Free Without Scars by Ayla Jones Page B

This time it was a private text to just me.
    Me:   Hell no. You realize we’re going to hear about this for the rest of our lives now, right?
    Nikki Johnson: I see why Deacon is flipping out. LOL. How’d the meeting go?
    Me: Pretty good. What are you up to? I was glad she’d texted me. Her openness had inspired an entire change in direction of my work. That was worth something to me. I really wanted to see her again, but last night had gotten heavy, and I didn’t know if things would be awkward for her today if I’d contacted her first.
    Nikki Johnson: Grocery shopping for the week. Then heading to Art Crawl tonight. So was I. I started to tell her that, but the “typing” indicator bubble flashed. She was writing something. It went away the minute I stopped typing. Then there was nothing. Was she waiting for me to ask to go with her? Or was she going to ask? I sat in my car for a few minutes, staring at the screen. Shit. This really shouldn’t have been weird for two people who’d had a heart-to-heart the day they met.
    Fuck it.
    Me: Cool. Meet me there?
    Nikki Johnson:   You in? You want to come with me?
    I laughed. The texts were nearly simultaneous.
    Me: Yes
    Nikki Johnson: Yea h 
    ****
    An amphetamine crash wasn’t as bad as a caffeine one, but it left me groggy and unable to sleep the rest of the afternoon. Not that midday sleeping would ever be allowed in our apartment. Deacon and Brody had a conversation for ten minutes by shouting across the hall to each other, while they were in their respective rooms. What the fuck.
    So resting got put on the backburner like always. I sat at the dining room table and worked on some rewrites for How to Fuck up a Friendship . It was way too early to be obsessively watching my inbox for notes from someone at Hillington, but the threat of panic still hung in the distance like storm clouds.
    The smell of marijuana wafted in from the open balcony door when Shaw walked in. Brody stayed out there, being a creep, watching our married neighbor swim. “My bro just finished the score for the episode, dude. It’s hot. A little rough but he’ll clean it up,” he said. He waved his iPad at me as he sat in the chair across from mine. All of the music on How to Fuck up a Friendship was original, thanks to Shaw’s brother.
    “Let me hear it,” I said.
    “Okay, here goes. The whole vibe is kinda old school. Lots of instruments. Not too much production.” It was for a Sami-centric episode, and something Samira had been looking forward to filming since we signed with Hillington. My voiceover narration guided the story of the series, but this was the first and only episode where it would be completely from her point of view. There was a scene where Sami masturbated when she found an erotic Tumblr blog on Chuck’s laptop. I was worried about Hillington cutting the scene. It was in my original manuscript, the story that eventually became season one, but Samira and I had played it a lot safer last season. Now, I wouldn’t let it go so easily.
    But maybe I needed to rewrite it.
    Just in case. To have a backup scenario I could live with if they hated it.  Actually, now that I was reading the script, none of the entire episode was my best work. There were still some lines of dialogue I thought were mediocre.
    “You look so excited right now,” Shaw said sarcastically.
    “What?” I pulled my hands off the keyboard and smiled but it felt forced. “No, I am. I swear.” I looked back to the screen. Parts of the story diverted from Sami’s true personality, and overall it lacked the intensity I wanted the audience to feel in this episode. Fuck.
    I gulped down. Was it time to start over completely?
    Shaw groaned and I looked up again. “You gotta give me something, Charlie. You look like you hate it. You want him to rework it? He can, dude.”
    “No…no. Sounds good.” It did, and his brother’s work deserved better than this script.
    So did Samira.
    “Dude…” he said with