I go through the morning at work like a coffee-fueled automaton. Executing the tasks on my to-do list with the detached determination of somebody who has bigger things on their mind. I buzz around the production office, handing out copies of scripts and shooting schedules, hashing out last-minute alterations to the night’s program, and prepping a couple of guests, but mentally I’m still up there on Runyon Canyon, replaying the conversation with Teo, reading between the lines, searching for double meanings.

Even on the surface, it’s crazy. An invitation to a concert? Casually delivered like we were just a couple of old high school buddies who did chess club together? No sense of the hurt and drama in our history. No acknowledgement of what he did to me, to us.

Then again, maybe it doesn’t really matter to him, maybe it didn’t mean anything. Maybe it was exactly what he seemed to treat it as: Bumping into some girl he used to know, and asking her out on some semi-date. Could he really have forgotten how badly things ended between us?

It was so easy—too easy—to be comfortable with him. Talking like we used to, laughing like we’d won. His eyes still fixed themselves on me like everything I said mattered, his presence so deep and strong I felt like I could fall into him. He still talked with that cool, guarded manner of holding something back. Still had the look of someone who didn’t tell you everything, who kept himself a mystery, so that even when you were talking about one thing, you felt like he was thinking about something entirely different.

I used to love that, it used to make me want to unlock that enigmatic smile and find out what went on behind those narrowed eyes—but now that I know how much Teo can hurt me, I can’t stop worrying about what could happen if I let myself get lost in him again.

For so many years I’d thought about what I’d say to him if I ever saw him again. I’d filled entire journals with the things I wanted to tell him. Angry, hurt, confused things. I’d imagined him turning up and begging for me to take him back. I imagined him turning up having completely forgotten about me. I’d envisioned passing him on the street, a battered, destitute criminal the way everyone in our town assumed he’d end up, or seeing him at a club partying it up, surrounded by sleazy hangers-on and pornstars.

And in all of those situations I knew what I would say. I’d had seven years to refine it, to practice. So that when I did get my shot it would really hit home. No room for him to mistake what I meant, no way he could ignore what he’d done to me.

Except the moment had come—twice in the last few days, in fact—and each time my mental script got thrown right out the window. What good was seven years’ practice when the sight of that rugged jawline made me forget everything since then? What good was holding a grudge when that look made you feel so good?

Seeing him again made me realize what I really wanted, and it wasn’t revenge. It wasn’t to deliver the perfect ‘fuck you,’ or to gloat over some sense of high ground. All I really wanted was to go back to the past, seventeen and in our own secret world.

Except I can’t. I can’t forgive the unforgiveable. Not that it’s even an option.

Now all I have are a bunch of questions, a half-promise we’ll see each other again, and full confirmation that he’s as beautiful and dangerous as I remember, maybe even more so.

“Crap!” I splutter, as my phone alarm goes off and I realize I’ve been staring at a blank sheet of paper on the desk in my new office for nearly an hour.

In five minutes I’m about to have the biggest meeting of my career. A pitch meeting with the higher-ups that I had to push, pull, and fight for like some lawyer on an unwinnable case. I may be new to the job title of producer, but I’ve been working my way up on this show for years and I know its internal workings like the back of my hand. I’m ready to push boundaries and forge my own path. I just need to get my head back in the game, and stat.

“Crap crap crap crap crap,” I mutter to myself like some nihilistic mantra as I snatch and sweep up the papers I’d prepared for this.

This is my first real chance to drag some quality kicking and screaming into Hollywood Night. To take the televisual equivalent of a gossiping neighbor with a bad sense of humor and try to make something meaningful. Something people tune in for and remember, instead of just leaving on as background noise, or because they’re too lazy to change the channel.

Clutching the stack of papers unevenly to my chest, I leave my new office (still only half-furnished) and blast through the corridor to the meeting room. At the door I see that two of the execs are already there. I knock lightly and force a bright, confident smile as I enter.

“Hey,” I say, trying to hide the fact that I’m a little breathless with a swig from my coffee mug. “Hope I’m not late.”

“Right on time,” Sean says genially.

Sean’s in his fifties, and has the gentle, detached presence of a man who doesn’t seem to stress all that much about his work, but is so experienced in his field that he doesn’t really need to. With his bald head and Lennon glasses he could pass for a New York Times columnist, though any one of them would probably swap places with him in a heartbeat. If you watch any primetime TV at all, chances are Sean is behind at least a third of them.

“Just to let you know,” he says, “Ted won’t be able to make it today. He’s got some other things to attend to.”

“Oh, ok. I see,” I say, pretending to be surprised. The truth is that I’ve only seen Ted once in all the years that I’ve been working here. If you could call Sean’s engagement with the show ‘hands off’ then Ted’s involvement is ‘not even in the same hemisphere.’

The wiry woman with the red hair in a tight ponytail and permanently pouted lips looks at Sean, ignoring me. I grit my teeth and work hard to keep my smile firmly in place.

“How long are we giving this?” she says in a dry, bored voice.

“However long it takes, Candace,” Sean shoots back, chuckling nonchalantly toward me, almost apologetically.

Candace McGill has a reputation for being rude, manipulative, and arrogant—and that’s the nice version. As the executive producer and show runner, Hollywood Night is her baby—and by baby I mean the excuse she uses to party with celebrities and hit on young actors. She’s as slim and dangerous as the cigarettes she chainsmokes, with a team of surgeons at her beck and call to keep her looking fantastic for her age—which I suspect is just a little younger than the Easter Island heads she looks uncannily like. My only hope for pushing through some of my ideas is that she doesn’t care enough to bother shooting them down. Judging by the amount of work she does, that’s not entirely impossible.

“I’ll keep this quick, I promise,” I say, sliding my papers around on the meeting desk. “I just wanted to go over a few ideas for some slightly longer features we could run. Interesting, more in-depth subjects that could give viewers a little more actual insight into Hollywood. You know, a more unique perspective that people might really respond to.”

“Oh God,” Candace sighs, looking out of the window in boredom. “This again. Honey: We’re a late-night gossip show, not PBS. All you’ve got to do is put pretty faces on the screen, get actors to look like well-adjusted people for the interviews, tell rumors nobody cares about as if they’re worth anything, collect a paycheck, and thank the Lord there are enough morons in the world to keep us in a job.”

Sean laughs gently, though we both know Candace isn’t really joking.

“I hear what you’re saying,” I reply, hoping to appear calmly diplomatic, “but even still, don’t you think there’s a little room for some more—”

“To be honest,” Sean interrupts, “ratings are decent, but we’re having to work pretty hard to keep them there. It’s competitive now, what with TMZ and TrendBlend, no doubt about it. Sorry to say so, but it may not be the best time to take risks.” He shrugs in apology.

“That’s exactly my point,” I say, leaning forward eagerly. “Most of our competition is coming from internet sites, right? And the whole ‘celebrity scoop,’ fast news cycle, short attention span thing is something we can’t really compete with. They’re always going to get there faster and more easily. Production value is our strongest suit. That’s why—”

“Sweetie,” Candace says, looking at me fully now, as if finally interested, “we don’t have to compete, because they don’t have the access, the power, or the money. And if the geeks posting online do want to come after us, they’ll have a hell of a fight. If people want rumors, we’ll have the sleaziest, dirtiest ones. If people want scoops, we’ll make them ourselves.”

Sean laughs again, this time a little more nervously.

“Right. I’m not saying we should change the show entirely,” I say, backtracking a little to take the sting out of Candace’s words. “But we could also do things that a lot of the internet blogs and video sites can’t, such as really insightful features.” I grab the printouts I’d made and slide them across the desk. “Remember last Christmas when we had to pull two segments at the last minute? I used the b-roll I had with some make-up artists just telling personal behind-the-scenes stories about actors and projects they’d worked on. It was a thirteen minute segment.”

Candace rolls her eyes.

“How could I forget?” she says dismissively.

“Well, we didn’t put the segment up on the site—but somebody took it and uploaded it anyway. It got thousands of views, and a ton of comments. People really seemed to like it. If we had put it up on our site it would have been in the top three videos for the year—and that’s without people bouncing from our other videos.”

Sean studies the sheet of figures and nods slightly, while Candace glances at it and pushes it back toward me.

“So what were you thinking?” Sean says.

“Ok,” I say, leaning forward and taking a deep breath. This is it. “I’ve been talking with this really interesting woman who owns a yoga studio downtown. Just a couple of years ago the place was really struggling, but then these MMA fighters started going there, and in turn a lot of celebrities started going too. Apparently they really love this place. It’s the new hot thing for actors here. We could take tons of angles on this. The feel-good story about a business turning things around. The idea of celebrities and regular joes going to the same classes, the way something like yoga can bring people together on equal ground—”

“Somebody pass me the remote,” Candace sighs. “I’m already bored.”

I let the comment slide. “Frankie—the woman who owns the studio—tells me there are some big actors who’d be willing to talk to us about how much they love the place.”

“Sure,” Candace says, “and there’s a bum down the street who’ll give you Clooney’s number for the price of a forty. Honey, this is L.A. Everybody is somebody’s cousin when they want something from you. We’re not a charity organization set up to dole out free advertising. We run some infomercial crap like this and people will change the channel.”

I clench my teeth, if only to stop me from saying something that would get me fired on the spot, and though the silence only lasts a few seconds, it’s tense and hard.

Sean lets out another gentle chuckle to break it.

“It’s a good idea, Ash,” he says, though it sounds like a consolation. “Maybe we could revisit it at a later date, but for now I think we shouldn’t rock the boat too much. Let’s keep things running as smoothly as possible. You’ve only just started as a producer, so let’s see how you do on the show as it currently is.”

“Ok,” I say.

“But great idea, and it’s good to see you’re thinking of ways to improve the show. Always good to see.”

“Thanks,” I say, already stacking my papers, grabbing my coffee, and standing up to leave.

I almost bolt out the door. Blood boiling so hot I want to scream like a kettle. I stride back to my office wondering if the door is soundproofed, but halfway there I hear Jenny’s voice.

“Ash! You having that meeting today?” she asks as she struggles to keep up beside me.

“Just had it.” I refuse to make eye contact as I power walk down the hall, and I see her shoulders slump as she takes in my demeanor.

“Guessing it didn’t go well then?”

“Your guess is correct.”

I turn into my office and slam my papers down on my desk while Jenny closes the door behind her.

“You wanna talk about it?” she says, her voice gone low and soothing.

I turn around to face her, and at the site of her cute-as-a-button nose and thick, red, hand knit wool shawl, find it hard to maintain these levels of atomic frustration.

Jenny was one of the first people I met at this job, and now one of my closest friends. She’s a writer, though nobody who saw her would have too much trouble deducing that. She looks like Virginia Woolf if Virginia Woolf smiled all the time, wore hoop earrings, and constantly dyed her hair whatever the most hipster shade of the month happened to be, in this case a glistening shade of greyish-blue.

“You were right,” I say, throwing my hands up in the air and slumping onto the office couch, body limp with defeat. “Candace is never going to change. And neither is the show as long as she’s in charge.”

“She didn’t like the yoga studio feature, huh?”

“She didn’t just dislike it, she spat all over it. You would think I was trying to allocate a segment to a Vietnam documentary the way she tells it. All I’m trying to do is add a little more substance to the show.”

Jenny murmurs sympathetically.

“Was Sean there? Did he do anything? He loves you.”

I shake my head. “Sean is Sean. He was into my ideas, but at the end of the day he’s as scared of Candace as anyone. To be honest I don’t blame him.”

Jenny settles herself beside me on the couch and puts an arm around my shoulder, saying nothing, which I know comes hard to writers like her.

“Why am I even here? What’s the point, Jenny?” I say, entering the ‘despair’ phase of this informal psychotherapy.

“The point is that you have a job that pays pretty well, you’re great at what you do, and that you get to work alongside such cool and talented persons as myself.”

“Such cool and talented persons that are allowed to do nothing better than write bad puns for segments about butt implants.”

“You’d be surprised how challenging that can be.”

I laugh a little, then stand up in a huff and start to pace, trying to shake off the bad energy that crackles through me. Jenny folds her arms and smiles.

“You gonna pretend that this is actually what’s bothering you?” she asks.

I stop and look at her.

“What do you mean?”

“Come on. You don’t expect me to believe you’re this mad about a rejected segment, do you? You’ve worked here for two years—you know the drill.” She pauses a moment, eyeballs me, and then nods slowly. “Alright. I see how it is. What’s his name?”

I can’t help but smile and shake my head a little, looking away in slight embarrassment.

“It’s complicated.”

“Great,” Jenny says, leaning forward. “I love complicated. I read Pynchon for the jokes.”

I sigh a little, taking my time as I try to pick the right point to begin.

“It’s not just any guy. I bumped into an ex yesterday.”

Jenny rubs her hands together and grins. “Mm-hmm. I’m hooked already.”

“He was, like, my first love. I mean real, deep, carve-your-name-in-my-skin love. Leave-your-shirt-behind-so-I-can-smell-you-after-you’ve-gone love. Kill-me-now-so-I’ll-never-come-down-from-this-moment love, you know?”

“Whoa,” Jenny coos on a heavy breath. “No. I don’t know. My first love was more ‘I’ll-come-over-tonight-but-only-if-you-can-give-me-ten-bucks-for-gas’ love.”

I shake my head. “Anyway, we dated in high school and everything was magic and I thought it was forever until one night…he just skips town. Doesn’t tell anybody anything. Just…gone. Nothing left behind, no clue where he went. Just gone. Never heard from him again. Until now.”

Jenny sits back and frowns.

“You really don’t know why? Did he act weird before he left or anything?”

“No. Nothing. His dad was always in and out of jail, involved with a lot of shady stuff, I don’t even know what. Teo used to get picked up a lot by the cops too. But for nothing.”

“Maybe that was it, though. Maybe this guy—Teo—committed a crime, like with his dad or something, and then left before he could get caught.”

“No!” I say, sounding just like I did back then, always first to defend him. “Teo wasn’t like that. Sure, he’d get into fights sometimes, but he wasn’t anything like his dad. Besides, he would have told me. We didn’t hide anything from each other…or at least, I thought we didn’t… I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he was just really good at pretending to love me, and I was really good at believing it.”

Jenny lets the sadness linger in the air a moment before sympathetically sighing.

“How long since you saw him?”

“About seven years.”

“Whoa!”

“I know. Long time, right? I tried to get over it. God, I dated some awesome guys. Smart, funny, talented, interested in me. But every time, I knew from the first date I wasn’t going to fall for them. That it’d always feel…like an imitation.”

“So you bumped into him again in L.A.? Just randomly?”

“Yeah. Just out of the blue. I went to a tattoo shop, and there he was.”

“And you didn’t say anything about your past? Or ask him why he left?”

“No. I mean, I wanted to, but…I don’t know. It was confusing. A shock just seeing him. And I feel like I’m supposed to act like it’s all water under the bridge. Like we’ve both moved on and it doesn’t mean anything now. But…” I trail off, shaking my head.

Jenny sighs and nods sympathetically with the kind of expressive sadness only her big brown eyes could manage.

“Damn. And you’ll never see him again. So now you’ll never know.”

“Actually, no—we’re meeting again. He’s supposed to call me.”

“What?!” Jenny jumps up from the couch and paces toward me determinedly. “You’d better tell me you’re gonna ask him what happened this time, because at this point I feel like I’m reading an Agatha Christie with some missing pages.”

I laugh a little and move back to the desk, ready to take my seat and get back to work.

“That’s not a bad way to describe how I felt the past seven years.”

“Don’t be afraid to talk to him, Ash. You can do this. You just gotta stand up and be your badass, take-no-shit, awesome self. You deserve some answers.”

I nod and pick up my now-cold coffee, taking a big gulp and steeling myself for the day ahead. Jenny’s right. I deserve answers. And I’m going to get them, no matter what.