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“As the VP at Instep Pictures?” Libby asked. “Remind us what your mission statement is.”
“Well, Cole and I started Instep to build on what we’d learned makingWaverley. We believe that great art grows out of great environments. Rather than a top-down model, where you have a genius who’s so devoted to their vision that they treat everyone around them badly to achieve it, we wanted to support creators in building diverse, nurturing sets. Making movies doesn’t have to wreck everyone involved. Creativity thrives when you’re good to each other. That’s really the core of it for us.”
She was sayingwe, but Instep had been all Maggie. Cole had helped her get meetings with financiers, and he’d lent her his name, but the production company was entirely her vision.
Maggie had kept insisting that she hadn’t learned enough on set to do this, but he’d convinced her that she didn’t have to make the movies herself. That producing was really about assembling a team of cool, smart, creative people, and then figuring out what they needed to dotheir best work. And honestly, Maggie had spent her entire life doing that in different ways. Once she started to believe in herself, he hadn’t been at all surprised when Instep had taken off.
“And your first projects drop soon?” Libby asked.
“At the Snowshoe Basin film festival in Montana at the end of the month. We’re really excited.”
For all that she’d told him what really mattered was that the two of them were together, he knew she wouldn’t have been happy if she didn’t also have a career that made a difference. Cole was confident that now, in her third job, she’d found a way to do it that was as big as she was. More than as a high school drama teacher and more than as an intimacy coordinator, Maggie was changing the world as a producer.
He was so damn proud of her.
Tasha Russell bumped Cole’s shoulder with hers. “Are you wrapping up here, or is Maggie still in the middle of her Darryl Zanuck routine?”
“She’s almost done.”
Or not. Maggie was in the middle of describing every project Instep had in the pipeline to a rapt Libby. They might be here awhile.
“Ryan has a flask if you need it,” Tasha muttered.
Ryan held open the lapel of his own tux, revealing it tucked into an interior pocket. “Gotta be prepared.”
“And if you’re nervous—”
“I’m not,” Cole told his friends.
“Sure.” Tasha didn’t, for a second, believe him.
But as always, he was telling the truth. Being nominated was actually an honor. It wasn’t something he would’ve been able to imagine just a few years ago. And at some point in the future, after he did some more serious roles, well, who could say? But for the moment: “I’m not going to win.”
“Everyone loves a comeback kid,” Tasha said.
Which had turned out to be true. People had loved Cody Rhodes, and they had loved watching Cole playing a grown-up role. Even if theystill sometimes treated him like a frat boy, even if no one believed him when he told them that he’d finally managed to read all ofThe Heart of Midlothian, even if sometimes the way they loved him was limited, the outpouring of support meant a lot.
“The ceremony will be boring, and when it’s done, I get to just be me.” Cole James, fully grown up, no longer a reckless kid.
“Until you have to promote the next one.”
Tasha did have a point.
Heck, Oscar buzz was already starting to build aroundPalooka. And the parts Cole was getting offered these days, they were meatier. If he hadn’t managed to entirely reinvent himself, he’d gotten most of what he wanted.
“Isn’t that right?” Maggie turned around, giving him the “Help, I need you” look.
He was only too happy to oblige, especially because joining her meant he got to slide his hand up the bare skin of her back, exposed by that most excellent dress. “Isn’t what right ... pumpkin?”
He and Maggie didn’t really do terms of endearment—and from the expression on her face, he had a feeling that she was going to remind him of that later on.
“That you’re going to produce a documentary about the tabloids of the early 2000s and how they affected the celebrities from that period?”
“Oh, yeah.” He wasn’t planning to go on camera, but it had been all too easy to find people who’d been coming up at the same time he had been to go on the record about how toxic that environment had been and how the stench of it had lingered. It felt like the last thing he needed to do to truly make things up to the cast and crew ofCentral Square.
Maggie was beaming at him as if he’d just invented the moon and gifted it to her, and that—that made it all worthwhile. So Cole kissed her temple, which resulted in a blinding smattering of flashbulbs, but you had to give the people what they wanted in this job sometimes. And what they wanted was Cole James, deep in love.
It was what he wanted, too, so it wasn’t a hardship or anything.
