Man. I am in deep.

“I brought you something.” He walks toward me and holds out a cellophane-wrapped package. The tape is barely holding together and the ribbon looks like it was used as a handle. “Cookies. From my mom.”

“You brought me cookies all the way from New York?” I ask, handling the small package carefully.

Whether he intended it or not, Carter seems to realize the implication of this.

“I . . . There were a lot of extras?” He gives me an adorable self-deprecating smile. “I made it weird, didn’t I?”

My heart is thrumming, my skin is all flushed, and the vision of grabbing him by the collar and kissing him is flashing like a Vegas billboard in my head.

“No, it’s sweet.” I gingerly pull apart the wrapper. The scent of chocolate and butter fills the air.

“Carter,” Kylie says, winded as she jogs up. “I’m glad I found you.”

He turns to her. “I just got in. What’s up?”

“Brad wanted to know if you had a chance to look over the scripts he sent you.”

“Oh, not yet,” he says, clearly caught off guard. “I only saw the email last night.”

Kylie laughs easily. “He wanted me to follow up. I was like, ‘Brad, there were five of them! Give him time!’ ”

Carter laughs easily now, too, but my own smile is totally forced. A gallon of ice water could not have changed the tone of this conversation any quicker.

It’s not that Brad doesn’t forward along a script to an agent when he has someone in mind from said agent’s list. It’s just that he doesn’t send five out, to one agent.

I’m trying to keep calm, but is this the golf weekend thing all over again? “Brad sent you some scripts?” I ask.

“Yeah, for one he wants to give the screenwriter some feedback and asked for my thoughts.”

“I see.” I put the plate of cookies down on a nearby table.

“Brad also wants Carter to help him decide how to best distribute to the team,” Kylie adds helpfully.

I bite my lower lip to keep my jaw from falling open. So now I need to position myself with Carter in order to have him send work my clients’ way?

When I’m sure I can ask it without yelling, I say, “Just Carter?”

“Yes, just Carter,” Kylie says, shrugging a little helplessly.

We’ve finally arrived here. I can’t even say I’m surprised.

“I do have some experience in this,” he says, with a gentle lean to his voice. “In New York I did some playwright work. For what it’s worth, I also have a decent eye for pairing talent with roles . . .”

I nod, forcing another smile. Why do Carter and I do so much better when we’re not in the same room? After the texts, I was so excited to see him, and now I’m confused all over again about who he is. It’s like fate keeps telling us there’s just no way to make it work.

He glances quickly over to Kylie, who is watching us with flat curiosity.

“Well,” I say, swallowing my pride, “let me know if you need some help, okay?”

Carter nods, but I don’t stick around to see if he’ll say anything else.

I’m so worked up I can barely concentrate. The worst part of being this mad is that I’m no longer rational. I hear Carter talking on his phone with his door open and I want to hurl a stapler at him for being loud enough for me to hear. I hear Brad thanking Kylie for the coffee she’s handed him in the hall, and I want to yell, “If she was a male assistant, would you expect him to bring you coffee every goddamn hour?”

And I’m so angry that when my phone buzzes with a text from Carter, I can’t even read it. I flip my phone facedown when a second comes in, a third, a fourth, and dive into the process of answering emails, returning calls, and making deals. In essence, the anger fuels me—and if I don’t have five hot scripts in my inbox, at least I have a motherfucking productive day.

Only when I’m home later—way past nine, and with a fishbowl-size glass of wine in my hand—do I read what he wrote.

It’s time for us to cut the shit.

I don’t know what kind of game Brad is playing.

But I get that I’m coming out favored in part because I’m a guy. And that’s fucked up.

I like you. I liked us.

I don’t know how to manage this weird competition. I need you to tell me how I can fix this.

The problem with deciding to cut the shit is that it’s easier said than done. I could reply to his texts, addressing everything, but in a lot of ways that feels like cheating. We know we can text. We know we can get along outside of work. What we can’t seem to do, yet, is interact like rational humans when we’re together at the office, and given that approximately ninety-eight percent of my life revolves around my job, I can’t just accept the text-and-out-of-work approach to our relationship.

So I reply with a simple I feel the same about all of this. Let’s talk more in person—that’s where we always get stuck, and try to get to bed early.

• • •

Life has to go on, and because we all took time off to be with family for the holidays, there are a million things to handle. We each have endless producers to follow up with, staffing season to plan, directors and actors to call and cajole, schedules to massage.

It all makes me want to sledgehammer Brad for thinking mid-January was a good time for the department retreat, and my nerves climb higher in my throat with each day that passes without my speaking a word to Carter. I feel Brad’s New York Decision looming like a dark thundercloud.

It’s only about a two-hour drive from LA to Big Bear, but because we’d all planned to drive ourselves, and everyone works until the last second, we end up leaving at the worst possible time—four in the afternoon on a Friday. And yet, when I come outside, everyone is happily piling into a handful of limos parked out front.

A swank ride up to the retreat: a surprise from Brad.

“Limos!” Rose cries, and eight-year-old me can totally relate to the excitement of this, though thirty-three-year-old me remains cynical.

“Gotta treat my people well, don’t I?” Brad says magnanimously, and claps me on the back. “I have high hopes that this retreat is the best one yet. Don’t let me down, kiddo!”

“And Carter!” Carter adds with a nervous laugh, but Brad doesn’t hear him.