I can feel my cheeks flush, even as I keep my breathing even and my shoulders back.
“So…what do you think?” Dash asks, staring at me.
I want to slap his face for suggesting our film feature a dove. Instead I ask, “Do you have any story yet?”
“That’s your job.”
“Yes—it is.” I turn away from Dash, glancing from Bryan to Meredith to Carrie. “We’ll get working on a story arc if that’s what you think should be our focus right now.”
“Do you have a better idea?” he asks rudely.
My throat tightens: that stinging feeling right before you cry. My face is so hot, I think I might be steaming. “No, that sounds just fine. We’ll go get started.”
I start to roll my chair away from our shared desk space, and Dash stops me with a hand on the chair’s arm. “Let’s let the others start—” his gaze roves over them— “while I go over all the boring stuff with you.”
He says it like it’s something awful. My cheeks throb with heat, and for a too-long second, my eyes sting, too.
Then I tell myself to put my big-girl panties on. I’m an officer in my sorority, damnit. When my dad and Manda divorced last year, following us finding out she’d been cheating on him with the entire city of Atlanta, I called her a whore and told her if I saw her face again, I’d slap it. I’m not Ammy anymore. I’m an adult, by God, and if Dash thinks he can treat me like a child, he’s got another thing coming.
He casts his eyes down to his pad, where he fills in some of the bird’s feathers.
I don’t say a word, just sit there with my lips pressed tightly together, then trying to look more neutral so none of the others notice our weird tension.
I struggle to behave normally over the next hour, listening to Dash go over protocol and details. Every time he shifts, it’s as if he’s pulling on a string to something anchored deep inside me. I start sweating. I can’t keep my eyes from roving all the contours of his body. He’s filled out a lot. His body is a man’s now, forearms hair-dusted, his hands wider and thicker, nicked with small scars. I notice a scar on one temple.
Even his voice is different, I think, as I listen to him talk in boring work terms. Like me, I guess, he sounds less Southern. More confident. Like he’s used to being in charge.
Despite everything, I find myself a little lulled by his low, familiar voice, even as I keep my posture rigid and my face blank.
So I’m surprised when he stops speaking, looks down at a phone he’s cupping in one hand, and stands up.
“Did you get all that?” he asks me, in a way that makes me think he thinks I didn’t.
“Yes, of course.”
“Good.” He casts his gaze around the room. “I have a meeting for another project, folks. Adam and Ashley, if you could work on prototyping doves and other pre-production stuff.”
“Yessir,” Adam says.
“You writers do your thing,” Dash says, lifting an eyebrow in the direction of Carrie, Meredith, and Bryan.
“Sure thing, boss,” Bryan says.
I’m not sure what I’m expecting, but it’s not Dash striding to the door and opening it without a glance my way. “I’ll see you all tomorrow,” he says flatly.
The door shuts with a sharp click.
All the air has left my lungs. I can’t move. Belatedly, I clutch my iPhone, thinking of hurling it at the door. In the end, of course, I pull myself together. I sit there for a tiny moment, dying inside, until I’m calm enough to roll my chair across the room.
Seven
Dash
“Shot of Jameson.”
“All-righty…”
The pig-tailed blonde turns to pour my whiskey, and I try to let my breath out.
“Here ya go.”
I slam it back while she watches from beneath her eyelashes. A small smile plays along her lips.
“You need another one?”
“Please.”
She’s turned her narrow back to me again, and I decide to make it easy on her. “One more and an Irish Car Bomb.”
She slides both drinks over the pocked wood bar counter, and I nod. “Thanks.”
I down the Jameson, drop the car bomb shot into the glass of stout, and slide off the bar stool, palming the drink. A quick scan of The Wasted Quarter Horse reveals nothing but strangers’ faces.
Good.
The Quarter Horse is in an old warehouse. The room you walk into is a little on the narrow side—booths on the left, bar on the right—but if you head toward the back wall and hang a left, it opens up into a larger pool room.
I let my gaze caress that big wall as I head toward the pool room. It’s a spray of color, sporting a whole mess of warring faeries. Why the fuck a bar called The Wasted Quarter Horse would want a mural of fighting faeries, I don’t fucking know, but when I got the commission two years ago, I didn’t ask.
“Hey, Dash!” My head turns as I step into the wider pool room. It’s Poppy, a wispy, red-haired girl who’s not much over 21 and always over-friendly when I’m here for Trivia Tuesdays. “It’s not Tuesday night,” she calls over a full tray. I take in her dimpled smile and try to return it.
“Got here a little early.”
She winks, and I find an empty booth to drain my drink.
I live in Burbank, but since Disney acquired Imagine last year, I’ve been in Nashville enough to have a company-paid penthouse at Birchwood Towers down the block. When I fly in, I’m here Sunday through Wednesday, so a couple of us always hit up Trivia Tuesdays. Winning team gets free tabs, and we usually win.
An aproned guy I recognize stops by the table, offering a menu, but I shake my head. He takes my glass.
“Another drink?”
“Pint of Guinness.”
“No prob.”
I watch the flat-screen on the wall till he returns. Then I pull back half of the drink. I can feel my knotted shoulders deflate, feel my eyelids tug a little in that good, relaxing way. I give a little laugh and sink my fingers into my hair.
Fuuck.
I take another long swallow and laugh.
Made it to the Quarter Horse—still breathing, so that’s something.
I finish the drink while my thoughts drift around like dust motes in a sunny window: real, but barely. None of this feels real yet. That’s a good thing, I think, as I tabulate my bill and leave some cash under my empty glass.
With a brief glance around the Horse—for what? Amelia?—I head toward the door. It’s hot as fuck on Broadway, all that thick-ass, sticky Southern air. I never miss this shit in Burbank, I think, as I amble toward the river.
My car’s still at the Horse, but I can’t drive now, on account of my usual teetotaler status. Since I never drink, it goes right to my head, and that’s a good thing; I don’t drink unless I want it that way.
Distantly, I know I’m going to have a headache by tonight, but I don’t give a fuck. I almost want it. Homage, I think with a miserable smile.
I cut down Ryman Alley, listening to country music drifting through the doors somewhere. Sounds like a Rascal Flatts cover.