Tonic (29 page)

Dry and dress. Walk down the stairs with my boots full of bricks. Push the door of my shop open. Brace self for the shitstorm.

My crew was all there, bright and early, faces full of anger, and all of them stood and rushed me, everyone talking at once.

“Are you okay?” Veronica.

“Fuck that fucking bitch.” Penny.

“Tell me we don’t still have to do this, Joel.” Ramona.

Eli and Max huffed and puffed and rattled off insults, and Patrick just stood behind them, arms folded, watching me with the weight his eyes always had. They all kept talking, talking, talking, getting louder as my pulse thumped in my ears, ringing in my head like a bell.

My eyes slammed shut. “
Enough!
”

Silence.

I opened my eyes to find them all still, brows drawn, incensed. My voice was low when I spoke. “I told you, all of you that this was a mistake, but you wanted it. You wanted this. You signed up for it, every one of you, and so did I.”

Penny’s face was on fire. “You can’t fucking expect us to work with her, Joel. I won’t do it. If she threw you away, lied to you, then why would she give a fuck about any of the rest of us? This is bullshit, man.”

“I know it’s bullshit, but what do you want me to do about it? We’ve all signed contracts.”

Her jaw clenched, arms folded, but she didn’t have an answer. Neither did I.

“Trust me, I’m the last person who wants to be here,” I said, scanning their faces. “But we’re in this, and we’re in it together.”

Ramona shifted, popping her hip defiantly. “If we’re all in it together, then we can all get out of it together.”

I shook my head and ran a hand over my beard. “It doesn’t work that way.”

“Why the fuck not?” Eli that time, looking betrayed. They all looked betrayed, and my anger simmered, steamed, boiled.
 

Penny saw it and pressed the button. “Joel, we don’t have to work with
her
. She fucked you up and fucked you over, and now we’re supposed to act like she didn’t? Fuck that shit. It’s her or us.”

Nods and noises of approval. My anger bubbled over, hitting the bottom of my heart with a hiss. “You act like this isn’t hard enough without having every one of you fighting me.” My voice grew lower, louder with every speeding heartbeat. “But I come down here and you’re slinging insults when I need you to have my back.”

Veronica frowned, her red lips dipping, jaw flexing. “But that’s what all this is about. We’ve got your back so hard, we’ll fight for you when you won’t.”

I shook my head, frustrated. They didn’t get it, and I didn’t have the patience to explain it to them. “Then do what I ask. All of you.”

They waited for instruction, and I pointed at the chairs.
 

“Go to fucking work,” I bellowed, startling all of them. “Do your fucking jobs. This isn’t about
you
. It’s not your fight.” I turned for the door. “It’s mine.”

No one followed me. I walked out of the shop to complete silence, aside from the bell on the door, and I turned straight for the door to the building, heading up the stairs to the control room, praying Annika wouldn’t be there.
 

I didn’t see her in the control room, just the faces of some editors who looked as tired and over it as I felt. Laney was at her desk on the phone, and her eyes cut to me when I walked in.

“Let me call you back. Yeah. Okay, bye.” She set her phone down and had the nerve to look at me with pity. “Good morning, Joel.”

“The hell it is.” I moved into the room, stopping about halfway in. “We’ve got a problem.”

“We’ve got several problems.”

I nodded, crossing my arms. “They won’t work with her. They’re talking about staging a coup.”

She sighed.
 

“This can’t go on. I don’t know how you expect any of us to keep going after everything that’s happened.”

“You’d be surprised. It’ll blow over sooner than you think.”

My eyes narrowed. “Do you know something I don’t?”

She shrugged and spun her chair to face me, looking unfazed. “Just that people are predictable. Everyone needs time, sure. But nothing is irreparable.”

A laugh shot out of me, dry and painful. I shook my head. “You don’t know us very well.”

“You’d like to think that, sure. But you don’t do this for as long as I have without it becoming second nature. We read people. It’s how we produce. It may as well be in the job description.”

I seethed. She stood.

“You knew what you signed up for.”

I scoffed.

“Okay, maybe not exactly what you signed up for, but you knew this wasn’t going to be a picnic. You knew there would be drama, so I’m still trying to figure out why you’re surprised. Annika too, for that matter.”

My jaw clenched, teeth pressing together until it hurt.

“She did exactly what she was supposed to do. The rub was that she got attached, and so did you. And here we are. So, what? Do you need a few more days? I can push it back a little to give you some space, but we can’t just stop filming or we’ll fall behind. And if we fall behind, Hal’s show will air first. And if Hal’s show airs first, we’re all fucked.”

I couldn’t stand it, the loss of control, the loss of my choices, my options. There was no escape, and fury churned in my chest. I dropped my hands, squeezing them into fists by my side. We were at an impasse. I had no way to convince my people to work, and this was all
her
fault. But if I were gone, maybe I’d take the drama with me and the show could still go on. It was my only other option, and as furious as I was, I took it.

“Fine. Then I quit. I never wanted to do this fucking show anyway, and now that you’re going to make a circus out of my life, then it’s over. I’m done.” I spit the words at her, waiting for her to react. To beg me to stay so I could say no again.
 

But she didn’t. In fact, the pity was back. “You can’t quit. I’m sorry, I really am, but you’re under contract, and so is the shop and everyone in it. The network has sunk millions into this show. They’re airing trailers and ads. And they’re not going to shy away for a second from taking you down if you try to fight it.”

“Tell them to come at me,” I hissed through my teeth, an empty promise from a caged bear.

She shook her head. “You’ll lose it all, the shop, everything. They’ll take you down for compensation. I’m sorry, Joel. But this is it.”

Rage. It took every ounce of willpower I had not to scream, to wreck something, to get the adrenaline, the frustration out of my body and into something else. But I didn’t. I felt my blood pressure rise to the point of dimming my vision, the heat of my pulse in my tense neck climbing up my face. I had to get out of there.

So I turned to leave, and there she was, standing in the doorway, pale and beautiful. And I hated her more in that moment than I’ve ever hated anything in my life.

Annika

He was so angry, he seemed to suck all the air from the room into himself. His eyes locked onto mine, full of hate, burning into me. The shock of it sent physical pain through my chest, and he stormed past, nearly pulling me into him with his gravity. His eyes never left mine, and I couldn’t look away, turning my head to follow him until he broke the connection, leaving me powerless. Empty.
 

Laney stood in the middle of the room, looking at me like she’d told me so, and I filled up the emptiness with rage. My lips twisted.
 

“What did you say to him?”

Her jaw flexed, eyes narrowing as she crossed her arms. “Don’t act like I’ve betrayed you, Annika. You’re the one who’s put us all here.”

I ignored the jab. “What’s the matter with him?”

“You.”

I pulled in a long breath and let it out slow, chin down, wishing I could explode her with my mind. “Laney,” I warned.

“He tried to quit. The cast won’t work with you. He wants out, and he can’t get out. So, he’s pissed.”

I was unsurprised at anything she said. “I can’t do my job.” It was a statement, a fact.

“Yeah, conflict of interest, like I said from the beginning.”

“What do you want me to say? That you were right? That this is all my fault? What do you want from me?” My voice broke.

Laney looked tired, resigned. “I don’t want anything from you, unless you’ve got a time machine somewhere you’ve been hiding.”

I looked around the office, feeling out of place, alien. “What am I supposed to do?”

She sighed. “Sit in here and work on next week’s art and history segments. Keep that door shut. Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t leave this room.”

“And tomorrow?”

“I don’t know, Annika. I honestly don’t.” The words were heavy, laden with her frustration. “But today, I’ve got to try to figure out how to calm everybody down, earn their trust back. And I can’t do that with you around.”

I held my chin high, even though I wanted to crumple to the ground and cry, and took my seat as she walked toward the door.

She paused just before walking out, though I didn’t give her the satisfaction of meeting her eyes, focusing instead on my laptop screen.
 

“I’m sorry, Annika.”

I didn’t answer, not even giving her a nod, though she stood there for a long moment waiting. And then she closed the door, leaving me in the quiet room alone. It was
too
quiet. I scrambled for my earbuds in my bag and plugged them into my phone, putting them into my ears with shaking hands, as anger and sadness, pride and pain pumped through me to the aching beat of my heart.

Annika

MORNING CAME IN THE CLAWS of my alarm, and once it was shut down, I stretched in bed, wishing I could just sleep through the next week to wake up with everything behind me.
 

The day before had been bullshit. I’d hidden in the office. Laney sent the entire cast out drinking on a company card in the hopes they’d burn off steam and come back feeling better, and we spent the day working on the schedule, the segments we had, a trailer for the network. Busy work. We were otherwise shut down, and if Joel’s reaction to me had been any indicator, we were a long way off from getting moving.

If I was in the picture, at least.
 

Honestly, Laney should have fired me on the spot, given the fact that I could no longer do my job, but she kept me working and busy while she tried to fix the mess. But she was treading water. If I were gone, everything could get back on track.

I sighed to vent the pressure in my chest, but it didn’t help.

Kaz was cuddled up on the bed next to me, a new development for him. But he’d been so affectionate ever since things fell apart, and I just figured he knew I needed him. It’d been nice — the old bastard hadn’t been so lovey-dovey since he was a kitten and I was eight.

I rolled over to face him, curling around him as I laid a hand on his furry back to pet him. But my hand froze — he felt …
wrong.
Cold. Still.
 

Dead.

I jerked away from him in shock, scooting back in a flurry, but I didn’t realize how close I was to the edge and whooped as I tumbled off the bed and hit the floor with a thump. But I didn’t stop trying to get away, my eyes bugging and heart thumping as I crab walked across the room like a bug.

“Fuck, fuck, shit, fuck,” I muttered in a loop as I blinked at the bundle of fur on the bed.
 

I stood and scrambled out of the room, down the hall, panic rushing through me as I threw open Roxy’s door. She sat up in bed and moved her head like she was looking around, but her eyes seemed like they were closed.

“Huhwha?” she mumbled.

“Roxy,” I hissed. “Fuck. Fuck! I think …” I couldn’t even say it out loud.

“Wassamatter?” Blinking happened and she peered at me through slitted eyes.
 

I tried to swallow, though my mouth was dry as bone, as I tried to catch my breath. “It’s Kaz.”

Her eyes flew open. “Oh, my God.”

“Yeah,” I breathed. “Yeah. Come with me.”

“Okay,” she said as she crawled off her bed, and we hooked arms, walking down the hall together with our eyes on my doorway. I could see him in my bed still, and my heart sped up.

We stopped at the edge of the bed, staring at him. He hadn’t moved. We didn’t speak for minute, both of us just watching him, wondering what the hell we were supposed to do.

“Touch him,” I finally whispered.

“He’s your cat, Annika,” she hissed back.

“Roxy, you have to do it. I can’t do it, you have to, please, you have to do it,” I rambled, and my freakout must have been fully evident, because she let me go and stood up a little straighter, steeling herself.

She took a deep breath and braced her hand on the bed, reaching into the middle to touch him. She flinched when she made contact, squinting as she ran a hand down him and felt his ribs.

After a second, she jerked her hand back and shuddered, hopping as she shook her hand out like she could get rid of the memory of it. “God, Annika, nope. Nope. Not sleeping. Definitely dead.”

My hands flew to my face, covering my mouth and nose as I stared at my cat, my friend since I was a little girl. The fear dissipated, and I sat down on the bed as tears pricked my eyes, falling when I ran a hand over his silky fur. He looked peaceful, like he’d just come to comfort me, fell asleep, and drifted away.
 

Roxy broke the silence, her voice soft. “What should we do with him?”

I sniffled, swiping at my tears. “Maybe we could bury him at Mama and Papa’s. Or find one of those … I don’t know … cremation places?”

“And in the meantime?”

I stood and walked over to my corner to picking up his blanket before moving back to my bed to lay it flat. I picked up Kaz and laid him on top, then wrapped him up in it like a death shroud. We stood there and looked at him for a long time, both of us lost in thought, in memories.

My tears fell, my already broken heart fracturing again and again, just when I thought things couldn’t get worse. Joel crossed my mind as all the hurt piled on, then I thought about work and the mess I’d left there.
 

Work.