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I spent the next few hours pouring over my own notes and making the necessary changes. Though I still had my original manuscript for After Midnight saved on my computer, I chose to pull my dialogue from the hardback copy I was cradling in my lap. To the tune of Sherman’s rhythmic purring, I tweaked the script into what I wanted it to be.

Around two o’clock I was forced to take a break when Olivia called, almost in a full-blown panic.

“How’s it going?” she practically spat, though I could tell she was trying not to lose it on me. I took that into consideration so that I didn’t get into it with her.

“It’s going,” I said, re-reading my last scene. “I’m almost done.”

“Thank God,” she breathed, lighting the obligatory cigarette. The way she sighed, it sounded like she was a few seconds post-coitus. I stifled a chuckle.

“Did you think I wouldn’t get it done?”

“It’s not that,” she said slowly. “It’s just that I’ve had a phone call every fifteen minutes since I called you this morning, and it’s driving me nuts. Marcus is almost having a heart attack worrying about those revisions.”

“Tell him to chill out,” I said, deleting a typo and re-writing a few words. “I’m just adjusting some things, making them sound better. I doubt this will take more than another hour or so.”

“Okay, I’ll call him now and give him an update,” Olivia said, and I could hear her fingers tapping away on her keyboard, probably composing an e-mail. “Give me a shout when you’re done.” She hung up.

I went back to work for another half-hour or so. Then I got stuck.

“Son of a bitch,” I snapped, shoving myself and my chair away from my desk. I looked over Jesse’s last monologue and something about it just felt off.

I flipped through the book on my lap, looking for the speech in the text. I compared the two, and though the words seemed so right on the page in the book, they felt very awkward in the context of the movie. I couldn’t picture Orlando saying them, or hear them in his silky tones, and chances were an audience would cringe if I left the speech as it was.

Jumping up from my chair, I started pacing the floor, saying the words out loud, wanting to actually hear them, rather than just running them over in my mind. Every time I heard it in my own voice, I couldn’t shake Orlando’s audition, and the way he’d sounded on the phone, the passion he’d shown me. Though he’d only been working with the rough cut of that speech, he really knew where Jesse was coming from, and somehow making the changes I wanted to make just felt wrong. The fine balance of obsession and love, of betrayal and acceptance, of desperation and control had all been in his reading, and though the words weren’t quite right, I couldn’t hear him saying the new ones, and that had me well and truly stuck.

Seeing no hope for it, I went into the living room and grabbed my address book from the coffee table, flipping through it to find Orlando’s number. Taking a deep breath, I slowly dialed, praying he was home. Actually, come to think of it, I didn’t know if this was home or not. For all I knew it could have been his cell phone.

As I heard the steady ringing of the phone in my ear, my heart sped up and a fine sheen of sweat appeared on my palms. I was actually nervous about calling him, and that had me rattled more than the nerves themselves. I took the phone back into my office and sat down in front of my computer screen again.

“Hello?” he answered on the sixth or seventh ring. It took me a few seconds to compose myself enough to actually speak to him, by which time he’d repeated his greeting.

“Orlando? This is Dominique Marceaux,” I said finally, impressed that I didn’t sound at all nervous, even though my stomach was now making close friends with my tonsils.

“Dominique, how are you?” he said, his tone telling me my call was a pleasant surprise. “How’s the new book coming along?”

“Oh, that one’s fine,” I said, taken aback that he even cared about my work. “I’m actually having trouble with the After Midnight script and was hoping you could help me out a bit.”

“Sure,” he said, his enthusiasm almost overwhelming. “I was just reading over the last draft a little earlier today, actually.” He paused. “Are you one of our writers now?”

“Sort of,” I said, not really sure how to answer him. I myself wasn’t even sure if I was part of the writing team, or if I was just doing one round of revisions. I made a mental note to ask Olivia.

“What does that mean?” I realized I hadn’t bothered to explain my answer when he broke the unintentional silence.

“Apparently my notes are too much for the current writers to handle,” I said, unable to keep a bit of bitterness from creeping into my voice. “They didn’t want to work with what I gave them, and since I won’t approve the script the way it is, it’s up to me to make the changes.”

“That’s brilliant,” he said, as though he were mulling the idea over in his head. “Who better to adapt your book than you, right?”

“I thought so at first,” I said, grabbing my mouse so I could scroll up in the script a bit. “Unfortunately there’s one scene, more specifically one monologue, that’s giving me a hard time. Since it’s Jesse’s most important speech in the whole story, I figured you might be able to shed some light on it for me, help me test out a few things?”

“I’d love to,” he said, and for the first time I noticed some light background noise.

“You’re not busy, are you?” I dared to ask. I heard voices, and the tinkling of plates and glasses, so I assumed he’d been eating.

“I’m just finishing a late lunch,” he said, but he didn’t sound at all put out. “Hang on a mo’ and I’ll go somewhere quieter.” He covered the phone with his hand and I heard his muffled voice for a few seconds, presumably telling his dining companions what he was doing. After another minute or two, he came back on the line.

“Sorry about that,” he said, the background noticeably quieter now. “I’m in my car.” He chuckled. “Oh the things a guy’ll do for some privacy.”

“I didn’t mean to bother you,” I said, suddenly feeling like an ass for not offering to call back later. The guy had a life, who was I to expect him to take time out of it to talk to me?

“You’re not,” he said, and his words were somewhat soothing. My stomach unclenched ever-so-slightly. “Lunch with my mates isn’t as important as having a stellar script for my next project.”

“I’ll keep this brief, then,” I said, feeling myself flush. Though he hadn’t actually said it, my twisted mind interpreted his words to mean that I was more important, and as dumb and delusional as it sounds, that thought made me happy.

I spent the next fifteen minutes or so going over the speech with him, asking him to try different phrases, with different emotions, to see how everything fit. When hearing his voice saying my words, my notes didn’t seem as far-fetched or awkward. He had a way of making each sentence melt into the next, of taking even the most discomfited lines and making them sound magical, like they were meant to be as they were. I ended up changing a few things, but they were a lot more minor than I’d originally thought the changes would have to be, and by the end, I was actually happy with what was written on the page. In all honesty, he made my original dialogue sound good, and that made me even happier.

“I think that about does it,” I said as I saved the script on my computer. “Thanks so much, Orlando, I really appreciate the help.”

“Any time,” he said, and I wondered if he was smiling on his end. I knew I certainly was. Actually, I was grinning like an idiot at Sherman, and he was giving me a look that told me just how stupid he thought I was. Unable to take any more, he jumped off my desk and sprinted into the living room.

“I won’t keep you,” I said, feeling awkward again, unsure of whether I wanted to keep talking to him, or if I wanted to hang up and call Olivia. I knew he had friends waiting that he probably wanted to get back to, so I opted for the latter.

“You know, I was hoping you’d ring me,” he blurted out, and by the silence that followed, it seemed as though he wasn’t really sure he should have said anything. I heard him take a deep breath.

“You were?” It wasn’t the most brilliant thing I could have said, but really, he’d shocked me. Why the hell did this man want me, of all people, to call him? An image of the blonde from the magazine fluttered through my mind and I tensed slightly. Of course he wanted me to call him; he probably thought I looked like that girl, or one of the others he’d been photographed with.

“Pathetic, isn’t it?” he said, his thin attempt at humour, but I got the feeling he was hoping I’d tell him he was anything but pathetic.

“No, that’s not exactly the word I’d use,” I said, not wanting to leave him hanging. “It seems a little odd, that’s all.” Honesty was the safest approach here, I decided. I sat back in my chair and waited for him to direct the conversation.

“It’s nice to talk to someone other than my mum or my sister about something other than my career,” he said, and he had that same wistfulness in his voice that I’d heard before. I closed my eyes and tried to picture him, his dark curls, his dark eyes, some random outfit. It amazed me that I couldn’t think of the necessary adjectives to describe him, that all I could think of was ‘tall, dark, and handsome.’ Some writer I was in that moment.

“Surely there are people around you who talk about other things,” I said, hoping he was exaggerating. If not, I felt sorry for him.

“Lately it doesn’t seem that way.”

“What about your girlfriend?” There, I’d mentioned it. One of us had to bring her up, it may as well be me. I wasn’t stupid, I knew he probably wasn’t single.

“She’s kind of pre-occupied lately,” he said, seeming startled that I’d mentioned her. I assumed that most women he talked to outside of his immediate circle played the ‘out-of-sight-out-of-mind’ game where that particular person was concerned.

“Oh?” I felt the need to listen to him, to let him talk, to help him if I could. Whatever magnet this man had inside him, it was drawing all of my maternal instincts to the surface, instincts I hadn’t even known I had. I shook my head, trying to clear such ridiculous thoughts.

“Yeah, she’s busy with her own work,” he said, somewhat hesitantly. Looking at it from his point of view, I could see how it would be weird to talk about something so personal with someone who was essentially a stranger, so I didn’t push.

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” I said slowly. I didn’t want him to think I didn’t care, but at the same time, I didn’t want him to feel like I was prying. Besides, I wasn’t even sure why I gave a damn if he was having issues with his girlfriend or not.

“It’s okay,” he said, his voice softening a bit. “I’d like to talk about it with you.” In my head I saw a sweet smile play over his lips, but shook away the image quickly. I didn’t want to become one of those girls, who was all about the lovey-dovey, ooey-gooey romantic crap, especially with a man who was already taken.

“Only if you’re sure,” I said, getting up and going back into the living room.

“Who knows, it may trigger some creative ideas for your new book,” Orlando joked as I sat on the couch beside Sherman.

“I wouldn’t use your love life for my book,” I said quickly. I knew he was fiercely protective of his private life, and I certainly didn’t want him to think I’d use anything he said in my writing. That’s not how I operate.

“I know, I was teasing,” he said gently, his voice all milk and honey. An involuntary shiver stole up my spine and I felt a bit tingly all over. I’d have to be really careful or I’d turn into a puddle on the carpet before this conversation was done and over with.

“It’s kind of hard to tell over the phone,” I said, my face turning slightly red. I’d known he was teasing, what the hell was wrong with me?

“I suppose it is,” he agreed. “I think that’s half my problem right now, actually.”

“I’m confused,” I admitted, feeling totally lost at his words.

“Lauren has been away so much with work, and when she’s not, I am, so it’s hard to know how she’s really feeling, or to tell her how I’m feeling, when our only communication seems to be over the phone,” he explained, though he didn’t talk down to me, like I was dunce for not figuring it out myself. He sounded almost conversational, like he was discussing the weather, not something that seemed pretty painful for him.

“I bet that’s hard,” I said, not sure what else to say. I was still on shaky ground, unsure what he expected from me, so I said as little as possible.

“And when we’re together, it feels like she spends more time in front of the mirror, figuring out her outfit, or her hair, or something like that, than she spends with me,” he continued. Emotion was starting to show in his voice as he spoke. “She doesn’t seem to get that I think she’s more beautiful when she’s lounging around my flat in a pair of my old sweatpants and a t-shirt than when she’s all made up to go out somewhere.”

Okay, was he really complaining about his high-maintenance girlfriend? How the hell was I supposed to respond to that? I couldn’t exactly say I knew where she was coming from, especially considering I was still in my pajamas and hadn’t even brushed my teeth yet, but at the same time, I didn’t want to say I knew where he was coming from because it might come off that I was bad-mouthing this Lauren woman. I opted for the non-committal approach.

“Have you told her that?” Safe, easy, not taking a side, just letting him vent. I mentally patted myself on the back for keeping myself out of his personal problems.

“A few times, yeah,” he said with a rather large sigh. “But she always says I don’t understand what it’s like to be a model in today’s industry. She complains about being judged every time she sets foot outside the door, like there’s always a camera somewhere trying to take pictures of her on what she calls a ‘fat day.’ And no matter what I say, she won’t let that guard down.”

“Doesn’t she realize that you’re under a microscope all the time, too?” I couldn’t help but ask, thinking back over all of the candid shots of him I’d seen in magazines. I knew he was paparazzi bait here in London, and that it was ten times worse when he was in the States. It sounded to me like Lauren was a bit self-centered, but I didn’t dare say that.

“Apparently she doesn’t,” he said, sounding almost exasperated. He took a couple of audible breaths. “I’m sorry, I really shouldn’t be dumping this on you.”

“I don’t mind,” I assured him. As long as we weren’t talking about me and the fake life I had chosen to let him see, he could talk for hours. The formality was gone from his voice, replaced by a sort of comfort that should have felt forced given that this was only our third or fourth conversation, but really didn’t. It seemed almost natural for him to be opening up to me this way.

“You know, my mates are probably wondering what’s keeping me,” he said abruptly, and all signs of comfort were gone. In a split second he went from talking easily to me, to not being able to get off the phone fast enough. Maybe he’d crossed a barrier he wasn’t ready to cross, or he’d broken some personal rule, I didn’t know, I just knew that he was ready to hang up on me and I hadn’t said more than a few sentences.

“Of course, no problem,” I said quickly, trying to cover up the fact that this sudden change was affecting me. “Thanks again for your help.”

“I can’t wait to see the new script,” he said. “Take care.” The line went dead.

I stared at the phone for a minute as I absentmindedly stroked Sherman, barely registering his wet nose rubbing against the palm of my hand. I tried to see the bright side, that the phone call had accomplished what I’d been hoping for and I could now finish my revisions, but all I kept thinking was that I’d done something wrong, that I’d said something I shouldn’t have, though I couldn’t figure out what it was, and now he didn’t want to talk to me anymore. The same gross feeling of inadequacy that my mother inspired in me was creeping to the surface, and I found myself taking my hand away from Sherman and running my fingertips over the scarred flesh of my ear and neck. He hadn’t even seen the scars yet and he was rejecting me, what the hell would he think when he actually had a chance to see me in person, if that ever happened? I tried not to think about it as the first warm tears dripped down my cheek and onto the back of my hand.