Page 43 of The Dirty Version
Tash had once dreamed of Gayle and Oprah hosting an all-girlfriends watch party for The Colony ’s premiere.
She’d imagined celebrating her book’s Hollywood debut with all its fanfare. She’d pictured Rohan and Wesley as her dates. She’d envisioned Janelle decked out in gloriously consequential clothing. She’d visualized herself swanning through cocktails and applause.
She’d never once considered swapping that pageantry for sunrise over a secret beach.
Or limestone crueler than her Biscayne Coastal lagoon instead of the red carpet, or a riptide so dangerous she could only view it from a tamarind-treed hill, or pelicans instead of paparazzi, or the scent of hibiscus and ginger massage oil still fragrant on her skin.
Gayle and Oprah would have been amazing; but Tash had chosen a different premiere-night fantasy.
She wrapped one of the villa’s blankets around her naked shoulders, matching her breathing to the tranquil wind.
“There you are.” Rumpled and shirtless in the half-light, Caleb walked barefoot across the lookout garden’s grass. He’d left the villa’s French doors open. He slotted behind Tash in the hammock without upsetting its swing.
He retucked their blanket. Tash snuggled in, his broad chest warm at her back. They watched the day break over the ocean, Bali’s sky cracking a volcanic scarlet-gold.
“Jet lag?” Caleb rested his chin on top of the wildness of Tash’s hair.
She nodded. “I didn’t want to wake you.”
His arms cinched tighter. “The LA premiere is today.”
Tash craned around until her smile found his incredible blue-eyed gaze, still a little bleary above a pillow imprint slashed across his cheek. “Do you wish we hadn’t missed it?”
“Oh, absolutely.” Caleb deadpanned, voice husky over the distant marine crush. “One hundred percent. I’m hating every moment of this Season Two fine-tuning.” His hands dragged lazily over the blanket; beneath it, his legs harnessed her hips. “This project continues to be awful.”
The project had landed Braverman Productions an early renewal deal with the streaming platform, and knee-deep in two more seasons of groundbreaking feminist TV.
Caleb and Stacy had been renewed, too, for the whole run.
Advance press hailed Astrid’s performance, and her media blitz included several podcasts in addition to the usual round of late shows.
Tash did not know if Leo Rousseau’s podcast had made Astrid’s cut; once Braverman’s lawyers blocked Tash’s episode from airing, she’d stopped paying attention.
“I’m so sorry you have to stay here for some of the filming, then.
” Tash’s contract for The Colony ’s extension granted her a similar script oversight to Season One.
The cast and crew were due in Bali soon, but she and Caleb had flown out early—to refine certain story elements that could only be finalized on-location.
Even if, so far, the only setting they’d diligently researched was their villa’s four-poster bed.
“Me, too.” His kiss was not at all apologetic.
“Which backdrop should we knock off today?” Caleb’s official duties included tour guide.
He’d visited during the first season’s taping, after Stacy contrived a consultation, insisting Bali was too spectacular to miss.
“The forest around the mountain temple, or the forest around the waterfall?”
Tash had stayed behind for that first trip. She’d returned to Florida to give herself a concentrated focus on a next book. She and Caleb tried long-distance for a few interminable months, before Janelle helped Tash pack up the duplex and put her on a plane to California.
“Which forest goes with which episode again?” Tash laughed; they’d begun the same conversation yesterday.
But the travel to Bali had been exhausting, and they’d both recently been working so hard, and the villa had a pool and butler service.
They’d abandoned their responsibilities, and not left the resort’s grounds.
“I don’t remember.” Caleb scrunched sideways in the hammock, sliding down until they angled face-to-face. He’d left his glasses inside, and his eyes glimmered. “Let me think through the scenes.”
He affected scruffy contemplation. “Okay. One forest is where a cynical detective with a penchant for mathematics goes undercover at a burlesque club, only to fall for a con man who frequents it, becoming his latest mark.”
He’d mashed the plot of Tash’s new novel draft into The Colony ’s landscape.
Tash raised her eyebrows. “Sounds like a must-see.”
“A must-read,” Caleb corrected. “It’s a love story—even if the author tells you the genre’s called Florida Noir.
” He continued to sweetly trample several rhetorical devices.
“The other forest is where a beautiful literature-professor-slash-novelist gives up her rental in Venice to move in with her boyfriend and his handsome dog in Silver Lake.” Twinkling. “Also a love story.”
Tash grinned. They’d begun part of this conversation yesterday, too. She wove their bodies closer together. “Wow. These forest sagas are so compelling.”
“I know.” Caleb lowered his voice to a persuasive murmur. “But the second forest has space for Janelle to visit. And your brother loves the kitchen in the second forest.”
“My brother loves every kitchen, as long as it has food.”
Caleb pressed on. “The second forest could also make room for a writing desk, if you wanted.” He kissed her again, smiling the possibilities. “Or you could keep Venice as your office.”
Truthfully, the prospects thrilled Tash too much to play coy. “Let’s do that one.”
Caleb pulled his brawn back. “Really?”
“Yes. Just please stop disrespecting the wordplay. I’ll come to all your forests.” And his canyons and his cliffs, and probably even his secret groves and warrior islands. “But it’s still early. Let’s go back to bed.”