“I’ll kick off lead-up promos now. We’ll give you Friday off to air the teaser clip during your usual Du Jour time, which buys you a day, and then air the special Friday night.”
“Uh-huh. And?”
“You’ll have your merry Cape Cod weekend—don’t forget to wear a life jacket if you go on a boat, though, insurance will have a field day with us if you don’t—then fly back Sunday in time for work that week.”
“You’ve thought this through,” I said, crossing my arms.
Samantha beamed. “Don’t I always?”
“I knew your green glasses were a bad omen.”
Samantha tossed me the yellow legal pad. “See? Omens! You’re already thinking bigger.”
I swallowed, slightly bolstered. “One more idea, now that I’m starting to build a brand.” I punched the last word with air-quotes. “What do you think about maybe working through some of the projects I’d been putting together before Soulmail?”
She cocked her head. “Remind me?”
“I have plenty of ideas, but the one on addiction...” Itrailed off when I took in her expression. “What is it?”
“Tough subject,” she said. Matter-of-fact. “We’ve moved past awareness, we’ve worked on destigmatizing, and we know that people can recover. That one on opioids on the Cape has been done, like the one on meth in Montana. How’re you going to add to that in an expert way?”
It took me a second to recognize what I was feeling. Defensiveness. Mostly because after two years of trying to find the right angle, I knew she wasn’t wrong. I’d love to focus on rebuilding families who had been impacted by addiction so kids like me didn’t have to bend over backward to repair their parents, sure. But the idea of dragging Sabrina—who was powerless to speak for herself—through public mud felt borderline exploitative.
Before I could answer, Samantha tapped her chin. “Is there a Soulmail angle?”
“Maybe? I’m sure there is. We already couldn’t help who we love before Soulmail. But addiction...” I hesitated. I wasn’t ready to share anything about Sabrina. “It’s important to me.”
“It is to almost everyone, I’ve learned.” She tipped her head back. “Tell you what. Hone the precise angle you want. Workshop pitches on Soulmail and addiction. And then once you nail that executive producer cred, you’ll be able to convince loads of higher-ups for funding.”
“The EP cred.” Heat clenched my scalp. “Right.”
Nineteen
I lay on a yoga mat in my new apartment, my muscles screaming. A thin layer of sweat clung to my face, my chest, the small of my back. I was out of Pilates practice.
A buzz bleated into the space. I sat up, twisting the bio-tracker ring I wore around my middle finger, then frowned at the iPad, which was at 2 percent battery. I navigated to Settings, but the sound buzzed again. “The doorbell, you dork,” I said into the space. They were the first words I’d spoken all day. I wasn’t used to living alone.
I pressed the intercom button.
“I come bearing gifts,” a warm voice announced.
Caleb. I released the lock, then threw on a long-sleeved T-shirt over my workout clothes. As fast as I could, I closed the swath of open research notebooks and corralled them into a pile on the kitchen island.
At the door, I winced as I caught a glimpse of my hair in the mirror fixed to the wall.
“Warning,” I said when I opened the door. “This apartment is not ready for human consumption.” Neither was my face, but this was Caleb.
He stepped inside. “It can’t be as bad as your old bedroom.” He rounded the hallway and laughed. “Oh.”
It was sunny and high-ceilinged, the same way many New York apartments were. “It’s atrocious,” I said, stacking a pottedplant on a tower of moving boxes to punctuate my point. “But I promise it’s clean. Just messy.”
Caleb toed a box overflowing with kitchenware aside. “It’s refreshing. You’re human. My ex-girlfriend would have had all this catalogued, unpacked, and sorted out before allowing anyone in.”
I digested this information. I felt irrationally stabby at the wordgirlfriend, a huge part of his life I’d known nothing about, and also less-than at the thought of someone so capable. “I’ve been busy,” I settled on. “And, ex? How fresh?”
“Couple months.”
“I’m... sorry?”
