Page 21 of Sizzle Reel

“Are you doing okay after all that?” Romy asks Tuesday night. The first stop on my Make Romy Backgrounds for Her Play trip involves developing the psyche of her thirteen-year-old detective prodigy character, and the vision I developed on the way home from work was to take something with overwhelming bright colors, try-hard artificiality, and an underlying grittiness. So we’re at a 7-Eleven. “I’m always here if you want to talk about it,” she adds.

Wyatt hasn’t really apologized since the incident on Monday. My instincts are to just forgive him, move on, brush it under the rug, but I’m trying to hold strong. Not to mention I’ve just…not had the emotional energy to even deal with him. Julia would tell me to use the list of coping mechanisms we’ve made and gone back over five times in my years as her client, so I’m trying.

“I don’t even know what to talk about,” I admit. “I know he’s a deeply flawed human being, and I know it wasn’t personal or malicious, but it just—I dunno, it stings like it was.”

Romy flashes a tiny, playful smile. “So just to be clear, I can shit-talk Wyatt now? Like no holding back, can analyze his failings like Edith made us analyze Flannery O’Connor in Intro to Fiction?”

“We’re just in a spat right now,” I say. “It’ll blow over. So, you know, don’t go too hard.”

“ ‘Too hard’? Lune, he outed you to your freak boss. We don’t have sympathy for Martins. Rule one of being queer.”

Martins is what Romy and I call people who out other people, after the dude from Love, Simon. And it isn’t a word we throw around lightly. The last time we called someone a Martin was when one of the middle schoolers Romy was tutoring told all her little brother’s friends that he was gay at a theater rehearsal.

“Do we really think he’s full Martin, though? Like Wyatt’s exceptionally stupid. We know this.”

Romy sighs and runs a hand through her hair, the bleached strand shining in the weird lighting.

“Look,” she says. She slides over to me and rubs my back. Not an unfamiliar move, but I stiffen upon first contact this time. But her hand is warm, and the strokes of her fingertips make my muscles soften like melted butter. “If he doesn’t come to his senses, just—fuck him.” She slides her hand off me, which leaves me feeling oddly hollow. “Okay, how’s Valeria? Are you still feeling okay about this after the outing?”

I grab an energy drink out of the refrigerated section, and Romy disappears behind an aisle as we continue to speak. The place is empty, so I guess we can just speak at an obnoxious volume until the guy working the register kicks us out. I pull out my camera and start getting shots of the inside. It’s too bright in here. Perfect for the ebb and flow of the scene.

“Honestly, she seemed more agitated about it than me. She left the room while it was happening,” I reply as I click Record.

Romy pokes her head out from the aisle, Hostess CupCakes in hand. “Damn, she did? What excuse did Wyatt give for her just bouncing?”

I shrug as I adjust my angles. “Bathroom.”

“Yeah, ’cause people just suddenly have to piss after watching someone be outed.”

I kill the recording and join Romy in one of the many room temperature aisles. Grab a bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos off the rack. “Do you think it means anything?”

“Not sure, but I’ll give her major props for knowing it’s a bad thing. You know, unlike everyone else in your office.” She raises her eyebrows. “Or…Well, it’s most common to know that feeling through experience.”

I hate how the thought curls a little ball of warmth in my stomach. “You think that means she’s gay?”

“I’m saying it’s a win-win. Either she’s a solid ally or queer herself. Game’s still on, basically.” Romy smiles. “Did you two get to talk before?”

Inside, that warmth is spreading all the way to my fingertips, but I offer a blasé shrug. “A little bit. She still remembers my name, bantered a little, got a sticky note.” And Wyatt. “And Wyatt got me that interview with her.”

Romy frowns. “Oh, right. He’s actually very efficient as a wingman.” She looks down at the camera bag on my shoulder. “Are you done with the inside?”

I look around. 7-Elevens always have harsh light, and the effect is cool, but Romy doesn’t need much of it for the story. The gritty outside parking lot is honestly more the vibe. “Yeah. Let’s go outside.”

We pay for our junk and head into the parking lot. I pull open my trunk, and we sit in the open back like a couple of vagrants. It’s a familiar scene for us. Out of the three of us, I was the only one with a car in our first three years of college, so when Wyatt was away with family, we’d go on little adventures like this. Park at Griffith, park on the cliff shoulders of Palos Verdes and Malibu Roads, park in Old Pasadena. We’d bring food and cheap alcohol, gossip until we ran out of names, lament or celebrate the state of storytelling, and I’d film and she’d write. When the night grew too old, we’d curl up under blankets together and watch the few stars we could see from L.A.

As I set up my camera again, Romy stares intently at her phone.

“Did you finish the dialogue revision to go with the changes the director mentioned?” I ask.

Romy is a genius with dialogue, at least in my opinion. She used to use her free time to record conversations in the food court or the film school or the engineering quad at U.S.C., and she would read every line of her dialogue out loud in as many ways as possible for each assignment in any writing class she took. Whether it was prose, screenwriting, or playwriting, thedialogue shone. But the festival involves revision as part of the experience, and as a creative, I know how much that can hurt, especially with a project as personal as this one.

“Yeah,” she says.

I leave my camera, sliding a hand on her shoulder. “Want me to send them to your actors? You have the emails ready, right?”

She exhales. “Yeah.” Looks to me. “Will you?”

I smile. “It’s the only skill I gained from Alice.”

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