“Well I can’t. I’ve been basically without my family since I was eighteen years old. It’s like a divorce, and she got custody of everyone.”
Neevah doesn’t realize how fantastic she is. After Dessi Blue releases, there will be enough people letting her know. For now, I just listen, letting her unburden what she’s obviously been holding in.
“At least Mama and I talked,” she says.
“How was that?”
“Uncomfortable. Awkward. Needed. We cleared the air. She doesn’t fly, but she’ll try to get up to New York to see me when the movie wraps.”
I don’t like to think of Neevah returning to the East Coast. I have no hold on her, and I know New York is her home. There is a part of me, though, that hopes she’ll decide to move to LA. I could find a dozen projects that would keep her here, but she would hate that. It would be a disservice to her. I’ll make it clear if she needs anything from me, it’s hers. We’re still several steps away from that kind of discussion.
“I’m really excited about Santa Barbara,” she says, her voice hushed, husky. “Are you?”
I answer first with a raspy chuckle. “What do you think?”
“Sometimes I don’t know what to think. I understand your reasons for us not pursuing the . . . attraction between us until after the movie, but there are days when you are on set and I don’t even see you, and Kenneth brings my notes and we have no contact, and I wonder if I’m dreaming it all.”
“If you are,” I tell her, my voice dropping lower with need and anticipation, “then we’re having the same dream.”
Usually when I’m shooting a movie, I’m completely consumed by that story. Nothing distracts me. The one time I strayed from that one-track mindedness, it bit me in the ass and ruined the story. Neevah has no idea how many of my rules I’m violating taking her away like this before Dessi Blue wraps, even if we are on a break.
“I want that—to be in a dream with you,” she answers, sounding breathless—like maybe this thing between us that I’ve given up resisting she can’t resist either.