Page 60 of Unromance

They’d been working toward this for years, but he couldn’t help feeling like it was happening all at once. The Guiding Light announcement would go live a week into the New Year. He hoped he was up for the job of managing it all. It was easily the most responsibility he’d ever had on a production, and he spent more time than he’d admit daydreaming about call sheets and schedules and whom he’d hit up first for investor calls.

Oblivious to his inner turmoil, Alissa plowed on. “I just signedoff on the social media graphics for the announcement. You have impeccable timing. I also—” The line went silent for a moment, the whoosh of an email sending the only sound. “Just sent you a pitch deck. Potential first project.”

Mason switched his phone to speaker so he could open the email that had justdinged into his inbox. “I thought we already had that lined up.”

Alissa hummed noncommittally. “Me, too. But now I’m thinking it feels more like a second project, and we should go a little more mainstream for the first one before going down Artsy Fartsy Lane.”

“Trust your gut, Alissa. The first script was perfect,” he reassured her. And he meant it. He’d read it one sitting, staying up well into the night to finish it.

She sighed. “You may be right, but it’syourfault I’m questioning this.”

Mason blinked. “My fault?”

“Yes,” she groaned. “I tried to get the rights for that book you sent me, and their agent auto-rejected me.”

“What?” Mason asked hollowly, a ringing starting in his ears.

“Yeah, apparently the author won’t sell her rights, so thanks for the tip, but it might be a no-go. I sent her agent another email requesting an audience with the author. It would be the perfect first project for Guiding Light. As soon as I read it, it felt like everything was falling into place. It’s everything we stand for. Written by a woman, queer rep from a queer author, would have mass appeal as a rom-com, but also there’s so much depth and weight and realness that I could see it sweeping at Sundance—which I know we’re not supposed to talk about, but… I just felt like I could see the future of Guiding Light and that was our jumping-off point to doing everything we wanna do.”

Mason felt like an ice bucket had been dumped over his head. “You requested the rights forWhy We’re Not Together?”

Alissa was silent for a moment, her confusion palpable on the other end of the line. “Yeah? Isn’t that why you sent it to me?”

Mason ran a hand over his face. Itwaswhy he’d sent it to her. It would be a perfect debut project, but that was before everything, before he really knew Sawyer. He hadn’t thought about it in so long, hadn’t realized Alissa had been thinking about it for the past month—not just thinking,workingon it. “Yeah, I did. I just… I know her—the author.”

“What?” Alissa screeched. “Put me in touch with her! I know I can convince her if I could only—”

“I can’t,” Mason said numbly. The following silence on the line was heavy. “We’re… not really speaking right now.”

“I see,” Alissa said slowly. He could practically feel her words welling up behind a dam, threatening to burst free. “Mason, I swear to God. If your dick is what’s ruining this for me—”

A laugh burst out of him, flat and humorless. “My dick wasn’t the problem. My emotions were.”

“Ah. I’m sorry, that—that really sucks, actually.”

“It’s fine,” he sighed heavily, not feeling fine in the slightest. “It’s just fresh. And honestly, I’m sorry. First the tabloids delaying the announcement and now this—”

“Mason—” She cut him off. “I love you, but this one’s not about you.”

He nodded. “She had a bad experience with her first book’s adaptation.” He could feel Alissa’s attention sharpen on the other end of the line.

“How so?”

He did his best to relay what little Sawyer shared, and he knewwhat Alissa was thinking—all the ways Guiding Light would be different from that big studio. He could already visualize the PowerPoint Alissa would put together at four in the morning when her hunger for this project kept her awake. When he finished, however, instead of spitting out all the reasons Sawyer was wrong, Alissa was quiet.

“Now tell me about her.”

And just like that, the whole story came tumbling out of him. After their fight outside Celia’s, he’d contemplated calling Luis and telling him what happened, but he hadn’t been ready for anyone else’s opinions. But between work and Sawyer and now this unexpected overlap between workandSawyer, he needed to let it all out. By the time he finished, he felt wrung out but lighter. “I don’t know how I keep ending up here. Even while trying to unlearn this pattern, I repeated it.”

Alissa went silent for a beat. “Have you consideredWhy We’re Not Together–ing yourself?”

“Did you really just make that a verb?”

“I did. It was pretty good, wasn’t it?”

He heard the sound of a door slamming on her end of the line, Alissa’s girlfriend screaming something lewd in the background that he pretended not to hear. He coughed to cover his laugh. “I’ll let you go. Sounds like you’ve got a date night to get to.”

Alissa giggled on the other end of the line. “I do. I love you. Thank you for calling.”

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