Page 76 of Act Like You Don't Care
This was important, so I dressed carefully for it. A light gray suit, white shirt, dark blue tie. Shoes shined, but not too shiny. Margaret had opinions. And expectations. I intended to meet them.
I wanted to give her no reason to regret having given me a chance.
Except, when we got there, Margaret was nowhere to be found.
Her executive assistant met us in the generously furnished room outside her office. "Hi, something's come up and Margaret asked me to handle this."
Summer stood up and shook her head. "This needs to be handled by Margaret herself."
"Well, I'm sorry, but she's in meetings. I can maybe schedule you in for some time in a couple of weeks." He pulled out a tablet and brought up what looked like Margaret's personal schedule. "How is the third Thursday from today? And how much time will you be needing? I have fifteen minutes here at ten o'clock, or if you need longer there's a half-hour on Friday morning."
Summer gave me a look then turned her attention back to the assistant. "I'm afraid it's a bit more time-sensitive than that. We can do lunch, or breakfast even, but we really should speak as soon as possible."
The assistant shot me a speculative glance, then looked back down at the schedule. "I'll have to talk to Margaret. What did you need to speak to her about?"
"A scheduling issue," Summer put in quickly. "We need to move the filming schedule up a little, or at least Tam's scenes."
"Oh, she's not going to like that," the assistant muttered under his breath. "Let me talk to her and I'll get back to you with a time. I'll also need to know why Mr. Laydon's schedule needs to be moved up. We may be able to fix whatever the problem is."
I sent Summer a glance and compressed my lips to keep the, "There's no fixing this," from spinning out into the sterile air of the producer's office.
"It isn't something that can be fixed," Summer said firmly. "If you don't mind, I'd rather speak to Ms. Grant directly about the issue."
The assistant glanced over at me again, frowning, then grudgingly agreed to talk to Margaret and let us know if she had time to speak to us.
Fuck me.
Summer handed over a business card with her contact information and then we left, no further ahead than we'd been when we got there.
* * *
Summer calledme the next morning just as I was waking up. "She's canceling your contract."
"She's what?" I demanded, shocked fully awake at the news. "She can't do that, they've already started promoting it."
"She knew, Tam, or guessed. The first thing she asked was if you were pregnant."
"Only because that's what people always assume the problem is when you're an omega! You can't let her do this! It's my big chance!"
"Tam, it's done. I'm sorry. I'll find you something else to fill in the gap, maybe some guest appearances on TV or some voice-over work where it won't matter when the baby gets big." She paused and I heard the caution in her voice when she started speaking again. "Are you sure this is the right time for you to keep the baby? You do this film, you'll be set for life in the industry. Then you can take all the time in the world for babies."
"I've already made that decision. It's mine, I'm keeping it. Besides, the father already knows. I don't think he'll agree to a termination."
"Damn it, Tam, you had to go and do that, didn't you? You're not giving me much to work with here! Do you even care about your career or has that baby got you by the hormones?"
"Are you dropping me as a client?" My heart pounded as I waited for her to answer.Please say no.
"Of course not."
I felt a wave of relief wash over me, but it was short-lived.
"You have to understand how this is going to limit you from now on. Everything we've done, every choice we've made in order to bury your omega status is now completely erased like we'd never done it at all. All those sacrifices you made? All for nothing. We could have built you a solid career in omega roles when you started, but you didn't want them, remember? And now I don't know, Tam. You may be too old to start over again in that genre of acting."
Her words made my blood run cold. "I can fix this."
"You're going to call a doctor?"
I shook my head, forgetting for a moment that she couldn't see me. "No," I stammered when I remembered. "But I'll find a way."
