LITMIR.BIZ

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rewriting, then rewriting again to get it where he wanted it.

      He allowed himself to feel a small moment of pride as he contemplated the achievement on the very simplest of scales—he, personally, had written over ninety pages of screenplay. Spelled the words correctly. Even got the grammar and punctuation right, give or take a few colloquial exceptions. The man—boy, really—he’d been fourteen years ago would have been astonished. But that boy hadn’t known that he had dyslexia. That boy had whipped himself daily for being an ignorant half-wit who couldn’t understand even the basics of stuff that other kids seemed to take in as easily as air. He’d been on a road to self-destruction, spiraling out of control, furious at himself for being kicked out of school, looking for some way to ease the pain…

      Realizing that he was standing in his almost-empty office dwelling on his misspent youth, Dylan gave his head a brief, impatient shake. All that stuff was history, water under the bridge. Long gone, done and dusted. Unimportant in the world of here and now.

      Stacking the screenplay on top of the carton of personal effects to take out to his car, Dylan spent the next few minutes checking his desk drawers for anything he’d forgotten. Apart from stray paper clips and Post-it notes, he was home free.

      His heart felt lighter as he grabbed the box. The Boardroom team were holding a goodbye dinner for him tonight at his favorite Mexican restaurant in Hollywood, and he’d say his final goodbyes then. For now, he was content—happy, even—to be moving on from this stage in his life.

      He’d made it to the office door and was balancing the carton on his knee to flick the light off when his phone rang. Frowning, he contemplated not answering it, but his conscience wouldn’t let him walk away without picking up. Sighing, he dumped the box on his visitor’s chair and scooped up the phone.

      “Anderson, here,” he said.

      “Dylan, it’s Ruby. You got a sec?” his agent asked rhetorically. Rhetorically because, no matter what his response, she always kept talking. She could talk under wet cement, his agent. One of the reasons he paid her a small fortune every year.

      “I know you’re keen to put your feet up for a while and give that enormous brain of yours a break, but I’ve just had a very interesting call,” Ruby said. Dylan smiled to himself, recognizing the enormous brain reference as Ruby’s way of softening him up.

      “Forget it,” he said firmly. “No. Negative. Non. Not interested. I officially do not exist for the next two months. Then you can start fielding job offers for me again.”

      “Dylan, baby, you haven’t even heard what the offer is!” Ruby wailed.

      Dylan rested his hip against his desk. Ruby was only getting warmed up, he could tell.

      “You’re going to have the screenplay on your desk tomorrow morning. That should keep you busy enough.”

      “So you don’t even want to know who’s desperate for a story editor on short notice? Not even a tiny inkling of curiosity?” Ruby asked.

      “Nope. Not interested,” Dylan said smugly. He had the next two months of his life planned down to the second—three concepts to develop further for network pitches, and several more screenplays in various stages of plotting. Only when he’d laid the groundwork for the next step in his career would he start looking at in-house jobs again.

      “Fine. I’ll ask around the traps, see if anyone else good is available.”

      Off the hook, Dylan felt free to be helpful. “Try Olly Jones. I know he was keen to stop freelancing and go back in-house.”

      “Yeah, I know. They signed him to Crime Scene last week.”

      “Hey, that’s great,” Dylan said, pleased for his friend and making a mental note to give Olly a call. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a full weekend to himself or caught up with his friends.

      “You got your big goodbye bash tonight?” Ruby asked.

      “Yep. Gotta go home and stock up on the tissue,” Dylan said.

      “Yeah, right, because you’re so sentimental,” Ruby scoffed.

      “I’m an emotional guy,” Dylan defended.

      Ruby made a rude noise. “Anyway, I’ll call you once I’ve read the script,” she said.

      “Sure. See you.”

      Before he could put the phone down, Ruby spoke up again, her tone exasperated. “You’re really going to let me hang up without even asking which show it was? You could really do that?”

      “Yep.”

      “And you call yourself a writer! Where’s your natural-born curiosity and nosiness?”

      “It’s not going to work, Ruby,” he said good-naturedly. “I’ve got too much to work on to even consider it.”

      “Fine. It’s just I know you like the show, I thought you’d be tickled to work on it,” Ruby said. He could almost see her shrugging her big shoulder pads.

      “Ruby…”

      “Fine. Don’t work on America’s number-one daytime soap. See if I care.”

      He was about to end the call, but he hesitated for a beat, his interest well and truly caught.

      “You mean, Ocean Boulevard?”

      “The one and same,” Ruby said smugly. “Apparently, their story ed’s written himself off for six months or so in a car accident.”

      “Yeah?” Dylan said, his mind ticking over at about a million miles a minute. Sadie Post worked on Ocean Boulevard, had done for the past four years. He’d have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to know that in the small industry they worked in.

      He couldn’t even think her name without feeling a burning resentment. A series of images flashed across his mind’s eye—Sadie staring at him with burning intensity as she humiliated him in class by peppering him with questions she knew he couldn’t answer; the impatient disgust on his guidance counselor’s face as he kicked him out of school; his father’s contemptuous acceptance that flipping burgers was all his ignorant son was good for.

      “Dylan. You still there? Hello?” Ruby said.

      “Keep talking,” he said after a long moment.

      Maybe he wasn’t as busy as he’d thought.

      TEN DAYS LATER Sadie drove into her assigned parking spot at the Ocean Boulevard production offices in Santa Monica and pressed the button to bring the roof down on her Audi TT convertible. She checked her appearance. Her hair looked windblown, but it matched the tan she’d gained on her honeymoon-for-one in the Caribbean and she figured it was the least of her problems. It was amazing how things like convertible-hair suddenly gained perspective when you had a real crisis to deal with. Nothing like being stood up at the altar to give a girl a reality check.

      Grabbing her satchel, she swung her legs out of her low-slung car and pushed herself to her feet. She couldn’t wait to get into work. She imagined her desk, overloaded with scripts and story lines for her to read, and felt pathetically grateful. Ocean Boulevard was her sanctuary, her solace. She knew it would take all her energy and focus, and then some. Its comforting embrace would get her through the next few months. She was banking on it.

      Not that she was a basket case. Far from it. She was good, solid.

      Okay, she wasn’t about to kick up her heels and dance a jig, but she wasn’t a sniveling wreck, either. After ten days of self-pity in the Caribbean, she’d picked herself up and dusted herself off. Life went on, and so would she. It was that simple.

      Recovering was a little easier given that she still hadn’t heard from Greg. She told herself she liked it that way. If she never spoke to him again, she could pretend the whole six months she’d thought she was in love with him had been a hallucination.

      Striding

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