Fox pointed his beer straight ahead. “Door’s that way.”
The captain grunted and took his leave. Fox didn’t even pretend to be interested in his beer after that. Instead, he got up and crossed the room, stopping in front of the cabinet he’d picked up at a rummage sale. Buying furniture went against his grain, but he’d needed somewhere to store the vinyl records he’d started collecting. He’d bought his first on their trip to Seattle. The Rolling Stones. Exile on Main St. Even Hannah had approved when he’d picked it out at the record convention.
Anyway, the damn thing had started looking lonely, just sitting there all by itself, so he’d walked over to Disc N Dat and purchased a few more. Hendrix, Bowie, the Cranberries. Classics. The stack had grown so much, it felt almost accusatory in its silence, so—after trying to talk himself out of it for a couple of weeks—he’d ordered a record player.
Fox reached back behind the cabinet where he kept the key, sliding it out of the leather pouch. He unlocked the door and looked at the vertical rainbow of albums, only hesitating for a second before pulling out Madness. Dropping the needle on “Our House.” After listening to it all the way through, he pulled out his phone and started the song again, recording an audio clip and firing it Hannah’s way.
A few minutes later, she sent him back a clip of the Golden Girls theme song.
Through music, they’d just acknowledged she’d be staying in his guest room—and this was how it had been since she left. Fox waiting for the messages to stop, holding his breath at the end of every day, only releasing it when the text came.
Swallowing, he turned and looked at the guest room. Hannah was in LA. This was a friendship based on something more . . . pure than he was accustomed to. And it was safe. Texting was safe. A way of offering more to someone without giving up everything.
Would he be able to keep that up with her living in the same apartment?
Chapter Three
For two weeks, Hannah and Latrice had worked overtime to make the location swap from LA to Westport happen in the name of artistic vision. Westport business owners had been finessed, the chamber of commerce fluffed. Permits sealed and housing nailed down. Now they were T-minus ten minutes until the chartered bus reached the small Washington fishing village.
If Hannah was going to make professional strides during the filming of Glory Daze, it was now or never. She finally had to woman up and ask Sergei for the opportunity, because as soon as the bus pulled to a stop, he’d hit the ground running and she’d miss her chance.
Stalling shamefully, Hannah sunk down in the pleather seat and scrubbed her hands over her face. She yanked out her AirPods, cutting off Dylan’s greatest hits, and shoved the devices into her pockets. Reaching up, she removed her ball cap, running nervous fingers through her hair several times, struggling to see her reflection in the window. Her movements stilled when she realized the impromptu primp session wasn’t working. She still looked like a PA. The lowest woman on the food chain.
Definitely not someone Sergei would trust with an entire film soundtrack.
She flopped back in the seat, knee jiggling, and let the raucous sounds of the bus drown out her sigh. Over the top of the seat in front of her, she watched Sergei and Brinley, the music coordinator, lean their heads together to converse and then break apart laughing.
Now, Brinley?
She was leading-lady material. A tailored, tasteful, bobbed-brunette transplant from New York who had a different statement necklace for every outfit. A woman who walked into a room and got the job she applied for, because she dressed for it. Because she exuded confidence and expected her due.
And Brinley had Hannah’s dream job.
Two years ago, Hannah had purposefully asked her stepfather to find her a low-level position at a production company, and he’d tapped Sergei at Storm Born. At Hannah’s request, her stepfather had asked his casual acquaintance to be discreet about their connection, so she could be just Hannah, as opposed to famed producer Daniel Bellinger’s stepkid. She had a bachelor’s in music history from UCLA, but she knew nothing about film. If she’d leaned harder on her stepfather’s name, she probably could have landed a producer position, but where was the fairness in that when she didn’t know the industry? It had been a choice to learn from the sidelines.
And she had. Being in charge of boatloads of paperwork and record keeping meant she’d had a lot of opportunities to study Brinley’s cue sheets, synchronization contracts, and notes. No one technically knew she’d taken a quiet interest in that side of the production company. Hannah still lacked hands-on training, but two years later, she was ready to move up the ranks.
She observed Sergei and Brinley with a hole in her stomach.
They were behind-the-scenes talent, but approaching them was just like walking up to the lead actors. Still, she was growing weary of holding Christian’s straw and getting slurped on.
A salt-air breeze filtered in through the cracked bus window. While it jolted her with nostalgia, kissing her skin with welcome wherever it touched, it also told Hannah they were really close to Westport. If she wanted to make the slightest step toward progress, she needed to act now.
Hannah rolled her shoulders back and shoved the baseball cap into her tote bag, ignoring the curious looks from cast and crew as she picked her way up to the front of the bus. Her pulse ticked in the base of her neck, moisture fleeing from her mouth. When she drew even with Sergei and Brinley, they smiled expectantly. Kindly. As in, Kindly explain why you’re interrupting our conversation.
Not for the first time, she wondered if Brinley and Sergei were secretly seeing each other, but the gap of pleather seat between them—and the rock on Brinley’s finger from someone else—spoke to them being just friends.
Fact was, the two of them had to work closely. Coordinating music for movies was an intricate process, the score often crafted in postproduction. But Storm Born had their own way of compiling the track list that would play beneath the dialogue or during montages. They created it while the filming process took place, relying heavily on the mood of the moment (read: Sergei’s whims). And they tended to use music that already existed and trimmed it down accordingly, rather than creating music to fit the film.
Hannah couldn’t dream of anything better than summing up a distinct moment with the right song. To help weave together the atmosphere. Music was the backbone of movies. Of everything. One line from a song could help Hannah define her own feelings, and the opportunity to put that passion to art was something she spent every day wanting.
Ask them. The bus is almost there.
“Um . . .”
Oh, good opener. A filler word.
Hannah dug deep for the girl who’d been brave enough to pitch Westport to a room full of producers and talent. She was starting to think her nostalgia for this place had spoken on her behalf. “Brinley. Sergei,” Hannah said, making herself look them both in the eyes. “I was wondering if—”
Of course the bus chose that moment to stop.
And of course Hannah was too busy adjusting her clothing and twisting her rings and generally fidgeting to catch hold of anything that might prevent her from sprawling sideways down the center of the row. She landed hard on her shoulder and hip, her temple connecting with the floor. A truly humiliating oof launched from her mouth, followed by the most deafening silence that had ever occurred on planet Earth.