The Reunion by Kayla Olson(32)
We soon get pulled in four different directions, so we don’t actually get to eat together. Ransom ends up in a conversation with Shine Jacobs and Bob Renfro, Ford looks genuinely interested in whatever Pierre Alameda is talking his ear off about—probably the up-and-coming tennis star he’s been coaching lately, who made it past the first round of the French Open—and Millie stands by while Sasha-Kate chats up our producing team, Nathaniel and Gabe. I’m the lucky one: I end up with Xan.
“So how was it working with Vienna Lawson, Liv?” she asks between bites of taco. We’re standing at a tall table under a gorgeous weeping willow that sways gently in the evening breeze. “Your performance in Love // Indigo was really something special. You two were obviously a collaborative match made in heaven!”
I blush; I can’t help it.
“Thank you,” I say, stalling for time. Xan practically built my career, and I’m so grateful for it. Working with Vienna was an entirely different sort of experience, though—more creative input on my part, a more mature role requiring range I never knew I had—and I’m not sure how to describe it in a way that won’t sound like I liked Vienna better.
“It was… it was a singular experience,” I finally say. “Simultaneously more relaxed and more intense than anything I’ve ever worked on before.”
More relaxed, in that Vienna and I regularly hung out in my trailer until two in the morning with a full pot of coffee, trading ideas about how to approach shooting the next day’s scene. More intense for the same reason.
Xan nods thoughtfully, working on a particularly juicy bite of papaya. I assume she’s read the various articles and interviews floating around about Vienna’s creative process; it’s no secret Vienna holds her ideas loosely and is always open to testing them, no secret that this often leads to plans being flipped on a moment’s notice in a way that stretches into long days and longer nights. It’s such a different world from the one Dan and Xan inhabit, where they bounce things off each other and bring a fully realized script to the table week after week.
“I heard from a mutual friend that she’s been working on a secret new project,” Xan says, and I can’t hide my surprise—a large coconut shrimp falls out of my taco and onto my plate. “News to you, then? I’d bet money she’s writing something with you in mind.”
“I’d be lucky to work with her again, honestly. She’s brilliant.”
Xan shakes her head. “You make your own luck, lovely. Dan and I have spoken often, privately, about how Girl wouldn’t have become what it did without you.”
“I don’t know about that—I had some exceptional material to work with on the show. Did you know there are entire college courses devoted to you and Dan?”
She makes a face, and I laugh. “The college courses I love. But if I get one more email from a high school sophomore saying their English teacher is requiring them to interview a writer, I cannot be held accountable for my actions! What kind of assignment is that, anyway? Bless their hearts.” She stabs a slice of mango with her fork. “The students, I mean. Not the imbeciles who assign those things.”
This is why I love Xan. She’s brilliant and confident and grounded, and it’s always been primarily about the work itself for her, not other people giving her recognition for it. She and my father got along well when they were both up-and-coming in the industry—he was the same way.
“If Fanline gives the green light on our reboot,” she says, an abrupt subject change, “we’d go into production as early as August. If Vienna reaches out to you about whatever she has in the works”—ahhh, that’s how we got onto this topic—“all we ask is that you don’t commit before clearing it with Girl’s shooting schedule, okay?” She says it with a smile, but there’s an unexpectedly hard undercurrent to her tone.
“I—oh,” I stammer, totally caught off guard. She’s assuming I’m a yes for the reboot, if it happens at all, even though I’ve been careful not to get anyone’s hopes up. I especially dislike the way she’s implying Girl should take priority over all other potential projects on my radar, and the insinuation that I might jeopardize the reboot by accepting a role elsewhere. I don’t know whether to be flattered or insulted.
“Don’t worry,” I go on, smoothing my words out until they’re seamless. “My agent is on top of my schedule and will work it out if there are any potential conflicts. There won’t be any issue.”
Even as the words leave my mouth, though, I know they sound more solid than they feel. More committed than I am. Hypothetically—if I were to commit—the shooting schedule for Girl might be fixed and predictable, but Vienna Lawson is anything but. She could get an idea tonight, draft it next week, and have everything all set up for an on-location shoot by next month—or it could take as long as a year, maybe two, for her to feel ready to go. At the very least, if she’s writing a project with me in mind, she might hope for intense collaboration in the months to come, which could become a point of contention if it started to interfere with Girl.
I need to take a breath and a big step back before I get too far ahead of myself.
“If you’ll excuse me, I need to make a quick phone call. Good to chat, Xan—thanks for tonight!”
We both know my “quick phone call” is an excuse—I should definitely touch base with Mars about what just happened, but it can wait. I follow a winding path lined with tall tropical trees, their leaves wide and green, and find a quiet corner. Dan and Xan really do have a phenomenal backyard, I think, taking a moment to just be here in this peaceful little alcove. It’s like its own private room under the stars, a ceramic birdbath its focal point, walled off by coral honeysuckle and moonflower vines and a thriving lot of wisteria, all of it lit by a lamppost straight out of Narnia. It’s lovely, romantic. Relatively quiet.