FADE IN:
1 INT. HOTEL - MEETING ROOM - DAY
Three and half bare beige walls frame a boardroom desk and four chairs. Two men sit opposite each other.
One of them is not happy.
For Harrison Kyle, the road to misery was lined with rose petals.
“No, Lee. I already told you. I write serious films. Real people, real struggles. I do not write romance.” He crossed his arms, grimacing at his soon-to-be ex-best friend. Apparently knowing each other since first grade meant nothing to the asshole, because he was asking Harrison for the one thing he’d promised he wouldn’t.
“I’m sorry, buddy. It’s too late. I promised the studio, and you owe me.”
Lee may have been sorry, but that was hardly a consolation.
Harrison groaned, running a hand through his short hair.
He was boxed in by a completely uninspiring cage. Why was it always beige? His life was a series of colorless rooms — hotels, meeting rooms, studio offices — all attempting to be unique, but only succeeding in matching each other in unoriginality.
He’d flown the red eye for this?
“I’ve owed you our whole lives,” Harrison brushed off. “I’m not doing this.”
“It’ll get you out of the contract with the studio.”
Dammit. If anything would get Harrison to agree to this ridiculous idea, that would be it.
He’d signed the standard non-compete clause when the studio had locked him in to a five-picture deal. He had been too high off the buzz of Sundance to realize that he was signing away his autonomy.
Six years… That’s how long he’d been writing other people’s ideas. Whatever the studio wanted. Whatever would sell. He missed writing the stories that took shape and evolved in his mind. Ached for it.
And he was so close. One last script, and he’d be free.
“Fine,” Harrison said, shucking his sweatshirt and throwing it over the back of his chair. His T-shirt stuck to his skin, damp with sweat, his shoulders aching from the flight. “But we’re not friends anymore.”
Lee stood, shrugging on a jacket over his red polo. He looked like he was due at an audition as a golf commentator. “I love you too, man.”
This was not how Harrison’s week was meant to go.
The love movies sold was a farce. A manipulation. And he’d built his career on truths. Exposing them with dialogue and themes until the unyielding light of a camera forced the audience to look squarely at them and themselves.
How the hell was he supposed to write a romance?
A knock came at the door, and Lee paled.
“There’s one more thing,” he said around a weak laugh. “Actually, you’re gonna laugh.”
Harrison doubted it.
“For Christ’s sake, Lee, what could be worse than roping me into writing a rom-com?”
Lee swallowed and stuck his hands in his jacket pockets.
“Hello, Harry. What a surprise.”
At the rich English lilt, Harrison closed his eyes, plotting Lee’s demise in increasingly detailed ways. Poison? Too quick. From the obvious way Lee was biting back a laugh, he deserved something elaborate. Painful.
Hayley Bennett waltzed into his periphery, five feet five of sharp wit and temptation. Harrison kept his eyes on Lee. He wasn’t ready.
Her voice was infused with fondness. “Oh, come on, Harry. Don’t look so glum. This will be fun.”
It wouldn’t.
Before Lee could slither out the door like the snake he was, Harrison cornered him, lowering his voice so Hayley wouldn’t overhear. “I’m not going to forget this. Thirty years of friendship, and you’re leaving me stuck here like this is some damn real life rom-com?”
Lee clapped Harrison on the shoulder, cool as anything. If he wasn’t careful, his smile would get stuck that way. “Don’t look so worried. It’s only a week. What’s the worst that could happen?”
“I’ll send you a list.”
A familiar laugh rang out but was quickly covered with a cough, and Harrison turned. Hayley slid gracefully into a seat, the epitome of elegance, her shoulder-length hair carefully tucked behind one ear.
Lee patted Harrison’s chest, smug smile firmly in place. Definitely ex-best friend. “You’ll be fine.”
Harrison rolled his battered suitcase into the corner of the room. He’d practically been shoved onto the last-minute flight by the studio, which meant this project was important. He still didn’t like it.
Hated even more that he couldn’t check in to his room for another few hours, and all he wanted was a decent coffee and a nap.
It didn’t help that he was stuck in this tiny bland room, the only sign of life being the glass door and the view beyond it, which was — you guessed it — a beige hallway.
Maybe he could set his next screenplay in a cubicle farm, some sort of pseudo surreal world of endless beige that served as a commentary of how much routine we embraced before it stripped the very color from our lives.
The knot in his stomach tightened. He’d be calmer if he wasn’t sardined in this room with the one person he’d spent months avoiding.
Seeing Hayley again was short-circuiting his brain. He’d foolishly hoped he could forget her after the party, but he hadn’t counted on Lee selling him out.
Maybe no amount of time would be enough. Six months hadn’t dulled her memory or the impact of seeing her again.
Hayley was just as beautiful as ever, holding court over his senses, and he was a mere jester.
She was smooth to his scruff, always polished and proper. If she’d traveled recently, it didn’t show. Where Harrison looked like a mutt rescued from a house fire in a dark T-shirt and loose jeans (the only thing about him that was relaxed), Hayley stunned in crisp, clean tailoring.
Cheekbones, neck, shoulder — her body was a series of alcoves he wanted to hide away in. Her long legs were currently hidden under trousers, leaving only a flash of bare ankle on show. He remembered exactly what her legs felt like wrapped around him and wanted to run his thumb over that delicate skin, dip his fingers lightly under the hem of her pants to see if the same flame sparked to life in her eyes.
Amber, he remembered. A deep, magnetic amber.
“I want to make it clear that I’m only doing this because I’m contracted to.” He rifled through his bag for his ear buds. He fucking longed to take a shower, to wash off the stale smell of recycled plane air and his frustrations.
“Don’t worry. It’s exceedingly obvious that you don’t want to be here. And since you couldn’t find love if you fell into a vat of it, I don’t expect that you’ll be any help.”
Well, at least her expectations were reasonable.
“I’ll take that as a compliment since these films are all the same. Vapid and uninspired.”
“You’re calling my work vapid?”
He shrugged, the lie twisting in his gut. Truthfully, her writing was insightful, though crippled by the idiotic conventions she played to. But there was no denying her talent, nor her success. Her last movie had outsold his by an entire decimal point, even if her name had been buried in the credits.
He wasn’t sure what pissed him off more.
Lee had made it clear that the studio wanted him here because of the acclaim his films had always achieved (he’d take the Academy’s accolades over what appealed to the average person). But if they had hoped he could raise this drivel to his usual heights, they were mistaken.