A knock on her bedroom door woke her. Lauren checked her phone. Usually around this time, she was just getting back to the house after a run. She’d forgotten to set her alarm.
“Yeah?” she called out, sitting up and rubbing her eyes.
Stephanie walked in, still dressed in her jeans and blouse from the night before. She had raccoon eyes, yesterday’s mascara and eyeliner having made an unfortunate migration south.
“You’re still in bed? Are you sick?” Stephanie said.
“No. I’m fine.” Had her mother already spoken to her sister about the house? Stephanie probably wanted to make sure Lauren was okay with it. And the truth was, Lauren didn’t really know how she felt yet. She’d woken up a lot during the night with her mind racing. Living with her family would be an adjustment, but maybe that was not a bad thing.
“You have to see this.” Stephanie handed her a bunch of typewritten pages.
Bewildered, Lauren looked down. The top page read The Rory Kincaid Story, an original screenplay by Neil Hanes. In the corner, the name and address of his agent.
Lauren’s hands shook. She looked at her sister. “I don’t understand.”
“I think you do,” Stephanie said.
“Where did you get this?”
“I found it in Neil’s room this morning.”
“He’s writing a movie about Rory?”
Stephanie nodded.
“You knew about this?”
“Just since last night. He was asking me so many questions that I finally was like, What’s your deal? And he told me. But he told me not to tell you—or anyone.”
Lauren sat on the edge of her bed. So that’s why he’d been sniffing around all summer. “Oh my God.”
“I didn’t want to upset you but I thought you’d want to know.”
Lauren nodded, a wave of panic making it hard to speak. She thought frantically of her conversations with Neil over the past few weeks, wondering if she’d said anything about Rory.
Stephanie sat next to her.
“Thanks,” Lauren said. “I do want to know. Of course I want to know.”
“Laur, this stuff with Mom and Dad makes me realize how I’ve taken so much for granted. I see it all falling apart and I’m scared.”
It was probably the most real, honest thing Stephanie had said to her since they were teenagers. Unfortunately, it was coming at a moment when Lauren could not think straight.
Lauren flipped through the screenplay, then jumped to her feet. “I have to go.”
Matt woke to knocking on the door.
He was exhausted. The visit with Craig had been invigorating and daunting at the same time, reminding him that good footage was just the starting point, not even close to the finish line of a successful film. He had tossed and turned most of the night, wrestling with how best to use Stephanie’s material.
The knocking continued.
“Coming, coming,” he said. He got up and answered the door bare-chested and in his boxers, the comforter wrapped around his waist.
“I have to talk to you,” Lauren said, walking past him into the room.
“Come on in,” he said, squinting against the sunlight. He closed the door and surveyed the room’s disarray: his unmade bed, the Sack O’ Subs takeout bag on the floor, the empty soda cans lining his desk next to a bag of ranch Doritos. “Sorry, the place is kind of a wreck. I’ve been going twenty-four/seven the past few days.”
“I’m freaking out,” she said.
“I mean, it’s not that messy,” he said.
She didn’t crack a smile. “Look at this.” She handed him a manuscript, or, on closer look, a screenplay.
The screenplay. The Rory Kincaid feature film.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered. “Where on earth did you get this?”
“What difference does it make? I just want to know how we can stop this from happening.”
Matt pulled out his desk chair and sat, thumbing through the pages. “We can’t.”
Lauren sat on the edge of his bed and put her face in her hands. “I was afraid you’d say that. Can you believe this?”
He wanted to jump in and start reading the thing. But Lauren had clearly come to him for some kind of reassurance, and the least he could do was try to give it to her.
“This doesn’t mean anything,” he said, tossing it onto his desk. “He doesn’t have shit. We have the real story. By the time this thing sees the light of day, it will be old news because this documentary will be everywhere.”
“How can you be sure?”
“This is just a draft of a script. It’s only seventy pages. I doubt it’s finished. It sure as hell isn’t a shooting script.”
She looked unconvinced. “I’m really upset about this,” she said.
He sat next to her. “I know. It’s understandable. But there’s nothing you can do about it except know that (a) most feature-film scripts don’t even get made, and (b) you helped bring the true story to the screen. You have your own say, which people will care about and listen to infinitely more than this guy’s crap.”
She looked at him. “I never thought I’d say this, but I’m glad you’re doing this movie.”
“Really?”
She nodded. And then, in his exhaustion and stress and relief and simple raw attraction, he kissed her. Again. She kissed him back, her arms moving around his neck. He pulled her on top of him as he fell back on the bed. The absolute force of his desire was shocking to him. It was as if the hours of intense conversation had been leading to this moment.
“Lauren,” he said, gently moving her off him and onto her back. Her hair was coming loose from her ponytail. He found the purple elastic band and gently tugged it off. He kissed her just under her jaw, then lower, feeling the pulse at the base of her neck. He tried to slow it all down, to give her a chance to stop him. Hoping against hope that she wouldn’t.
Lauren didn’t want to speak, afraid the intense feelings she had for Matt, the overwhelming drive to have him touch her, would burst like a bubble if she said a word. In that moment, she felt like she was coming up for air after nearly drowning, and all she knew was that she could still slip back under. She took his hand and moved it to her breast, kissing him. He slipped his hand under her tank top, touched her, and then pulled it off. He unhooked her bra and drew her in close so they were chest to chest. The sensation brought tears to her eyes.
When his hand moved lower, to the top of her shorts, she helped with the button and zipper.
“Do you have anything here?” she asked.
“God, no…this was the absolute last thing on my mind.”
It didn’t matter, not really. She hadn’t had her period in a while. Maybe it was the running. Or maybe her body had just given up, the way she had.
It was reckless, but she didn’t care. Where had being careful, being safe and good, gotten her?
She pulled him on top of her, and all that had been weighing on her, strangling her, finally released its hold.
Afterward, her eyes filled with tears. For the first time in as long as she could remember, they were tears of happiness instead of grief.