“Now, one thing I always like to do with the people I’m looking at bringing into my circle is to give them a reality check.” Nina picked up her drink and sipped. “Because I can blow smoke up your ass as much as I like, but it’s important to me you know what you’re getting yourself into.”
Lily gulped. “Okay.”
“I have extremely high standards. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think you could meet them, but I like to make sure my people are all on the same page.” Nina set her cup back down. “I run my rooms by merit. I don’t care if you’re a staff writer or if you’re the co-executive producer. If you have great ideas, then I expect you to stand up in front of everyone and share them.”
“Right. Of course.”
She nodded like she wasn’t at all surprised. But it sounded… intimidating. Competitive.
“Working in a writers’ room is intense,” Nina said with a smile, as if she knew exactly what Lily was trying to imagine. “It’s busy, it’s long hours and you have to be strong enough to have a voice if you want your ideas to be heard. This is nothing like writing a script and then pitching it to a producer.”
Lily saw in her mind’s eye a packed room, with people speaking over the top of one another and all crying out to be heard. She had to stop herself from physically shuddering—it was the polar opposite of how she liked to work, which was in a quiet, peaceful place. Or at the very least, at a pretty cafe with a pair of noise-cancelling headphones helping her get into the zone.
At heart, Lily was an introvert. A quiet, creative soul.
There were times—before she’d been shouldering the burden of LA rent as a singleton—where she’d rented an Airbnb in the countryside so she could really buckle down. Being somewhere serene and beautiful, especially if it reminded her of home, helped to get her creative juices flowing.
But the idea of a noisy room where she had to pitch her ideas in front of a crowd…
That sounds like my worst nightmare.
“The success of a show like this depends on the dedication of everyone involved—and that means there are periods where we don’t take vacations and we don’t have personal lives. We don’t go home to see our families.” Nina laughed and Lily realised she must have looked completely shell-shocked. “I’m not saying any of this to scare you away, I promise. I know you’ve been grinding since you moved here. I can tell that from your body of work. But the pace of television is a whole other beast. We do thirteen episodes a season and the deadlines are hard. I’ve been where you are and coming into this part of the industry can be a culture shock. I never want to bring anyone onto a project of mine without them knowing the reality of things.”
Lily’s stomach churned as if her stomach had turned into a mini cement mixer. Her gut instinct sounded warning sirens, waving red flags left, right, and centre. For an opportunity that sounded so perfect on paper—an opportunity to work with a near-future industry giant, a big budget production, ongoing work—everything that Nina was saying felt like the opposite of what Lily wanted.
Not to mention the expectation of not having any semblance of a personal life… No visits home. No working on her manuscript. No trying to salvage her dumpster fire of a love life.
Lily had studied business at university, wanting to choose something sensible. Wave of Love had been written after hours, while she was working a soul-sucking job in the finance industry. Writing had been her escape. It was the place where she could be her own boss and make her own rules and set her own goals.
Ultimately, the idea of working on a television show reminded her of that office job. And of the cutthroat team environment, where everyone was ready to climb over one another to be successful. A place where she often had to make sacrifices to her creativity.
And sacrifices to her personal life.
What do you really want?
Freedom. Love. Home.
It all swirled in her mind. Ever since she and Sean sat down next to one another on the plane, her life had been brought into sharp focus. Her words had dried up… and yet her novel was flowing. Her heart was broken… and yet she’d found passion in a man’s arms. She was growing her success in LA… and yet the life she craved was back in Australia.
How could an opportunity be so right on paper and so wrong in reality?
If she took this job now, Sean would move on with his life and some lucky woman would claim him. And it made her sick to her stomach, the idea of sitting in a crowded and competitive writers’ room. Her dream had always been a quiet place where she could create and find love. LA would give her neither of those things.
What was the point of success when you were chasing the wrong things?
“I’m sorry,” Lily said, abruptly pushing back her chair. Her heart was racing a million miles a minute as a weight lifted from her shoulders. “I’m so flattered that you enjoyed my work and I have a tremendous amount of respect for you and what you want to accomplish… but this isn’t right for me. I’m so sorry to have wasted your time.”
She grabbed her bag and flung it over one shoulder, hurrying from the cafe as fast as she could. The second she was outside in the fresh air, she grabbed her phone and opened her internet browser.
She had a plane ticket to book… and a life to recapture.
Sean walked through Riptide’s doors and found himself greeted by a familiar sight. The cricket played on a TV screen in the room’s corner and the bar was mostly empty, save for a few regulars dotted around. The smell of beer and salt hung in the air, and he could view the ocean through the floor-to-ceiling glass doors that lead to the back deck. Despite it being sunny outside, Riptide always felt a little dark. It was hard to believe he’d been coming through these doors for a decade.
The same people, the same smells, the same… everything.
His boss, Pat, was behind the bar, wiping down the surface. He looked up in surprise, his grey eyebrows furrowing. “Did I stuff up the roster? I didn’t think you were coming in until tomorrow.”
“I’m here to chat.” He pushed through the swing door that led to the area behind the bar, including the tiny office out back that was little more than a glorified storage cupboard.
“Marty!” Pat called to a guy who was collecting empty pint glasses from one of the tables. “Watch the bar for a sec, would you?”
Pat followed Sean into the back room. It smelled a little like BO and a lot like the grease used to fry the chips in the kitchen. There were papers scattered over the desk and a framed photo of Pat and his wife, along with their two grandkids. Riptide might not be the fanciest of places to be, but Sean was grateful for the steady work and support Pat had given him over the years.
But now it was time for that phase of his life to end.
“This is it, isn’t it?” Pat let out a long sigh as he dropped into his chair.
Sean leaned against the wall and raked a hand through his hair. Sweat beaded along his hairline—it was scorching outside, and the bar’s air-conditioning was mediocre at best. “I haven’t said anything yet.”
Pat raised an eyebrow, motioning for Sean to speak.
“You’re right, though,” he said, feeling strangely anxious. “I, uh… I’m tendering my resignation.”