Page 38 of Wrapped in You

Derek snapped his fingers. "It is the same! Although I have to admit, I'm guilty of microwave dinners."

"Who doesn't like a good microwave dinner?" Sophie joked. "The microwave dinner recipes have gotten insanely good over the past decade."

"It's night and day," Derek agreed. "I really don't know how to cook for one person. But the microwave is made for one-person dinners."

Sophie gave him a soft smile. "When I went through my breakup—the one I was telling you about—I really struggled with that. I didn't know how to cook for one person. I always had buckets and buckets of leftover food in the freezer."

"You were stocked up for the end of the world," Derek joked. "A prepper."

"Something like that." Sophie laughed.

"I wouldn't last two days," Derek quipped. "I make movies. And I don't even know if I do that well. Not anymore, at least."

Sophie was surprised at how open he was about that. She took a sip of wine and made sure the sound guys and her father weren't paying attention.

A part of her wanted to invite Derek to a quiet corner so they could hear each other better. But she knew that would sound the alarms.

She thought,Mike, Isaac, and Beck wouldn't let me hear the end of it. And Dad would tell Mom, and she'd call me immediately and beg me for details.

Nothing in Willow Creek was private. Nothing ever really belonged just to you.

"You've had an incredible career," Sophie reminded him, remembering what Cara had said about studios writing Derek "blank checks."

Derek offered a sad smile. "I had a brilliant career. I'm pretty sure it's over."

"Because you're making a Christmas film?" Sophie furrowed her brow.

"No," Derek said. "Because I just don't have it in me anymore."

Sophie pressed her lips together. She couldn't pull her eyes away from his.

"You mentioned my wife's name," Derek said softly. "That day you called me out."

Sophie was flushed again. Stuttering, she said, "I'm sorry about that."

"No. It's okay." Derek spread his hands out on the table between them. "I hadn't realized how miserable I was making myself until that moment. I was fighting against her vision for a cheerful, heartwarming Christmas movie. You know,Silver Bellsis unlike any of her other screenplays. It's optimistic. It's joyful. It isn't 'difficult art,' so to speak. When she first wrote it, I asked her why. I'll never forget what she said."

Sophie couldn't breathe.

"She told me she wanted to celebrate everything about life in her art," Derek explained. "She wanted to talk about the difficult times, the disappointments, the heartbreaks. But she didn't want to leave out the beautiful moments, the Christmas cheer, the second chances. She died shortly after she finished writingSilver Bells. I wouldn't have remembered it if I hadn't moved houses recently and found the script among her things. I told a studio friend about it, and he assured me this was my big return to big movies. We got millions of dollars worth of funding like that." Derek snapped his fingers. "I was amazed. It was like Georgia was trying to tell me something from beyond the grave."

Sophie closed her eyes. She couldn't believe Derek was bringing her deeper into his world.

"I'm so sorry for your loss," she offered finally. "I can't imagine."

Derek's eyes were wounded.

And then it occurred to her.

"Can I ask a question?"

"Sure," Derek said. His voice was soft.

"Is she the reason you hate Christmas?" Sophie asked. "Did she love it so much that losing her ruined it for you?"

"Partially," Derek offered. "But it's a bit deeper than that. It was just a few days before Christmas that she passed away. At the time, we were finishing up auditions and preparations for a brand-new feature film, and everything was rushed, and we were both panicked and frantic. We wanted to fly to Hawaii the day after Christmas to relax and recoup before filming started.

"She called me about an hour before it happened. She had new edits on a script, and she was headed out to meet our producer Jack. I wasn't so sure of her edits, and I told her that. I could feel her rolling her eyes through the phone. She was like, 'You have to trust me, Derek. You know I'm always right when it comes to the scripts!' Which was true; she was always right and I was always wrong, and it was impossible for me to learn that. Even now. We had a brief spat about it. I don't even know if we said we loved each other. And then a few hours later, I got a call that she'd died in a car accident on Sunset Boulevard."

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