Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 106001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 530(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 530(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
The store is the one I went to a few months ago with Layla and Ethan before I left for Paris. As they shopped, I stole away to the men’s section, found a shirt that reminded me of Bridger, and sent him a photo.
My breath catches again just thinking of that.
I open my phone, click on my texts, and return to that last thread with him. There’s the shot of me holding up a teal button-down, the caption reading: This color would look good on you.
He replied with a simple: Thanks for the fashion tip.
That was all he said. But still, I run a finger over the text, and I hit the like button for the first time on his reply.
The next evening, I get dressed in my apartment in Chelsea, feeling a little wound up as I zip up a simple dark red dress. Soon, I’ll know if time has doused my desires, or if this bouncy feeling is infatuation all over again.
I touch up my mascara and dust on some blush, I adjust the gold necklace I always wear, with its letter-shaped pendant—I for the French word, intrépidité.
A gift from my mother.
My contribution to the gold theme tonight.
I step into a pair of short boots and grab a coat, then I leave, the elevator whisking me downstairs, where I head out into the New York night. It occurs to me that I’m going to a party Bridger will attend, and for the first time, I’m leaving from someplace other than the home I once shared with my father.
That thought wraps around me like sweet smoke wafting through the air, a little tantalizing.
I catch a Lyft uptown, slicking on lip gloss when I reach Fifty-Third.
Well, he does need cheering up, and perhaps I’m finally the woman to do it.
2
SHIRT MEMORIES
Bridger
You’re only as good as your last hit.
Every singer knows this. Every actor, every writer—hell, everyone in the entertainment business should live and die by this mantra.
I’ve been hunting for a new hit for years.
It’s December and we just wrapped another season of Sweet Nothings, so I spend the afternoon in my office overlooking Central Park, flipping through pages and more pages. Some of those pages are a script for a drama that has “streaming hit” written all over it. Anti-Heroes Unleashed. It’s unputdownable. I lob in a call to the writer’s agent and discuss terms.
I’d call that a very good nine-to-five, thank you very much.
But in this business, one good day does not make your career. I glance at the clock on the wall. I need to take off soon for an event. I’m honestly not sure I want to go to it, but that’s most events. There’s a chance, though, that David Fontaine could be there. If I could just grab a word with the guy…
His new show The World Enough And Time is blowing critics’ minds. The darkly comic TV show about an ex-CIA agent gone undercover premieres this Thursday night.
I want our company to land his next show. Badly.
Snagging Fontaine would be a challenge—bigger than any I’ve encountered before, given his impressive resume, as well as his notorious pickiness. But I like to combat pickiness with patience. Fontaine doesn’t stick with one production company for long—maybe because he hasn’t found the right one.
Or maybe because the right one hasn’t found him.
Yet.
My new intern, Jonathan, raps on my office door. Clears his throat. “Hi Mr. James.”
“Come in. And, like I said, you can call me Bridger.”
Jonathan strides over to my long wooden desk, waggles his iPad. “Thank you, Mr. James. I read Savage Love at lunch. I prepped my coverage for you.”
“And?” I ask, leaning back in the chair, hoping he can get to the point soon. Yay or nay—that is all.
Jonathan swallows nervously. He does everything nervously. He’ll never fucking last like that. But he’s a friend of one of the producers at Sweet Nothings, and blah, blah, blah.
“I think the rising action is great,” he says, fidgeting with the cuff of his shirt.
“The rising action?” I counter.
“The beginning…of the story,” he explains, awkwardly.
“I’m familiar with what rising action is.”
“And it’s good,” he says, then goes on for a full minute about what happens in Savage Love, and I want to interrupt, to tell him what an elevator pitch is, because the clock ticks ominously louder in my head, and I need to go home, shower, change, go for a walk, then get over to MoMA. Promised Ian I’d show up, and I always make good on my promises, no matter how distasteful I find events. “But I think it would be better if the love story started sooner,” Jonathan says, finally finishing.
That snags my interest—the mention of the love story. I want a love story that grabs me by the throat.
“Remember this—the love story should always start sooner than you think,” I say, then I stand and check my reflection in the window overlooking Central Park, assessing what I’m wearing. I’ll change for the party when I’m home in a little bit. “You know what I want to find, though?”