Silver Screens and Broken Dreams (Echoes of Us #2)

4. “In love there are two things– bodies and words.” – Joyce Carol Oates

Dylan

M y stomach felt as if it had dropped to the floor. A sudden wave of nausea passed over me, along with a million and one questions I couldn’t answer. How could this happen? What am I going to do now? How am I gonna afford to pay my bills? What the hell am I going to tell my dad? Who is going to hire someone mid-season for anything?

“Are you okay, Mr. Cooper?” Harold Hughes asked worriedly from his seat. “Can I get my assistant to get you some water?”

“No, I’ll be fine.” I waved him off. I looked for the first time to Natalie on my right, who appeared equally worried. I reached across and squeezed her hand, letting her know I’d be okay.

“So as I was saying, we won’t be keeping you on the writers' team for Season Five next year due to…” A sharp knock sounded on the door behind us. Harold yelled for whomever it was to enter. One by one, the three department heads walked into the office and took their seats next to Mr. Hughes: John Devereux the CFO, Julia Jacobs the Head of Content and Hillary Turner, the Vice President of Operations.

I barely got to see John in my day-to-day working at the company, but I did know that he'd gotten wild with Reece from the copy room at the Christmas party last year. John was diminutive in stature, his clothes swamping him as he crossed one leg over the other. His jet black hair was slicked to one side, and his piercing green eyes pinned you in place as he took your measure with his stare.

I could feel Natalie tense to my side as Julia coughed, shuffling some papers in her lap. She would have to be blind not to notice, but Natalie had harboured a giant crush on Julia since the day she had breezed into the writers' room and told us we needed to incorporate more influencer-friendly content into our shows if we hoped to get social media buzz. She was extremely good at her job, able to spot televisual trends before a lot of leading figures in the same field.

Hillary was a whole other kettle of fish. If Gretal was below Meave in the demonic hierarchy, then Hillary would be about ten circles of hell deeper than Meave. If it wasn’t for the high beehive of hair on top of her head, I knew in my heart I would see her horns.

“How are you both this morning?” Hillary smiled from across the table. Her eyeballs were barely visible between the thin slits of her peering eyelids.

“Fine, thank you.” I heard the tremble in Natalie’s voice.

“Good, we should get started.” She tapped the glass of the table with her polished pointed nails, gesturing towards Harold. Obviously familiar with her style, Harold chuckled and put an affectionate hand on Hillary’s, giving it a slight squeeze. Her grin widened as she smiled widely at him, her pale white teeth seeming to glow from within. Part of me wanted to warn him to be careful in case she unhinged her jaw and swallowed him whole.

“Absolutely.” Harold clapped his hands, leaning his big frame back in his chair. “So tell me you two, how do you think you have both done this last season?”

Oh god . It felt almost as if they were interviewing us again. I prayed we would not get a 'where do you see yourself in five years' question, because the only answer I would have given half an hour ago was to be still working for the studio, doing what I did best. Writing.

“I think looking at the ratings, I would say we've done amazingly.” I steeled my voice, hoping confidence might sway any decisions not yet made about mine and Natalie’s futures.

“Can you explain that a little more?” I wasn’t expecting Julia to speak at this meeting. She tended to have more of a stoic nature in meetings, watching things from the background with a keen focus. It seemed Natalie was as surprised as I was as she squeaked out a small noise next to me, quickly covering it with a small cough.

“Yeah sure.” I took a deep breath, feeling a ramble coming on. “Well, as you know, the overall ratings for network television are going down. People watch TV on the whole a lot less and the numbers for people who watch live TV are even less still. We have managed, even with the decline in these figures across the board, to maintain an average of about sixteen million viewers with a six point seven rating and ninth ranking overall for the Thursday night slot. No other network has pulled in those figures in the last two quarters.”

I caught a wink from John across the table. The only time he showed any level of happiness is when money was involved. “That’s true Dylan, advertisers still care about who watches TV live and when. We have maintained good links with the biggest commercial agency, Vunderkin, for the past two seasons. The show has pulled in a lot of revenue for the studio.”

I slapped my hands hard onto the arms of my chair, the anxiety and now growing anger bubbling up to the surface. “That’s why I don’t understand why you are letting us go.”

Impressively, the four executives on the other side of the table pulled the same confused expression. Furrowed brows all around. “What do you mean, let you go?” Julia asked quietly.

“Well, isn’t that why we are here? So you can give us the heave-ho out the door?” Natalie said, trepidation clear in her voice.

“Good grief, no!” Harold bellowed, standing quickly from his seat and moving around the desk, resting against the glass table between us. “Dylan, you have produced some excellent work here with the team over the past few years that has not gone unnoticed. All of us here haven't failed to notice all of the extra work you've put into the show. How you attend every taping, how you develop new talent, and are always on hand for the directors and showrunners. Even with young Ms. Spencer here, we have enjoyed watching how you have cultivated her gift. Natalie, you are irreplaceable and your ideas are so unique. You know the trends to aim for before they are even in the public zeitgeist.”

“Well, that’s awesome.” I looked over to Natalie, who shrugged. “Doesn’t really explain why we are here though.”

“We here because of Amore Blue .” That was the working title of my cop drama that had been on ice for several months now. I knew the studio heads had received my pitch and proposal, but other than a 'thank you for the submission', I’d heard nothing.

I felt my pulse pick up. Amore Blue was a passion project, one that I'd thought would stay hidden in a drawer somewhere for me to pick up and thumb through on wine-fuelled nights in the future whilst I lamented on things that could have been. Now here I was, in the office of a head of a major studio, and he was talking about my work. “What about it?”

“Forgive us, but we have had several meetings about your concept amongst ourselves for several weeks now. We have kept it very close to our chest as we didn’t want word to get out to the press that we were looking into diversifying our portfolios to include a police procedural drama. This isn’t something the studio has ever really paid much attention to. The polling says that the time of these shows is very much over. Late nineties to the early noughties was their heyday." Harold picked at the white linen of his trousers before reaching behind himself into the desk to pick up a lint roller which he ran up and down his thigh. “However, we see something new and exciting with your work, Dylan.”

“You do?” I heard a catch in my voice, the wonder in it reminiscent of a six-year-old boy asking if Santa had arrived yet.

“Yes, we do,” Julia confirmed. “What we don’t want is to just be another company who drags out the rainbows during pride month and then give ourselves a big corporate pat on the back. With how you have written the pilot of the show, we can see the real humanity in your main character, Nico Amore — love the name, by the way.” She winked.

“Thanks.” I felt my cheeks heat as she regarded me warmly. Her eyes, however, flitted to Natalie every few seconds.

“Yes, we want to show real, true representation as an organization where the main character doesn’t become a caricature of a stereotype.” Harold stood, giving my shoulder a light squeeze as he returned to his seat. “We don’t want the funny gay best friend. We don’t want the tragic figure looking for acceptance in the big city. We don’t want all the things that we already have. We want his sexuality to be incidental to the show as we move in and about his life and we think your script gives us exactly that.”

I looked at Natalie, whose eyebrows were meeting her hairline as she took in the excited faces around her.

“What we are trying to say, kids,” Harold smiled, “is that we have just green-lit the first season of Amore Blue , and we want you to be head writer and showrunner, Dylan.”

An hour later, Harold shook my hand before moving on to Natalie. My head spun with all the information that they'd piled on us for the last hour, ranging from content, advertising sources, finance, script development, location recce and creating a team. Natalie had been asked to join the meeting, as they'd figured correctly that I would want to poach her for my own team. When the offer had been presented to her, she had whooped, exclaiming, fuck yeah, baby! before profusely apologising to the studio heads.

“So Dylan, I trust we can leave this in your hands for the moment while you assemble your team and get back to us at the same time in two weeks to begin pre-production meetings?” Harold smiled, ushering us towards his office door.

“Yes sir, absolutely. Thank you again,” I stammered. The building excitement was bubbling just underneath the surface of my skin. I struggled to maintain my composure as I thanked and bid farewell to the other studio heads.

Natalie and I made our way from Harold's office towards the bank of elevators, past Meave the Terrible. Not a word passed our lips as we nodded a silent goodbye to her. The elevator arrived. We solemnly entered and turned. Natalie reached forward to press the button to take us back to fifteenth. Just as the door began to close the dam broke.

“Oh my fucking god!” I screamed.

“Holy shit!” Natalie screamed in response, jumping from a standing point into my open arms. We rocked that empty elevator for the whole ten seconds we took to descend to our floor. We stumbled out into the reception area where a less- than-impressed Gretal scowled at us over a steaming cup of what I could only assume was hemlock. Even her pointed poisonous glare wasn’t enough to bring down my mood as I broke into peals of laughter.

After an agreement with Natalie to meet later that evening at my place for dinner to discuss the initial steps, during which she had berated me for making her travel to the third world (which to her meant anywhere outside of Manhattan), we went off into separate meetings. Whilst the news seemed to invigorate her to new heights of focus and inspiration, it had completely zapped my brain of anything anyone could call useful. Needing a reprieve and somewhere to vent, I picked up my phone and dialled.

“What did she do now?” Hailey chuckled down the phone a millisecond after answering.

“Who? Natalie?” I barked out a laugh.

“Yeah, normally when you call me in the middle of the day, it’s to tell me what shenanigans she has been up to.” Hailey wasn’t wrong. Natalie, Hailey, and I had become very close since the breakup. I’d taken to referring to it as just that, as even mentioning his name was like a knife to the gut. Hailey would initially make trips to the city once a month until she got a job offer as a financial analyst for a big name accounting firm in the business district. She'd then moved onto the Upper East Side and rented an apartment that I could fit my whole house in, twice over.

“No, it’s not so much about Natalie, but I have something to tell you. Can you meet me at Giordano’s for lunch in about an hour?”

An hour later I pressed my palms to my ears to drown out the shriek. “Are you fucking kidding me?” Hailey yelped, rushing around the table to pull me to my feet. She threw her arms around my waist and crushed me against her. “I’m so fucking happy for you!”

“Hailey, people are looking,” I gasped, short of breath, as she jumped up and down while holding on to me. I looked around at the other diners, offering a small nod of apology, while trying to laugh through a restricted diaphragm.

“Oh who fucking cares!” she scoffed, pulling me back to look at me, her eyes brimming with tears.

“Excuse me, ma’am, but we have other diners,” the young, pretentious server who'd seated us hissed behind Hailey.

“Oh eat a dick, Diego, my friend is going to be famous,” Hailey laughed before giving me one last boa constrictor-like hug and returned to her seat. I winced and offered my second nod of apology to the now-seething young server, who turned promptly on his heel and returned to the kitchen.

“Hailey!” I laughed. “You’re going to get us thrown out.”

“Oh pfft.” She waved me off. “They can’t throw you out. You’re like the king of movies now.”

“I don’t think creating a show gives you special being-a-dick privileges.” I looked around at the other diners again, who appeared to have forgotten we'd ever existed and had resumed going about the humdrum of their lives.

“I can’t believe it babe.” She put a hand over her mouth and sighed. “You are doing exactly what you set out to do all those years ago in school. You are exactly where you said you wanted to be.”

“I know.” I bit my bottom lip. “It’s kind of awesome.”

“Well, all except…” She trailed off.

“What?”

“Well, you know.” She gestured towards me.

“No, what?”

“Well, I guess I always thought when you finally got here, where you are now,” she started, “I always assumed you would have Austin by your side.”

“Hailey…”

“I know, I’m not starting anything. I was just thinking about how sad it is.”

“Do you not think I know that?” I sighed. “Do you not think how every time I watch his show and see Mike , that I’m not reminded about what I’ve lost? But it’s for the best.”

It’s a line I'd repeated to myself like a mantra since the day we'd ended things. I'd told myself it was okay when I turned on TV and watched him on a talk show for the first time with his castmates, and my heart had felt like it'd broken all over again. I'd told myself it was okay when I'd watched him in a scene in bed with a woman, his lips trailing down her body as he'd whispered I love you into her ear, when all I'd really wanted to do was kick the TV off the wall. I'd told myself it was for the best when I'd seen tabloid pictures of him out in a club with Kyle and Kevin. Kevin had been unnaturally close to Austin, his hand planted possessively on his chest, as the headline had questioned who the man in Austin’s life was. And I'd told myself it was okay, when we'd run into each other at our alma mater and Austin had looked almost sick at the sight of me, sweaty and shaking. I'd made sure to quietly text my driver to give me an excuse to get myself the hell out of there.

“I know babe, but a part of me is hopeful, you know.” She smiled sweetly at me and shrugged, taking a sip of her glass of white wine.

“I think that ship has very much sailed Hailey.” I played with the stem of my own glass. “Austin’s moved on.”

“And that is why I think there is still hope.” She rested her hand on mine. “Because you never say that you have moved on.”

“I want to though, Hailey.” I smiled wearily. “Going over all that again will only hurt me more. I want to move on.”

“I know.”

“I have to.”