These damn interviewers don't know when to quit."Like I said, I'm too busy. There's no such thing as downtime in my life. Every extra second is spent working on my skills and honing my talent. There's no rest for the wicked, or the famous. And I'm both."
She twitters on about how everyone's loved someone in their lives, blah blah romance is a hot commodity, blah blah you should consider taking some time off, blah blah plenty of women in Nocturna Beach who'd love to get to know me, and I do my best to ignore her, hoping my noncommittal answers will turn her off the trail, but she's not having it, not taking hints, whatever you want to call it.
And then, all hell breaks loose.
The door to the recording booth springs open, and in marches Denali, followed closely by a big, burly man who I'dexpectto be doing a better job of keeping her contained. Instead, she'sdragginghim along behind her as she storms over to the girl's mic and yanks the cord out of the back, cutting the sound to it. She does the same with mine next, and then puts her hand on the desk and scowls at the hostess.
"Interview's over," my fiery assistant snaps, her eyes hard as she sizes the other woman up. "You've veered off the approved topics for ten minutes, and Kai has been more than accommodating to your blatant disregard for what we sent you and what was agreed upon in the contract." She snaps her fingers in my direction and I stand with a grin, watching her work her magic. "We're done here. And I daresay the company will bethrilledto hear of the underhanded tactics you've employed here today. I wouldn't expect any of their other talents to agree to an interview on your show again, if this is how you comport yourselves."
She doesn't wait for an answer; instead, Denali just grabs my hand and drags me from the booth, daring anyone to stop us with her body language alone. I sort of wish I could see her face right now, because I'll just bet it's intimidating as fuck.
Letting her lead me out of the studio and to the car is easy enough. Sure enough, as if she'd willed him to be there early, Roger is waiting at the curb, and she opens the door and practically shoves me in before storming around the car and getting in on her side. The door slams. Her arms cross over her chest, and she scowls at the back of the passenger headrest as Roger waits for her direction.
Which she's not giving, because she's so mad she's practically fuming.
I pick up the tablet off her lap and open the schedule, skimming it to see where we're scheduled next.
Lunch.And sure enough, there's a big enough gap for us to drop into the new restaurant she mentioned she wanted to try last week. Not the one the company wants me to endorse.
"Well, Roger, it looks like we're going to Rockaway Heights," I say with a grin, flipping through the schedule for the rest of the day. "Lunchtime."
"Rockaway Heights? That's not where theCutleryis," she mumbles, staring at me in confusion.
"No, it's where that place you wanted to try is," I say simply, closing the conversation just like that. "Rockaway Heights, Roger."
He puts the car in drive and grins at me in the rear view mirror. "Rockaway Heights it is, sir. Buckle up, and we'll get going."
I don't miss the tiny grin that Denali makes as she looks out the window and tries to hide it.
chapter thirteen
Denali
"Well,this isn't what I expected when they saidnew and fresh."
Kai and I are shoulder to shoulder in a restaurant that follows the spirit of the term, but not the definition. Loosely, at that, too. The walls are painted in spatter and splotches, like someone sneezed the paint all over a white canvas. The floors are concrete, and they're an unattractive brown shade, though how they managed that, I'll never know. The ceiling is vaulted, which would be nice, if it wasn't in three shades of clashing colors that didn't compliment each other atall.And worst of all, the barstools don't have backs, the chairs don't either, and the tables are concave around the sides to make it impossible to lean against them.
"What the hellisthis place?" I ask slowly, turning in a circle to really drink it all in. And I'm not the only one, either. Everywhere I look, people appear to be just as confused as I am by the design of the restaurant—if you want to call it that. "It looks like someone chewed up a whole restaurant, puked it back up, and then threw some paint on the walls and called it art."
"Ah, yeah," Kai agrees slowly, sliding behind me in an attempt to hide. "I think we should go. I don't know if my imagewould ever recover from eating here and endorsing this travesty of a design failure."
I have to bite back a little laughter at that. "Well, we're already here. We might as well try the food."
That's a mistake. I know it the second I see the cook behind the counter throw a slab of meat on the grill and add literally zero seasoning. The other cook is dicing up vegetables, and like, there's no rhyme or reason to it. Just two cleavers, a mishmash of technique, and a whole lotta swearing, which makes me wonder if he learned how to dual wield those from some streamer's vlog or something.
We find a table easily, only because smart people would rather stand and eat whatever they've ordered instead of attempting to sit at one of these strange and uncomfortable things. I regret it when I go to lean over the table and my elbows hit nothing.
Kai laughs at me, and dammit, I want to be mad, but I can't be. I laugh, too, putting my head in my hands as we both soak in the hilarity of our situation.
Roger refused to join us. He's probably better off for it, honestly.
Our food takes awhile, probably because the cooks are as skilled at time management as they are at chopping vegetables, and while we wait, Kai turns his curiosity on me. That, and that megawatt smile he reserves for interviews and meeting new people.
"So, you wanna explain to me why we left the podcast interview like we did,kera?"
He's fishing for details I don't want to give. That would require me to admit that I let myself get distracted in the sound booth while he was working, unattended, in the next room. Why I let the man who'd joined me distract me when I was supposed to be watching the interview go down?—
"They were told to explicitly stick to the questions approved. They were given a list of things tonotask about it, and they took that list and waited until nobody was looking, and used it as a guidebook on whatnotto do. They broke contract," I say, and sure, all those excuses are valid and true, but it's not the only reason.
