Kids. Erin scoffed. Her comrades on the show were mostly over thirty or on the verge, but everybody knew "kids" was a term that applied beyond the span of childhood these days. When her generation pressed toward the back end of their thirties, forty year olds would become kids, too. Nobody could doubt the intensity of Millennials' Peter Pan complex.
Another story editor named Jeanette was working late with them tonight, too, but she'd left the room for the fifth or fifteenth or fiftieth time for another dramatic conversation with her boyfriend, who she suspected was stealing from her, but who she stayed with because A, she didn't get enough drama by writing it into other people's lives through her day job, and B, because his best friend's cousin's best friend had cowritten the pilot for The Walking Dead, and she was hoping that would somehow land her a better job. Or at least a party invitation.
She was the yin to Joey's yang. Erin wondered what that made her.
YOLO employed a smallish team of story producers, post-producers, editors, and assistants who worked on various aspects of formatting and storytelling. Sometimes Bill Rice, the showrunner, hung out for uncomfortably long stretches in the bullpen—uncomfortable because he brought an East Coast suit-to-the-office-every-day vibe to the table that was totally out of synch in Santa Monica. He looked like he was in costume, like he'd just come off a movie set where he was playing a Wall Street millionaire. She always expected to see him in makeup.
Apart from Bill's rare visits, the only people who braved entrée to this room besides the story team were harried assistants and, occasionally, the field producers. Tonight she and Joey were the last man and woman standing. Rishi had been with them all day, but she'd left around six with a migraine. Jeanette had been in and out, her MO.
Also in and out throughout the day, every day, was Jarvis Greene, the executive producer and the only other inhabitant of an office with a door. It was Jarvis's job to screen every single piece of footage as it came through and write detailed outlines of the show's twelve hour-long episodes with the help of a team of transcribers and assistant editors. Jarvis had been the one to inform Erin she wouldn't be working on her own segments of the show.
"I get it, but I'd be lying if I said that doesn't scare the hell out of me," Erin had told him.
Jarvis shrugged. "Them's the breaks. It's a conflict of interest."
"If it was a conflict of interest, then why'd Rishi and Bill want me to be on the show? It's not like I'm a Kardashian. I don't think my story's going to have that much impact on our ratings."
"The hell you say."
Ratings were a touchy subject. YOLO's viewership had risen last season by only one third of one percentage point. With the fickleness of this industry, a noncanceled show had nowhere to go but up. A drop was a death knell.
Thinking about ratings, and especially Kardashians, made Erin think of Leo. She hadn't seen him since she'd arrived in L.A., which was both a relief and a torment. The potential of his presence hovered over her like a storm cloud waiting for the worst possible second to burst. Raylon Carle and Lena Frattingham, the other two field producers, had been in and out of the bullpen several times each, weighing in on what they thought was suitable for a scene or giving heads-ups on bits of footage that might be useful for a certain narrative. But so far there'd been no trace of Leo—though Erin had heard his name mentioned in a few meetings and knew he'd been working with the other producers.
It was now Friday, a week and a half into postproduction with four or five more weeks to go. At this point it was hard to escape the fact that Leo was avoiding her. But why? Her assumption was that he was ignoring her out of embarrassment, and she decided that was a best-case scenario. Unlikely as it seemed, she was starting to think she wouldn't run into him at all.
On Wednesday she was flying back to Dallas for a break—four days to spend at home for what she and Ben jokingly called her "conjugal visit." Indeed, between his work and hers in the past month, she barely remembered what sex felt like.
A sharp pang of longing for Ben jolted through her, all the way to her core. It was followed by a pang of jealousy for her co-workers. Jeanette lived here, so her boyfriend was around—to everybody's deep chagrin. Joey also lived in L.A.—actually, Pasadena. The running joke was that he lived in his parents' basement, but of course he didn't. He rented an apartment above a friend's garage, somebody he'd grown up with in Michigan. He said it kept his head from spinning off to La La Land, his own running joke.
Rishi lived in Chicago, and her husband, Sandeep, flew in on weekends. Erin had tried to get Ben to do the same, at least to come for one weekend, but he was elbow deep in a new project, something to do with applying for a national grant. It seemed as if every time Erin called, he was in meetings with The Nemesis, who, if she didn't know better, was conspiring to keep her husband in the office ever longer. He called her nights on his way home, and over the last two weeks the time had drifted back from around six L.A. time to around eight. Last night he'd called after ten which meant he'd stayed in the lab past midnight.
The Nemesis was also married. At least, as far as Erin knew she still was. Her husband, Ryan, was a middle school teacher and football coach who in the summers became a stay-at-home dad to their two kids. Erin hadn't seen Ryan in at least two years, probably the last time Melody had let him out of his cage.
Joey yawned widely and scooted up his chair, interrupting Erin's thoughts. "I can't wait for the order sheet. I'm making a Starbucks run," he said. "Venti vanilla latte?"
Erin nodded. "Skinny." She gestured down her body with her hands and snorted. Even though she wasn't overweight—she'd just done a triathlon, for Pete's sake—at five feet five and a hundred and twenty pounds, by L.A. standards she was no waif, either.
"Natch," Joey said, rolling his eyes. "Skim's the default option here. If you want full fat, you'd better go back to Texas."
Was that true or a product of Joey's comedic impulses? Erin could never tell. She watched him leave, puzzling over it, and was still staring in the direction of the door when it swung open again, and in strode Leo.
At the same moment, Erin's phone started buzzing on the table beside her. She glanced down. Ben. Her mouth had gone dry.
Without looking at Leo, she picked up the phone. "Hey, hon."
"How's life in crazy town?" He sounded like he was in a good mood.
"Crazy. You just leave the lab?"
"Yep."
Erin pulled the phone away from her ear and glanced at the clock. Eight forty-eight L.A. time. Wow. How'd it get so late? At least Ben had left before midnight. And who was she to complain? She was pulling long hours right now too. Three thousand hours of video files weren't going to view themselves.
"I'm still working," she said, feeling Leo's impatience but not looking up at him. "Me and Joey might be here till two a.m. at this rate."
"Things not going well?"
"No, they're going OK. Well, sort of OK. We're trying to get four episodes sewn up before Wednesday's break. That is so not going to happen."
"That's why I'm here," Leo broke in, and Erin jerked her chin up and glared at him.
"Is that Joey?" Ben asked. He laughed. "I'm still not sure how I feel about you burnin' the midnight oil halfway across the country with all these strange men."
"Joey is same-sex oriented," she said dully, avoiding his question. "You're one to talk, Ben Bertram. You've been pretty cozy with The Nemesis these last two weeks."
Awesome. By trying not to say the thing Ben wouldn't want to hear—that she was currently with Leo, not Joey—she'd said something Leo shouldn't hear. Not to mention something she shouldn't have said in the first place. She hadn't realized until this moment that Ben staying at the office so late with her out of town was bothering her far more because she knew Melody was with him.
There was silence on the other end of the line. And then, "That's a joke, right?" Ben hated The Nemesis even more than Erin did.
"Yes, that's a joke." She looked at Leo as she said thi
s, feeling desperate to wrap up this uncomfortable three-way conversation. "Hey, I'm kind of in the middle of something. Can I call you when I'm back at the condo in a bit? I changed my mind. I'm not planning on staying that much longer."
Joey would not agree with that assessment, but she could continue working once she got home—her temporary L.A. home, that is.
"That's fine. I'm not sure how long I'm gonna last before I crash though. If I don't answer, call back until you wake me up."
"OK. Love you."
"I love you, too."
The veggie pita she'd plucked from the catering tray an hour earlier was churning in her stomach. Meanwhile, she was beating herself up for the visible nervousness she was displaying to Leo. She felt like a fly buzzing against a window, trapped in plain view.
While Erin finished her call, Leo had settled himself into a bright orange chair at the cubicle next to hers. She took her time tucking the phone into her bag, which was down at her feet, before looking at him.
"Hey, Leo." It seemed anticlimactic.
His lips twitched, making it clear he enjoyed her discomfort. "Erin."
"So, are you really here to work?"
Ugh! Why do I always say the wrong thing? As in the thing she was really thinking. Yes, she'd always had a problem with her filter, but in this case if Leo had an ulterior motive, she was sure she didn't want to hear it.
He gazed at her intently, seeming to mull over his response before he gave it. "I heard you're having some trouble with Fabian's narrative in episode two. He's one of mine."
Erin shook her head. "No. I mean, yes, there's some trouble, but I'm not the one having it. Joey's producing Fabian's segments for that episode." And thank God for that. When the team assembled for the season's first postproduction meetings, Erin had managed to avoid getting drafted for segments on contestants she knew Leo had produced.
She hadn't examined too closely why she was scared of him, apart from this. This way she came unhinged when he was around. She wasn't worried that she was attracted to him, but the thought that he was attracted to her made her feel almost as bad as if the former were true. Leo was cunning, and his entire job centered on his ability to get people to say and do things that made for compelling stories.
She trusted herself, but she didn't trust him one bit.
"Well, where's Joey, then?"
Leo pushed back from the table as if he were about to leave, making Erin's head spin a different direction. He was all business, causing her to wonder if this whole situation was in her head—if Leo had never come onto her after all, and she was stressing out over nothing.
"He's on a coffee run."
Leo nodded slowly and sprawled back in the chair, settling in. Erin's stomach gave another lurch.
"How are things going?" He gazed at her in that intense way of his.
She shrugged. "All right, I guess. Slower than they should be. I swear it feels like we have twelve times more footage this season than we did in season three."
"We do have one extra contestant this time."
She narrowed her eyes at him. "Yeah, but I haven't even seen any of that footage. Which makes me incredibly nervous."
He laughed, his eyes lit with an impish gleam. "You lived that footage. You've seen every second of it."
Erin gave a wry smile. "That's why I'm nervous."
He chuckled again and then hooked his feet around the edge of the partition and scooted closer to Erin's cube. He leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees, getting as close to her as possible.
"I think I make you nervous."
It's not in my head, Erin's brain shouted at her. She fought the urge to back away from him. Instead she held his gaze and worked to keep her voice steady.
"You frustrate me." She paused, taking a sharp breath. "You're too involved in my story."
Leo dropped his eyes before she did. It was a little victory but a sweet one.
"It's my job to be involved in your story."
"I'm not even a real participant," she argued. "I'm just a sideshow. And like I told Jarvis, it's not like I'm some big actor making a cameo. My segments are hardly going to make or break the season."
"You're selling yourself short. You are YOLO. Your 30 by 30 bucket list introduces every episode. Your blog formed the concept behind the show. And the show has a viewership of 1.5 million people who were all drawn in one way or another by your concept." He stared plaintively at her. "Everybody wants to do what you're doing. People are tired of being spectators, of living life unchallenged. But not many people are brave enough to act beyond the day-to-day routine."
Erin blinked. She'd never thought of her blog, her lists, as brave. She'd simply been searching—searching for what she was meant to do with her life, searching for ways to live it fully rather than float, which is what she'd been doing before. College, her career as a teacher, her running, all of it had been about chasing some idea that wasn't hers. Even 30 First Dates had been a wrong path she'd had to take to find her way to Ben.
She'd taken all the wrong paths to find the right ones. It wasn't something she'd wish for others. It wasn't brave.
She swiveled her chair so she was facing him. "YOLO is about challenging people to live out the dreams they already have in their heads. It's not about giving people carte blanche to quit their day jobs and do all the stupid things I've done." She splayed her hands palms up on her knees. "I started 30 First Dates because I didn't have goals."
Leo misread the gesture as an invitation, placing his hand over hers, and Erin jumped. She pulled her fingers away instantly and scooted her chair back by at least a foot. It didn't faze him, and he leaned in closer. "That's exactly what I'm talking about. You inspire people." He paused for one moment, something blazing, unmasked, in his eyes. "You inspire me."
Every hair stood up on the back of Erin's neck, but she met his gaze. "No." She shook her head. "No, that's BS. You've been out traveling the world, meeting people, and having adventures. Living life. You're the opposite of me. You're the one people want to be like. You…you make fun of me for not being brave enough."
Her eyes darted to the doorway. Where the hell is Joey?
Leo's eyes narrowed. "That's why you're afraid of me? You're afraid of being made fun of? Of being embarrassed?" He gave her a skeptical look. "I do know you're braver than that."
"I'm not afraid of you," Erin said, knowing it wasn't true. This man terrified her because unlike her, he always seemed to know exactly what he wanted. And she didn't like the way he was looking at her right now. She contemplated calling Ben back so she could hold the phone between them as a shield.
"Helloooo, party people!"
Joey's chipper voice was so contrary to the mood in the room that Erin almost jumped out of her chair. He caught the flavor of the discussion in a heartbeat. "Whoa," he said. "Is it as dire as all that? You didn't hear the C-word, did you?"
Erin, so grateful she felt like hugging him, looked up in confusion. "Cancer?" she asked.
Both Joey and Leo laughed.
"I forget sometimes that you're still a baby writer," Joey said. "No, canceled." He glanced over his shoulder where the door had swung shut behind him. "Don't tell anybody I said it out loud. It's bad luck."
Within a few minutes Joey had redistributed the skinny caramel macchiato he'd bought in case Jeanette came back to Leo, and he and Leo were hunched over his computer screen, digging through the seemingly endless list of AVI files.
Erin, indebted to Joey, thanked him for the drink and used the distraction to pack up her stuff and slip out of the room. Within three minutes, she was in her rental car on her way home to a studio-rented, three-story condo unit that was two blocks from the beach.
When she got there, she pitched her coffee into the trash and slipped on a hoodie and some flip-flops, preparing to disappear into the throngs of people out enjoying the nightlife around the pier.
A stroll on the cool sand with the waves thrumming in her head, drowning out her thoughts,
sounded way better than a vanilla latte right about now.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Playtime's Over
August 14, ten months to thirty-five
Erin traced one finger along the edge of Ben's jaw. He gazed at her with a lazy, drowsy expression. It was almost one a.m.
"I've missed this." She wrapped herself closer into him.
"Me, too," he said, his eyes drifting shut. A few seconds later they opened again, and he pulled out of her arms, untangling his limbs from hers. "I forgot to set my alarm."
"What time do you have to be there?" Erin refused to feel guilty about keeping him up even though it was the middle of the workweek and he had a meeting the next morning. He'd been out of town when she'd left which meant they'd made love precisely one time in the last four weeks—not counting tonight, which had tripled that total. It wasn't a great track record for newlyweds.
Ben finished tapping at his phone screen and rolled over, winding his body back around hers. "I don't want to think about it."
She nestled her head against his chest.
"I hate how busy we are," she mumbled, her mouth brushing against his skin.
His arms tightened around her. "Me, too." He didn't seem half-asleep anymore as he grazed her hair with his lips and planted a line of soft kisses along the top of her head. In fact, she could feel how not asleep he was against her left thigh. Her body warmed and tingled in response.
"Really?" She tilted her chin so she could reach his mouth. "Again?" In broken gasps she asked, "What about your meeting?"
In answer, he groaned and pulled her on top of him. "No work talk."
Erin didn't say another word. She wasn't about to argue with that.
This Is 35 Page 11
