Adapted for Film

by Stacey Rourke

  “There was a great deal of controversy over Greyson Meyers,” Duncan continued, oblivious to my panic inducing plight of impromptu public speaking, “who is known primarily for his blockbuster portrayal of the superhero The Vindicator, being cast in the alluring role of your sexually-charged main character, Aiden St. Cloud. Some fans even staged a protest and started a petition trying to get Meyers removed from the film. How do you respond to this powerful reaction from your readers, and are you confident with the casting decision?”

  I knew this question was coming, had been asked it enough times for my answer to be reflex. Still, I cast a wary glance toward the room beside us. The newcomers were laughing and talking behind the soundproof glass, paying no mind to the sweaty introvert next-door living out her biggest phobia.

  “I … uh.” Clearing my throat, I locked eyes with Tandy.

  She nodded her head, silently encouraging me to talk to her alone.

  Filling my lungs, I recited the response just as I had the night she and I stuffed our faces with shrimp fried rice and scripted it. “I appreciate my readers feeling such a powerful and protective attachment to Aiden. Their passion for my character is the biggest compliment I could receive. That said, as a producer on the film I was privy to Mr. Meyers’s auditions tapes. I can say with complete honesty that I saw a side of him beyond The Vindicator. I watched him become Aiden St. Cloud, and I can ensure all of my readers they will not be disappointed. Especially during a certain meadow scene I know all True Love fans are looking forward to.”

  And cue throaty chuckle, I mentally directed myself, wincing at the sound that assaulted my ears. Wow, that landed closer to a donkey bray. Next interview pretend to have laryngitis.

  “I think we got it!” Duncan slid off his headphones and unceremoniously dropped them to the table. His chair legs screeching across the floor, he pushed back from the table to stand up. “Let me go check with the other producers and see if I missed anything. If not, we’ll go get you settled in for the night.”

  With the rapid-fire steps of the overly caffeinated, he ducked from their room and reappeared behind the glass next-door.

  “So, those are the producers,” Tandy leaned in, sizing up the crowd of what she probably viewed to be walking dollar signs. “Hmmm, the guy in the flannel is totally your type.”

  Casually as I could, I glanced back over my shoulder. All I could see was the back of his frame; his red and white flannel shirt rolled mid-way up his forearms, a pair of faded jeans peeking out from beneath his untucked shirt tails. Be that as it may, it was enough to appreciate his tall, well-muscled physique.

  “What about him is my type?” I asked, somewhat apprehensive of her answer.

  “He accomplishes that sexy, ruffled look without really trying or caring, just like you.”

  I hitched one eyebrow in her direction. “Somewhere in there I think there was a compliment. You have to really want to see it.”

  “It was a compliment,” she countered. Her face brightening with a fresh idea, Tandy rounded the table and leaned against it beside me. “Let’s play Descriptive Narrative … of him!”

  “I don’t want to play Descriptive Narrative,” I grumbled. Plucking my glasses off, I rubbed my tired, jet-lagged eyes.

  “Come on! He’s a perfect candidate!” she prodded, nudging my foot with hers. “Last time, and I won’t make you play again. I promise!”

  “Never again?” My resolve wavered at the prospect of never again having to pick apart innocent bystanders for her amusement.

  “Never, ever. But you better hurry because Duncan is on his way back and this is a one-time offer.”

  Heaving a begrudging sigh, I turned back toward the glass to size up my target. I couldn’t see his full face, only his profile. A shadow of a beard, which toed the line somewhere between stubble and the full facial hair commitment, shaded his strong jaw-line. With his hands resting casually against the table behind him, the muscles of his back strained against the fabric of his shirt.

  Running my tongue over my dry lips, I went with the very first description that popped into my head. “He was the kind of guy you would ask to help you move, just so you could watch him work.”

  Suddenly, all the conversation and movement in the next room stopped. The temporary freeze broke with the two women in the group covering their mouths, and exchanging matching looks of astonishment. My eyebrows furrowed when the man with the bad comb-over slapped a hand on my target’s shoulder and mouthed something that looked an awful lot like, “You’re a hottie.”

  “No,” my head shook to deny the ugly truth bouncing its way to the center stage of my reality, “they couldn’t possibly have …”

  Before I could finish my claim, built on pure blind hope, he turned around. Black hair darted off his head in a messy tangle, as if he’d spent all day combing his fingers through it. Cobalt blue eyes crinkled at the corners. Delectably inviting lips pulled back in a half-smile that caused a deep dimple to dip into his left cheek.

  Leaning forward he clicked a button. A light soundtrack of static filled our room. “Ms. Evans, I’m Kole Camden, the director. Thought you should know that your microphone is still on and playing loud and clear in here. And, if you ever need help moving, I can be bought with pizza and beer.”

  Shooting me a quick wink, he released the button and turned back to his chortling crew.

  Slowly, I pivoted in my seat in Tandy’s direction. “Did you know they could hear me?”

  “I had my suspicions.” Tandy had the good sense to at least pretend to be remorseful. The truth of her amusement revealed itself in the gold flecks twinkling in her mahogany eyes. “They seemed to be mulling over your last answer.”

  Many thoughts and emotions slammed and swirled through me during my typhoon of embarrassment. I could’ve indulged any of them and hid under the table until they had to call security to physically pry me out. I did toy with that idea. Instead, I slapped one hand down on the table and shot Tandy a wide, forced smile.

  “So, hey!” I mused, a hot blush filling my cheeks. “I met the director!”

  Chapter 2

  “Did they put you up in a swanky hotel?” RB asked, her shoulders rising in giddy anticipation of the fantasy she was constructing in her head without the benefit of my input.

  I scratched the back of my neck, a wry laugh escaping me. “They offered. After that cab ride I was afraid I was going to end up at a pay-by-the-hour dive deep in the bowels of Hollywood. A trailer on set was my second alternative and that’s what I went for. Not to mention, I didn’t want to miss a thing that went on at the set. I wanted to be submerged in every aspect of the movie-making process.”

  Her long side-bangs fell into her eyes as she tilted her head and sighed. “And to think, little decisions like that could’ve made all of the difference. Had you opted for the hotel, the two of you may not have fallen in love.”

  She was my core demographic reader—the hopeless romantic. I respected her whimsy … though I hadn’t always. About six months ago, my jaded outlook would’ve insisted I roll my eyes at her rosy outlook on matters of the heart.

  “Don’t jump ahead of the story,” I playfully scolded with a half-smile. “First, I had to dull my rush of humiliation with a bottle of wine and a good night’s sleep. Being greeted in the morning by the bright California sunshine notably improved my mood, even if I was woke up by an incessant woodpecker-like knock rattling the trailer door.”

  “Ms. Evans?” the pert little blonde in the doorway bubbled, flipping her waist-length ponytail. Even if I slammed the cup of coffee in my hand and let it scorch its way down my gullet, I could in no way match her level of pep. “I’m Maya. The studio assigned me to you!”

  “Not sure how comfortable I feel having another human assigned to me,” I stated. Setting my coffee on the counter behind me, I twisted my hair up into a knot and secured it with my trusty pen. “I can already feel myself becoming drunk with power.”

  “You’re so funny!�
� Maya swatted the air between us, her nose crinkling with her high-pitched giggle. Barely a blink and her mood changed to business somber. “First things first, you had said you were fine with a trailer on set, but were you and your guest comfortable last night? I can still arrange a hotel suite!”

  “Can I weigh in on this decision?” Tandy interjected, sauntering from the bathroom with a terry cloth towel wrapped around her head.

  “Nope.” Leaning against the narrow doorway, I crossed my arms over my quirky-owl-in-glasses tee that hung off of one shoulder. “Voting privileges are reserved to those that have spent time on the New York Times Best Sellers list.”

  “Fascists,” Tandy huffed with an indignant toss of her head and continued her quest to collect her toiletries bag from her suitcase.

  Turning back to Maya, I found her waiting with brows raised as if someone had hit her personal pause button. “This trailer—and I use that term loosely—has two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and more bells and whistles than I can count. I have a closet-sized apartment in New York that constantly smells like curry from the take-out place below it. This place is so much better than what I’m used to, it may as well stomp on my puny apartment and insult its mama. We will be more than comfortable here.”

  “Fantastic!” Maya chirped, her head tilting to the side with a sprightly twitch. “In that case I would love, love, love to give you ladies a tour of the set!”

  “Wow, that’s a lot of love.” Casting my gaze to my toes, which were desperately in need of a coat of polish, I rubbed a hand over the back of my neck to hide the derisive expression that threatened to destroy my polite persona. More than anything I wanted to take that tour and explore every facet of my fictional world coming to life. It was the part of my brain that hated people, crowds, and basic socialization that needed a minute to prepare herself for what was to come. “Give me just a minute to throw on some clothes and pry Tandy away from the mirror, and we’ll be right out.”

  With my elbow on the arm of the over-stuffed chair and RB listening intently, I pressed the knuckle of my index finger to my lips and let the memory of that day play through my mind in intricate detail. Champagne bubbles of laughter tickled their way up my chest. “The tour was amazing. Of course I was too busy being a crazy OCD troll to appreciate that ...”

  “This is our screenwriter’s cave,” Maya said, welcoming us into the conference room with a formal wave of her arm. “They meet after the dailies are reviewed to tweak the script or do rewrites depending on the feedback from Mr. Camden and the producers. They may ask you to sit in from time to time. You being the author and all.”

  “I am? That explains why my mom keeps writing that in my underwear.” Skirting around Maya, and her plastered on smile, I ducked into the room. An open box of donuts rested in the middle of the table, crumbs dusting over the area around it. A cursory glance inside brought me to the sad realization that all of the crème filled treats were gone. Pining over pastry disappointment, I caught sight of a dry erase board at the far end of the room with my characters’ names scrawled on it. “What’s that?”

  “That’s the scratch board of The Powers That Be.” Maya closed the donut box and wiped the crumbs off the table with a napkin. “A few scratches of their magic pens, and the lives of our characters are forever altered.”

  My entire body bristling in dread of the horrors I would behold, I strode to the board like a dead-woman walking to her lethal injection of literary change. “Not too much, I hope.” My voice betrayed me by hiking up an octave—or six. “Faithful readers rioting the theaters might be perceived as a bad thing.”

  “Breathe, book lady. They have to know that,” Tandy muttered, joining me at the board. “I’m sure they wouldn’t risk any big changes.”

  “They added a scene,” I hissed under my breath, barely keeping a cap on my threatening hissy fit. “Instead of Aiden seeing Paige for the first time at the script read-through, like I wrote it, he now sees her in a parking lot!”

  “Oh, yeah!” Maya brushed the crumbs from her hands into the garbage can. “I heard them talking about that! Apparently, on film it wasn’t coming across that Aiden’s initial attraction to Paige is because she reminds him of his girlfriend that died. With the parking lot scene they can do a fade in to the girlfriend memory, and then fade back to Paige.” Turning around she was stabbed with the full impact of the razor sharp glare I’d fixed on her and stopped short. To her credit, her smile finally faltered. “Uh … sometimes things have to change for film. D-do you want me to call Mr. Camden?”

  I could feel Tandy’s stare boring a hole into the side of my face, willing me to chill out and not be the diva author she’d warned me about the entire flight there. Taking a deep, cleansing breath, I mentally counted to ten before answering, “No, it’s fine. My coach here,” I jerked a thumb in Tandy’s direction, “has reminded me repeatedly that not every subtle nuance of my one hundred and twelve thousand word novel can be squeezed into a two hour movie. That said, if the screenwriters and director all agree that this is the better way to do it, then I will support their decision.”

  “You’re so mature,” Tandy teased with a maternal grin and stroked my hair. “What happened to the girl that did a keg stand at the Alpha Delta Delta frat party on a dare?”

  “She hit her thirties and the dares got way too intense,” I laughed, in spite of my huffy mood, and swatted her hand away. “All right, Maya, how about if you show us this new parking lot set?”

  “It’s not a set, it’s one of our actual parking lots,” she corrected with a Vanna White wave of her hand and led us to the side door, “and it’s right this way!”

  Squinting into the morning sun, I slid my sunglasses down from where they rested on top of my head. Then, I stood blinking for a whole other reason. Aiden’s lipstick red Ferrari 458 Speciale was parked in front of me, looking every bit as sexy as the man that would be driving it, which was exactly as my laptop and I had intended it. No, it was what was sitting next to it that had me biting the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste blood.

  “It’s a Prius.” Chin to my chest, I peered over the frames of my sunglasses in disbelief at the sea glass green compact car before me. “Paige, who came to town to be wined and dined by studio executives, is driving around in a motorized rollerskate.”

  “Prius paid to have their product featured,” Maya’s pink glossed lips pursed, her ponytail bobbing with her enthusiastic nod. “It’s kind of crucial to the budget.”

  “Pick your battles,” Tandy whispered in my ear, “got to have the money to make the flick. Don’t bite the hand, even if it’s thwacking the tip of your nose … don’t bite it.”

  Her attempt to inject rational thought worked about as well as throwing a shot glass of water at a raging inferno. “Maybe she had a full-sized car phobia she forgot to tell me about while I was creating every facet of her character.”

  Her chest expanding with a deep inhale, Tandy stepped between Maya and me, caught my shoulders, and forced me to look her in the eye. “You haven’t blinked in a really long time and you’re grinding your teeth down to nubs. Seriously. Fix that, it’s getting creepy. Now, this pretty little girl is doing her job to the best of her ability. She doesn’t need to see your crazy, because it may tempt her to run and tell the tabloids, ‘kay? Rein it in, and I promise there will be enough wine this evening to make your forget all about the things bothering you and that director you made eyes at.”

  Gulping down a ragged breath, I held it for a five count then exhaled through puckered lips. “Thank you. This is why I brought you … and I did not make eyes at him.”

  Tandy gave my arm a comforting pat, then dropped both her hands to her sides. “A room full of strangers would argue otherwise.”

  Maya’s blonde head poked into view over Tandy’s shoulder. “I think some of our stars are in make-up. Would you like to meet them?” she asked.

  Tandy—the well-educated, well-spoken woman whose mere presence had been known to intimi
date men and women alike—blushed and squealed like a preteen at a One Direction concert.

  Leaning around her, I spoke to Maya directly, “That was a yes, in case you missed it.”

  We followed Maya’s swinging blonde hair across the lot. California weather was showing off with her cloudless blue sky, and a delicate breeze was tickling the loose strands that had broken free from my messy bun and fallen around my face. Pushing them behind my ears, I watched in giddy anticipation as the crew rushed around to set up today’s scene. From what I could tell it was one of the on-set scenes between Paige Carson, the writer, and Aiden St. Cloud, the Hollywood heartthrob. A movie set being constructed on a movie set. The Inception vibe of it all was a little trippy.

  “Here we are!” Maya announced as if she had led us across the desert to the Promised Land—which, in this case, was another trailer. Two quick raps on the door, and she yanked it open and stepped inside.

  I expected to be enveloped by the standard beauty salon bouquet: perfumed powders, tangy hairsprays, and fragrant cosmetics. Instead, I was nearly bowled over by a cloud of cigarette smoke and the nostril scorching aroma of burnt coffee. Reluctantly, I followed Maya inside, my eyes instantly watering at the nicotine haze. The trailer was no bigger than mine, yet had been hollowed out to allow room for a row of salon chairs with a well-lit mirror positioned in front of each. A countertop ran beneath the mirrors at waist height that held every beauty product ever created, and a few that appeared borrowed from alien technology.

  Only one chair was filled, and a makeup artist blotted cover-up over a dragon tattoo decorating the side of the shiny, bald head of its inhabitant. Around them, four curvaceous women in matching gold lamé dresses chain-smoked and talked over each other to be heard. I couldn’t help but notice there was one blonde, one brunette, one red-head, and one raven-haired beauty. Mr. Clean, whoever he was, had collected a full set.