“There are definitely sides, wolf scout.” I motion to Quinn and myself. “We’re in charge of protecting your private lives. And then Jack is in charge of protecting your public lives.”
Still, we have to align at the end of the day and find common ground together. And almost everyone likes Jack Highland. He’s hard to hate. That used to make me a little bit wary of him, but I have no real beef with Jack. He’s the youngest executive producer onWe Are Calloway,and he has an enormous amount of contact with security.
He has to. Production and security are intertwined on filming days. These meetings set up most of the prep work.
Someone knocks on the locked entrance downstairs. I stand and peer over the balcony railing.Speaking of Jack…“Go meet him first, Quinn.”
He bites into his bagel and then jogs down the twisting iron stairs.
Maximoff has pushed aside his food and tea. He somehow sits like a board on a slouchy red beanbag, and he cracks his knuckles.
Jane shifts her bag of peas, but I see how uptight she sits too.
“What’s wrong?” I ask them. Staying standing, I lean on the silver wall with a lightning bolt decal.
“It’s Sulli’s first production meeting,” Maximoff tells me.
“It needs to go well,” Jane adds.
Right.
Their cousin has never been onWe Are Calloway. By joining the docuseries, Sulli is opening herself up to new criticism from the public.
But Maximoff and Jane have been on the show since they were little kids. Before I even met him, I watched Maximoff Hale on-screen profess his undying love for Power Rangers and excitedly say,“I hope that if I have a brother or a sister, they’ll like Power Rangers too.”
Public fact: Xander is a Power Ranger every year for Halloween.
Jane abandons her frozen peas to flip open another pastry box. “What do you want, Jack?”
Jack Highland ascends the twisting staircase. He has a quintessential “jock” look: broad, cut muscles visible through his tight black button-down, shoulder span as wide as a linebacker, and the charisma and popularity of a letter-jacket quarterback.
In any teen comedy, my “type” should hate his “type” but real people are more than just “rebel” versus “jock.” Plus, we’re both adults.
What I know about Jack: he wasn’t a football player. He did swim in college. He’s twenty-five, Filipino-American, biracial, and he has short dark brown hair, honey-brown eyes, and he’s a good inch taller than me.
“Give me the blueberry muffin,” he tells Jane, and she passes the baked good before gently sitting back down. Quinn slumps onto his beanbag.
Unwrapping his muffin, Jack turns to me first. “Have you reconsidered my offer?”
Maximoff’s brows knit. “What offer?”
I cross my arms loosely. “Jack wants me on the show.So fucking badly.” I emphasize those words. “How long have you been asking me?”
“Three years.” He bites into the blueberry muffin. “The more you keep turning me down, I’m going to start believing it’s personal.”
“Wait.” Maximoff stands. He hates sitting when other people are standing, I swear. “You wantFarrow, this Farrow”—he points at me—“on the show?”
I give Maximoff a once-over. “How manyFarrowsdo you know?”
Maximoff shoots me a middle finger.
Jack is used to exchanges like these, not fazed. “I’ve always wanted to showcase a bodyguard onWe Are Calloway. Farrow has a good look, there’s a gif of you two…” Using one hand he scrolls on his phone and flashes me the gif first.
We’ve seen that one.
A Tumblr user made a gif from the footage when the court suspended Moffy’s license. In the gif: Maximoff and I push through the courthouse doors, exiting with sunglasses, side-by-side, cameras flashing repeatedly.
We look hot together.
