Chapter 108: Going Up Against A Cooperation? Easie Peasie

The phone call timer read 14:22 and nobody in the room had said anything for the last ten seconds of it.

Adrian replayed it, in order.

He’d promised to make Jenna the biggest idol in the world. Then to buy the building. Then, near the end, to take the building apart.

In hindsight, the sequence had escalated.

Rose was staring at him. Mouth slightly open, one hand frozen over her water glass, the face of someone who’d watched a calm man lift a car.

"Wow," she said.

Too far?

He thought to himself, then looked at the call timer.

14:23.

A whole minute had passed and Jenna hadn’t even spoken.

Maybe it was a bit too far.

Jenna hadn’t made a sound since burn it down.

Jenna not talking was the most alarming thing she could do. It meant she was either impressed or drafting a statement.

He wasn’t taking it back.

Somewhere under the volume was something quieter and colder, and it wasn’t going anywhere. It sat there whenever he remembered the man’s office and the way Jenna had said he just wanted to talk after hours.

No joke, no deadpan.

That was the part that stuck.

"Adrian."

Jenna sounded like someone reading from a card.

"For the record, you’ve been monologuing for four minutes without a breath. I timed it."

"Four minutes?"

"Four minutes and twelve seconds."

He looked at the phone again.

Rose’s mouth twitched.

"You’re keeping track?"

"I was worried you’d pass out."

"I’m calm."

"You’re loud," Jenna said.

"Calm and loud. Different things."

Rose slid a few inches closer on the couch and set a hand on his forearm. Light, steady, the way you’d hold a pot lid down. He noticed it only because it stopped his knee from bouncing.

"Sorry. It’s not you." He rubbed his face. "It’s the building."

Jenna let out a breath that might have been a laugh.

"The building?"

"The people in it."

"Ah."

There was a pause.

He knew what she was thinking.

Or, at least, he knew what he was thinking.

"They put a price on you before they’d learned your name." His voice dropped, the way it did when he meant it. "I’m not ignoring that."

Jenna didn’t answer immediately.

Rose’s hand remained on his arm.

The room had gone quiet again, but this time it wasn’t awkward. It was the kind of quiet that came when nobody wanted to step on the next sentence.

Then Rose spoke.

"Adrian." Rose said it gently, which made it worse. "They own half the city."

Jenna gave a humorless little laugh.

"VJ has a building with more floors than I can count and a legal team with its own legal team," Jenna said. "We have a couch and a Corolla."

Adrian looked toward the window.

The Corolla was parked outside.

It suddenly seemed very unimpressive.

Rose tilted her head.

"You hear yourself? Take the building apart." That’s a fairy tale.

"It’s not a fairy tale."

He leaned back.

"That’s pretty much been my life for a while now."

Neither of them answered.

That was probably because there wasn’t much to say to it.

Adrian wasn’t sure what his life had technically become either. A few months ago, he’d been worried about classes, rent, Maya, and whether he’d have enough money to make it through the month without asking his parents for help.

Now he was sitting on a couch talking about competing with one of the biggest entertainment companies in the city.

Normal progression.

"And Rose got an email from the same company, offering two hundred grand for a painting. The same man’s name is on her meeting request."

Jenna’s eyes shifted toward Rose.

Rose’s expression had changed.

Not much.

Just enough.

"So the question isn’t whether he’s done it before. The question is how many other girls have answered his emails."

Rose’s fingers tightened on his arm.

She didn’t say anything, which was how she said she’d already thought of it.

"I’m not saying it was a trap. I’m saying I’d like to know why a company that treats Jenna like inventory wanted to pay you more than I’ve made all year."

Rose looked at him.

Then Jenna.

The silence that followed felt different.

"Who showed them your painting?" Adrian asked.

Rose was quiet.

"Daniel posted it. Two weeks before they emailed."

"Who’s Daniel?" Jenna asked.

"My ex."

"Oh good," Jenna said. "Another man."

Adrian looked down at the phone.

That was one way to summarize the evening.

He stood because sitting was making it worse.

The phone sat on the coffee table, speaker up.

He crossed to the kitchen and put his back to the fridge.

The water was cold enough to sting his teeth.

He drank half.

Whatever he’d been about to say next, the cold knocked the edges off it.

Jenna was explaining something from the table.

He caught his own name twice and "delusional" once.

He decided not to ask for the context.

"Do you actually think Daniel’s in this?" Rose asked.

Adrian twisted the cap back onto the bottle.

"I think he posted it and someone saw it." He looked toward the living room. "I’m not saying he planned it. I’m saying a man who likes leverage might meet a man who sells it."

Rose didn’t answer.

She was staring at the floor now.

Adrian knew that look.

Not panic.

Calculation.

The kind that happened when someone was rearranging old memories because a new piece had just been dropped into the middle of them.

He pushed away from the fridge.

"We’re not letting it go."

"Adrian," Rose said, a small warning in it.

"I’m not going to fight them."

He set the bottle on the counter.

"I’m going to build a door next to theirs."

Rose looked at him.

Jenna went quiet.

He’d bought Dina a week.

A week was a door that closed.

Jenna deserved a building.

"Even if you’re right," Jenna said, "they’ve got contracts, cameras, an audience. We’d be a startup with a rented stage."

"Maybe."

"That’s not a plan."

"No."

Adrian looked around the room.

The couch.

The coffee table.

The phone.

Rose.

Jenna’s voice coming through the speaker.

None of it looked like the beginning of a company.

That was probably why it was easier to think about.

"I’m not being reckless."

"You’re arguing very hard," Rose said.

That was his father’s line, almost word for word.

If you were reckless, you’d work harder to convince me you weren’t.

He stopped arguing.

He reached for his phone instead.

There were numbers.

There were always numbers.

He pulled up his balance.

The number was bigger than the last time he’d looked and smaller than the building.

"I have enough to start."

Rose raised an eyebrow.

"You paid a booking fee," Rose said. "That’s not capital. That’s a coffee."

"An expensive coffee."

"Still coffee."

Jenna laughed softly from the phone.

"He’s counted change out loud since we were fifteen," Jenna said. "If he says he can do it, he’s counted it twice."

Rose glanced at Adrian.

"You believe him?"

"I’ve watched him price water. Yes."

Adrian looked at the bottle sitting on the counter.

He had, in fact, compared the price per bottle before.

There was no reason to feel attacked by that.

Rose studied him for a moment, the way she studied a seam before she bought it.

Whatever she found in his face, she didn’t argue with.

Instead, Jenna spoke again.

"What could we do that rivals VJ?"

Adrian went back to the couch, because that question deserved sitting down.

VJ’s real advantage wasn’t talent.

It was distribution.

Cameras, a stage, a place to be seen.

Yuki Kamado had been four jobs at once.

A voice, a face, a camera, and a stage.

Take away the building and what’s left?

A camera.

A microphone.

A light.

A stage that fit in a living room.

Under two thousand dollars.

He’d spent more on a mattress.

"Streaming," he said.

Rose turned toward him.

"Streaming."

She said it slowly, trying the word.

"A channel. Her voice, my art on the screen. No contract."

"No contract," he agreed.

Jenna was quiet for a second.

"That doesn’t sound terrible," Jenna said. "Coming from you."

"I’ll take that as the compliment it wasn’t."

Jenna’s chuckled lightly, which eased the tension in his shoulders a bit. Sti, he knew the VJ problem was still sitting there. So was Daniel.

Neither had disappeared, at least not until they’d at least found a possible business model.

Rustle

Hmm? Adrian’s eyes widened and followed the sound to sight Rose. She’d moved closer.

Her hand slid from his forearm to his thigh, and her lips were near his ear.

He caught the quick flick of her eyes toward the phone, and everything clicked.

"Babe? What’re you doing?"

"You look sexy when you’re angry," she murmured.

"I look so sexy? What-"

It hit him right then. Was this Devoted lover in action.

Rose’s closeness against his slightly hardened length made it increasingly difficult to remember that Jenna was still on the call.

Fuck. It definitely was.

Then Jenna spoke again.

"I think you might be onto something," Jenna said.

Adrian’s attention shifted back to the phone.

"Hold on. Let’s switch to a video chat. I want to see Rose’s face when I walk her through the budget."

He opened his mouth to decline.

"Alright," Rose said, with a painfully calm voice.

Her eyes never left his.

Her hand didn’t move.

"Switch it, babe."