Page 7 of Total Creative Control
“Seriously,” Lewis said, “youarea fucking diamond, Aaron. This was a massive help. You’ve got a great ear for character voices.”
“Yeah?” Coming from Lewis, that was high praise. He felt his cheeks heat. “Thanks.”
Lewis studied him, still standing just that little bit too close. “You know what it is? There’s no bullshit in your writing. You don’t write lines to make yourself sound clever. You write them to make the characters sound authentic.”
“Isn’t that the point?”
“It is, but a lot of writers don’t get that.” He gestured to the pages they’d been working on that evening, piled in haphazard heaps on the floor, and made a face. “Ryan’s always shoving his own words into the characters’ mouths, and it shows.”
Ryan was a freelancer who’d pitched several ideas to Lewis over the years, and a couple had been picked up in the latest season—mostly because it was five episodes longer than usual and, as hardworking as Lewis was, even he couldn’t write every single script himself. Mind you, given the amount of time they’d just spent tearing Ryan’s draft apart and putting it back together again, Aaron had to wonder at how much time it had really saved.
Out loud, he said, “He does have quite a…distinctive authorial voice.”
“Yeah, well,” Lewis said darkly, “I don’t want to hear his fucking authorial voice. I want to hear Skye and Faolán.” He met Aaron’s gaze. “That’s what you’re so good at.”
And that right there, that praise, was what kept Aaron in Lewis’s orbit. Even when others said it was time for him to break free and take his career onwards, he found himself looping back around Lewis’s star.
“You should go,” he said abruptly, disconcerted by that thought. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
Lewis frowned slightly, but gave a curt nod, wished him a good night, and headed out.
When the wheezy clanking of the lift had faded, Aaron found himself acutely aware of the lonely silence in the office. The hum of the lights and printers, the quiet tick-ticking of a settling building. Outside, it was already dark. Even though summer was still lingering by day, the early September evenings were drawing in with a reminder that autumn was on its way, that liminal season of new pencils and new beginnings.
Not that Aaron was beginning anything new. Quite the opposite in fact.
Shaking off a sudden restlessness, he gathered up the pages they’d been working on. Then he snapped a few photos of the post-it notes on the wall to use when writing up their plan the next day, before pulling them all off and piling everything on his desk ready to deal with in the morning. Briefly, he considered making a start on it then, but no. That was being cowardly.
As awkward as it would be, he should just go home and face up to the possibility that Colin might still be there, clearing out his stuff. It was the least he could do after ending their two-year relationship.
So he turned off the lights, grabbed his jacket, and headed downstairs, past the empty reception desk and through the glass doors onto the street.
It was a short tube ride from Shepherd’s Bush to his maisonette in North Acton, and the time went by too quickly. Despite his good intentions, he found himself dawdling on the walk from the station to his home, a craven part of him secretly hoping that Colin might have already finished his packing-up and left.
No such luck. Colin’s red Seat Ibiza was parked outside the maisonette, boot open and half full. Their front door stood open. Aaron dithered, briefly tempted to phone Janvi and see whether she was free for a pint, until Colin came clumping down the stairs lugging a heavy suitcase.
He stopped in the doorway when he saw Aaron, his handsome face tightening, lips thinning. “I thought you were working late.”
Aaron shrugged. “Got away earlier than expected.” He glanced at the car boot. “Uh, need a hand or…?”
“I can manage.” Colin stomped down the short path to the pavement, suitcase banging against his leg, gym-honed muscles straining beneath his t-shirt.
Aaron stepped back to let him pass.
Objectively, Colin was a good-looking man. Tall and fit, with a handsome face and thinning blond hair that he kept buzzed very short. But to Aaron’s shame, it had been a long time since he’d found himself attracted to Colin. A long time since he’d found himself attracted to anyone but Lewis.
Worse than that, recently, when he and Colin were in bed, his mind had started painting images of Lewis. When Colin touched him, it was Lewis’s broad hands on his body. When Colin fucked him, it was Lewis driving him towards orgasm.
Sometimes, it was only thoughts of Lewis that pushed him over the edge.
Which was… disturbing. And a big part of why Aaron had ended things with Colin. How could he have done anything else? Colin deserved a boyfriend who wasn’t lusting after his boss like a hormone-addled teenager. He deserved a boyfriend who wanted him, body and soul. And that wasn’t Aaron.
Sighing, he left Colin to wrestle his suitcase into the car and trudged upstairs into the maisonette. The small, open-plan kitchen-living room looked rather bare, with the exception of two cardboard boxes on the counter stuffed with Colin’s—and, frankly, a number of Aaron’s—possessions: the lamp from Colin’s side of the bed, three of the six Emma Bridgewater mugs Aaron’s mum had given them last Christmas, Colin’s muddy football boots, and a half-finished packet of chocolate digestives.
Ordinary things, dull things. Their life in all its spectacular tedium.
Aaron knew he should feel more. More bereft. More regretful. Moresomething. If Skye was leaving Faolán, Faolán’s heart would be breaking, or cramping, or feeling like it was being crushed in a steel fist.
But Aaron’s heart just… wasn’t.