This Is 35

by Stacey Wiedower

  But first, she had to get cracking on No. 20: Start a screenplay. She'd had great intentions of getting started on the plane ride to L.A., but had she? Um, no. In fact, she wished she could travel back in time four years and smack some sense into herself.

  Start a screenplay? What the hell was I thinking?

  She had no ideas for plot or characters or even genre, no clue how to actually write a screenplay, and no theater experience of any sort. All she had going for her was location—she was currently living in the epicenter of the movie world and was surrounded every day by professional screenwriters.

  Monday morning she tossed out the question in the production room before people's coffee had time to kick in. Everybody was discussing their weekends—most of which involved logging more hours in that room—or mindlessly staring at portable devices, not getting any substantive work done yet.

  Erin was kicked back in her orange chair, sipping at a vanilla latte. Jeanette, Joey, and Rishi were all in the room, along with Eileen, Marqus, and Rosario—all junior story editors—and Charlie, Jarvis's very young and drop-dead gorgeous assistant. As Erin contemplated her dilemma, Leo walked in alongside Lena Frattingham, another field producer. It was a full house.

  She almost chickened out asking her question. She hated reminding everybody else how green she was, especially because most of them had worked their asses off to land in one of these chairs, and she still sometimes felt like she'd lucked into the job.

  Eh, what the hell? How else was she going to strike this item off her bucket list before Ben arrived in four days?

  "You guys have all written screenplays, right?" she asked in a loud voice to nobody in particular.

  The low, groggy drone of conversation in the room trickled to a dull silence, apart from Jeanette and Rishi, who were talking in whispers, their heads close together at the opposite end of the long table. And then a bubble of laughter exploded.

  Joey stood up and raised his right hand in the air, Boy Scout oath-style. "I want to take a quick poll," he said. "Who in this room has not written a screenplay? Or three? Or six?"

  By this point Jeanette and Rishi had stopped talking and were watching Joey, too. Sheepishly, Erin raised her right hand. She glanced around the room and saw that hers was the only hand raised. She shrugged and laughed it off.

  "My agent's shopping one out right now," Eileen said. "It's a sci-fi thriller with a steampunk twist. Major blockbuster potential." She smiled wryly, the only way Eileen knew how to smile. Every comment she uttered she managed to make ironic. She wasn't Erin's first choice for advice.

  "I'm adapting my cousin's novel right now," Charlie piped up in a tentative voice—also characteristic. When Jarvis wasn't around, Marqus and Joey called Charlie "the nymphette." She was no Lolita—Erin figured her for around twenty-two—but she was the youngest member of the story staff, and the general consensus was that her résumé wasn't what had landed her there. She was a dead ringer for Kate Hudson circa How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, only with boobs. And, though she was a good thirty-five years younger than Jarvis, according to Joey and Jeanette, she was only five years younger than his wife. Also according to Jeanette, Jarvis always had a young blonde at his right hand, no matter what show he was producing. His current wife had been the highest paid story editor on his last staff—an HBO original series that won three Emmys after its first season.

  How Jeanette knew this, Erin wasn't sure. She also wasn't sure about asking Charlie for help, but at least the girl wasn't intimidating—unlike Eileen. She made a mental note to corner her later and get some tips.

  Joey, who'd been standing by the door talking to Marqus, circled the cube farm and plopped into his chair. The buzz in the room picked up again and took off into an excited hum, everybody moving into their day.

  "Writing a screenplay, huh?" Joey asked. "What's the matter? You stuck?"

  "You could say that," Erin said. She explained that it was part of her list. Just when she got to the part about why she had to start writing a screenplay now, before she and Ben went to Disney this Saturday, Leo walked up and butted in.

  "You're going to Disneyland?" he said. "For your list? Why didn't you have that one on the show?"

  "It just wasn't the way things shook out," Erin said, piqued at the fact that he was still butting into her list even after filming had ended. "I'm doing the list in order, and YOLO caught me when it caught me." She paused, cocking her head to one side. "Why? You have some burning desire to shoot inside the Happiest Place on Earth?"

  Leo gave a half smile. "Been there, done that," he said. "It's visually stimulating but a little cliché. I think your list items were better."

  "Oh. Well then, why'd you ask?"

  "You're actually getting the absentee husband out to do the bucket list with you. I wondered why he would do this but not the stuff for the show. He camera shy or something?"

  Erin noticed Joey had an eyebrow raised. She hadn't talked to him about her problems during the season. In fact, she hadn't breathed a word to him or anybody else about any of her shoots, especially the ballroom dancing segment.

  Erin pondered Leo's question. "Maybe," she admitted. "I have wondered if he was trying to get out of doing the show. I sort of forced it on him." Her forehead wrinkled as she considered this. Would Ben have been so passive-aggressive? She didn't think so.

  She shook her head. "No, he really was busy with work. I'm shocked he's coming here and going to Disney with me. I was afraid I'd have to go alone. Or recruit somebody to come with me on Facebook."

  "I'd have gone with you," Joey said amenably.

  At the same time, Leo said, "You could've asked me. I've already done about half your list with you as it is."

  Joey's mouth was open in an O-shape, his lips still formed around the word "you." His eyebrows shot up again, and an angry flush rose to Erin's cheeks.

  "Hardly," she snapped. She looked up at Leo who was towering above them between her and Joey's stations. She felt rather than saw other heads turning in their direction. She lowered her voice, swiveling her chair sideways so fewer people could hear her. "My list has thirty-five items on it, not just the show's seven. You did a grand total of two items with me." She did a quick calculation in her head. "That's barely more than five percent of my bucket list."

  "What two items?" Joey asked. "I thought he was just filming them, not doing them."

  "Forget that," Leo said. "That math was impressive."

  Erin ignored Leo, wanting to set the record straight. "He went climbing with me right before the wedding, remember? He had to do that item with me to get the shots. Like he had to skydive with Carsyn."

  Joey nodded. "Oh. Right," he said. "What was the second one, though? Did you have another extreme sport I'm not remembering right now?"

  "You could call it that, with Leo involved," Erin muttered.

  "I filled in for Ben in a waltz lesson," Leo said. "I'm still sad it wasn't a tango." A maddening grin broke out across his face. "I dance a mean tango."

  "How'd you fill in if you were producing?" Joey asked.

  Erin's eyelids fluttered, her anger building that this conversation was still happening. She drew in a sharp, impatient breath.

  Before Leo could answer, she said, "He butted in and wouldn't let me reschedule with the dance instructor." She glared up at him. "Something about flying out the next morning."

  "Why are you so bitter?" His eyes were dancing in amusement. "I saved you, remember? If it wasn't for me, you wouldn't have finished your bucket list for the show. We can't have the show's creator failing to fulfill her own mission."

  "First of all, I'm not the show's creator," Erin said. "That would be Bill. Secondly, you were supposed to be in town for two more days."

  "There was a scheduling conflict." He shrugged, blasé. Just then, Lena called to him from across the room where she was huddled over Jeanette's computer. He gave Erin a pointed look. "I saved you," he repeated.

  She made a face at him as he walked awa
y. When she turned back to Joey, ready to finish her sentence about the screenplay, he was staring at her with a speculative look.

  "What?"

  He shook his head. "Nothing." His voice implied otherwise. "That was…interesting."

  "Interesting how?"

  Joey appraised her for a long couple of seconds. "It just seemed like I was watching…a lover's quarrel." He leaned in closer, and he lowered his voice to a whisper. "Has something happened between you two?"

  Erin's mouth fell open in genuine shock. "I'm married," she said—a little too loudly. She felt heads turn in their direction again.

  Joey laughed heartily, and she stared at him, nonplussed. "I forget you're from the Bible Belt," he said. "Family values and all that jazz. I've almost forgotten what that's like."

  Erin rolled her eyes. "Cut the bumpkin crap. I happen to love my husband. I have no desire to cheat on him." She glanced over her shoulder to where Leo stood with Lena behind Jeanette's station, the three of them deep in conversation. Despite that, he glanced up, caught Erin's eye, and winked.

  She shuddered and cut her eyes back to Joey. "Especially not with Leo."

  Joey looked from Erin to Leo and then back again. "Wow," was all he said.

  Erin's mouth formed around the words "Wow, what?" but she pursed her lips and decided the discussion wasn't worth continuing. In fact, it had turned ludicrous.

  "What do I need to know to start a screenplay?" she asked.

  Joey stared at her for another long second, turned to face his own computer, and said, "Tomorrow I'll bring you my copy of Save the Cat!"

  Used to the weird, barely-English jargon tossed around this room on a regular basis, Erin nodded. She'd eventually figure out what the hell that meant. In the meantime, she'd embarrassed herself enough for one morning.

  "Thanks."

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The One with the Mouse

  August 31, nine months, two weeks to thirty-five

  Erin pulled on Ben's shoulder. "Wait. Stop here." She pulled her phone out of her small cross-body bag and held it up, turning so she and Ben were facing the same direction in the middle of the mass of bodies. "Selfie time."

  "Again?" Ben gave her a teasing nudge. "What are you going to do with all of these, anyway?"

  "Plaster them on social media to embarrass you at work, of course." She positioned the phone carefully to capture the iconic castle in the background and plastered on her best fake-but-trying-not-to-look-fake smile. Her selfie smile. Meanwhile Ben's lips turned up in an I'm-indulging-my-wife half smile.

  She took two shots and then turned the phone around so they could inspect the pictures. "Are you worried this will damage your professional reputation?"

  "Depends," he said. "If you post the one from It's a Small World, it might." His eyes twinkled. "I'm pretty sure we weren't supposed to be doing that on a kiddie ride."

  She poked him in the side, a thrill running up her spine. "We were in the back of the boat. Nobody saw us."

  "Why don't we go ride that one again?" He slid an arm around her waist and pulled her toward him as they started walking, folding themselves into the crowd.

  "We could," Erin said. "Or we can go ride Space Mountain one more time and then get out of here." It was around twilight, and they'd been in the park since 9 a.m.

  "You don't want to eke out every single second of Mickey time?" he said. "The park doesn't close for hours yet."

  She zipped her phone back into her bag and slid her arm under his, looping it behind his back like high school sweethearts at a football game. She was tempted to put her hand in his back pocket. "I want to eke out every single second of you time," she said. "I can't believe you're leaving already. You just got here."

  "I know." His body stiffened slightly, and she wondered if he was annoyed with her nagging. "I wish I could stay longer, but I've got a dozen meetings on Monday. That's not an exaggeration." He squeezed her waist lightly. "Besides, you're busy, too."

  Erin had tried to get out of working Friday, but with so much to do crunched into such a short time frame, it hadn't been possible. Ben had hung out with her at work in the morning and then they went to lunch at a dim sum place around the corner from the studio. After lunch, he left to explore the Santa Monica Pier, while she crunched as much work as she could into the afternoon. She'd busted out the door around three, hating every second she had to be at the office with Ben waiting around for her.

  Friday night, they'd explored L.A. together, and she'd finally tried good L.A. sushi—a restaurant called Sugarfish that was worth the hype. Before that they'd done all the cheesy tourist stuff—fit their hands into the concrete imprints at TCL Chinese Theatre, wandered Rodeo Drive and ogled the Ferraris, Maseratis, and Bentleys lining the street, cruised the tree-lined boulevards of Beverly Hills, drove down Sunset and then up into the hills where they stopped at a lookout and took a ludicrous number of selfies with the Hollywood sign in the background.

  And then, after getting to the condo around eleven, exhausted, they'd stayed up another three hours, christening the purple sofa, the hall between the kitchen and the stairwell, and finally the big white bed in the sleeping loft, tangling themselves into the sheets and falling asleep in each other's arms somewhere around two a.m.

  Five hours or so later, Erin's cell phone alarm woke them up for their Disney adventure. And now they were dead on their feet.

  "You think the line's still bad at Space Mountain?" Ben said. "They've stopped giving Fastpasses on that one."

  Erin could tell he was ready to go. "Let's get out of here," she said. "If I were any more tired, I'd need to leave on a stretcher."

  He stopped walking and reached down suddenly to swipe his right arm under her knees. He swooped her up and started carrying her through the crowd. A girl walking nearby, holding hands with her little brother, started giggling, and Erin smiled down at her and waggled her feet in midair.

  "Thanks," she said to Ben.

  He laughed. "I don't know how far I'll make it, but consider this my grand heroic gesture."

  "You are my hero." She kissed him on the cheek. "I've been feeling jealous of all the kids asleep in strollers." She lay her head against his shoulder, nestling her cheek above his collarbone.

  For some reason as Ben weaved them through the crowd, angling sideways at times to avoid knocking Erin's feet into passing clusters of people, Brian's rehearsal dinner speech popped into Erin's head. She thought about the notebook where Ben had scratched out journal entries when they were barely old enough to start feeling things they didn't understand.

  They walked in silence for a couple of minutes, and then she angled her head to look up at him. "Could you have imagined this when we were, like, twelve? Walking up Meadow Hill together on our way home from school?"

  He smiled and glanced down. "Disneyland and you all in the same day? My twelve-year-old self couldn't have handled it. I'd have spontaneously combusted." He nuzzled his chin against the side of her head, the stubble of his five o'clock shadow scraping at the tender skin of her temple.

  "Did you really know all the way back then?"

  "Know what?"

  "Know that you wanted this. That you wanted us to be together."

  He didn't say anything for a couple of seconds. Erin tilted her chin higher so she could see his face—not easy with the darkening skies and the awkward position of her head on his shoulder. The crowd around them, all heading toward the front of the park to find a prime spot for parade watching, faded till she saw only her and him. Ben's eyes were very soft.

  "I've loved you as long as I've known you," he said.

  Erin felt a yearning that went beyond the physical yearning he always brought out in her, and especially now when their time together was rare and precious. She wanted to ask him something but wasn't sure she could articulate the question right.

  "And is it…are we…is being together as good as you thought it would be? Back then, I mean. Would your twelve-year-old self be disappoin
ted at the reality of it? Or was the fantasy better?"

  Ben's lips turned down into a slight frown, his brows pulling together in a V. He stopped, lowered his arm, and gently set her on her feet. As he straightened back up, he groaned softly in relief. He had to be as tired as she was. Erin wished she could return the favor.

  "Where is that coming from?" He searched her face. He didn't start walking again, but gazed down at her intently. People were streaming around them from behind, from all sides, and someone's elbow jostled Erin's back. "Are you disappointed?"

  "No." Erin reached out and grabbed his left hand with her right, tugging to pull the two of them into the stream of moving people. "No," she repeated once they were moving again. "The opposite. I love you more than I ever would have thought possible."

  The lightheartedness all around them put the seriousness of the conversation in higher relief, and panic fluttered in her stomach at whatever it was she'd just unleashed. Her exhaustion had lowered the inhibitions, the reticence, that grew up around the inner sanctum of a relationship. So much left unsaid. But she couldn't stop this babble from pouring out of her mouth.

  Her loopiness reminded her of how she'd felt in Napa back in the day—the 30 First Dates days. She'd had way too much wine and gotten carried away with her date that night, Tom Bramsen, who she'd kept in touch with and who'd driven to Tahoe for her and Ben's wedding. Thoroughly intoxicated, she and Tom had skinny dipped together in the fountain of a winery owned by the family of one of Tom's fraternity brothers, ultimately getting caught.

  A similar lapse of self-control gripped her now, but she couldn't stop it.

  "I guess I'm wondering if you still feel the same way about me as you did back then or if being married, and working, and being busy all the time, and all of this"—her hands fluttered out in front of her—"you know, adulting…has burst the bubble. Made it too real."

  Ben stopped short, pulling Erin to a stop, too. A stocky, balding man holding the hands of two young girls smacked into Ben's back. "Sorry man," Ben said, barely sparing him a glance.