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Though it was probably best if he didn’t find that out.
While he had been pining for two and a half years, she’d been trying to move on with her life.
“It’s weird,” he conceded. “Do you really see us as strangers?”
She shrugged. “I can’t think of a word for it.”
Her phone buzzed and she picked it up, leaving him to his spinning thoughts.
“Fuck,” she muttered. Her phone clattered onto the desk. She moved the mouse of her computer to wake it up.
“What happened?” he asked.
“I heard from a friend that Chase is working at this studio across town. Just as I’d suspected. You know, would it have killed him to give notice? What’s with the cut and run? Am I that terrifying that people can’t just be straight with me?”
He rubbed the back of his neck. Sure, she was speaking about someone else’s actions, but those words could have been said about him too.
“And Iknewit too.” Nikki clicked furiously on the computer and sometimes punched a few keys with angry fingers. “My gut doesn’t lie. They’d been trying to woo him since Thanksgiving. And I don’t have proof, but I am fairly certain he oversold his abilities in order to leverage a better position.”
André’s lips pulled up on one side as he listened to her rant.
He’d missed the rants.
More than he realized.
She was so damn cute when she went off. So much passion and hilarity in a tiny punk rock package.
“Yes. Having Sunshine Capone release an album withourname on it has gotten some attention. As it should. Also yes, Ashton fucking James’s surprise drop came from our humble hole… Why did I say humble hole? That’s so gross,” she chastised herself. “That’s not what I meant. Whatever. You can take the girl out of the scene, but you can’t take the scene out of the girl.”
She closed her eyes and growled. When she opened her eyes, they were on André. “I’m not—that wasn’t about porn. I’ve never done porn.”
He rolled his lips inward and nodded once.
She went back to the computer.
“But Chase had nothing to do with either record. Though I’m sure they don’t know that.” She snorted. “They will soon enough. They want him? They can have him. We don’t need Chase to make this place run. I will find a replacement.” She leaned forward, examining something on her computer screen. “Sure, a year ago I would have taken over his duties, no problem. But we’re busier now. Which is awesome because who doesn’t like to be able to pay their bills, right? And I want to do—” Her gaze snapped to André. “The thing.”
The thing she kept thinking about but not saying out loud?
He was starting to put it together. And if it was what he thought it was, he wanted her to do the thing too.
“What did Chase do here?” André asked.
“Mostly tracking and some light mixing for commercials. Like TV spots.”
“Doesn’t Asa know how to do that?” he asked. He had no idea what Asa was doing these days. He might be just as busy as Nikki. “Or maybe he knows someone who does that.”
Nikki stared at him without really seeing him.
She touched her lips with her fingertips which she did when she was having a memory or thinking really hard—one of those useless facts he remembered.
“Nikki.”
They both jerked their heads around to find Johnny leaning casually in the doorway.
“Remember when we talked about you giving away too much information?”
André’s gaze darted to Nikki in time to see her cheeks glow pink.
