: Chapter 11

I EXPECT AN INTERROGATION from Harlow, but I definitely don’t expect to find London and Mia also waiting for us at the loft. My brain is still fuzzy from the sex, from the impending trip, from the deadlines looming on my calendar; I don’t seem to have any extra space in my thoughts for what’s happening right now.

I stare at the three women just inside my door, blinking in confusion.

“I texted them,” Harlow explains with a wave of her hand. “During the fuckfest. After you came—I think—but before Oliver did.”

“You called an emergency meeting because I was having sex with Oliver?” Pressing my palms against my face, I mumble through a laugh, “Oh, my God.”

Harlow pulls my hands away, shaking her head. “I’m just relieved you’re getting pounded.”

“Harlow,” Mia says, pulling me away from her. “You’re ridiculous.”

“Says the girl who can barely walk today.”

Mia ignores this and pulls me inside. It’s true: she’s limping. But it’s not her bad leg. Harlow would never tease her about that. Mia’s walking like an old woman, or a very, very pregnant one. Delicately, like her back might snap in half.

“What’s with you, Blanche?” I ask, grinning.

“Shh.” Mia waves me off.

The girls crowd around me in the living room—London and Mia next to me on the couch, and Harlow sitting on the coffee table, facing me.

“The thing we need to discuss,” Mia says with dramatic sincerity, “is how we failed you.”

Harlow turns to look at her in thrilled amusement.

I lean away from Mia, skeptically observing the three of them. “You what?”

“All this time,” Mia says, lifting a delicate hand to her throat, “things were developing with Oliver, and we have to assume if you weren’t telling us everything it’s because we weren’t available to you. As friends.”

I level her with a flat look. “Are you being a passive-aggressive troll?”

London and Harlow nod.

Mia shakes her head solemnly. “We’ve just been so busy.”

“You were buying a house, asshole,” I remind her.

She agrees with a smile. “So busy signing all those papers for days on end, I couldn’t answer my phone, asshole.”

I lean back against the couch, laughing. “It just happened.”

“No thought at all,” Harlow deadpans.

Nodding, Mia says, “That sounds like our Lola. Impulsive.”

“No, I mean, last night—” I begin.

“Last night was the first time you guys ever flirted and then boom! Sex?” Harlow asks, nodding as if she’s got the answer right.

“The three of you are enormous dicks,” I say, grinning. “And I need to pack.”

I push up from the couch and start walking down the hall to my room.

“But we still need details,” Mia calls out as she follows.

Details.

My head swims with them. I still feel full of Oliver. I want to tattoo every detail on my skin: The curve of his mouth when he’s coming. The soft brush of his fingers on my shoulders when he’s moving to touch my hair. His shoulders over me, shifting up and down, up and down as he moves.

“It was nice.”

Harlow snorts from my doorway, watching as London and Mia settle on my bed. “He broke your vagina and—from the sounds of it—almost broke furniture, and it was ‘nice’?”

I look up from where I’m pulling clothes from my dresser. “Can you not say ‘vagina’?”

“It’s an awesome word,” she argues. “You should be proud—”

“God, I’m sure my lady parts are unbelievable,” I cut in, turning back to my packing, “but it’s not an awesome word. It’s an awesome thing, but it’s a horrible word.”

“We need a better one,” London agrees. “I do like pussy, though.”

“But we wouldn’t just casually refer to our pussies the way guys refer to their dicks,” Harlow says.

“Is that a bad thing?” Mia asks. “Do we need to casually refer to them?”

Harlow looks insulted.

“Like, how about . . . sock.” London angles both hands to point between her legs and looks at us for agreement. “This is my ‘sock.’ ”

“Maybe something that isn’t already a thing, and doesn’t rhyme with cock?” I suggest.

“Oh.” London deflates. “That’s so weird. I didn’t even think about that. Clearly it has been far too long since I thought about cock.”

“How’s the new house?” I ask Mia, changing the subject. I zip up my duffel bag and drop it near the desk.

She shrugs, grinning with bliss. “Gorgeous. We got the keys yesterday.”

“Did you spend the night there?” I ask.

She nods. “No furniture, no electricity, it’s about two degrees inside, and Ansel ran around the entire place naked before attacking me on the wood floor of the living room.” She grips her lower back, wincing. “Is twenty-three too old to comfortably have sex on the floor? I thought we’d have more longevity than this.”

“Well, that explains the geriatric curve to your spine,” I say.

London sighs. “I would have sex on a pointy rock right now.”

I high-five her, but she immediately grabs my hand and swipes her palm across mine. “Wait. I’m taking back my high-five. You got superbanged last night. And today.”

“It was nearly a year ago that I was last banged!” I protest. “And I’m headed to L.A. for three days with no banging. Give me that high-five back.”

London limply wipes her hand back over mine and the four of us fall into silence at the mention of L.A. The quiet tells me they’re done giving me shit. But their continued presence tells me they’re not leaving until they get some more details.

So I give them what I can.

I tell them about drawing him, about the tension that seemed to be let loose after that, about how my feelings seemed to grow exponentially as soon as I gave them air. I tell them about the night at his house, cuddling, about the party in L.A., the bar afterward, and Oliver’s bare admission that he’s in love with me.

My heart seems to balloon until it’s hard to take a deep breath.

Harlow’s hand is pressed firmly to her chest. “He said that?”

I nod, chewing a nail and speaking around it: “He said it.”

“And you didn’t have sex with him immediately that night?” Mia asks.

“In a hotel room,” Harlow adds, horrified at my missed opportunity.

It’s too much, and I feel months of longing crash into everything else going on in my life right now. “It’s a big deal to me,” I say. And, inexplicably, tears fill my eyes.

Pushing past a surprised Harlow, I rush into the bathroom, closing the door behind me.

“What—?” I hear London say.

Harlow’s voice is a calm murmur: “I got this.”

I hear her knock quietly on the door as I fill my cupped palms with cold water, splashing it on my cheeks before pressing my face into a soft towel.

Breathe.

It’s just a lot all at once, I tell myself. Breathe.

“Lola?”

“Just give me a second.”

I don’t know why, but I have this dark sense of dread. My blood rushes cold in fear and hot in thrill, wildly alternating between these two poles. This is good. Everything is good. So why do I feel like I’m trying to contain a hurricane in the palm of my hand?

I take a few minutes to brush my hair and put it back up in a neat ponytail. I put on a little makeup. I stare at myself in the mirror, and try not to worry that the woman staring back at me is going to fuck all of this up, every last bit of it.

“Lola,” Harlow whispers through the door. “Lola. It’s okay for it to be intense. Oliver isn’t going anywhere.”

THE CAR PULLS up in front of the Four Seasons Beverly Hills and the driver lifts my sad little duffel bag from the trunk, smiling blandly when I give him a pathetic tip because I only have ten dollars in cash.

I’m startled when the bellhop reaches for my bag before I can pick it up and we apologize in unison. He gives me a sympathetic smile and nods to the opulent hotel entrance. I must look like I’ve just emerged from a cave: I’m going on a night with little sleep, and napped like a milk-drunk newborn the entire drive from San Diego. But even with the darkening sky all around me and the promise of a comfortable bed, unfortunately I know I will be up for hours now.

The room is already paid for, and with my key in hand I head upstairs. It’s a lavish suite, decorated in soft neutrals with bright flowers in a vase on the desk. A giant king-size bed takes up much of the bedroom floor, and just beyond is a set of French doors to a balcony overlooking the Los Angeles skyline.

It’s beautiful, and this week promises to be exciting, but my stomach feels a little low in my body. As desperate as it sounds, I don’t like the idea of being away from Oliver for the next few days. Things are so new between us still; it isn’t time yet for interruption.

I pick up my phone to call him, and see that in the past three hours, I’ve missed two calls from my editor, three from Benny, and one from Oliver.

I listen to Oliver’s message first as I walk into the bathroom and undress, needing a shower, some room service, a full night’s sleep.

“Hey, pet. Just missing you. Hope the drive went smoothly. Havin’ dinner with the group tonight. Will miss you there, and later.” His voice drops. “I don’t want to sleep alone in my bed tonight. I want you in it, on top of me. Lola, I’m obsessed. Call me when you’ve arrived so I can play with you. I love you.”

I listen to it again, and again, and again, until I turn on the water, lips curled in a smile as I remember every single one of his touches, and forget that I have other messages waiting, red and urgent on my phone.

A CAR PICKS me up outside the hotel at nine the next morning, and I look out the window as we weave our way through downtown L.A. traffic. I called Oliver last night after my shower, talking to him for three hours until both of our words were coming out thick with exhaustion. I suddenly want to see a picture of him, of us—something to stare at other than the monotony of cars merging into our lane, the endless view of sidewalk and taillights.

But when I pull out my phone to scroll through whatever pictures I have stored there, my screen is already lit up with another missed call from Benny.

“Fuck,” I breathe, feeling with my thumb that my phone has been on silent since I left San Diego yesterday. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” I’d forgotten that he called. I never listened to his messages.

Lola, it’s Benny, give me a call.

Lola, sweets, I just talked to Erik. He’s needing an update on the delivery of the manuscript.

My editor? What?

Hi, Lola, it’s Erik. Give me a quick call. I wanted to check in about the progress on Junebug and see if you needed some extra time.

“Extra time?” I say out loud. The driver glances at me in the rearview mirror. My hands are shaking when I open my calendar app.

There is no way I got this wrong.

No way I got this wrong.

I look, blinking. I know my book is due next week—I’ve been stressed about being behind on it while on the road—but it’s not on the calendar. I scroll forward one week, two weeks, three . . . nothing. I scroll back through this week, and last week . . . it’s not there, either.

The driver pulls up in front of the studio offices and I trip out of the backseat with a distractedly mumbled thanks. My fingers are damp on the screen, clammy. With dread settling in my stomach, I open my calendar for two weeks ago. Pinned to the Wednesday of that week are the words Junebug due to Erik It was due two weeks ago.

I have seventeen panels drawn for my next book, and it was due two weeks ago. Now I understand why Erik has emailed, casually “checking in” twice. Now I get why Benny gets nervous whenever he’s brought up Junebug. I have never in my life missed a deadline—not even for something as small as a math assignment.

I pace outside the building, running late for the meeting with Austin and Langdon already but I can’t let this wait, either. Benny doesn’t answer when I call, and I leave him a rambling message, hysterically trying to explain what happened, that I put it in my calendar and then somehow immediately made a mental note that it was due in March, not February, and could he call Erik and explain and please tell him that I need an extension and I won’t ever ask for this again, this is completely my fault.

My phone lights up with a text from Oliver—Good luck today!—and my panic magnifies. I have no idea how I am supposed to focus on anything today knowing how monumentally I have screwed up.

“Morning, Loles!” Austin calls from somewhere behind me, and when I turn, I see him sauntering out of a parking deck adjacent to the building. He smiles widely and I drop my phone into my purse, still shaken.

“Good morning.”

When he approaches and sees my face—no doubt I’m pale and look like I’m completely panicking—he draws his brows low, giving me a playfully grumpy face. “You don’t look like a badass ready to kick some ass today!”

“I just realized I missed—”

Austin doesn’t care. He’s already walking past me and tilting his head for me to follow.

I pinch my shirt over my breastbone, fanning it over my skin as I walk into the building behind him. And goddamnit: my blue silk shirt already has wide sweat marks under the arms. It can only go downhill from here. My first instinct is to call Oliver, to tell him everything and unwind as he calmly explains how this is all normal, and lays out how I’ll get it all done.

“Langdon is on his way,” Austin tells me. “What were you saying? You missed a what?”

“Oh,” I say, tripping to keep up with his fast strides as he enters the elevator. “I had to send something to my editor.” My head spins and I pull my phone out of my purse again to see if Benny has returned my call.

“Oop, none of that!” he says, tapping the top of my phone with his index finger. “We’ve got a lot to do today.” Leaning in, he adds, “Nothing’s more important than this, is it?”

AUSTIN LEADS ME to a conference room and hands me a printed copy of the script—my first glimpse—telling me I have a half hour to look it over while we wait for Langdon to arrive.

“He’s stuck in traffic,” Austin says, frowning down at his phone.

“I haven’t even read through—”

“Don’t worry,” he says, gently interrupting me. He comes around the table to sit next to me, and his sincere wince tells me he knows how overwhelming this must be for me. I just can never tell whether or not he’s on my side. “We have all day to pore through this. I swear, Lola, you’ll have so much time with this script you’ll want to burn it soon.”

By the time Langdon arrives and the three of us sit down, my notes on the first few scenes are shakily written and disorganized. The document in front of me is one of the most exciting things to ever happen in my life, but I can’t manage to engage fully. My thoughts vacillate between Junebug and Oliver—from anxiety to relief and back again. But Langdon and Austin are already very familiar with the script, and even without the deadline panic and the Oliver obsession hijacking my brain, I feel like I’m chasing a car down the street to keep up with the conversation. I need to focus. I can’t look to see if Benny or Erik has called me back. I just need to get through the day.

Just get through the day.

Just get through—

“So, Lola,” Austin cuts into my efforts, using the tip of his pen to scratch his scalp. The loud scritch-scritch-scritch seems to echo through the room. I run my hands up over my bare arms, wondering why the air-conditioning is cranked so high. “We were thinking in the opening scene,” he continues, “Quinn could be coming back from the library rather than waking up in bed.”

I scan through the section in question, noting that I hadn’t written any comments there. I actually liked the opening scene. “Well, it’s sort of less scary to first run into Razor outside the library than it is to wake up to him standing in her bedroom,” I argue.

“I’m just not sure the audience will be sympathetic to Razor if he’s in the bedroom of an eighteen-year-old girl,” Langdon says.

I stare at both of them. “Especially since Quinn is fifteen.”

Austin glances up at Langdon and I catch his subtle head shake. “Let’s focus first on the library-versus-bedroom issue.”

“The audience isn’t supposed to be sympathetic to Razor at the beginning.” Do I really need to explain this? I feel the other stress melting away as this one begins dumping fuel on the fire in my chest. “He’s a deformed man with scales and teeth as sharp as knives. He doesn’t look like a hero because at the beginning, he’s not.”

Austin launches into an explanation about audience confidence and first impression and there’s so much jargon that after a few minutes of it my brain starts to slowly ebb away, thinking instead of Oliver, in his office.

How he told me to be quiet.

How it felt like he knew I was starting to panic at the idea of leaving for three measly days.

How much he seems to love me already, how much he trusts me to get it right.

How much I need him here right now, eyes centering mine, helping me get through this one minute at a time.

“. . . so the issue really is grabbing them up front, curling our fist around their collar, and yelling in their faces that they’ll love Razor,” Austin continues, “no matter what he does. Right up front, in the first scene. It lets us forgive him when he acts out, later.”

I nod, head swimming. What’s he saying makes sense.

But it also doesn’t, right?

And fuck, I know I missed most of his lecture, but I can’t help but fight, just a little longer. “I just think—”

Langdon sighs heavily, looking to Austin in exasperation. “We don’t have time for this.”

“No, no,” Austin says, waving easily to Langdon, and giving me a winning smile. “Let her speak.”

The words swim in my head and for several, long, painful seconds I forget what scene we’re talking about. “Um . . .”

“The open . . . ?” Austin prompts, with deliberate patience.

Nodding quickly, I say, “I prefer it to happen the way it is in the book.”

Under his breath, Langdon sneers, “Now there’s a surprise.”

I whip my head to him. “Excuse me?” I ask, my heart beating so hard I’m shaking. “Isn’t this an adaptation of the book? I edited that scene for weeks to get it right.”

A sarcastic smile curls Langdon’s mouth. “You’re how old?” he asks, leaning forward with his elbows planted on the table.

I sit up.

The panel shows a girl with a barrel of propane, holding a match.

“Twenty-three.”

“Twenty-three, and you wrote a book, and some people liked it, and now you understand Hollywood.” He flicks his fingers in front of him, leaning back in his chair. “I’m not sure why I’m even here, then.”

My blood turns to steam. He just said what?

“I guess I’m not, either,” I finally manage, voice shaking. “You’re forty-five with only one screenplay adapted for a major film studio and it grossed less than eleven million. Our budget is ten times that.”

Langdon draws a deep breath, and it makes him look like a dragon preparing to exhale fire. “My focus has been indie films, giving me a niche perspective that allows me to—”

Austin tries to laugh, but it comes out as a shrill burst. “Langdon, stop it. Don’t be a diva. Lola is just telling us how she feels. This is all new to her.” He turns to me, placating. “Some of this—and I know it will be hard—will just have to be you, trusting us. Trusting me. Trusting Langdon. Trusting the process. Do you think you can do that?” He’s already nodding, already smiling as if I’ve agreed.

I stare at him, stunned.

“Great,” he proclaims. “We’ll tweak the opening just a tiny tiny bit, and then boom! Your world will unfold on the screen!”

THE REST OF the meeting is equally abysmal. Langdon eventually gets over his tantrum, but my story is hacked apart, reorganized. Dialogue I love is lost, scenes I would never have thought to include in the book somehow make it into the script. It’s not that I’m particularly precious about my work, but so many of their changes simply don’t make sense. And we have to do it all again tomorrow. And the day after that.

I order room service and get into my pajamas before eight o’clock. Erik called during our brief lunch break and has set up a call for us on Friday afternoon, during my drive home to San Diego. At the very least he didn’t sound like he wanted to murder me, but I know when I get home I’m going to have to dive into the writing cave.

My phone rests in the middle of the fluffy bed, black and lifeless. I want to call Oliver, to beg him to ramble and pull me out of this frozen frenzy, but every breath I take only makes it halfway down my windpipe before it seems to push back out.

I want him here. I have a to-do list five miles long but I feel restless in the room alone. It seems crazy, like needing him this way is too much too soon. I spent most of the day wishing I were back in San Diego, rather than at the table working through the script.

But I don’t want to talk to Oliver on the phone because I feel inarticulate in my panic about him and me, about the book, about the movie, about everything . . . and I don’t want to text him, either, because it’s trite to put this enormity in a tiny digital box. I miss him in this weird, frantic way. I want to drive home tonight to be with him. I need him in the hotel room with me and I know, without having to weigh the pros and cons for him, that he would drive up here in a heartbeat if I asked. He would calm me down, make me laugh, tease my insanity into something else. A fluffy toy to prop at the end of a pen. A bright pink plastic slinky. Something disposable and silly.

But if he came up here, he would be on the road alone, late. People are drunk. People are reckless. People text and drive and San Diego is over a hundred and thirty miles away.

My phone vibrates with a text and I look down to see his name on the screen. How did it all go?

Picking up my phone, I start to type about ten different replies but find myself deleting each one. Finally dropping it back on the bed, I turn on the television, get into the shower. I pull out a notepad and spend the next few hours sketching some of the worst things I’ve ever done and then drop the pad on the bed. Was Razor Fish a fluke? I started it when I was fifteen, and it took me three years to finish, two more to edit, and another two to get published. How did I ever expect to write the follow-up in a matter of months while touring, working on the film, falling in love?

The panel shows a monster, eating the furniture.

I’m exhausted but my brain won’t stop. I dig into my bag, find a sleeping pill. It stares at me, tiny and white and challenging.

I don’t even feel it slide down my throat.

The world narrows from a wide white space to the tiny spot of focus in front of me: my hand holding a pen. The line elongates, dragging off the margin, and my eyelids are heavy trees falling over in the woods.

AUSTIN MEETS ME outside the building again the next morning, handing me a huge cup of coffee. “Figured you might need it, eh?” he asks, sipping his little espresso.

I smile, thanking him as I take it. My thoughts reel: Is he saying today is going to be longer and harder than yesterday? Or is he saying he thinks I need to be more focused and got me a coffee to help?

I follow him to the elevators, listening to him have a short, bursty conversation on his cell. He hangs up just as we get into the car and press into a cluster of people.

“I want you to know that Langdon really does get the spirit of your story,” Austin says, too loud in such a crowded space.

“I’m sure.” I want to talk to Austin about this, of course—as well as make sure we’ll be able to wrap this up in time for me to get home and back to work—but I really don’t want to do it in the middle of a crowded elevator.

“And I get that the age thing is a sticking point to you—”

“It is,” I say quietly.

“But Langdon has the film sensibility to know what will work and what won’t. We aren’t going to draw in the male audience we need with a fifteen-year-old female protagonist.”

I can tell everyone around us is listening in, waiting to see how I reply.

“Well, that’s a shame,” I say, and someone behind me snorts. I can’t tell from the sound whether it’s supportive or derisive. “Though Natalie Portman was only twelve in The Professional, and a lot of Razor and Quinn’s relationship dynamics are based on that.”

The doors open on our floor.

“Well, there was certainly discussion about the sexual dynamics there, too,” he points out.

I open my mouth to give him my opinion—that it’s about damaged people finding connection, and it’s never implied to be a sexual relationship between Mathilde and Léon—when the doors open and Austin steps out of the lift.

“Sex sells,” he says over his shoulder. “It’s not an idiom for nothing.”

“Wolverine, too,” I call out, loud enough that I know he hears me even if he’s charging ahead of me and thumbing through emails on his phone. “He mentors younger girls but never lets it get creepy.”

Austin ignores this, and we walk down toward the same conference room we were in yesterday. I see through the glass door that Langdon is already there, sitting and laughing easily with another man—slightly older than Langdon, but fit, with graying hair at his temples and thick tortoise-shell frames.

“Oh, good, they’re both here,” Austin says, pushing the door open with a flattened palm. “Lola, this is Gregory Saint Jude.”

The man stands and turns, looking at me with guarded eyes.

“Our director,” Austin adds.

I reach out to shake the man’s hand. He’s shorter than I am but greets me with a firm handshake, a friendly nod, and then sits back down beside Langdon.

“My dad’s name is Greg, too,” I say with what I hope is an affable smile.

His answering one is tight around his eyes. “I prefer Gregory, actually.”

“Sure. Of course.” Gah. I’m already unsteady from the misfire with Austin, and suddenly feel like Razor himself, arriving from a completely different version of this same world. I’m clearly cracking because I have to bite back a laugh at the thought.

Sliding my phone on the table, I’m hit with the need to call Oliver and tell him that. To hear his voice, to get a taste of normalcy.

And just like that, it’s as if I’ve broken the seal and let in the flood of thoughts.

I never texted him back last night, so this morning I sent him a series of heart emojis and a S.O.S. L.A. IS WEIRD text, but his reply—Slept like a rock. Think I’ve been sleep deprived? Call when you’re done today—wasn’t nearly enough. I briefly reconsider the idea of him driving up and spending the next two nights with me, but would I be able to focus at all knowing he was within a few miles? And even if I could, when would I work?

“Lola?” Austin says, and I blink over to him, registering that I’ve been staring at the screen of my phone, and this is probably not the first time he’s said my name.

“Sorry. Was just . . .” I turn off the phone completely and smile over at him. “There. Sorry. Where are we starting?”

His smile is wan. “Page sixty.”