How to End a Love Story(16)

Mind over matter. She’ll finish her stint in LA, gain some fabulously interesting new stories to tell at dinner parties, and then she will have fixed the problem. She will return to New York and write and write and write, and then sell what she’s written and edit it and edit it and edit it until she publishes it, and she’ll be back in the swing of things. Helen is good at winning, or at least seeming like she is.

All I have to do is get over this, she reminds herself, and knows she will.



One week down, nineteen to go.

Grant stares at the clock above the door, ticking down the seconds until Suraya finally lets them go for the weekend. He ignores the impulse to look about two degrees to the right and slightly down, where Helen is currently drumming her fingers against the table.

“I just kind of . . . fundamentally disagree with everything you’re saying,” she says. She’s using that awful, friendly voice she has whenever she’s talking to him without looking at him. “It’s a slow-burn thing. We’d be giving it up too early, moving that piece up from the finale.”

“I hear you,” he says. “But then we still need an episode-out that tees up something with Celia and James, or we’re just killing time till the last episode.”

“I hate to play this card, but they’re my characters,” Helen says stubbornly. “This is a hill I’m willing to die on.”

“You can’t die on every hill,” Grant mutters.

“Okay, I think we’ve done a lot of good work,” Suraya murmurs, and shuts her laptop. “We’ll pick this up on Monday. I agree with Helen, though: the slow burn of it all works because it’s surprising.”

“Then we need something else, literally anything else, that’ll make us care about the middle four episodes,” Grant insists.

“Grant,” Suraya says, her brows slightly lifted. “Have a good weekend.”

Grant nods tightly. That’s embarrassing. He’s usually better at reading the room. Helen shoots him a triumphant look before she sweeps out the door. I don’t want to fight with you, he wants to shout at her retreating back. The rest of the room files out, and the dull ringing in his head clears just enough for him to feel something other than shitty about this.

“Can I say something, between us?” he says, as Suraya waits for her assistant to take photos of the ink-covered dry-erase board.

“Make it quick. I’m thinking about my dinner menu,” she says.

“Helen has a problem with me,” he says, his voice even, his tone measured.

Suraya shrugs. “It’s natural for you two to clash. Her loyalty is to her books and her readers; yours is purely to the show and the room. That tension is what keeps us in the pocket of where we should be. You’re both professionals—I’m not worried.”

Grant exhales shortly. “Okay, take me out of the equation. She’s still not gelling with the room, and it’s more than just nerves. Day one was nerves, we both saw that, but she’s had no problems speaking up since. And whenever she does, there’s an eighty percent chance it’s dragging the flow of the room to a grinding halt. It’s not an issue yet, but I can just tell, if she keeps going down this road, fighting us on every point . . .”

He shakes his head. “You told me when we first met, happy writers write better shows. I am fucking miserable, and maybe that’s on me, maybe that’s me and my own baggage here, but I can tell you for a fact that I’m not the only one in need of a pretty drastic morale boost after just one week.”

Suraya purses her lips. “What are you suggesting?”

“I—don’t know,” Grant sighs. “It’s like she can’t fathom the idea of fun being productive. She’s just like this, she’s always been like this, since we were in high school. Someone has to talk to her about it and it can’t come from me.”

“That is you and your own baggage,” Suraya says, clipped. “I don’t think it’s as bad as you’re making it out to be.”

“I’m reading the future,” Grant says flatly. He watches as Suraya takes an eraser to the board, wiping it clean. A lump forms in his throat, some hopeless feeling he can’t name. “I shouldn’t have brought it up. I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

Suraya shakes her head. “I’m glad you brought it up; it’s good that you’re paying attention to things. I will monitor the situation, Grant. If it becomes a bigger issue, I promise I will handle it. Now go home and have a good weekend.”

The feeling of self-righteous indignation carries him to the parking lot.

Then the bubble bursts. What am I doing here?

Grant knows he could just do his job to the point of technically fulfilling his contract: show up on time, make pleasant conversation at lunch, throw out a few ideas when they come to him, and throw up his hands if they get shot down, because at the end of the day, this is just a job.

He could easy-mode his way through the next nineteen weeks, and it would probably be better for the dynamics of the room.

But it wouldn’t be better for the show.

He closes his eyes, and the image of Helen Zhang’s unsmiling face appears instantly, annoyingly. She’s as cool and uncaring as always in his memory, and just a little bit brittle.

Grant exhales and opens his eyes. He feels slightly ridiculous. He’s not going to tank his entire reputation and career over one job he didn’t even want that much in the first place.