“Not because ofthat.” He made apfftsound. “I know I was a dick in third year. I should have got things back to how they were. I know that was on me.” He paused. “Third year was shit, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, it was, and Susie was a cow, sorry.”
“She was a cow,” he said, smiling. “But it wasn’t just her fault that I cut you out.” He lifted his face to the sun and closed his eyes briefly. “I think I was luxuriating in the feeling of being rejected. There’s something so powerful about unrequited love. It was such a big feeling, and I was always chasing big feelings back then. I’m not proud to admit that.” He crossed his arms, hugging them to his chest. “Plus, I wrote a script about it, a script that got me an agent, so I guess you did me a favor breaking my heart.”
“So why were you pissed off?” she asked, frowning in incomprehension.
“Because…It’s stupid.” He hung his head, shook his long fringe down around his eyes.
“Just tell me,” she said, and he sighed.
“That email you sent when I first moved to LA. You didn’t mentionShadow Strike, you just said, ‘Well done on all your success.’ And, I remember the exact line you used, you said, ‘It must be incredible to know so many people have seen your work.’ I know you, Chloe. I know what that meant.”
“What did it mean?” she said, laughing, because she had no idea what he was talking about.
“It meant you thought the film was bad. And I couldn’t face calling you, hearing you try to be tactful. Or worse, you’d tell me what you really thought, and I couldn’t hear that from you.”
“That’s a lot of assumptions,” Chloe said, but she felt a glimmer of recognition.
Sean started walking a little faster down the street, a bouncing gait, full of nervous energy. Chloe had to dodge a woman with a pushchair to keep up with him.
“When someone offers you a chance to make a film, you don’t say no,” he told her. “You think, ‘I’ll do this commercial stuff for now, then I’ll go back to making real art later.’ Then they offer you more money, and you get pigeonholed as the action guy, and ten years later, you’ve never quite gotten around to making anything real.” He slapped his forehead in frustration. “And I was so nervous about seeing you this weekend because you’re the one person whose opinion I still care about, even now. When I’m awake at three in the morning, loathing myself, it’s your voice in my head telling me I’m a fucking hack.”
Chloe shook her head in bemusement. “Sean, that’s crazy. Why would you care what I think? I’ve done nothing, written nothing. It’s incredible, what you’ve achieved.”
“So did you actually likeShadow Strike?Probe and Prejudice?Apocalypse Four? Tell me, honestly, don’t hold back.” He looked across at her with wild, desperate eyes.
“Sean, they made millions at the box office. People loved them.” She fiddled with her hair, pulling it into a hairband, feeling trapped by this line of questioning.
“But didyou?” he pushed.
She wasn’t going to lie. Not now.
“They’re not really my genre, but I could tell they were incredibly well directed. That shot at the end ofApocalypse Four, where they’re running from the dust cloud, I loved that, it must have been so hard to get such a long—”
“But what about the writing?” He ran a hand through his hair again, his whole body racked with pent-up energy.
She paused, turned to face him, and said, as gently as she could, “I didn’t love the writing.”
“I knew it. I knew you hated them,” he said, pushing the heels of his hands into his eye sockets.
“I didn’t hate them, I just thought the scripts were a little…generic in places, but what do I know?” She paused. “I’m not your target audience.” She watched him clench his jaw, his shoulders hunched up around his neck. She’d never seen him like this, so tense and insecure. “Honestly, Sean, it doesn’t sound like it’s my opinion you’re worried about, it’s your own.”
“Do you know how hard it is, being successful?” he said, letting out a whimper, and he looked so forlorn, Chloe couldn’t help but laugh.
“Sean, fuck off! Seriously? Listen to yourself.”
“I know, I know how it sounds, but money isn’t what makes you feel successful. I wake up every day with this anxiety that someone is going to take it all away from me, they’ll realize I don’t have an original idea in my head and I only got this job because my uncle worked at the studio, which is true. I’m just some nepo kid. And my legacy to the world isApocalypsefuckingFour, which got twenty-two percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Twenty-two percent! You know whatThe Guardiansaid?” She did know, she had read that review, but she shook her head, feigning ignorance. “They said, ‘People shouldn’t be worried about AI writing movies. They should be worried about Sean Adler writing movies.’ ” He sighed and Chloe had to pinch her lips closed. “And I know it’s not exactly BAFTA Award–winning stuff,” Sean went on, “but I gave three years of my life to that film, and it’s really hard to make something great, that’s what no one understands.”
He was almost crying now, that nervous energy exploding on his face, distorting his features. Chloe stopped walking and pulled him into a hug.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re making stuff people want to see. The real world can be a lot! People want to eatpopcorn and escape for a while. Plus, it’s easy to be a critic.” She pulled back and took in his red eyes, his pouting lips. “Sean, I’m in awe of you. You know you’ve got a massive career ahead of you.”
“Thank you,” he sniffed, wiping his eyes with a sleeve as they started walking again.
Chloe couldn’t get over this revelation, the level of self-doubt he’d carried so quietly. She’d imagined Sean waking up every day thrilled with his life. Now that assumption felt naïve. Did anyone ever really wake up that way?
More than anything, his vulnerability cast something into sharp relief—something she hadn’t quite been able to articulate until now. Maybe the reason she’d never felt an attraction to Sean was because they were too alike. Both intense, emotional, prone to overthinking and spiraling—they were both drama queens, all yin and no yang.
