“Gavin, that’s very generous of you to think that way, but…”

“Ok, kiddo, let me lay some of my cards on the table.” He paused, eyebrows knit in thought, and he looked away for a moment.

He slid a glance towards the sliding doors, as if noticing something going on inside. Tina looked in that direction also but couldn’t see anything in particular.

He looked her way again, but had a more serious mien now. “Since finishing my contract with a big studio, and getting some backing for a couple of films that I really believed in, but didn’t star in, I’ve felt so much freer, creatively. I decided to test my limits doing other things. With the success of one of those films I got backing for came vindication: I felt capable of doing anything after that.”

Tina nodded. Gavin had recently produced a genre-busting blockbuster that he’d co-wrote the story outline for that had been a hit with the millennial demographic. The effort had caught everyone by surprise, and the film had triggered a stampede of similar films backed by major studios.

“So yeah. I was not all that happy about some of the film choices I made several years ago – what you’ve pointed out just now. I’d taken them on as favors, let me tell you. But with this freedom, and the success of that film, I grew to believe that there was much more I could do. That there could be more to what I could “chew on” and create than the scraps I was feeding on, and putting out, for so many years.”

Tina thought about apologizing about what she’d said, when he asked all of a sudden, “Do you believe that this pattern of what I’d been stuck doing for so long has been similar to what you’re doing?”

Tina licked her lips. Sure. There had been a time when those thoughts had crossed her mind. She’d even talked to a few close friends, not in the industry, about feeling that she needed a change. She tried to talk about it with Bette, before the series of events that had started in Luxembourg led to the life-changing gold adventure that changed their lives. Whatever happened since then had all been determined by what Bette considered to be their shared responsibility. So Tina had set aside what she’d been thinking about, concerning her own career. They’d jointly agreed what Bette had been entrusted with had taken precedent over everything else, and so life had continued along that track.