She chuckles. “Um… no, not an actress. As much as I’m perfectly suited to being famous and am brilliantly stunning, sadly… no, I’m just Alex.”
Smirking, I raise my eyebrow. “Okaaay, just Alex… and… what are you doing here?”
She smiles, opening her arms wide and spinning around like a kid in a candy store. “This is my new home, Nate,” she calls out.
I tilt my head, slightly confused. “It is?”
She stops spinning and puts out her hand abruptly. “Alex O’Donovan, I’m your new business partner.”
Scoffing, I tilt my head even further. “Ah… come again?”
“Oh, Nate, you filthy dog, you. Not on the first date,” she quips and runs around the gallery, looking at the artwork. “These pieces… I can’t. I amliterallyobsessed. I might die! They’re like really eclectic, Nate. You have such an eye for detail. Where did you study?”
I shrug. “My bedroom?”
She bursts out laughing and shakes her head. “Oh my God, working with you is gonna be lit! Picture it… brighter space, windows wide open, cute lil’ street sign out front catching every passer-by. Nate, this place is about to go viral IRL. We’ll be selling these paintings faster than Taylor Swift tickets.”
I stand here in shock, wondering what’s actually happening. “Um… sorry, who are you?”
“Oh my God, are you not listening? I’m Alex, your curator slash manager, and I’m going to run this gallery for you.”
“And… where have you come from?”
She smiles. “Well, there’s this bird called a stork, and when a baby is born—”
“Alex!”
“God… okay, sheesh. Ria hired me. Said you need a push in the right direction.”
“But she didn’t want to come with you to see me?”
She sighs. “She’s confused. She doesn’t want to give you the wrong idea, but she doesn’t want to see your talents go to waste, either.”
“I see.”
“Hang in there, Fred Astaire, you’ll be right.”
“You’re a little weird.”
She nods, popping out her hip with the brightest smile on her adorable little face. “Thank you. That’s so nice of you to say.”
“Yeah… definitely weird. But how will this work? Do I pay you?”
She smiles and shakes her head. “Well, I’ll never say no to payment. But Ria has covered me with a seven-day-a-week salary for a year. So you’re stuck with me for the next three hundred and sixty-five days, bucko!”
Opening my eyes wide, I gasp out of shock more than anything else. “Wait! She paid you to work for me every single day for the next year?”
“Sure did.”
I shake my head. “But what about Christmas… and Easter? Thanksgiving and fucking, I dunno… Hanukkah?”
“Well, I don’t think for a second that you celebrate Hanukkah, but don’t worry. I’ll be available all those days.” She winks. “She paid me double time and a half for holidays. So yeah, I’m working those days for sure.”
“Alex, this is too much. She doesn’t need to pay you for this.”
“She said you’d say that and that if you said no to accepting me as your manager, to tell you that I will be out of a job and back on the streets. See, you’re actually really helping me out as much as I’m helping you out here, Nate. She said that would help you decide to keep me or not.” She grins at me like she knows she’s just won the battle of wills, and I groan, running my hand through my hair.
“Why were you on the streets?”
