Finally finished a key scene in Wordplay, which absolutely needs to be perfect. The scene where Steven falls in love with Kelly. No context provided, but ideally, none should be required. Obviously I haven't taken the time to format the HTML.

INT. BAR – AFTERNOON

Steven and Kelly, several drinks into a post-presentation celebration, share a table at a quiet, mostly deserted bar. Both are tipsy but still coherent.

KELLY
I still can’t believe how well that went.

STEVEN
I know! It was incredible! It was like ... I don’t even know. All metaphor escapes me.

Kelly GIGGLES.

STEVEN
What’s so funny?

KELLY
Just you. “All metaphor escapes me.” I mean, come on. Who talks like that?

STEVEN
(blushes)
Sorry. Get a few drinks in me and the old English Major starts to resurface.

KELLY
Weren’t you a Math major?

STEVEN
Not right away.

KELLY
Really? You changed from English to Math?

Steven smiles, takes a drag from his drink, and laughs to himself. Kelly reacts with visible apprehension.

KELLY
Did I just touch something bad?

STEVEN
No. No. Just got lost in a thought for a minute.

KELLY
What’s the thought about?

STEVEN
About how I thought I died inside once.

There’s a silence. Kelly doesn’t say anything, just gives her best look of gentle inquisitiveness.

STEVEN
I used to hold these delusions that I could write. In High School I was always just writing. Stories, screenplays, I even started a novel once, and made it like a hundred pages in. I remember thinking that there was this power in language, this tension, this hypnotic version of reality that was sharper than real life. Crisper. Less muddled. And I knew more than anything that that’s what I wanted to spend my life doing. What I wanted to study when I went away to school. And so, when searching for majors, I zeroed right in on English Literature.

KELLY
How does that turn into math?

STEVEN
Well, English was what I loved, but Math was what I was good at. And it took me about three weeks of Honors English classes to realize that I was in way over my head. That I was surrounded by people with actual talent, with this innate ability that I just lacked. That if this was what I did for the next four years, that those four years would be spent in a perpetual state of playing catch-up. I didn’t want that. So six weeks in I went to my advisor and I told him that I wanted to change my major to math. I revamped my schedule, I started from scratch, and four years later, I moved into my cubicle.

KELLY
And you equate that with dying inside?

It comes out harsher than she’d have liked. There’s an extended silence.

STEVEN
I don’t know. That’s still what it feels like sometimes. I mean, I know it was the responsible choice. That was how I justified it. It ensured that I would focus on something at which I could excel. In a lot of ways, it was like a weight off my shoulders. And yet, it still felt so much like giving up. When I look back at that decision, I have this tendency to remember it as the moment where I abandoned my education, and replaced it with a trade school.

KELLY
Hey. No. Listen. The world is full of people whose dreams and whose responsibilities don’t quite intersect. And I think most people think that that’s sad, or even tragic. It isn’t. It just means that life isn’t simple. It’s a series of really, really tough decisions. And if it’s not, then you’re doing it wrong!

STEVEN
You’re right. I mean, I do know that. And I don’t hate my job, or my life. I know I’m not dying inside. I know that even saying it is stupid. But you can’t always turn off a thought just because you know it’s silly.

KELLY
It’s okay. I wasn’t trying to be pushy.

STEVEN
No, you’re fine.

There’s a long silence. They’re smiling at each other.

STEVEN
What happened the night we met?

KELLY
In the bar?

STEVEN
What the hell were you doing there?

KELLY
Fending off clumsy attempts to pick me up.

STEVEN
Cute. Only to ask me out the next week.

KELLY
Only to find out that you were reunited with a lost love from High School. I remember. It was like the exact opposite of serendipity.

STEVEN
(laughs)
What I mean is, you don’t strike me as the sort of person that goes out and drinks alone. Particularly when you were all dressed up.

There’s a silence. Kelly levels her gaze. We see her face go from apprehension, to “fuck it.”

KELLY
I was dumped by my boyfriend of two years that night.

STEVEN
Jesus.

KELLY
He told me he wanted to get his stuff out of my apartment, and that he didn’t want me to be there. At the time I didn’t really want to see him either. So I found the nearest bar.

STEVEN
That bad?

KELLY
I’d known him since college, right? Name was Patrick. A friend of a guy I went out with for a couple of months. About a year after I graduate, I run into him in the elevator of my apartment building. We get to talking, and before long we’re going out. My first real adult relationship. You know, vacations together, a joint account at Blockbuster. To me, it feels like it’s “it”, you know? We talk about marriage. We talk about the future, and we talk about each other like we’re in each other’s future. It’s not romantic like it was in High School, or self-assured like it was in College. Just ... pragmatic.

A pause. She’s near tears.

KELLY
And we’re out to dinner and he just drops the bomb on me. How he’s dying inside. How he feels like he’s giving away everything for our relationship, and how it isn’t worth it. And he rambles on, and on for what must have been an hour, before I finally shut him up and get us out of the restaurant. And he tells me not to go home for a couple of hours, so I find myself in the awkward position of being in a bar, with a new dress, and new earrings, alone.

STEVEN
Oh. I’m so sorry. I mean, I didn’t know.

KELLY
You had no way of knowing. What you did was perfectly natural. You weren’t even the first guy to come up and talk to me. You were the fourth. And all three of the other guys that came up and started to hit on me got pissed off when they realized they were being blown off. You know, “What the hell is up with this one, walking into a bar dressed like that and expecting not to get hit on.” And I’ve since come to realize that that doesn’t mean they were bad guys. They probably weren’t. But you were different. You were ... perspicacious enough to see that the right thing to do was to be nice to me, and then leave me alone. So that’s what happened that night.

STEVEN
“Perspicacious?”

KELLY
It means perceptive. Intuitive.

STEVEN
I know. I’m just thinking I should introduce you to Zack.

KELLY
I don’t want to be introduced to Zack.

STEVEN
Then what do you want?

KELLY
I don’t know. But not that.

There’s a long pause. They’re done sizing each other up, and just smile. They’re enjoying each other’s company, resigned to the tension, and not fighting it.