Dark Wild Night

by Christina Lauren

  “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.”

  Chapter TWELVE

  Lola

  OLIVER IS STANDING outside my building on Friday afternoon when the black car pulls up to the curb. The driver opens my door and then unloads my small bag from the trunk, refusing a tip.

  “Already covered,” he says with a smile.

  I wilt. This time I was prepared. I shove the twenty in my pocket and look up.

  Mute at night, frantic to contribute meaningfully during the day, I spoke to Oliver only twice in the past two days—for a total of maybe ten minutes—and my reaction to seeing him right now is exactly what I expected. He’s wearing dark jeans, a deep red T-shirt, his navy blue Converse. His hair is combed but hangs over his forehead. His lenses don’t begin to filter the brilliant blue eyes behind them. When he smiles at me, tucking the corner of his bottom lip between his straight, white teeth, it’s like taking ten deep gulps of fresh air.

  He takes one step toward me and I move quickly into his arms, pressing into him for more when he squeezes tight, pushing all the air out of me. His mouth is on my temple, my cheek, covering my lips in small bursts of kisses, lips opening, tongue sliding inside to claim me. Out on the sidewalk his hands impatiently move over my waist, my hips, my ass, words sliding across my lips as he tells me he missed me, missed me, missed me.

  I want to go up
stairs, make love, drown in him. But it’s nearly seven, and we have dinner at my dad’s. With a groan, Oliver pulls away, nodding to his car at the curb. He links his fingers with mine and walks me to the passenger side.

  “Ready?”

  I nod. “No.”

  Laughing, he opens the door for me. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  AS IMPOSSIBLE AS it seems, I’ve never really had an awkward moment with my dad. Even after he came home from the war and we sat across from each other at the breakfast table, both of us unable to think of anything but his nightmare-tortured bellowing in the middle of the night, haunted by the images scorched on his closed lids. Even when Mom left and he lost his mind in a bottle and pills and I would drag him to bed, give him water, listen to his sobs. Even when he came to my room while I was doing homework, and quietly admitted that he needed some help. We’ve had hard times—brutal even—but it’s never been weird.

  This truth dissolves the moment we pull up at the curb and Dad is waiting on the porch, wearing an enormous grin.

  It didn’t occur to me until just now that I’m twenty-three and have never brought a boyfriend home.

  The second we walk in the door, I know Dad is going to make this as horrible as I expected: his smile reaches both ears, and when he slaps Oliver on the back, the sound cracks through the room.

  Oliver smiles easily at him, eyes glinting with humor. “Hey, Greg.”

  “Son!” Dad crows.

  My stomach turns tight and sour. “Dad, don’t,” I warn.

  He laughs. “Don’t what, Lorelei?”

  “Don’t make it weird for the rest of all time.”

  He’s already shaking his head. “Make it weird? Why would I do that? Just saying hi to you and your new fella. Your boyfriend. Your—”

  I growl at him, cutting him off.