Page 9 of The Dirty Version

“You could think about it like a trial period, if that makes the idea of collaborating with me less upsetting.” Caleb stirred his espresso.

“I have to give the story team weekly updates on our progress—their feedback could be our test. It’ll be apparent if we can’t work together.

” He took a small sip. “I’d even suggest you take the lead to get us started.

Write Noab’s rescue of Hewett’s shipwrecked body as narrative bullets so I know how you want to begin.

And don’t worry about screenwriting format—I can handle all that. ”

One scene.

Narrative bullets.

Behind the guard of her hot teacup, Tash could admit she’d be relieved to pause her constant fight. “Go on.”

“You could lay out the dialogue and action. It would also be helpful if you described the mood.” Caleb glanced to the notes at his elbow as he paraphrased: “Noab finds Hewett washed up, all tangled and bloody. She hides him in a sacred place. She undresses him to clean his wounds.”

Tash dipped a triangle of mini French toast into a pot of syrup, testing the notion that she and Caleb might harmonize.

“She has to get him out of the shallows. The island is protected by a prehistoric ocean predator, called the Mother Beast.” She remembered her student’s pink-lettered tattoo.

“She’s like a cross between a demon crocodile and a monster shark.

It’s death for Hewett once the Mother Beast senses his blood in the water. ”

Caleb nodded gamely into their détente. “Great. When you write the bullets, try to paint that with adjectives. They don’t have to be fancy—just list them, and do the same thing with the verbs.

Imagine it as if you were watching: What does Noab look like when she saves him?

How does she touch Hewett once she has him in the Grove?

No euphemisms. For this kind of writing, we’re never indirect.

We use anatomical vocabulary and actionable specifics. ”

No euphemisms; it would make the task feel doubly daunting.

Tash broke off a piece of biscuit, laying it thick with ruby jam.

She watched as Caleb sank his teeth into a hump of rounded strawberry.

Then as two puckered blueberries drizzled with honey went into his mouth.

The tattoo on his collarbone read Calypso —Tash could see its ebony scroll fully as he sat back, shifting the collar of his button-down.

The C unfurled in thick-tendoned shadow, the o flourish trailed toward his shoulder blade.

The l and y stretched, yearning to touch more skin.

He speared a chunk of melon. “Does that make sense? Description, action, and the emotion each character feels as the scene is unfolding.” He waited for her answer.

Tash blinked, mentally righting herself, shooing thoughts of his collarbone away. “Well, in this scene, Hewett is unconscious. So I don’t know about his emotions.”

Caleb chuckled. “Perfect—one down. Just focus on Noab, then.” He projected encouragement; they were teammates now.

“Also, if it helps, don’t think about this like you’re doing it for Braverman.

Think about it like you’re doing it for the actors, who genuinely want to breathe life into your story.

They want to do a good job, and the more insight they have into your vision, the more your characters come alive. ”

When they had finished, Tash left Caleb in the Seashell’s grand arcade.

She shrugged off her thin shawl outside in the sunshine, righting her wrap dress and reasserting her curves.

But with each step toward the parking lot, she had the oddest sense she’d been the one hypnotized; she’d let Caleb assign her homework.

She’d let him tell her to do it for the actors instead of for the fans.

She’d let him pick the date and time for their next meeting, in three days.

She’d achieved her goal, she’d played ball —but she’d let him run the court.

The closer Tash got to her car, the more she felt she was exiting a trance. The clearer her head became, the more she remembered she truly did not want to diagram Noab’s bodily desire. She’d avoided the exercise quite purposefully when she’d written the book.

Because Tash’s comfort zone was abstract treatises on the minutiae of modern lit; she wasn’t a creative writer. She’d faked it in The Colony . She’d covered for her fiction inexperience by imbuing her characters’ interiors with bits of external atmosphere.

She’d constructed the attraction between Noab and Hewett to transcend their known worlds, describing their connection as involuntarily magnetic, each drawn instinctively to a wisp of a past life, to the taboos of their own cultural demons, to forbidden mythology, to the shape of foreign shores.

Not euphemisms—but also not a list of unfancy adjectives and verbs.

Tash hid in this kind of phrasal camouflage, behind her terrible suspicion she had no real creative fiction skills.

She wouldn’t know how to access the character of Noab without revealing some soft part of herself, and Tash had no urge for such a revelation.

Definitely not with Caleb Rafferty there to observe.

In retrospect, it sometimes amazed Tash that people related to Noab and Hewett’s story; she thought any able critic could have scratched the surface and poked holes straight through her characters’ inner lives.

The Colony ’s success was truly accidental—at first, Tash meant it only for Janelle; then, when Janelle insisted Tash submit it to an open call at a small press, it published to zero fanfare.

Its good fortune came by pure luck, when a copy landed in a celebrated feminist’s lecture appearance gift bag.

And now that luck had long departed.

Tash’s misgivings mounted. All that tea sloshed sickly in her stomach. Caleb would be disappointed by anything she wrote.

Panic overtook her, and Tash reversed sharply, striding back up the Seashell’s steps, past the tinkling fountains, into the assault of new-money faux-Italian decor, steeling herself to beg for Caleb’s mercy.

Perhaps they could find a compromise.

Tash grasped for feasible alternatives. Perhaps she could offer to make things easy for him—to step aside and let him collaborate with an experienced ghostwriter. Perhaps, in return, Caleb could agree to honor certain story boundaries.

She couldn’t find him in the Seashell’s arcade, or where they’d been sitting in the coffee nook.

She scanned the pool deck, the spa pavilion, the maze of salmon-colored marble, searching for a turtle-print shirt and a hint of sympathy.

She swung in a circle, increasingly unguarded.

She opened her mouth, tempted to start shouting Caleb’s name.

Just in time for him to tap her shoulder.

“Tash?” He’d swapped his regular glasses for smoky aviators. He held a daiquiri, of all things.

It had only been seven minutes since they’d parted, yet his posture seemed to have completely unwound. His stack of papers had been shunted beneath a pool umbrella, next to a tube of sunblock. A loose smile played across his mouth.

And standing beside him, in a Saint-Tropez-style, wide-brimmed hat, Astrid Dalton lilted, gorgeous in a fire-engine-red bandeau swimsuit.

“You’re Tash Grover?” Her opaque, Audrey Hepburn round sunglass frames bounced between Caleb and Tash. Astrid stuck a sculpted arm out for a handshake. “I’m Astrid Dalton. I’ve been dying to meet you!” She elbowed Caleb with a foxy smile. “This jerk said I couldn’t come to your coffee.”

In the presence of such a perfect creature, Tash wished herself to the bottom of the swimming pool.

Kinetic prowess indeed—in person, Astrid Dalton stunned in a way her photos didn’t convey.

She was arresting—all burnished lithe limbs, hair in a thick plait down her back.

Tash wanted to thank the universe for manifesting such a physically ideal Noab.

She also wanted to stash her own dowdiness in the suffocating heat of her locked car.

“I didn’t say you couldn’t come.” An obvious soft spot tempered Caleb’s chiding retort. “I said your hero worship might distract us.”

Astrid’s eyebrows hoisted high on her smooth brow.

“Right. And then you conveniently booked me a seaweed wrap at the same time you two were meeting.” Releasing the handshake and smelling deliciously of spa, Astrid beamed at Tash again.

“Anyway, it’s an honor. I hope I get some time with you.

I’ve lurked in the fan forums, but it’s not enough—I have a million questions about Noab. ”

Caleb sipped his daiquiri. “Which is exactly why I said you couldn’t come. Tash needs to concentrate. You can bug her all you want when we’re finished writing.” Backtracking slightly, deferring to Tash: “I mean, if that’s okay.”

Tash nodded, hoping to express ease while feeling impossibly awkward about interrupting their poolside frolic.

Astrid grabbed Caleb’s arm mischievously. “Or maybe Tash should come with us for facials.” Noab’s royal bloodline glittered along Astrid’s skin, the taut line of her triceps flexing, supple and persuasive. To Tash, sparkling with explanation: “I’m torturing Caleb with self-care.”

Tash’s plan to petition Caleb for charity vanished, and she suddenly yearned to follow.

She could not sit through a facial, and she could not admit artistic defeat in front of her lead actress—not with Astrid’s excitement about the role, or her possessive fingernails on Caleb, or Tash’s weird curl of jealousy at their rapport.

Not while Tash still clung to some semblance of self-respect.

“I can’t. I’m sorry.” Tash coerced her features to broadcast regret. She tried to make light: “Caleb gave me too much homework.” She tried to retreat.

But a certain sex designer’s courtesy wouldn’t let her walk away. “Wait—did you need something?”

Tash engaged all of her smile muscles, groping for a plausible reason to have staged this encore. “Nope. I thought I left my sunglasses. They were my favorite. Very expensive. A gift.” She dismissed it theatrically, continuing her fallback. “I guess they’re not here.”

“I guess not.” Caleb stepped closer, grinning from behind the bronze rim of his own shades. His gaze dipped, lowering to Tash’s mouth, to her throat, to her décolletage.

She had to tell herself her breath did not catch, her mind did not white-noise fizz, as Caleb pointed to the plunging neckline of her sundress, where drugstore frames were safely folded, tucked against the hot flush of her skin.