Page 26 of A Very Snowed In New Year
ShayAnything.83: Have an excellent meeting, Mr. Archer.
HoldUp.76:
ShayAnything.83: I’ll be right here thinking about your Act Two monologue about how duty and honor can go fuck themselves if that means denying Ember her rightful orgasm.
HoldUp.76:
ShayAnything.83: Okay, but really go and have a great meeting! I do have several less important things to do as well.
HoldUp.76: Talk soon.
Okay. That wasn’t so bad. I kind of like being me as ShayAnything.83. Or is ShayAnything.83 pretending to beme? Or is this like self-insert fanfiction taken to the next level?!
I’m going to have to consult some diner pie about this.
EIGHT
Holden
LIKE TEXTUALLY
I’m glad I gave Shay a chance. Our chats on Backroom have been fun. She doesn’t seem needy, she definitely doesn’t seem like an idiot. She’s pretty clever, actually, and she seems like a genuinely nice person. I like her. But the future of our textual relationship hangs in the balance depending on how she responds to my last question.
ShayAnything.83: I do like Die Hard, actually! I watch it with my dad every year. But my favorite Christmas movie that isn’t marketed as a Christmas movie is Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail, and When Harry Met Sally. And Love Actually. It’s a four-way tie. Don’t make me choose.
Welp. We had a good run, I guess.
HoldUp.76: I’m pretty sure Love Actually is marketed as a Christmas movie. Specifically, it is marketed as a holiday romantic comedy, even though it features a woman who has a codependent relationship with her brother and there is a married man who cheats on Emma Thompson. Also, the President of the United States of America, who was for some terrible reason portrayed by Billy Bob Thornton, sexually harasses a British lady who works for the bachelor Prime Minister and then the Prime Minister walks in on them and has her relocated.
ShayAnything.83: These are all facts. The film itself is flawed and perplexing yet lovable in the way that family members are flawed and perplexing yet lovable. And I’m not changing my answer. Because Colin Firth.
I glance up from my phone to see if Rory is back from the ladies’ room yet. I succumbed to the guilt of not hanging out with her in public anymore, so I offered to spend an entire afternoon with her doing whatever she wanted, wherever she wanted. She wanted to see a matinee ofWickedon Broadway even though she’s seen it five times, and then she wants to do something in the middle of Times Square. I even offered to take her ice skating, but no. This. There’s no sign of my sister, and I clock a group of girls in the lobby who are poised to come over here. I’ve gotten really good at being unnoticeable, especially in New York, but only when I can keep moving. If I make eye contact with them, I could get stuck here talking about CGI dragons for fifteen minutes. So I will continue this very important text convo about one of the most god-awful movies to come out of the United Kingdom.
HoldUp.76: I do get the Colin Firth thing, and that’s the storyline I hated the least. Actually, I liked the porno stand-in one the most. But it is alarming how many scripts still get pitched as Love Actually—but XYZ. “It’s Love Actually, but everyone’s a dead superhero!” “It’s Love Actually, but with retired baseball players at a bachelor party in Vegas!”
ShayAnything.83: I would watch both of those movies, FYI.
HoldUp.76: I got sent one of them. It was so bad. You wouldn’t believe how many bad scripts I get sent. It’s alarming how many scripts get past my agent’s assistant.
ShayAnything.83: Well, that’s a shame. I recently got a very charming script that I want to star in. It didn’t come through my agency. It was from someone I know personally.
HoldUp.76: Oh yeah? That’s cool. I’ve had to start telling people to send their scripts to my agency if they say they have something I should read. Unfortunately, my grandma refuses to go through the proper channels.
No response.
HoldUp.76: I’m just kidding btw. I did read my grandma’s script, of course. She doesn’t even want me to be in it, she just wants me to get it to Richard Gere.
HoldUp.76: That part is not a joke. What’s the script you like?
ShayAnything.83: It’s a romantic comedy.
HoldUp.76: Oh, great.
HoldUp.76: I would rather drink eggnog every day for the rest of my life than star in a romantic comedy—and please understand that I would rather stab myself in the face with a fork than drink eggnog even once. That is how much I don’t want to star in a romantic comedy.
No response.
No moving dots.
