He thrusts a finger at me. “Grovel.”
“What?”
Roger’s face turns hard. “Get on your knees and beg. Convince me you’re sorry, and I won’t walk out that door.”
All I can do is blink. He wants me to humiliate myself.
He points to the door. “If I walk away, not only are you fired, but I will personally ensure you never work in this industry again. You’ll be a dead man.”
A dead man.Of all the things to pop into my head, I think of Han-nah and Ginny. Hannah would never walk away from her sister. Not like Roger’s threatening to do to me, or like my dad did when I was thirteen. In fact, Hannah so can’t bear to be without Ginny that she’s been trying her level best to drag her out of heaven. That loyalty, and fierceness—that’sreal love. Compared to that, it’s suddenly easy to see how anemic Roger’s offer is.
“Roger.” I can tell by the way his features fall that he already knows what’s coming. “I’m not going to beg you to stay. If you want to walk on me, then walk.”
Yeah. He walks.
Chapter 48
Theo
Monday, October 28, 2024
Far in the distance, like the soundtrack to a dream, I hear the opening bars of the Saints’ song “Family Fruit.” I groan and shove my face farther into my pillow, bending it so the pillow covers my ears. The song’s got to be playing on someone’s radio in the parking lot. Even in the depths of my wallowing, I can’t escape the band.
Then the music grows louder. Hannah’s voice croons, “I just wanted them to like me, but you were a bolt of lightning,” so close it’s nearly in my ear, and I startle, scrambling out of bed so fast my ankles get caught in the sheets and I fall to the floor.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” I do a push-up off the thin carpet and shake the damn sheets off my legs, then stride to the front door, ready to go full Clint-Eastwood-get-off-my-lawn on whoever’s throwing a party in the parking lot of my Extended Stay hotel.
“Surprise!” shout the Saints, the instant the door opens. I shriek, and they shriek back.
“What’s wrong?” Kenny yells. He holds a giant boom box above his head, the source of the sonic assault.
Ripper elbows him from behind a fistful of helium balloons. “Bro, turn off the music!”
The music cuts out. “Whoa,” Hannah says, taking me in. All three of the Saints’ eyes are wide. “You don’t look so hot.” I take a step back and shake out my T-shirt, as if that will air out two days of moping. “What are you guys doing here?”
Kenny’s long blond hair is held back by a sunny yellow headband I’m pretty sure I saw onGossip Girl. “We’re doing theSay Anythinggrand gesture.” He lifts the boom box back above his head, as if I’ve missed it. “You know, playing a song outside your window to say we love you. You grand-gestured us, now we’re grand-gesturing you.”
I shake my head. “And you chose your own song? A song about depression?” “Dude, I mean this with love,” Ripper says, “but you look like a public service announcement for depression.” “I’m an unemployed man living in an Extended Stay hotel. Iamdepressed.” “We just heard.” Hannah steps over the threshold. “Which is why we came to congratulate you.” “Congratulate?” As the Saints filter past me, I squint at Ripper’s balloons. “Do those say ‘Celebrate Good Times’?”
“Ta-da!” Hannah sets a pastry box on my tiny dining table and pulls off the top. Inside is a beautiful cream-colored cake, with the wordsCongrats on Getting Fired!in blue icing.
I purposely didn’t tell the Saints the news because I didn’t want to burden them or make them think my getting fired was their fault. “How’d you hear?”
“Roger called this morning,” Hannah says. “Told us the album release is back on but we have a new manager named Patrick.”
“Patrick,” Kenny says with disgust. “Can you imagine?”
“I actually know Pat,” I say, “and he’s a decent—”
“Shut up, Suit,” Ripper interrupts. “We’re doing a thing.”
“So we came immediately.” Hannah glances around. “I mean, we stopped for the balloons and cake and everything, but basically immediately.”
Kenny sets down his boom box and claps me on the shoulder. “It’s a wonderful day in a man’s life when he finally sheds his corporate shackles.”
“I guess we can’t call you Suit anymore, Suit.” Ripper drops onto my couch and kicks his feet up on my coffee table, immediately at home. Hannah sticks her hands in her pockets and looks around. “So this is where you’ve been living?”
I try to shrug away the embarrassment. “Sure is.” Granted, the Extended Stay hotel is not the most glamorous location in Los Angeles, but Manifest had a strict travel budget. The entire suite is pelican-themed, which the website called “California beachchic,” in a clear case of consumer fraud. Pelican-shaped ceramic lamps rest on the side tables (one now cracked thanks to Roger), and framed prints of pelicans soaring above the Santa Monica pier hang on the walls. Hannah’s eyes track over it all, then land on me—specifically, on the shirt-and-sweatpants combo I’ve been wearing for two days straight. To say this whole scene is not the look I’d hoped to present to the woman whose face is starring in my daydreams is a devastating understatement.
