Page 44 of The Boss I Can't Stand

“Me neither,” he said. “Found that out the hard way.”

“Is that why you have those couple of acting credits on your IMDb page?” I asked.

He smirked. “Trolling my page for info?”

“I did my research,” I admitted, taking another bite of my breakfast.

He conceded the point with a nod. “Yeah, I decided it would be a good idea to act in a couple of indie films early on in my career. When I watched myself, I just looked so unnatural on-screen. It definitely pushed me behind the camera, which worked out well. I’ve always been a better producer. Even if the first couple of films I put together were rough.”

“Did you really produce a nature documentary?” I asked. “On baboons?”

He snorted, his real laugh so different from the fake booming laugh he used when he was being The Face. “Oh, youreallydeep dived.”

“I did. I went back to theverybeginning.”

“Yikes,” he said, playfully tugging at his collar. “It was my first and last nature doc. The monkeys were too unpredictable.”

“More unpredictable than working with your mother and X?”

He scoffed, and I caught sight of his real smile. Not the big, shiny, artificial one but the soft, slightly crooked one that looked the best on him. The one I imagined when I closed my eyes. “Surprisingly, yes,” he said.

“But that doc still did a lot better than my first produced feature. At least with a nature doc, no one expects it to go anywhere, you know? But I really thought my feature was the real deal. It was a script I’d picked out myself, too, and really cared about. Which made it that much worse.”

“The movie about the spy who falls in love?” I asked, taking another bite of French toast. “I adored that film.”

Finn took a swig of his coffee and grimaced. “The box office didn’t agree. If you look up the definition of a flop, it’s there.”

“That’s not what a lot of the critics said,” I pointed out. “The reviews were pretty favorable.”

“Yes, well, the film didn’t catch on with audiences the way I’d hoped.” I could hear the disappointment in his voice. “Honestly, I think that’s what stung the most. If I’d produced a bad movie, then whatever—I’d learn from the experience and move on. But I made agoodmovie, one I really loved. I thought everyone else would fall in love with it, too…but they just didn’t.”

“We’ve all got those projects,” I said, nodding. The ones that didn’t get the traction they deserved for reasons known only by the film gods.

“I’m still trying to figure out what went wrong with that western I did. There was a lot of great buzz about the costumes, and I was super proud of how they turned out and then just…nothing. I didn’t even generate any costume work off the back of that.”

I’d spent months after that film wrapped making ends meet with side hustles while I tried to land another production.

“Texas Wanderer!” Finn said. “I saw you worked on that film. I couldn’t believe it didn’t even get an Oscar nod. I loved it. Westerns are one of my favorite genres.”

I shook my head, humming softly.

“What?”

“The country music in the car. Your love of westerns. I’ve just figured out that Finn Lockhart is a cowboy at heart.” He rolled his eyes at me. “Why haven’t you been putting out cowboy movies all these years then?”

His lips twitched. “Because that’s not where the audience is. Horses aren’t as fast as cars.”

I propped my head up on my hand, smirking. “I think you’re missing a real opportunity here for aRun ’n’ Gunprequel.”

He laughed. “Run ‘n’ Gun: Horses and Highways?”

“I was thinking more likeFull Throttle Frontier.”

“Hey,” he said, intrigued. “That’s not half bad.”

“I want title credit,” I joked.

“Noted. What kind of film do you want to costume next? Now that you’re doing your big twenties period piece,” he asked, eating the fruit on the side of his plate. He saw me eyeing a strawberry and lifted it onto my plate.