AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter 2
Ivy no longer believed in happy endings. She was devastated. She poured her hurt feelings into a new script about her and Nick. She called itWhen Joseph Met Mary. It was all about their romance. But when she got to the third act, she wasn’t sure how to end it. She knew she needed to kill Nick in the script. She spent a few weeks thinking of the best way to terminate him. In the end, his demise came about in a snowmobile accident. The ice of Cayuga Lake cracked, and Nick and his snowmobile sank to their death. She was pleased with the script. And so was her agent. Charlotte loved that Ivy had the guts to turn a happy romantic comedy into a romantic drama. Ivy realized she had Nick to thank for that. Too bad he was dead under the lake.
Tarantino had beat out Ephron.
The script went out for sale to the studios. Ivy waited for her phone to ring, for her email to ding with good news. But there was none. All the studios passed. Some of the coverage comments wereit’s too indieandtoo cast dependent. All that meant was that it didn’t fit the high concept, four-quadrant, preexisting proof of concept tentpole mandate that dominated Hollywood at that time.
But film executives liked the writing. The script became a calling card. It showed that Ivy had a great voice. Charlotte sent her out to meetings.
Ivy set off on the “bottled water tour”. Going from studio to studio, meeting to meeting, hearing how much people loved her script and her writing. Most of the time, all she got out of it was a bottle of water. The bottle water tour ended quickly. Ivy was dying from encouragement. Her agent wanted her to write another script. She did. That script didn’t sell either. She went out on another bottled water tour. She started to keep the bottles and redeem them at the local Vons supermarket. Money was tight, and every deposit helped. Ivy had been invited to the ball, but no one wanted to dance with her.
Her friends would try to fix her up. But Ivy didn’t date. Not since “the Departure.” That’s how she referred to the breakup with Nick. She masked her calls with her parents. She didn’t want them worrying about her. She made excuses to stay away from Geneva, even though it was her hometown.
“I’m not going to come home for Christmas because a classmate needs me to A.D. her low-budget film. She lost her first location, and the new church location is only available on December twenty-sixth,” Ivy fibbed to her parents.
“Oh, dear. That’s too bad. But what does ‘A.D.’ mean?” her mom asked, completely buying Ivy’s excuse.
“It meansassistant director. It also means I don’t have time to fly home to Geneva for Christmas.”
Even now, Ivy winced a bit when she remembered that conversation. She didn’t feel good about being dishonest to her parents but rationalized it as only a small white lie as, after all, it was partly true. In all honesty, Ivy didn’t want to go home to Geneva and risk running into Nick. She had spent every Christmas with him since they were eight years old. Christmas and Nick were interchangeable, and she teared up as she realized that life was never going to be the same. Her parents were oblivious to Ivy’s pain and didn’t seem upset that she wasn’t coming home because they had a solution.
“Why don’t we fly out to LA and spend Christmas with you out there?” her mom suggested.
“You don’t have to twist my arm. I’d love an excuse to leave this subzero tundra,” her dad added.
And so it was that Ivy’s parents and her younger sister flew out to LA for Christmas that year.
Linda, Ivy’s mom, adored the old-style restaurants on Olvera Street, where they participated in a Mexican dinner party complete with mariachis, a puppet show, and an upbeat line dance around the festive locale. Her sister, Carol, loved jogging in shorts on the beach in December where her legs lost their pasty white sheen and took on a bronze tan. And Mitch, her dad, was a big kid at heart as he fully embraced the Christmas-decorated Disneyland and didn’t seem to mind waiting three hours to get onto the newStar Warsride. Ivy’s family had such a great Christmas in LA during that first year that they ended up making it a tradition. For the next five years, they flew to California for Christmas. In truth, Ivy was surprised by how quickly her family acclimated to the lighted palm trees in Los Angeles because growing up, they’d always favored a white Christmas.
Ivy would never admit it, but she was nostalgic for the white Christmases of her childhood. She missed sledding down her backyard hill, driving through the neighborhood where all the Christmas lights reflected off the glimmering snow, and gazing at the pine trees when they were covered with white. In LA she tried flocking her Christmas tree with white to make it look like snow, but it never took on the magical effect of real snow.
Then five years AD (After the Departure), right after Christmas, she received a text from Cleo, a film school friend. Cleo was going to intern at the esteemed Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. She wanted to know if Ivy also wanted to intern. They could room together. Meet celebs. And see movies. For Ivy, getting to the Sundance festival was another one of her dreams. But in her dreams, she went as a screenwriter whose movie was premiering. She never thought she would go as a volunteer intern.
An intern at Sundance would have to stand in the freezing cold or in a crowded waiting room, organizing the lines and the guests. Ivy was directing the crowd—red tickets here, ticket holders in the tent, waitlists over there—when she ran into Andy, another friend from film school. Andy was an assistant at Brilliant Pictures, a new indie company. They caught up, and Andy invited Ivy to his company’s party on Main Street at 350 Spur.
Ivy arrived at the crowded party around midnight. The rustic bar was packed with festival attendees. She envied those who wore badges that said FILMMAKER. Hers said VOLUNTEER. She hoped her scarf would hide it.
Ivy found Andy. They reminisced and had a few cocktails and fancy finger food.
She started to get the sense that Andy liked her. She realized that when, filled with liquid courage, he blurted out: “I really like you.” Before Ivy had to address the awkwardness,heappeared. Parting the crowd—or did the crowd part for him? He was coming toward Andy, but he was definitely smiling at Ivy.
“Who is that?” she gasped.
“That’s my boss,” Andy revealed.
“Hi, I’m Drew Fox,” said the very tan and handsome producer. His bleach-blond hair was tousled, and Ivy resisted the temptation to smooth it down. He was dressed in that hip, effortless way that showed he understood fashion. He dressed high-low. An expensive black cashmere sweater with Levi’s jeans. She couldn’t help herself and glanced at his left hand for any sign of a wedding band. She noticed he wore no ring.
“I’m Ivy Green,” she said and smiled.
“She’s with me,” Andy blurted.
Drew grinned as Ivy quickly explained, “Andy and I are old friends. We went to film school together.”
“Andy works for me. And if he goes back to the condo and sleeps it off, he might still work for me tomorrow,” Drew said. He wasn’t mean. Andy nodded and told Ivy and Drew good night.
“I didn’t want him to embarrass himself,” Drew said with the most dazzling perfect white smile she’d ever seen. She wondered if his mom or dad was a dentist or an orthodontist or maybe they worked at a drug store where they got great discounts on Whitestrips and gave them to Drew for every Christmas and birthday. Maybe that was why he called his company Brilliant Pictures. But Ivy realized that she needed to stop daydreaming and join in the conversation.
“I like the name of your company,” Ivy told him.
