She curled up in her bed, trying desperately to fall asleep. Outside, thunder boomed, and though she normally loved a storm, at midnight it was enough to make her hug her stuffed dragon tighter. She got up, finally deciding that sleep wasn’t going to come, and turned on her lamp. She looked around at her clustered room, and sighed. Then she got up and walked to the kitchen, intending on making herself a warm drink.

After hesitating for a moment before the fridge, it seemed milk was the best idea, so she grabbed some milk and cookies, before remembering her agent’s warning that she was getting “fat.” So she set the cookies down and wrapped her fingers around the warm milk, before sinking down at the kitchen table and pulled “And Then There Were None” towards her. Sleep didn’t come, so she reached for her computer. The rain flew by the window, and lightning brightened the sky every few minutes. The small light that hung above the kitchen table was painfully alone in the dark night, so instead of focusing on the darkness around her, she focused on the projects her agent sent her. She looked up once, just in time to hear the tiny “ding” her clock made every time an hour passed. It was 3AM. Witching hour.

She looked around her apartment shrouded in darkness, and felt very alone. So she hugged her dragon tighter, its weight comforting her. Almost.

He sank down in to the plush cushions of a booth seat, and tightened his grip on the beer in his hand. The lights blared blue and purple and green, and people everywhere were dancing. He could see girls throwing their hands up and closing their eyes in ecstasy as they moved to the music, and he could see guys trading beers and jumping up and down on the dance floor. He sighed internally, and looked out the window next to him.

A storm was raging outside, and the rain mesmerised him as he watched each drop hit the window. They looked like small attempts to break glass, and in the dark he could see his reflection and the lights behind him. He could hear his friends behind him, yelling for more shots, more cards, more music. They tugged at him to join them at first, and he would, screaming and yelling with them, but he always ended up back alone in his booth, clutching beer in his hand. They left him alone after a while. He watched lightning cracked in the sky, and watched no one see it. It reminded him of the idea of a tree falling in a forest, and how no one would hear it. He laughed at the thought, and mentally noted it down. It might work its way into one of his scripts some day. He turned back to the scene and his friends at the club, and took a long drink from his beer.

The music blasted louder, and as he watched this fever dream scene unfold in front of him, he felt the familiar tug of loneliness on his heart.

She woke to the sound of dripping rain. She lay in darkness for a moment, listening to the raindrops tapping on the window and the soft wind. The sound of rain was always comforting, cozy, and reminded her of home in London. It was times like this she missed home the most. She groaned as she tried to turn over, and fell off of the sofa. She had forgotten that she went into an uneasy sleep on the sofa last night.

She threw on a pair of leggings, and made herself a coffee so she could begin functioning like a human being. She yawned and walked back over to the kitchen table where her computer lay. She had forgotten to turn it off, so now it was completely dead. As she struggled to plug the computer in to charge, she tried to remember what she had read. Most of the stuff looked uneventful, but even though she had held hope that her one hit so far would get her better stuff, she knew how the industry worked. One hit doesn’t make you a star; one hit makes you a one hit wonder. So she replied to her agent, saying that the two projects in New York sounded great, so she wouldn’t have to travel for filming. She should wait for a reply as to the audition times, but it was way too early for show biz stuff now, so she closed her laptop. She grabbed her headphones and went out for a run in the morning drizzle, before the rest of the city began to wake up. 

He woke up with a splitting headache, even though he hadn’t drank much that night. He looked up, startled by the strange wallpaper before he realised that he had went to sleep at a friend’s. He got up, groaning as his head protested, and pulled on his clothes before going outside to the kitchen. He discovered his friend there, and accepted the expresso offered to him gladly. He thanked the friend, and then went outside in the morning drizzle to catch a taxi home.

When he got home, he took a shower and brushed his teeth, finally feeling more human, though the taste of hangover lingered in his mouth. Wiping the last droplets of water from his long brown hair, he went to his study and sat down in front of his computer. He opened a blank Word document, and sat in front of it. Inspiration wasn’t coming, and the white page seemed like more like a forbidding wall than a welcoming canvas. He needed to go out, go out and find inspiration, find things that would make him his next box office hit. He rubbed his right temple, mentally pleading the pounding inside his head to stop, and closed his computer. He just lay in his chair for a while, until a producer called. They were casting, the man on the phone said, for his new film, and they, the studio, wanted his input for the strong female lead. So he agreed, hung up, and pulled his computer towards him again.

She got home after a good run, just in time to receive an email with two scripts attached from her agent. His brief note reminded her to start thinking about character. She sat down and typed a quick “will do” back, then pulled up one of the scripts, and took out her well-worn leather notebook. As she read through the script, she jotted down notes about character development, but the longer the script went on, the more 2 dimensional the character began. She sighed, and rubbed her temples. It was going to be a long day if this was one of the better looking scripts. 

Searching for leads was always difficult, and as he puzzled between suggesting two different actors to the studio, he paced around the study, picking up his well-worn copy of “The Oriental Express” and setting it down over and over. He couldn’t decide, so he went to rummage through his kitchen cabinets to find something to eat, but found nothing. Still, he found sitting down was impossible, so he grabbed a water bottle and went biking. He chose his favourite path, his mind clearing and his headache disappearing as he watched New York fly past his eyes. 

She finished the first script before running out of steam and getting hungry, so she decided to go out for lunch. She hesitated and then printed out the other script, taking it and her leather notebook out to find a place to eat. She had a sudden craving for Panera, and read through some of the script during her 5-station subway ride to a Panera. There was a Panera near her apartment, but a desire to be outside led her to the farther one. The script was off to a good start when she reached her station, and then she stashed it away to get off the subway. She made her way inside the unusually crowded Panera, and bought herself some hot tomato soup and a salad, reminded by her agent in her head again that: “actresses don’t eat.” She was only able to find one empty seat near the door, so she sat down, plugged her headphones in, and pulled out the script and her notebook again, intending on finishing it before she went home. 

When he got home after biking around, he was starving. So he took a quick shower and changed, grabbing his notebook, and going to find something to eat. He strolled to the Panera near home, figuring that the food would be good for his returning headache. When he pushed the door open, the crowd almost made him turn and leave. He reminded himself that he needed inspiration, and where better to find inspiration than a crowded restaurant? So he stepped inside, ordered a chicken soup and beef sandwich, then looked around for a seat, feeling like a high schooler who couldn’t find his friends in a cafeteria. Most of the tables were either full or had a group of friends, and he didn’t want to plop himself in the middle of a group. He was about to ask the cashier to make his order to go when he saw a young woman sitting alone at a two person table near the door. He almost sighed in relief and walked over. 

When the young man approached her, it surprised her that he had a Southern English accent. He wore silver rimmed glasses, and carried himself with a sense of quiet confidence and a boyish smile. His wavy hair grew to the nape of his neck, and when she looked up, his brown eyes were warm and kind through their lenses. She liked that he didn’t try to make small talk; she never knew how to respond to that and it made her anxious. Another something her agent would get on her case about.

He sat his tray down and sat down. She placed her headphone back inside her ear, and turned her attention back to her script, but she couldn’t help sneaking glances at the young man. He had taken out a weathered black notebook, with the simple engraving “Notebook” on the cover. She chuckled internally, and coughed. The young man looked up as his hand twitched, almost as if to reach for a napkin. She smiled, and offered a quiet “excuse me,” before bending over the script again. Her cheeks burned with a blush, and she lifted her hand to cool it, lest he notice. Bent over, she could only see his hands. He had long, grateful fingers, but he ate with his left hand. His right hand, she saw, was busy writing.

She didn’t know what he was writing, but his hand never stopped, and she was overcome with the urge to say something. Seeing how intently he seemed to be drinking soup and writing, however, she swallowed her questions and took another bite of her salad.

He sat down, shocked to meet a person from home. He sat his tray down, getting a chance to look at her fully. She had gracefully shaped features, and her simple white T-shirt and black leggings fit her well. Her eyes had been sharp when they first appraised him. It had surprised him when she smiled, because her smile held an infectious joy, even when it was only a polite smile. She had a very attractive charisma to her. As he thought this, she set down what she was reading to take a bite of salad, and when he glanced at what she was reading, he saw that it was a script.

“She’s in the business,” he thought to himself, and for a second considered telling her he was too. He snuck glimpses of her, and felt the tip of his ears starting to burn when their eyes met for a second, before he turned away. He was nevertheless able to spot the title of her script as she flipped open a worn leather notebook and saw it had a generic name. But with the intensity that the young woman was writing down notes, an outsider would think that it was a literary masterpiece. He knew the type of scripts that generally came with those names and for a second was overcome with the urge to warn the young woman. He hated to see hard work go to waste. Then he remembered that he was only a stranger to her. Why would she have taken his advice?

Still, he would have said something, but he reconsidered when he saw how intently she was reading and how she had replaced her headphone. So he refocused on his notebook and buried himself in his food while discretely tuning his senses to focus on everyone around him.

She looked up when he got up once to go to the bathroom, and feeling guilty, snuck a quick peak at his notebook. She saw lines of notes, written in messy cursive, the majority of them looking like story ideas. This man was a writer, she realised. He returned then, and she looked back down at her script, not seeing any of the words as her mind raced.  A writer, a person who could give her advice on character and script and storyline. Who knows, if luck held, he could even be a script writer. She once again looked up, and once again bit her tongue as she saw him put in headphones. She didn’t want to disrupt him, and risk interrupting his creative process now that she knew he was a writer, and so focused on the increasingly interesting character once again.

He finished eating first, and when he looked up from his notebook, happy with the ideas that were now blooming in his mind, he realised that the restaurant was a little less full now as customers finished eating and left. He glanced at the young woman sitting across from him, whose presence seemed to have spurred his mind, because he wanted to impress her, as childish and improbable as that may be. She, however, was once again fully submersed in the script. He looked around awkwardly: it was time for him to go, but he didn’t know whether or not he should say anything to the young woman, so he just piled his dirty plates together and waited to see if she would look up.

She caught his movements in the corner of her eye, and looked up. He smiled shyly at her and said pleasantly: “Goodbye, miss.” She smiled back, and replied with a similar sentiment. Her eyes trailed after him as he returned his dirty dishes and left the restaurant, stepping into the slightly drizzling daylight. She wondered what might have happened if she had taken her chance to speak to him, if she might have made a great friend. Then she turned back to reality and the still remaining ten pages of the script, her mind once again occupied by the character, and took a sip of her now cold tomato soup.

He couldn’t help but turn back to look at the young woman as he walked back home to start his next script and probably decide on his advice of lead actress. She sat perfectly straight, and in the dampened sunlight she looked like a piece of art, a strand of brown hair falling down next to her face. His heart fluttered as he watched her for a second. He wondered what might have happened if he had taken his chance to speak to her, if he might have found a great partner. Then he turned around to reality, and side-stepped several puddles, his mind already pondering how his new script idea might be able to translate onto paper.