Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 96284 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96284 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
“You think Haley’s here yet?” I asked.
“Given that she’s expecting our answer about the studio today, I bet she’s standin’ right outside with the company credit card in her hand.”
I chuckled. If she wanted to make changes to our podcast studio, by all means. Even I could admit it was pretty dull in here. We still had our round desk we sat at. We’d added more comfortable chairs, and we had a custom-made sign with our logo on the wall. Newspapers and magazines littered the table. My laptop, our mics… Equipment was probably the one thing we liked to keep state-of-the-art. We had better sound these days, mics you didn’t have to sit so close to, and wireless headphones.
We didn’t find Haley outside the door; instead, we found her in the office across the hall, and fuck me, she wasn’t alone. Sandra was there too.
I couldn’t hide my surprise. “Hey, you.” Was I happy? Yeah, I believed so. Right? Happy and confused? And something else? Why was she here?
“Hi!” She beamed and trailed over to me, so I dipped down and kissed her.
No, this was good. I was glad she was here.
“Haley asked if I wanted to go shopping for studio furniture,” she divulged.
“Oh.”
I loved Haley. I sent her a grateful look and kissed Sandra on the forehead. We’d had a rocky start last summer, but Haley had really come through. She’d started by engaging more with Sandra on Facebook and Instagram, which had led to a couple coffee dates and getting their nails done together. Eventually, my wife had mustered the courage to come over after work. Sometimes she brought cookies or lunch.
To Jake’s credit, he’d made an effort too. He was kind to her, and they’d reached a somewhat relaxed stage where they could complain about me to each other.
Nikki… Well. I didn’t know what her problem was. She was polite—nothing more, nothing less. And she and I didn’t have the kind of relationship where I could ask outright what she had against Sandra.
“You just assume we’re gonna say yes on the demolition of our studio?” Jake drawled.
I looked back at him, and he was ready to be an annoying brother to his sister.
Haley could take it. “Obviously. Here’s what I’m thinking. The back wall—you have your sign, of course. But we paint the wall in the same burnt-orange color you have in the background of the sign, and since you have black text, we put up a bunch of black-and-white photos from your past projects, and we use black frames. So we turn the theme into your brand, you know? And we wanna replace the desk and the chairs too. Sandra saw this old, sturdy, black-painted oak table at an auction, so we just need to find you some cushy chairs. Maybe a couple potted plants in the background—we want it both cozy and cool. I think viewers will like that.”
Damn. The woman had a vision.
I glanced back at Jake again.
He was leaning against the doorframe and scratching his jaw.
“Fuck it,” he said. “I’m too hungry to bitch. Go for it.”
I smirked. He rarely turned down an opportunity to fight with Haley, like only siblings did. She was the same. But they were surprisingly productive that way.
It was settled. The girls went off to give our studio an upgrade, and Jake and I headed to the kitchen to prepare breakfast. We were the only ones here, which was kinda rare. If Seth wasn’t in the office, a couple of the editors tended to stop by and work with Jake. Or Haley and Mai worked on social.
“Being alone makes me wanna play hooky,” I admitted.
He laughed softly and hauled shit out of the fridge while I grabbed the bagels I’d bought on the way here earlier. “But we don’t have too much on our plate today, do we? We have the FaceTime meeting with Martina at three, and we gotta start editing the interviews from Philadelphia and New York.”
Yeah, the latter would be the hardest part. As it turned out, interviewing veterans and first responders from New York last fall hadn’t been as difficult as I’d feared. But when we had uncut footage with everything out of order, it was easy to let the work brain take the lead, and the personal aspects concerning the terror attacks had remained locked up in the back of my mind. Putting it all together later, however…? Fuck, I was not looking forward to that, because that was when we had to add in scenes from the day that had ripped my parents away from me.
At least Boston was in the bag. Those interviews had struck me in a way I hadn’t anticipated, which, in retrospect, was dumb. I should’ve realized sooner that the marathon bombing would hit close to home. We’d heard similar stories from people who had lost someone, first responders who still had nightmares, men and women who had enlisted in anger, survivors with PTSD and opioid addiction.