I Wrote Him Savage Reviews, Now He Thinks They're Love Letters novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Unlatching, Not Unhooking
At the first read-through Kit mutters a private word for the star's acting habit, and Dorian answers by opening a binder of every review Kit ever wrote; Kit corrects his misquote in front of forty people and learns he was cast by name.
Dorian Frobisher began the first read-through by setting a ring binder on the table and announcing that he had a thank-you to make.
Kit Waincroft kept his eyes on page one of the script.
He sat four chairs down, among forty people and a platter of untouched flapjacks.
He had been cast three days ago, after five months without work.
His last job had been a pet-insurance advert in which his dog disapproved of him.
He had £212 in his account, and this part paid for the rest of the year.
So he held very still.
"We start when I say we start," said the director.
She had a pencil through her hair and a roll of tape sticking out of her cardigan pocket.
Dorian sat down in his camel coat, and the hired rehearsal room went quiet.
The new series was a Sunday-night melodrama about a haunted family and a missing will.
Dorian read the Earl.
Kit read the Earl's brother, who spent the first scene buttering toast and thinking about poison.
Dorian's first speech was good.
It was also exactly what Kit had expected, because before the first word his left hand rose an inch, his chin lifted, and he waited.
Then he said the line.
"Gate," Kit muttered.
He regretted it at once.
The word had crossed the table before his teeth could stop it.
Dorian's head turned a few degrees.
He read the next speech.
Left hand, chin, wait, line.
"Gate," Kit muttered again, because the first time had been an accident and now it was a position.
Nobody else seemed to have heard.
The director had heard.
She looked at Kit over her glasses, then at the star, and wrote something down.
Kit decided he would say nothing else all morning.
It was a good decision, and it lasted until the next speech.
Dorian read his third speech with no pause at all.
He launched into it, stiff and fast, and his eyes slid down the table toward Kit.
"Worse," Kit said.
"Now he's missing the gate and he knows it."
"And the hand?" said Dorian, hopefully.
"The hand only comes before lies," said Kit.
"Not on that line. That one's true."
Dorian looked at his script, then up at Kit, with his mouth a little open.
Nobody had ever told him which of his lines were true.
"It is true," Dorian said.
"The Earl isn't lying there at all."
"I know," said Kit.
"It's on the page."
The read-through limped on.
In Hollowmere, as the series was called, the Earl was wounded, the brother was smooth, and the housekeeper's secret got halfway out of a drawer.
At the break, forty people reached for flapjacks, and Dorian walked down the table with the binder under his arm.
It was thick.
It had a label on the spine in careful capitals: CORRESPONDENCE.
"May I?" he said, and opened it on the wood in front of Kit.
Page after page of print-outs sat in plastic sleeves, each tabbed with a gold sticker along the edge.
On the first page Dorian had written, in fountain pen: the collected works of Seventh Row.
Kit's ears went hot.
Seventh Row was where he sat at every theatre he could afford.
It was also the name he had posted under on the Curtain Call Board for five years.
"Listen to this," said Dorian, and read aloud with great tenderness.
"'He starts every sentence like a man unhooking a gate.'"
"Unlatching," said Kit.
The room did not go silent all at once.
It stopped in sections, from the nearest chairs outward.
"I'm sorry?" said Dorian.
"Unlatching a gate," said Kit.
"You unlatch a gate. You unhook a coat. You can't unhook a gate unless it's a very odd gate."
Someone dropped half a flapjack.
"I don't know who wrote it," Kit added.
"But that is the correct verb."
"Of course it is," said Dorian, and his whole face opened.
He turned a page and spoke to the room.
"A hundred and twelve of them, over five years, and not one word of it kind."
"They weren't meant to be kind," said Kit.
"They were accurate."
"That's what I said," said Dorian.
"In my experience it's the same thing."
Kit looked at the door.
It was just across the room, and on the other side of it were £212 and a flatmate who ate his yoghurt.
"Nobody has ever noticed that I do that," said Dorian, much more softly.
"The gate. I didn't know I did it. I thought I was just an actor."
Kit stayed where he was.
Whatever he had meant to say to that stuck behind his teeth.
The director, Vera Harrowby, cleared her throat.
"Are we reading," she said, "or are we being married?"
"We're reading," said Kit.
He sat back down and found page forty, because it was the only decision on offer.
"For the record," he told the script, "those were insults."
"Naturally," said Dorian, and sat beside him, radiant.
"I do hope you know I asked for you by name."
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend