Page 2 of Absolute Certainty
“I also hunch over in defeat when I’m fine.”
He scoffed, signaling his irritation. Perhaps she’d pushed too far. All too quickly, fury eclipsed the sadness before he spoke. “Do you want to hear about how the feature film we shot and got through post-production was just scrapped by the studio for a fucking tax write-off? Or would you like to hear about how the network just said nah, never mind about the limited series we were about to sell?”
Fuck. There was a defeat in his tone she hadn’t heard before, a different type of rage hanging at the edges of his words. Jay’s voice was naturally deep, but the heaviness of frustration and agony clinging to his pitch made it sound so painful.
“Jay, I—” she started.
“Save it. Please. I don’t want your pity.”
“It’s not pity,” Sahar countered. “This industry is fucking shit. I was going to say it sucks. It really does. And you don’t deserve to go through this.”
“How do you know what I deserve? Maybe I do. Maybe I wronged a ton of people, and this is my penance,” he argued.
“I have good instincts,” she replied plainly.
He took a deep breath through his nose and looked at her again, eyes searching. “Your instincts are wrong.”
Sahar swallowed, tilting her head. “You want to try that again?” she disputed.
The words tugged a small, barely there smile from him. And she’d seen his smile—it was massive and bright and so endearing that she was determined to get it out of him again. Jay’s anger wasn’t aimed toward her, she knew as much. The battle he was fighting was against external forces and, more harrowingly perhaps, with himself.
“Thanks,” he managed, his voice still clipped.
She smiled, bobbing her head. And then she remembered the first audition she bombed—forRomeo and Julietof all productions. She’d gone home crying, and to help her see that she wasn’tthe problem as much as jitters and external forces, her father had stopped working and convinced her to audition for him—no one else.
“Because I know you’re capable, and I want you to believe it, too,” he had said. And he was right. Sahar nailed down the monologue expertly, then persuaded the casting director to give her one more chance.
Now, sure, that was a university production and not as cut-throat as the West End or Hollywood, but she had the inexplicable urge to help Jay find his belief again. She wanted him to see that someone without any ties to him was interested in the story he had to tell.
“Can I read it?” she asked.
“Read what?”
“The screenplay for the limited series. Whatever you’ve got. I’d really like to read it,” Sahar specified.
He grimaced, eyebrows pinched together like he couldn’t grasp her sincerity. “You serious?”
“Why would I joke about that?”
“Why would you care to read a rescinded screenplay?”
“Because I’d like to see what you wrote. I knew you directed, but I didn’t know you wrote as well.”
She also knew that words could be personal—writers could be sensitive and their doubts were often like treacherous, unyielding currents. Once trapped in one, still, calm waters seemed impossible to reach again. For writers, artists, creatives—rejections fucking hurt. A lot.
He gazed at her, still undoubtedly questioning why she was interested in his work.
“Really?”
“You’re quite distrusting, aren’t you?”
“Can you blame me?” he countered.
She saw the rapids in his eyes—some tumultuous pain that had battered him must have forced him to build dams. Was it the industry? Something else?Someone specific?Lowering her voice, Sahar chose her next words carefully. “No. But I’m serious, Jay. Iwantto know what’s in that brain of yours.” In another life, Sahar would have been a psychologist, someone who had the chance to hear what people were thinking. She wanted to understand them—dive deep into the places where all their secrets lived.
He tipped his head, a bit of light dawning back into his eyes. He reached for his phone on the table, unlocked it, and handed it to her. “Here, add your email to my contacts.”
Sahar took it from him, added her information, and gave it back. “I put my number in there, too,” she said.
