Page 4 of It's a Love Story

“Oh, I’m sorry, Dan. I forgot this was our American lit seminar and that you’re the guy with the man-bun who smells like weed.”

And just like that, I have lost my cool.

Dan laughs. “Yes, the man-bun was huge at Brown ten years ago.”

“You went to Brown?” asks Rodney.

“No.” Dan laughs that annoying, smug at-you-not-with- you laugh. “Listen, Jane. I’m not going to let you turnCasablancaintoThe Hangover.”

“Let me?” I say, too loudly.

“See!The Hangoverhad stars,” says Nathan. “And a tiger. Jane. That’s what this thing needs. A megastar and a tiger.”

Dan leans back in his chair like he’s given up. He’s watching me as I sit stick straight, squeezing my hands together and listening to the roar of blood in my brain. I don’t understand how the opinion of a glorified cameraman keeps derailing my career. Hailey has a beach house. Jack has a gold album. I can feel this moment slipping away. Nathan slaps his knees as if he’s about to say,Thanks for stopping by,and shoo us all out. Rodney is looking at his phone, and Dan’s watching me with that unnerving intensity. We might both be concerned that my head is about to explode.

“I know Jack Quinlan.” I don’t say it as much as I toss the words onto the table in front of us. Like it’s the title of an essay I haven’t written and I’m just floating the idea.

Nathan leans back in his chair. “Oh?”

All eyes are on me, and I can actually feel where the runaway train has clicked back onto its track. The roaring of blood in my head slows. “Yes, since I was a kid.”

“Does he act?” asked Rodney. “He’s plenty commercial.” He laughs at his understatement.

I’m not entirely sure what I’ve started or where I’m going with this. But Nathan’s countenance has changed fromNotoI’m listening.

“No, but he could write a song for the soundtrack,” I say. Nathan and Rodney are looking at me like I am going to solve this problem, like they respect my leadership here. This is exactly the feeling I was hoping for when I walked in today.

Dan, however, rolls his eyes. “How are you going to pull that off?”

I have an image in my head of me trying to climb a ladder while a little raccoon is after me, gnawing on my shoe. I need to shake my foot to get free and maybe give that raccoon a black eye in the process.

“I talk to him all the time,” I say. “He’ll totally do it.”

CHAPTER 3

IMANAGE A NEUTRAL FACE AS I WALK BACK TO MYOFFICE. Nathan has assured me that Jack’s involvement will get this thing green-lit. And why wouldn’t it? Jack singing a song from our soundtrack to a packed arena would sell a gazillion movie tickets.

Mandy follows me into my office. “Looks like that went well?”

“It did!” I say, my voice too high. I sit at my desk and straighten a pile of note cards. “Just a few details to work out, and we’ll be good to go.”

“Need my help?”

“No, not now. I’m just going to make a few calls.”

I smile the smile of a person who is being flushed down the world’s largest toilet but wants people to think she’s enjoying the ride. When Mandy’s gone and the door is closed, I slide off my desk chair and sit on the floor. I don’t know what I was thinking. It wasn’t even an exaggeration; it was an outright lie. I haven’t spoken to Jack Quinlan since I was fourteen and he laughed at me. I wonder what he’d think about me now, trying to slide my desk drawer open from below to find candy.

Turns out this fourth date has gone like every other. The exuberance of my red dress mocks me as I take in the shoddy construction of my desk from below. “Made in Van Nuys,” says the sticker next to all of my “pleases.” I want to laugh this off. I want to stand up, go on with my day, and saunter— no, sashay!—into my next meeting. I want to call Clem and bust on Dan, who made this movie sound sleepier than it is. There is a thrum in my heart that this script has activated. I do not believe in love. I do not believe in finding The One. All of that is nonsense, but this script has given me this tiny ache, the sneaky kind that attaches itself to hope.

I had ached with hope on the day I auditioned forPop Rocks.I remember being discovered in my middle school’s production ofLittle Shop of Horrorsand asked to audition. I couldn’t believe it, being discovered. I’d just gotten braces and perfected a full metal smile that was like a cheat code to lifting my mom’s mood, softening her tired face into a giggle. I was a young twelve and didn’t know enough about Hollywood to be nervous. It all just felt fun. It was fun to make the stiff casting people laugh. I gave them something, and they gave me something back—an exact exchange of energy.I love you,followed byI love you too.I ended the audition with my full metal smile and got the job.

The studio found me an agent, and it all took off—the meetings, the contracts, the transition to on-set school and a life where I would only know three other kids: Hailey, Will, and Dougie. As the awkward keyboardist, I was the punch line of almost every scene, but it was fun. My job was to show up at fake band rehearsals with a gooey rack of ribs in my hand. Intermittently, I’d be on the receiving end of a thrown milkshake, chucked right in my face. I’d walk into the student lounge and sit on someone’s nachos and frown myoofinto the camera while the rest of the fake band said, “Poor Janey,” followed by that special guitar riff.

The irony was that this was the first time in my life I wasn’t actually poor. My mom and I stayed in the Westwood apartment I grew up in, but we had new shoes and rotisserie chickens. It was a sharp change—a single mother and child living on welfare one day and then having money for new shoes and prepared food the next. This was a thing I’d been craving my whole life, and I luxuriated in being casual about the basics.Oh, sure, let’s grab lunch.I still get a rush every time I put down my credit card and say, “I’ve got this.”

“I’ve got this” means I have this. I am not without.

The first time I ever saw my mother walk into a store, run her hand over a sweater, and then buy it, I felt actual joy. I do not exaggerate when I say that watching my mother purchase things that she didn’t need was the great joy of my childhood. It was hope fulfilled.

---