Page 31 of Cut Off
I’m in my Jeep at eight forty-five in the morning, heading toward a house I officially lived in for four days before staying with my sister, which is wild. My toothbrush is sitting on a marble vanity in a guest bathroom that’s bigger than my old kitchen.
The sky is doing that pale, scrubbed-clean thing it does in winter even though it’s spring. I rehearse my mantras out loud, because that’s who I am now, apparently.
“This is professional. This is a business arrangement. Jonah Holt is a client.” A client who happens to be devastatingly attractive but is also off-limits and not my type. Who’s also not into me, as he indicated by laughing in my face. “I’m here for Eli and only Eli.”
I’m rounding the curve onto Pinecrest when my phone explodes through the car speakers, and the name Mel Cho lights up the dashboard.
Mel and I worked together at W2Beaver, back when she was a producer and already destined for bigger things. She left for Seattle two years ago, and the last time we talked was a Christmas card with a photo of her in front of the Space Needle. In other words, Mel doesn’t call to chitchat. Mel calls because Mel wants something.
I tap accept.
“Lane.” Her voice fills the car, all confidence. “Tell me you haven’t already taken another job.”
“Good morning to you too, Cho.”
“Yes, fine, hi, how are you, you look great, I’m sure. Now answer the question.”
I laugh. “I haven’t taken another job. Technically.”
“Technically?”
“Define job.”
“Zoe.”
I drum my fingers on the steering wheel. The road blurs past—pine trees, mailboxes, that one weird mid-century house with the giant ceramic frog out front is coming up, just around the corner. “I’m nannying while I build out my podcast.”
“Mm-hmm.” Mel tsk-tsks. “Listen. KISL just lost Brennan to maternity leave, and she’s not coming back. They want someone in the EP chair on the morning block by mid-April. I told my GM about how you pulled together that volunteer firefighter piece in a single afternoon when the actual reporter no-showed. He wants to talk to you.”
I don’t say anything. I can’t. My foot is still on the gas, my hands are still on the wheel, but my brain has lifted out of my body and is hovering somewhere over Seattle, looking down at a corner office I’ve wanted since I was twenty-two years old.
“Zoe? Did you die? Tell me you didn’t die. I didn’t have time to find another candidate.”
“I’m here.” I croak. “Mel,that’s the morning block.”
“Yep.”
“That’s a real budget.”
“Yep.”
“That’s national affiliate—”
“Three million viewers a quarter, Lane, I know, I work here. Do you want it or do you want to pack sack lunches?”
I pass the frog house.
“I need to think about it,” I hear myself say. “This is a sensitive situation. Kid and dad just reunited.”
“I know the story, Zoe. All of Earth knows the story. It’s sad, but there are loads of amazing nannies.”
I don’t answer, and Mel sighs the sigh of a woman who’s heard every excuse in the book. “Seventy-two hours, until Saturday. That’s what I can give you. After that, I have to move to candidate two, and candidate two is Jenna Park, who is a hack but a very fast hack.”
“Seventy-two hours.”
“Don’t make me regret this, Lane. I’m sticking my neck out.”
“I know. Thank you. Really.”
