“You’re late,” Vivian said like she was barely interested in being disappointed.
“Sorry, yeah.” Bryn shifted the bag on her shoulder. Why the hell had she brought her mother’s ancient laptop? Oh, right. Because the tablet she used for recording was in her damn tented house. “I, uh, it won’t happen again.” She couldn’t possibly explain the termites. Couldn’t stand to have Vivian associate her with vermin. Were termites vermin?
“It won’t,” Vivian agreed with complete confidence.
Iris mercifully broke the silence that bloomed between them like a mushroom cloud of awkwardness. “I can take that.” She gestured for Bryn to give her the plant that now looked so incredibly stupid in Vivian’s place.
Deciding it was probably weirder to insist on taking the damn thing back, Bryn gave Iris the bright purple violets. She set her bag down on the banquette by the door, leaving the laptop inside. She wouldn’t subject Vivian to the ancient Gateway.
The moment Iris was gone, Bryn half-wished she could go with her. Had it been delusional to think she could rise to Vivian’s level? Vivian with her extensive acting training and years of award-winning narration work. Vivian who definitely didn’t earn extra money by moaninggood girlfor horny strangers on the internet.
Bryn stopped herself. She wasn’t ashamed of the audio erotica she created under a pseudonym. Over the last few years, she’d helped sapphics of all stripes connect to their sexuality. She had hundreds of emails and messages to prove it. She didn’t need a bunch of frames on the wall for validation.
Experience and talent weren’t the same thing. And someone had listened to her audition and decided she was the best person for the job. Probablymanysomeones. She couldn’t let herself get in her head just because Vivian was talented and beautiful and a little terrifying in an excruciatingly sexy way.
“So…how do you want to do this?” Bryn asked, wrestling back control over her nerves. “Like, should we get to know each other a little first? Or we can discuss our takes on Maggie and Jo. I think?—”
“We don’t need to know each other.”
Bryn blinked. “Oh. Cool. Totally. I mean, yeah. Who needs chemistry when you?—”
“This isn’t a date. You don’t need to know me,” Vivian repeated before turning toward the booth. “You just need to sound like you want me.”
Bryn swallowed, but somehow it made her mouth drier.
“Cool,” she said, still sounding unsettlingly similar to a woodwind. “I can do that.”
ChapterFour
The moment Vivianescaped her suddenly cramped booth, she was going to kill Harvey. She wasn’t even going to waste time finding a flight. She was going to get in her damn car and drive north until she landed at his Brooklyn townhouse door, and then she was going to kill him. Slowly. Painfully.
“Sorry,” Bryn said when she banged her elbow into Vivian for the third time in as many minutes.
They hadn’t even started recording yet but Vivian already shuddered to think how she was going to get through the week. Bryn, raven-haired rather than the natural red of her headshot, was a human cyclone. She was all motion and limbs and nervous energy. It was like she’d never stood still in her life. Like she’d never met an object she hadn’t knocked over.
Vivian had finally positioned the microphone between them in a way that made reading from her iPad at the same time possible. Satisfied, she started reading the opening credits. All she’d managed was the title when a squeak pierced her eardrum through her headphones.
She took a deep breath, reached over to her laptop, marked the spot, and recorded again. Another squeak.
“What are you doing?” Vivian asked with as little venom in her tone as she could manage.
Bryn gawked at her, her blue eyes round and startled. “Standing where you told me to?” she replied, as if fearing a trapdoor would open under her feet if she got it wrong.
“What is that noise?” Vivian asked more directly.
“I don’t know?—”
The squeak rang out again. Vivian’s gaze dropped down Bryn’s body to her feet.
“Do that again.”
Bryn threw her hands up in dismay. “Do what? I don’t hear?—”
Squeak.
Vivian pointed at Bryn’s sneakers. “It’s your shoes. Rock forward again.”
“But I barely moved.”
