She walked around the bar to make him a drink. John sat heavily on the barstool. Anna set the drink in front of him. She leaned against the bar, looking down at him. His hair fell in his eyes, and she had a strong urge to put her arms around him and just be his, to just belong to him, like she had wanted since that day in the bar. But she was too old for fairytales to come true. This was work, and she should be happy that they worked so well together, given all the ups and downs of this shoot.

“Has Los Angeles given you everything you need on the budget?”

“I could use some more money for the props and sets. Fake blood is surprisingly expensive.”

“We’re buying it?”

“It doesn’t appear out of thin air.” John looked exasperated.

“We don’t have a lot of extra time.” Anna grinned before she could stop herself. “But it isn’t that hard to make.”

“I don’t remember a lot of gore in The Castro.”

“I made a lot of short horror movies as a teenager.”

“Your parents must have been proud.”

Anna shrugged. “My mom didn’t mind as long as I wasn’t failing out of school.”

“When I left Colorado without a degree and announced I was going to travel instead, my parents were devastated. The first of many life choices they didn’t agree with.”

“I never finished college,” Anna said, setting aside the pages she’d been working on a moment before. She smiled. “Ready to fix your fake-blood problem?”

John cocked an eyebrow.

One hour later, the two of them stood in the restaurant kitchen of the hotel. The manager had agreed to let them use the kitchen for their batch of blood.

Anna stirred the giant sauce pot like a witch over her cauldron. The recipe for the fake blood was easy to prepare. She whisked the pot, her hands covered in the sweet red substance. “It needs to thicken.”

John nudged her aside and took over the stirring. “What horror movies did you make?”

“They weren’t great, but it was fun.” Anna smiled at the memory. “Fake blood and rubber knives. It was very young woman on a murder rampage. Once I started making movies, even bad ones, I knew I never wanted to stop.”

John’s phone buzzed. When he looked at the number, he scowled.

“Everything okay?”

John glanced up sharply as if just remembering she was there. He nodded. “My parents. My father’s birthday is in a few months, and they want me to come home for the party.”

“Do you want to go?”

“Not really, but I miss them at the same time,” John said. “It’s their worrying about me that I can’t stand.”