Final Edit - RTSA 53

The story everyone else sees isn't always the one you think you've written.

Rocking the Second Act is a live, evolving draft — I tweak, polish, and occasionally rewrite chaos in real time. If you’ve just arrived, the Chapter Index will get you up to speed.

The edit suite fell quiet as Jules cued up the latest version of the pool table sequence. Jasmine sat a couple of seats to my left, notebook balanced on her knee, while Rebecca sat off to one side. She seemed far more interested in how we all reacted than in what was actually playing. Alasdair sat forward the moment Jules reached for the keyboard.

While Jules loaded the sequence, my eyes wandered around the edit suite. It struck me that I’d spent months telling people I was making a television series, when the truth was I’d only ever written one. This was where it was actually being made.

I’d handed over scripts, but they hadn’t come back looking smaller or more compromised. They’d come back richer. Wardrobe had quietly revealed things about the characters I’d never thought to write down. Tilly had found moments with the camera that I’d never imagined. Jasmine had started giving scenes emotional textures I couldn’t have described if I’d tried. Even the rhythm of a conversation could change completely depending on where Jules chose to make a cut.

It wasn’t dozens of separate people pulling the story in different directions. Somehow it all seemed to move in the same direction, each choice uncovering another layer that had been hiding inside it all along. I’d begun this journey convinced the words were the story. Sitting here now, I wasn’t sure that was true anymore. The words were simply the invitation.

The music wasn’t finished yet, but Jasmine’s temporary cues were already doing far more emotional heavy lifting than they had any right to.

It rose exactly where it needed to, never telling the audience what to feel so much as giving them permission to feel it. Rose and Gary crashed into each other with all the urgency we’d fought so hard to protect from becoming gratuitous, every cut landing precisely where it should. The scene was intimate without being voyeuristic, raw without becoming ugly, and for the first time since we’d filmed it, I forgot it was Zack and me.

I only saw Rose and Gary.

See? I thought, absurdly pleased with myself. This is what I’ve been trying to tell everyone. It’s not about us. It’s about them.

Then the edit changed, just enough for my stomach to tighten. Instead of cutting away to the next part in the script, it moved closer.

Closer.

Until the screen was filled by Rose’s hand against Gary’s chest.

Except, no. Holy mother of fuck… it was my hand on Zack’s chest. My fingertips moving in slow, lazy circles against his skin.

I held my breath, surely I’d imagined it. The moment lasted barely two seconds before the episode carried on as though nothing had happened.

I looked around the room, waiting for someone to laugh. To tell Alasdair he’d left the wrong version in. That we’d all just watched an extra rough rough cut by mistake.

But none of the faces beside me looked even remotely surprised.

“Go back to that close up.”

Jules’s hand hovered over the keyboard until Alasdair gave a quiet nod.

The sequence rolled backwards in a blur of colour before settling on the frame I’d been trying not to look at. My hand rested against Zack’s chest, fingers curved lazily over his skin.

Jules froze the frame, leaving my hand resting there. The longer it stayed there, the harder it became to pretend it was just another pickup.

“Why the fuck is that shot in there?”

None of them rushed to answer. Rebecca was watching me now instead of the screen, while Jasmine slowly closed her notebook.

“Seriously, why the fuck is that shot in there?” louder this time.

Alasdair frowned, not defensively but with genuine confusion. “Because it belonged there.”

“It wasn’t in the script. I didn’t write that. It wasn’t even part of the bloody scene.” Uh oh, my voice was rising and coming out a bit shaky.

Jules had gone very still behind the keyboard.

“No. it wasn’t.” Alasdair replied, not looking at me. “Tilly grabbed a handful of pickups while we were resetting,” he picked up a pen. “Nothing formal. She thought they were lovely and showed them to me afterwards.”

He looked back at the monitor, then briefly at Rebecca who was still watching me.

“It would’ve been criminal not to use them.”

He sounded so matter-of-fact that, for a second, I wondered whether we were talking about the same shot.

“Why?”

He frowned, almost surprised I had to ask.

“Because actors spend all day trying to manufacture intimacy.”

He nodded towards the screen.

“You two forgot to.”

That hit like a slap. “What the motherfuck does that mean?”

It should have annoyed me that he wasn’t getting angry back. Instead, it made me feel like I was the only one in the room who’d lost their footing. My eyes drifted back to the frozen frame.

Rose and Gary had never been the point. They were one thread in a much bigger story. Everything else was supposed to matter just as much.

Yet here it was.

Two seconds that had somehow managed to pull the centre of gravity away from all of it. Suddenly I wasn’t watching a story about women reclaiming themselves. I was watching a fucking romance.

That wasn’t what we’d made.

I recognised the feeling immediately. It was the same one I’d had in every meeting lately – that somehow everyone else had already turned the page, while I was still trying to finish the chapter. Alasdair’s attention had drifted back to the frozen frame as though he were still studying the edit instead of the explosion he’d just set off.

The worst thing? None of them were saying a fucking thing, and somehow that frightened me more than if they’d argued. This wasn’t a fucking editing discussion anymore.

“Jules,” I said quietly, “would you mind giving us the room for a few minutes?”

He glanced at Alasdair, who gave the smallest nod, before pushing his chair back and slipping out, the door clicking softly shut behind him.

I waited until the silence settled again.

“I think we need to talk about what show we’re making.”

I’d expected one of them to jump in. Instead the silence quietly handed the conversation back to me. Right, deep breath, V.

“I know everyone’s excited about Rose and Gary. I know the distributors want more of them in season two. But I think that’s a mistake.”

I looked from Rebecca to Alasdair.

“I think if we start chasing that, we change what this series is. Suddenly it becomes about whether they end up together instead of everything that brought them to each other in the first place. That’s not more powerful. It’s... smaller.”

I rubbed my palms against my jeans, trying to untangle thoughts that had been crashing into each other ever since the rough cuts started coming back.

“And... I also have concerns about Zack.”

I glanced towards Jasmine.

“He and I...” I looked down at my hands. “...we’re seeing each other. Casually. I don’t really know what you’d call it.”

Nobody moved.

“The thing is...” I picked at the cuff of my sleeve. “We’ve been spending time together and...” I paused, hearing the words before I quite believed them. “I think...” Another pause. “I think he might be reading more into it than I am.”

My voice sounded smaller as I continued.

“He’s not even a year sober.”

The words seemed to hang in the room.

“Recovery’s messy enough without asking him to spend the next season filming a bigger romance with someone he’s...” I hesitated. “...someone he’s already struggling to separate from.”

I looked back at Alasdair and rushed my next words before anyone could respond.

“I know none of that’s the show’s responsibility. I’m not saying it is. But I do think it’s our responsibility not to create problems we don’t have to.”

They just sat there, staring at me, and I started wondering if I’d said any of that out loud, and they were still waiting for me to start.

But then, they exchanged The Look. I’d watched the three of them do it often enough over the past year, and had learned to dread it. Honestly, it was a bit bloody creepy. Somehow entire conversations seemed to happen without anyone wasting perfectly good words. And I knew exactly what it meant. Oh God. They’ve already talked about this.

Not the edit. Me. More specifically, me and Zack. Ah, fuck.

Finally, Alasdair sat back, one thumb rubbing absently against his bottom lip as he looked at the frozen frame on the monitor.

“What are you proposing?”

Not what I was expecting. I folded my arms across my chest.

“Sorry?”

“You’ve identified two problems.” He glanced at me. “The Rose and Gary arc. Zack.” He nodded once. “What’s your solution?”

I hadn’t expected that. My eyes flicked over to Jasmine. She was watching me with the same quiet concentration she’d worn all morning. She hadn’t interrupted once.

“I...” I stared at the frozen frame, unable to look away from my own hand resting against Zack’s chest. I hadn’t even known I’d reached for him like that. Tilly had noticed it. Not only noticed it, she’d pointed a camera at it. Then she’d shown it to Alasdair afterwards. They’d talked about whether it belonged in the episode, and Jules had built the edit around it.

Lily’s voice drifted back into my head.

“Zack’s not going to stay the night, is he, Mum?”

“Slow it down.”

The words tumbled out, landing clumsily in the quiet.

“The romance?” Rebecca asked.

“The payoff.”

Alasdair looked back at the monitor, pursing his lips.

“A slower burn.”

“Yeah.” I could hear my confidence returning now that we were talking about the work again. “I think they need to earn it for longer. Let people wonder whether they’ll ever get there instead of telling them they’re inevitably going to.”

Rebecca tipped her head slightly, the way she always did when she thought she’d found the real question hiding underneath the obvious one.

“You’re not talking about changing the destination.”

“No.”

“Just the route.”

“Exactly.” Fuck. Relief flooded through me so fast I clamped my arms harder against my chest.

Alasdair looked down at the continuity notes still sitting on his lap before speaking.

“Can I tell you why I disagree?”

I nodded. Can I stop you, I thought.

“I don’t think the audience is asking whether Rose and Gary end up together.”

That caught me off guard.

“I think they’re asking whether two people who’ve spent years convincing themselves they don’t deserve to be loved will ever believe otherwise.”

His eyes drifted back to the frozen frame.

“That’s a different question.”

Rebecca nodded.

“Those aren’t romance beats, V.”

She held my gaze.

“They’re recovery beats.”

Jasmine was quiet for so long I wondered whether she was going to say anything at all.

When she finally looked up, her voice was calm.

“I actually agree with you, V.”

I hadn’t realised how badly I wanted someone to say that.

“I think Zack’s in dangerous territory,” she said. “He won’t thank us for saying it, but he’s still learning where he ends and other people begin. That’s recovery. You don’t just wake up one morning with healthy boundaries because you’ve stopped drinking.”

She glanced towards Alasdair.

“If we can tell the same story without asking him to lean harder into that dynamic, then yes, I think we should.”

“Thank you,” I said quietly.

Jasmine smiled, and I realised far too late I’d celebrated too early.

“I don’t think slowing Rose and Gary down fixes the problem, V. I think it just postpones it.”

The relief I’d felt only seconds earlier quietly folded back in on itself. Jasmine wasn’t accusing me – if anything, she sounded… sad.

“Eventually we’ll tell the story the audience deserves to see,” she said. “And Zack will still be Zack.”

Alasdair looked from Jasmine to me before speaking. “I don’t think you’re wrong about the pacing. There’s probably a conversation to be had about how quickly we let them arrive.”

Rebecca nodded. “I’d be happy to revisit the season arc. We don’t owe the distributors every instinctive reaction they have after one screening.”

“Good,” The word escaped before I had a chance to swallow it.

“But,” Rebecca continued gently, “I don’t think Rose and Gary are pulling focus because they’re romantic.”

I frowned.

“They’re pulling focus because they remind people why they’re watching in the first place. Two people who’d written themselves off discovering they were wrong. That’s not separate from the series, V. It’s the same journey every one of these women is on.”

Everyone looked back at the frozen image of my hand on Zack’s chest. I swallowed hard on the lump that had been building, one thought arriving with horrifying clarity.

God, if Zack found out about this...

“Can I ask one thing?”

Rebecca looked over. “Of course.”

“Don’t tell Zack about this meeting.”

That finally brought everyone’s attention squarely back to me. Jasmine’s nostrils actually flared which was never a good sign. I quickly kept talking.

“I don’t want him thinking I’m trying to manage him behind his back. I just...” I sighed. “I’d rather he didn’t know.”

Alasdair gave a small nod. “This conversation stays in this room.”

Rebecca just nodded thoughtfully. After that, the meeting dissolved without anybody quite deciding it was over.

Rebecca and Alasdair were already halfway into another conversation by the time I reached the corridor, the edit giving way to budgets and distributor notes with the ease of people used to carrying three problems at once.

“V.”

Jasmine caught the door before it swung shut behind me. She walked beside me for a few moments without saying anything, waiting until we were well clear of the edit suite before she spoke.

“I meant what I said in there.”

“I know.”

“I do think Zack’s vulnerable.”

Hearing her say it again settled something in me, but only for a heartbeat.

“Then we’re on the same page.”

She was quiet for a moment.

“Not entirely.”

We’d stopped walking without either of us deciding to. Jasmine leaned against the wall, folding her arms, her eyes fixed somewhere over my shoulder rather than directly at me.

“I think you need to talk to him.”

“I will.”

She gave the smallest shake of her head.

“No, V. I think you need to actually talk to him.”

I let out a short laugh.

“About what?”

That finally made her look at me. There was nothing accusing in her expression – if anything, she looked disappointed for me.

“About what this is.”

I felt my brow crease.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Jasmine held my gaze for another second before looking away again.

“I think you do.”

The words hung between us, and before I could decide whether I wanted to argue or ask her what the hell she was talking about, she’d already pushed herself away from the wall.

“Just... don’t make decisions for him because you’re frightened.”

She left before I could answer, disappearing back towards the edit suite and leaving me standing in the corridor with the uncomfortable feeling that we’d just had two completely different conversations.

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