Page 26 of Beastly Mountain Man

That answer belonged to me long before the current production had become complicated.

“I like the point where a hundred moving pieces turn into something coherent. Not just schedules. Camera, sound, lighting, wardrobe, locations, talent, postproduction, legal, budgets—everybody has a separate job, but every decision touches something else. I like seeing enough of the whole structure to understand how it fits together.”

“You like making it work.”

“I love making it work. And I like the people. Even when they make me insane.” I smiled into my glass. “My first real production job was exhausting, underpaid, and so chaotic that one morning I spent forty minutes trying to find a prop that was sitting behind me. I knew almost immediately I wanted to keep doing it.”

Lucky laughed. “So you found your place.”

“I did.”

The laptop chimed from the dining table.

My attention turned automatically.

The screen had lit with a new notification.

Lucky did not tell me to ignore it. He did not give me a meaningful look or say anything about work-life balance.

He turned back to the pasta water.

That left the decision with me.

I crossed the room, woke the screen, and read the first line.

The message was informational, not a request for action; someone had copied me because I was normally copied.

I closed the laptop completely—not minimized, not in sleep mode, not waiting for me after dessert.

I left it on the table.

When I returned, Lucky was draining the pasta.

He looked up, but all he did was move my wineglass farther from the edge of the island before I bumped it.

The fact that he did not congratulate me made me want to kiss him.

I resisted for approximately another hour.

Dinner helped.

Fresh pasta was nothing like the dried emergency boxes sitting in my condo pantry. The ribbons were tender without being soft, and the sauce clung to every surface instead of pooling at the bottom of the bowl. Roasted garlic, Parmesan, black pepper, butter, and cream should not have felt like a revelation, but they did.

Maybe it was because I had touched the dough, because Lucky had made it with me, or because for once I was actually paying attention to what I was eating instead of using a meal as something to do beside a screen.

I went back for more.

Lucky noticed.

He did not comment.

I appreciated his continued commitment to excellent judgment.

We divided the bottle of wine slowly between us through dinner, water on the table beside it. By the time I finished my second glass, I was warm from food, alcohol, the fire, and Lucky’s company, but my thoughts remained perfectly clear.

Conversation wandered instead of following any useful agenda.

Lucky told me about growing up believing every father kept enough hardware in his truck to rebuild a staircase at a moment’s notice. I told him about the first time an actor missed a mark so badly that half the crew silently shifted equipment around him because resetting the person would have taken longer than resetting the entire shot.