Young Adulting - Christina Benjamin Page 0,4

a little jaded about Hollywood life, but that didn’t mean I had to crush her fantasies about the admittedly too-handsome-for-his-own-good star.

Seriously though. No one should be so handsome. He was like some lab experiment that took genes from the hottest people on the planet and spliced them together to create the perfect male specimen.

Which, now that I thought of it...wasn’t too far off. I remembered Fallon telling me that Henry’s mom was some former bombshell. One of the Bond girls, I think. And his dad was one of those huge action stars back in the day. His dad had moved offscreen, first as a director, then a producer—now he was a freakin’ living legend and his son was basically Hollywood royalty.

But yeah, sure. He was having a bad day.

The ding of a text interrupted my eyeroll and I pulled out my phone to see two words from my least favorite new co-worker.

Taylor: You’re late.

Late? Of course I was late! Taylor was a second-year intern which made her slightly senior to me, but not by much. Just enough to make me go and do the coffee run ten minutes before we were supposed to be having the meeting that would determine the rest of my life.

I sneered down at the phone as adrenaline raced through me.

I hated being late, but today I’d been doomed from the start. I blamed Kendal, one of my roommates, and the girl who seemed to have an uncanny sense of when I was going to hop into the shower. She’d then squeeze in there and take over until the entire apartment smelled like hair products before waltzing out looking like a supermodel and leaving the rest of us just enough time to brush our teeth.

I tapped my foot with impatience as I typed back: In line. Be back in a minute.

Taylor: We’re going in now. Colin’s asking where you went.

I groaned with frustration so loudly the guy in front of me turned back with arched brows. I managed a tight smile in return.

Colin was a junior associate and the guy in charge of the internship program. He was a good guy—young, smart, and from Iowa just like me so we had a bond that annoyed the crap out of Taylor.

But then again, Taylor was just annoyed. Period. That seemed to be her default setting, and really, who could blame her? The whole point of this internship was to get a job at the end of it. The number of openings for junior script developers were limited and last year Taylor hadn’t gotten the spot. They liked her enough to have her back as an intern, but my guess was that had more to do with her family connections in the industry and less to do with talent.

Or work ethic, for that matter.

The girl shifted every task she could onto me or one of the other first-year interns. But she could get away with it because she was Taylor-freaking-Hayes and everyone knew her uncle wrote the script for last year’s blockbuster action movie.

Between Taylor and Henry, it was hard not to get jaded about the nepotism in this town. I took a deep breath and reminded myself of what Colin and I had talked about over lunch just yesterday. Family connections and fancy degrees were all fine and good, but they had nothing on drive and ambition, and those factors were the reason I would be the one scoring the job at the end of this internship.

I glanced down at my phone guiltily because my mom’s last text was right there beneath Taylor’s, waiting to be answered. She was just checking in, making sure I hadn’t been drugged, murdered, and dumped in the woods—my mom watched way too many true crime shows and we all paid the price with her paranoia. The problem was, she’d also ask about my plans for next semester. I was only two weeks into this semester’s internship and my parents couldn’t wait for it to be over and done with so I could join Fallon at Ohio State.

The fact that I was hoping to get a job right after this…?

They definitely wouldn’t understand. That hadn’t been the plan, but now that I was here...now that I had a taste of what it meant to actually read scripts morning, noon, and night. To sit around and discuss them with others who shared my passion. To have my thoughts and opinions taken into consideration as part of the movie making magic?

I let out a