Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 66511 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 333(@200wpm)___ 266(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66511 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 333(@200wpm)___ 266(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
He cut his gaze to the side, out the floor-to-ceiling glass panels. “Why are you up?”
“I’m going for a jog. Wanna join me?” his dad asked. Chad’s gaze shifted to the clock on the microwave. How was it already five o’clock in the morning? He hadn’t slept all night.
“Yeah, I guess,” he said, taking another long drink. A long run was probably the best way to clear his head. “Give me a minute to change.”
He pushed off the counter and grabbed his phone, weighing the idea of texting Ducky again. It seemed stalkerish. He’d give it until lunchtime and reevaluate.
CHAPTER 7
Three days later
Ducky sat on a barstool in the middle of one of StreamTrainer’s training studios, caught in the snare of an unexpected media frenzy. Somehow, he found himself in a constant loop of interviews from anyone and everyone with a podcast or social media platform—which was technically their company’s target marketing demographic. No outlet was too small, a policy Ducky had initiated years ago when they’d first started to make it big. They always needed to remember how hard they worked to get people to pay attention to their small new business.
The last few days were a tiring blur. The unforgiving schedule pushed him past his mental hang-ups of being shy and reserved. Exhaustion had a way of tamping out those lifelong insecurities. Frustration probably came in a close second with the amount of actual work he was having to field between each interview. Apparently, fatigue and annoyance came off as charming and approachable if the in-real-time focus group studying his performance was to be believed.
None of it made any sense. For most of his life, Ducky enjoyed the title of outcast. He struggled to make any genuine connections with anyone. How had it all changed so quickly?
In the realm of possibility, the one option that made the most sense was that Sara, their PR person, had made it all up to keep him performing as she wanted.
Dallas did that to him all the time.
Whatever. It worked well enough.
In the moments between the chaos, Sara had created an entire advertising campaign, highlighting his physical transformation. A complete before, during, and after. How she’d done it so fast, he had no idea, but man, did she want to push the go button. Hell, their entire executive team, excluding Ducky of course, wanted the ads to go live as their first coast-to-coast nationwide campaign.
They nudged at him hard to give in. To see the importance of riding on the wave of all this media buzz created after The Game Awards and after Chad’s and Kai’s podcast on Wilder.
Ducky narrowed his eyes as he sat contemplating Chad or Kai’s possible involvement. Dallas or Greer could have gotten to Chad or Kai first, suggesting Chad say he didn’t believe it was truly Ducky on stage. The conspiracy theories ran wild inside his head. Could they have staged the whole thing in hopes of getting this exact response from the media? Chad more than anyone knew how social media worked. His father helped lay the groundwork for the online social revolution.
Pretty clever of those guys. If so, it worked like a charm. The world had turned out in Ducky’s defense. Chad wouldn’t give a care if he’d been painted as the bad guy. He probably hadn’t thought twice about it.
“Ducky, this is Emma with Buzzfeed Celebrity,” Sara said. Ducky nodded to the woman on the other side of the monitor in front of him. Their studio’s makeup team came forward to lift his hair, straighten his shirt, and do all the things he didn’t like at all. Mainly due to his aversion to being touched. “In this segment, you’ll read tweets that Buzzfeed has found about you and react to them. The funnier or sillier your response, the better. I’ll sit off camera and react with you. Look at me if something throws you off. This’ll take about fifteen minutes. Got it?”
He took a deep breath to steady himself. So many questions ran through his crowded mind. Like when did he ever tried to be funny before a day in his life? How could he be funny when he’d slept a total of six hours in four days? Instead of voicing any of that out loud, he put a practiced grin on his face and nodded, sitting a bit straighter in his seat.
Sara turned toward the filming crew, one of his longtime friends behind the camera gave a thumbs up. “Emma is about to start. What you’re to say and the tweets you’ll read will replace her on the screen.” She pointed again to the only monitor in the room.
He rolled his shoulders and nodded before swatting at the hands still touching him. “Let’s get this done then take a break. I’m starving.”
“Only a fifteen-minute break. Your afternoon schedule is packed,” Sara said, shooing everyone off stage. “And at six thirty, you’re taking a class with Skye.”