Trey Moore could barely conceal his anticipation as he ran his long fingers over the smooth, creamy piece of his latest obsession.
“That’s it,” he whispered, pinching at a couple of curled edges that were beautifully laid out on the table before him. “Come to me, baby.”
For months, he’d been preparing for this very moment. Trey reached for his scotch on the rocks before sitting on the high chair of his dining room table. He took a measured sip of the cool liquid and observed the printed cream-colored pages of his screenplay, which was currently divided into scenes.
Trey had been cooped up in his Brentwood, LA, estate for nearly seventy-two complete hours, and he was no closer to being finished with his latest screenplay than he was before he’d taken his hiatus.
For Trey, there was nothing more frustrating than having writer’s block when his agent and producers were on his back for the next Hollywood hit. He’d known, the minute he’d accepted this job, that he’d run into a few issues toward the end. He prided himself on only agreeing to write screenplays for stories that he truly believed were special in their own way. However, even he’d admit that, initially, he hadn’t seen the producer’s vision behind this particular project. As time grew and he let the story line foster in his head a bit, he’d begun to change his mind.
Every time Trey wrote a screenplay, he invariably got that feeling in the pit of his stomach that he’d figure out how to tie up every loose end in the story finally. Call it writer’s intuition or good old-fashioned luck, he always knew instinctively that he’d be able to finish things satisfactorily, and just an hour ago, he’d gotten that hunch again.
The feeling had come a little later than he’d liked, but luckily, he still had a couple of weeks to pull perfection from the last few scenes he’d written down in an effort to appease his agent and producers. It was mid-September and he hadn’t promised them anything final until mid-October.
Taking another sip of his scotch, he picked up one of the action scenes and read his handwritten sticky notes plastered across the paper. “Come on, Trey,” he said, closing his eyes. “What’s missing here?”
He kept his eyes closed as he imagined the scene playing out in his mind as it would in the movie. He was only partially into his vision when he heard keys jingling in his front door. Trey opened his eyes and glanced down at his rose gold watch.
“Carmen,” he said aloud as he shook his head and headed toward his front door. There was only one person who could be coming into his home at eleven o’clock at night.
“What do you want?” he said, crossing his arms over his chest the moment the door peeked open.
“Dang, big bro. Is that any way to greet your favorite sister?”
“You’re my only sister.”
“Precisely the reason you should be more grateful to see me.”
“You’re right,” he said with a laugh as he reached for the car seat that held his nephew, Matthew. “Hey, M-dog,” he said as he picked up the six-month-old. “How’s my boy doing?”
“Ugh.” Carmen frowned. “Why do you insist on calling him M-dog?”
“Because it’s way better than you and Mom insisting on calling him Matty. There’s nothing manly about the nickname Matty. Are you trying to raise your son to permanently be in the friends zone with every girl he meets?”
“Shut up,” Carmen said, lightly slapping Trey’s shoulder. “M-dog isn’t a good nickname, either. You’re lucky I love you because had anyone else called him that, I would have nipped it in the bud right away.”
Trey smiled, knowing she meant it. Although Trey and Carmen didn’t have the same father, they were extremely close. Trey’s stepdad—who was also Carmen’s father—had been around for most of his life, and since Trey’s relationship with his own father was strained, he appreciated his stepfather.
Through his biological dad, Reginald Moore, Trey also had two half brothers, Derek and Max. Since they all had different mothers, they hadn’t been too close growing up. Like him, Derek also had an uneasy relationship with their father. Actually, Derek’s relationship with Reginald was much worse than Trey’s. Max was the only son