Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 96284 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96284 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Jake and I nodded and jotted it down in our phones. Third and final season—we were done. Well, we would be once we’d suffered through another photo shoot. Our pretty faces would be everywhere.
“I need an answer about the talk show offer too,” Seth reminded us.
“We’re not doing a fucking talk show,” Jake said.
“Seriously,” I agreed. I didn’t care how lucrative it was. We weren’t interested.
Haley snorted a laugh. “There’s your answer.”
We appreciated Seth’s business brain, but Jake and I were firm on how we wanted to make money. We weren’t TV hosts or presenters. We didn’t wanna interview people in front of a live audience day in and day out. We wanted to be out there.
“All right.” Seth conceded. “Other than the photo shoot and Off Topic, what do you have next week? We had something on Monday, didn’t we, Jake?”
Jake and I shared a glance, and he nodded for me to answer.
“We gotta sit down with the film crew and set travel dates,” I replied. “Tuesday, if you’re not available on Monday.”
Jake nodded. “Seth and I are meeting with Ortiz. It’s gonna be a full day.”
Oh, right. They were gonna go through footage from Afghanistan and Iraq. We needed to cover ten minutes worth of conflict zones from the Middle East, preferably from around 2004, give or take, but it was gonna take hours to select the right events. Then we’d get our lawyer involved for securing the rights.
“In that case, I can start calling the people we’re interviewing to set dates,” I said. That would be a good Monday’s work.
Jake frowned but didn’t say anything, and then Haley jumped into footage she needed from us. The food truck recommendations were a continued crowd-pleaser on Instagram, and we were happy to deliver. As I’d learned yesterday, our followers had also enjoyed our new weekly interview on Off Topic, and the subsequent pictures we posted to promote that episode, and Haley requested more live takes, glimpses, that she could share all over.
It was gonna be a busy week, and yet, it was another calm before the storm. Once filming began, the majority of our other responsibilities were left in the dust.
After the meeting, Jake asked me to help him grab something from his house, so we excused ourselves and made our way out onto the street.
Another envy, I couldn’t lie. While I was stuck in a condo in Bel Air, Jake had bought a house four fucking doors down from our office. They were almost identical, with the exception that he had four bedrooms instead of three—and no pool. Which he didn’t need when we already had one, and frankly, he loved the extra space for his gardening. He’d built his kids a sandbox and installed a swing set.
For the record, a sweaty, shirtless Jake working a power drill and tools as he put together a playground for his children?
My fucking God. I had issues.
“I thought we agreed you wouldn’t bring work home with you,” I teased.
He chuckled and retrieved his keys. “I haven’t. I just wanted a minute alone—and I figured, I might as well return the Xbox.”
Eh. We hardly used it anymore.
“Well. You have me all to yourself.”
He smirked and side-eyed me.
If he could just stop being so motherfucking sexy, this would be much easier for me.
Unfortunately, he got serious as he unlocked the door and let me in. “It’s about New York,” he said, almost stumbling over one of Colin’s toy trucks. I loved that about Jake’s house. You could see kids lived here. “Are you sure it’s a good idea you lead that project?”
I felt my forehead wrinkle, and I followed him to the kitchen. “Uh, what else would I do?”
He grabbed two bottles of water from the fridge and handed me one. “I don’t know, the other four freakin’ cities we’re goin’ to?”
He’d fucking lost me. What was he talking about? We were interviewing the same kinds of people in each one—Philly, New York, San Diego, Chicago, and Boston. Paramedics, doctors, cops, firefighters, soldiers, and several family members of first responders too. What did it matter if…
Oh.
Because in New York, focus would automatically land on 9/11.
I rubbed my forehead.
Jake knew I got where he was going with this, and his gaze softened a bit. “It’s gonna be a lot of footage of when the towers came down. A lot of personal anecdotes and emotions from that day.”
I nodded once and leaned back against the kitchen island. He was right, of course, and it wasn’t like it’d gone unnoticed when we’d originally decided the cities. But I’d become good at compartmentalizing that particular time of my life. I reckoned most New Yorkers had done that. We sorta had to, because it’d been a day of complete mayhem, and then the grief that had followed…
I’d been fourteen years old, but some memories were as vivid as when Aunt Elsie had dragged me away from the news that day. I could still hear my uncle shout for her to turn off the damn TV. I could hear my cousins raging. Cullen, Angus, Greer, Ben, Kyle—my brother Francis… My sister sobbing. The phone ringing off the fucking hook.