Jack:Where’d you go?
Blair:Vanderbilt. But I got into Harvard and a couple other Ivies.
She regretted adding the qualification the moment she hit send. She didn’t need to justify herself to him. Just like she hadn’t needed to accept his apology yesterday.
Jack:What made you choose Vanderbilt?
Blair:I went to visit Harvard, and it seemed like snob central.
Oh, crap. Hadn’t Jack gone to Harvard? Didn’t she remember that from when the Moonpics PR team put together a media kit they hadn’t ended up needing?
Jack:So you went to Vanderbilt for one semester and read a lot of books?
What was this? A getting-to-know-you session? Not that she minded. She would have preferred to spend her dinner solving Jack’s problems, but talking about herself would do as a plan B. It felt almost therapeutic.
She should probably go see an actual therapist, though. See if Martha was still in business.
She shoved the thought aside.
Blair:Yes, and I kept reading books after I dropped out and moved to LA.
Jack:Did you ever try to write?
Blair:No.
Jack:Really?
Blair:Really.
Not really, but she wasn’t about to tell Jack freaking Branksome about her two attempts at writing. He would see them as failures. Maybe they had been, but only in the sense that they’d nudged her along the path to success. Blair didn’t fail; she just moved on.
Blair:I’m a producer, which I think of partly as being a professional reader. I make books into movies and TV shows that a lot of people see, most of whom never read the book to begin with. Because of what I do, they still get to experience the story, or a version of it. Some of them will go back and read the book. One of the things I’m most proud of is when a movie based on a book that wasn’t a bestseller makes the book into one. Or when it makes what was a bestseller hit the charts again years later.
As could have been the case withIn Time, but whatever, that was Mr. Harvard’s loss.
Jack:You’re drunk on your own literary power.
She smiled. He was kidding, but she felt compelled to continue the essay she was apparently writing for Jack Branksome explaining her career philosophy.
Blair:My larger point is that I found a way to work with the books I love. It gives me a lot of personal satisfaction,more than acting did. But I also think it does some good in the world.
Blair:Not like I think I’m curing cancer, but stories are good for people, don’t you think?
Jack:I do think. I just wish I could write one.
Aww. He was really in a state. Something about his brand of confession tinged with self-deprecation made the grudge she was nursing loosen its hold on her.
Blair:You did write one. A great one.
It took him a long time to reply.
Jack:Thanks, but I have another one due March 15, and that’s already an extended deadline.
Blair:Beware the ides of March.
Jack:Exactly.
This was a good point to stop. She’d shared some real stuff with Jack, but not enough to make her feel overly vulnerable. More importantly, she was done with dinner—shereallyhated eating alone. The last several nights had been inexplicably hard, which was frustrating because it was the first week of October. She’d been in the house for two and a half months. She was supposed to be feeling more settled; life was meant to be getting easier.
