Reggie had agreed to divorce with a speed and ease that hurt Blair more than she wanted to admit.
She tried to think how to explain all this in a succinct way. Jack did not need all the gory details. All the gory details were embarrassing.
She settled for saying, “Reggie wants to go out, to have more and bigger experiences. There’s nothing wrong with that. I like to go out,too.” Didn’t she? When she wasn’t stuck at home folding her quilts and waiting for the cyclone? “It’s just…”
“Divergence,” he supplied, bless him.
“Yep.”
“So you’re on good terms.”
“I guess. We’re not hanging out.” His impromptu visits had stopped, since he’d found his “lady friend.” “But we talk on the phone a fair amount, mostly about the kids. He’s a good dad.
“Anyway, enough about me.” She hadn’t minded his questions, had even enjoyed talking about herself. It had been bracing—why did that word keep coming up in relation to Jack? She had been lonely, and it turned out that Jack was the perfect antidote. But she was feeling like she’d talked about herself enough for one evening. “How are you doing? Dare I ask about the writing?”
“I’m doing surprisingly well,” Jack said. “I think maybe I’m a full-fledged daytime writer now. I’ve been sitting by the pool and writing, if you can believe it.”
“So you’re not a vampire.”
“Apparently not. I think it’s possible that this change-of-scenery theory actually works.”
She chuckled. “So what I’m hearing is that you’re not a vampire but the zombies are working for you.”
He smiled in a way she couldalmostcall fond—and in a way that made her stomach flip. “I guess they are.”
Chapter 10
The Mother You Needed
The next morning at the office, Blair reread the latest subpar incarnation of aGreen Lightscript.
Tiffany had pretty much given up onGreen Light, but she humored Blair. This latest version—the script Tiffany had delivered on Halloween—was the result of her finding a young writer to do some tinkering, a woman who was getting a lot of buzz for a sleeper-hit TV show.
Blair had had high hopes for this one.
She always did.
Her hopes were dashed.
They always were.
She thought back on the chain of adaptation. There was the novel on one end and this script on the other. In between was a series of iterations, each meant to solve some problem or other that had arisen in the previous version. Each version made sense, on its own, when she thought about its specific aim. But the cumulative result was the screenplay version of a copy of a copy of a copy. Pixelated and blurry.
Dead as a doornail.
For the first time, Blair wondered if perhapsGreen Lightwasn’t meant to exist as anything other than a book in a world where Angela didn’t exist. Maybe the reason all these scripts sucked was that Angela was meant to be the one writing the adaptation.
She hadn’t known Angela for very long, but sometimes she missed her so much, it hurt.
Cranky and hungry, she announced her intention to work from home for the rest of the day. “I have no meetings today,” she said when Tiff raised an eyebrow at her uncharacteristically early departure.
It was depressingly true. They had feelers out on a couple books she was potentially interested in. She had a writer working on a script for a YA series she was honestly kind of lukewarm on but that Tiff loved—Tiff was humoring Blair onGreen Light, so Blair was trying to return the favor. But it was too early to expect anything on that project.
On the way home, thinking of her silly goals of going to a restaurant and to a party before the end of the year, she drove by a café near the office where she and Tiffany sometimes had meetings. It was only eleven. It wouldn’t be crowded. She slowed her car. There was a spot right out front. It seemed meant to be.
At the last minute, she accelerated past the spot. She couldn’t do it.
At home, sick of herself, she ate some cheese and crackers, changed into a bathing suit, and went out back, where she encountered Jack. He was stretched out on one of the lounge chairs with his computer on his lap. She almost crept away, not wanting to disturb him, but changed her mind. It was her house.
