Andrew was waiting in the lobby of her building. He had driven across town without being asked, which was how he had operated for nine years and tonight felt less like loyalty and more like the actions of the closest friend Adriana had. He was wearing his best suit, the dark navy with the subtle pinstripe, his tie knotted tight, his dark eyes bright with a light that sat between anxiety and excitement, in the territory of hope.
“You look good,” he said. His voice was warm with an emotion she almost didn’t recognize—pride.
“I look terrified.”
Andrew shook his head once, slow and certain.
“You look honest. It’s a better look. It’s your best look.” He stepped forward and straightened her jacket. The gesture was small, instinctive, he had been taking care of the details around Adriana for nine years and intended to continue. “Ready?”
“No.”
“Good. If you were ready, I’d be worried.” He opened the car door.
They drove to the screening venue in silence. The city moved past the windows in its Friday evening configuration, alive, restless, full of the restless energy that Los Angeles wore on the evenings when things were about to change. The sunset was orange and pink above the western skyline, and the palm trees stood black against it, and the whole city looked like it was holding its breath.
Adriana sat in the passenger seat with her hands in her lap. Her heart was beating at a rate that had nothing to do with anxiety and everything to do with the woman she was about to see for the first time since a conference room argument that had ended with the worst words Adriana had ever heard:Stay away from me.
She was not staying away. She was doing the opposite of staying away. She was walking toward the person she loved with nothing in her hands except the truth and nothing on her face except the fear of a woman who had spent fifteen years avoiding this moment and could not avoid it for one more second.
Andrew parked. They walked to the venue entrance. The night air was warm. The screening venue was lit from within, and through the glass doors people were arriving— industry figures, press—the assembly of an audience that had been invited to witness a reckoning.
Andrew straightened her jacket one more time at the door.
“Just be honest,” he said quietly.
She nodded. She already knew.
Adriana took a breath. The breath was slow, a deep breath she had been teaching herself to take in moments of crisis for twenty years. But this was not that kind of crisis. This was the moment before she walked into a room to tell the truth to the woman she loved, and no amount of breathing technique was going to make it feel manageable.
She let the breath out. Set her shoulders. And walked through the doors into the warm light and the gathered audience and the future she was about to either reclaim or lose forever.
21
SIENNA
The screening venue was a restored cinema in downtown Los Angeles, a place built in the 1930s for studio premieres and had spent the last twenty years cycling through bankruptcy and renovation before emerging as an independent film showcase with velvet seats, art deco fixtures, and an acoustics system that cost more than Parallax Films’ entire first-year operating budget.
Sienna stood in the foyer in a fitted black dress that Dani had chosen for her because Sienna’s own wardrobe did not contain anything suitable for a premiere and because Dani had argued, correctly, that the filmmaker who brought down Burty Howarth’s empire should look like she meant to be standing in a cinema foyer being photographed by entertainment journalists. The dress was simple, dark, and cut so that Sienna felt both overdressed and underprepared, which was how she felt at every public event and which Dani insisted was part of her charm.
The audience was arriving. Industry people—distributors, journalists, producers who had watched the Burty Howarth scandal unfold in real time and were now here to see the documentary that had started it all. Parallax Films’ distributor had arranged the premiere with the marketing confidence of a company that knew it was sitting on the most commercially significant investigative documentary of the decade. The venue was sold out. The press row was full. Three streaming platforms had already opened bidding for the digital rights.
None of this felt real. Nearly a year of work, distilled into one hour and forty-seven minutes of film, about to be projected onto a screen in front of an audience that would decide, collectively, whether the story Sienna and Dani had built was worth the cost of telling it.
Dani appeared beside her. She was wearing a dress she had bought for the occasion, deep green, elegant. Dani looked stunning in it. Her dark hair was down, her eyes were bright, and she was carrying two glasses of sparkling water because they had both agreed that tonight required clear heads.
“Ready?” Dani asked.
“No.”
Dani smiled, wide and unsteady.
“Good. Me neither.” Dani handed her a glass and clinked hers against it. “To the truth.”
“To the truth.”
They drank. The water was cold and faintly bitter against her tongue, and she barely registered it. The foyer buzzed around them with the charged energy of a room full of people who knew they were about to see an important film. Sienna’s distributor approached to confirm the post-screening Q&A arrangements. A journalist fromVarietyasked for a brief comment, which Sienna provided with the professional calm of someone who had spent months preparing for this moment and was now, at the threshold of it, almost supernaturally steady.
The lobby lights dimmed once, the five-minute warning. The audience began filing into the theatre. Dani took Sienna’s hand and held it as she held it before every screening of every documentary they had ever made—with the grip of a woman who understood that the moments before the lights went down were the moments when the work stopped belonging to you and started belonging to the world, and that transition was always terrifying.
