“Matty!” Kevin jumped up and gave me a hug.
“Hey,” I said, sheepishly. I hadn’t been in the same physical room with these people since the video. “Thank you all for coming out here for the party.”
“We’re glad to be here.” Dave held up his phone. “We’ve been talking through the new pages, Matt. They’re great.” His face turned serious. “Thank you for trusting us and our ideas.”
I took a deep breath. “I do trust you,” I said. “I know the Comic Con video doesn’t back that up—”
Dave cut me off. “You were drunk, and the guy who posted it is trash.”
“Maybe so, but I still said it.” I glanced at Kristin. “It’s like Kristin said, this series belongs to all of us. I sometimes forget that, or I used to.”
“We want to do right by you and the show,” Kristin said.
“I know that, and I want to do the same.” I grabbed the stack of papers Jane had printed out earlier this morning. “Like Cassya and Alyster.” I held up the manuscript. “In my head, they’d come to be the OTP of the whole story: the prim and proper Lady Cassya falling hard for the uncouth, rugged Captain Alyster. They were a beauty and the beast story, in my mind. He’d killed hundreds of people and sailed the seas for years, pillaging and plundering. She’d spent her entire life cooped up in a castle, dreaming of marrying a prince. On paper, they were so, so wrong for each other, but that was also what made them so incredibly right.” Like Dani and me, really. She was the kind, thoughtful partner in our relationship, and I was the distant, emotionally unavailable jerk.
“I killed Alyster for the show. I stuck a literal sword through their love.” I set the manuscript down. “I hate myself for doing that, for dragging the story kicking and screaming into a direction I knew was wrong.” My stomach tugged at me. It was what I’d done to Dani. I drove the wedge between us. She’d offered to be there for me, to support me, and I sent her away.
“Matt,” Kristin said, “you should’ve said something.” She looked at Dave. “We probably could’ve let the romance stand. You did add the dragons, after all. We could’ve given in on Cassya.”
“No,” I said, “that’s just it. It still wouldn’t have been the book I wanted to write.” I looked right at Dave. “In so many ways, this show has been a dream come true for me. I’d been plugging away at this series for more than twenty years, living mostly in obscurity, until Dave came along and asked if he could turn The Bastyan Saga into a show.”
Dave smiled at me, and I smiled back. That tiny exchange transported me back a few years, to our first meeting in New York. Kevin and Kristin had been there, too. I’d been both excited and nervous about listening to the pitch from this guy, who up until The Saga had been known for directing only three films—The MILF Burglar and its two sequels.
But Dave had completely understood my vision. He was an actual fan of what I did. “Back then,” I said, “one of the first things you told me was that I could trust you with my vision.” My eyes brightened. “You can be very convincing.”
The others in the room laughed.
Feeling a bit more comfortable, I continued, “But even though you had the best interest of the series at heart and I watched last year as you all took the words I wrote and brought them to life so beautifully, I had a hard time ceding any control.” I paused. “The truth is, and the idea I’d been fighting against for so long, is that The Bastyan Saga no longer belongs just to me—actually, it never did, not really. It belongs to all of us in this room and to all the fans.”
Dave shot me a thumbs up.
“I’m going to be honest with you all now. It should come as no surprise, but this last manuscript has been a struggle.”
“No shit,” Kevin shouted, and the room laughed.
I pointed to him. “Right? I’d been struggling to finish, struggling to make everyone happy.” I paused, considering this. The writing had been going terribly, for too long. But then I met Dani and stopped obsessing about, well, everything. I’d managed to find some sort of balance thanks to her. “A few weeks ago, someone came into my life who lit a spark in me.”
Jane smiled at me.
“My entire adult life, I avoided getting attached to anyone. I thought falling for another person would get in the way of my writing, that it’d be a distraction. I never realized how much it could fuel me, complete me, and get me out of my head.” I looked up at the others, who were all staring at me. A realization hit me. “I’ve sacrificed a lot for these books, and I don’t want to do that anymore.”
I looked right at Dave now. “I could drop everything from my life and crank out the kind of pages you’re looking for in the next few days, but they wouldn’t be my best work. They wouldn’t be in service of the story I want to tell or the direction the show wants to take. So, I’m suggesting we part ways, creatively. You guys can make the show you want to make, and I…” My eyes searched the room for my editor, Ingrid. She smiled at me. “And Ingrid and I will move forward with the manuscript I already turned in…with a few tweaks,” I said. “I’ll have those for you soon.”
“I do think it’s some of your best work, Matt,” she said.
“Dave and Kristin,” I said, “you have my blessing to take the show in whatever direction you choose. I’ll work with Ingrid on writing the book I want to write, and I trust you to finish the show your way. I look forward to watching it hopefully no longer by myself but cuddled up on the couch with the person I care about. That is, if she’ll have me.”
Jane, a sad look on her face, touched her heart.
Well, that was enough sappiness for one business meeting.
“If you’ll excuse me,” I said, backing toward the door. “I have to take care of some things.” And I had to come up with a plan to show Dani how much she meant to me. I couldn’t simply walk into the kitchen and tell her. This moment required risk, daring, a grand gesture of love.
Yes, love. I was so quick to recognize it in my characters but had myopia when it came to my own heart.
I ducked out of the room, snuck upstairs, and headed into my office. The room was a total mess, which was no doubt a direct result of me breaking up with the person I’d hired to take my dishes away. Dishes from my last six or so meals littered the floor.
The last meal Dani had brought me still remained on the coffee table in front of my couch. I sat down on the leather sofa and started cleaning up the tray—soup and tea and a previously fluffy biscuit that had transformed into a hockey puck, two days later. Underneath the cup I found a note, an unopened pink envelope.
A lump in my throat, I leaned back, sinking into the buttery leather of the couch. “Matt” had been scrawled across the front of the envelope in the perfect, legible script of a former elementary school teacher.