it.’
I just kept glaring. If I spoke – if I said anything at all to her – I would never stop shouting.
‘We all know the story is engineered anyway. Why not do a little more engineering? You two—’ she waved a hand at Romeo-Dylan and Cece, ‘when did you first kiss?’
‘After that date I accidentally won,’ Cece said. ‘Dylan walked me home, and…’
‘That’s easy enough.’ Lily didn’t make her finish the sentence. ‘You could film that tonight, if you wanted. Just send them out on the verandah.’
Lily Fireball had fallen away. This was Lily Ong, standing in front of a whiteboard.
It only made it worse.
‘It wasn’t on the verandah,’ Cece said. ‘It was up the hill a bit. Near the hedges.’
‘Moreinthe hedges,’ Romeo-Dylan said, pressing his lips to her temple.
Lily blinked. She paused for a second longer than she normally would when she was in full flight, and her cheeks turned red. ‘Either way, very filmable.’
The Murray of yesterday would have teased her mercilessly about that. Lily Ong was not a blusher. It took a lot to make her turn that colour.
That Murray felt very far away now.
‘One kiss isn’t enough,’ I forced out from between my teeth, because even now, even with everything, I still had to do my fucking job. ‘That was, what, episode seven? I’ve got to keep the plot alive for five more episodes.’
‘I’m sure you’ve got plenty of footage of Cece sitting around here looking like a sad sack,’ Lily said. ‘Get some drone footage of her sneaking onto his boat. Some shaky-camstuff of them kissing on the deck. Some audio of them moaning. I hope you two are loud lovers.’
She was looking at me.I’m sorry,I could see in her eyes.But—
I looked away.
