Chapter 112: Starting My New Empire

The car’s Bluetooth picked that moment to connect.

Drew’s voice came out of four dashboard speakers at once, bigger and brighter than it had any right to be. "—so technically I didn’t lie about Marianne, I just edited it."

Adrian looked at the dash. He’d told Drew "no speaker" thirty seconds ago, and it had been true then. Beside him, Rose didn’t turn her head. She studied the building across the street with the stillness of a woman turning herself into furniture.

’Great.’ His hand drifted toward the volume knob, then away. Muting a friend mid-confession would only get him asked why.

"Edited how?" he said.

"The timeline."

"Drew."

"Okay. I did go to her place. That part’s real." A breath. "We were hanging out, and then it was more hanging out, and at some point it got, you know. Hands-on."

"You said you weren’t a virgin anymore."

"I said that. Yes. In capitals."

"What actually happened?"

"She, um. Did a thing." Drew coughed. "With her mouth. Which counts. In some countries it counts."

"Which countries?"

"Several. I looked it up." A pause. "Then she asked if I wanted to go the rest of the way, and I said I had to check on something. The something was my courage."

Adrian kept his eyes on the windshield. Out of the corner of his eye, Rose’s shoulders had begun a small, controlled shake. She wasn’t laughing. She was being furniture very hard. He decided the safest place for his eyes was a parked red hatchback two cars down.

"Why give me the fake version?" he asked. "Both were embarrassing. One was true."

"Because you always sound like you know what you’re doing." Drew’s voice went defensive. "You and Jenna, you’re calm, and I’m the guy saying ’it’s like a video game’ and—"

"I’m not calm. I’m quiet. They’re different."

"You have a girlfriend. You walk around like you read the manual."

’There’s no manual.’ There was a floating blue menu, and it had never once told him how to hold someone’s hand. "I improvise."

"Well, I improvised and bailed." A short laugh crackled through four speakers. "So how’d you do it with Rose? Like how’d you know what to do when it got—" He stopped. "Do you just know?"

Adrian opened his mouth and found an honest answer waiting. It had nerves in it, and a hand on his jaw, and a kiss in a convenience store that hadn’t been his idea.

Then he remembered the dashboard. The speakers were still lit. Four of them, all delivering his voice to the passenger seat.

"We’ll talk tomorrow," he said. "At school. Properly."

"Oh." A beat. "Oh. Right. You’re with her."

"Drew—"

"Say no more. I get it. I’ll buy lunch."

"You will." Adrian let it stand. Drew had decided what the pause meant, and correcting him would take longer than the call. "Don’t lie to me about this stuff again. It’s exhausting."

"Yeah. Yeah, okay. Sorry, man."

Not forgiven, exactly. Good enough. The line clicked off, and the dashboard went quiet like a room after a bad toast.

"He’s committed to the bit," Rose said, to the building.

"He has a talent for making a simple thing complicated."

"Mm." She turned. Her cheeks were pink in a way that suggested the furniture had heard everything. "I’m told you walk around like you read the manual."

"I improvise."

"I noticed." She said it plainly, eyes on his, then went back to the window. "Rather well."

He was very glad the car was still in park. His hands needed a minute.

He put it in gear anyway. Drew’s voice kept looping, cracking over ’manual,’ a guy carrying a lie for no reason except wanting to look like someone else. Adrian had done his own share of that. He stopped circling it. His phone buzzed against the cupholder.

Jenna: Alder St café. Twenty minutes. Come decide with me before I lose my nerve.

Practical. Safe. A place to go instead of a feeling to have.

Rose read it upside down. "Alder Street’s by the electronics store."

"You’ve memorized the map?"

"I’m invested." She tucked her feet up on the seat. "Drive, host."

Jenna had taken the corner table and a notebook, with the posture of a general before a campaign. She hadn’t ordered. A list sat open in her handwriting, numbered, underlined twice, the cover ringed with coffee. She’d been planning this longer than twenty minutes.

"Before we spend a cent." She skipped hello. "I’m not your project, Adrian."

"I didn’t say you were."

"You’ve been thinking it since the audition room. ’Poor Jenna, I’ll buy her a career.’" She spun the notebook around. "I want this to be ours. So I pay for something. My money, my choice."

He read the list. Item four had her name beside it. Lights, $180, J.

’She’d hesitated at $542.99.’ He remembered her thumb stopping at her bag. That hadn’t been about the number. It had been about who was holding it.

"Fine," he said as calmly as he could.

"Fine?" She’d braced for a fight. "No argument?"

"I’d be arguing for sport."

"Good." She smoothed the page. "Camera first, obviously. It’s what viewers see."

"Mic first."

Jenna blinked. "You’d put the mic—"

"Mic, lights, then camera. People forgive bad video. They leave for bad audio." He’d spent the red light reading reviews. "The camera’s the easiest place to overspend."

"You researched."

"For four minutes."

"That’s three more than I expected." Something eased around her mouth, the same look she’d worn under the stage lights. She wrote MIC at the top and underlined it harder than anything else.

"You didn’t solve it with a card." Jenna tapped her pen. "I walked in expecting a speech."

"I’d have lost."

"You would have." She grinned. "Good instinct."

Rose, who’d been quietly turning her coffee cup, tapped the table. "Backdrop."

"White," Jenna said. "Clean. Professional."

"A white wall looks like a hostage video."

"It looks like a studio."

"It looks like a studio in a hotel." Rose pulled the notebook over and sketched, fast: a board with a warm wash behind a clear center. "People remember a look. Warm light, one painted section, the rest neutral."

"Cost?" Adrian asked.

"Sixty. Board and paint."

"A backdrop kit is two-twenty and looks like a hotel."

Jenna studied the sketch, then the price. "...Fine. Painted board. If my face looks green, I’m blaming you."

"Your face will look good," Rose said. "That’s the point."

They fought for ten more minutes about stands and cables. By the end the page held a total: mic, $289. Lights, $180, Jenna’s. Camera, $480. Board and paint, $60. Stand and cables, $90. Just over eleven hundred dollars, and under two thousand with room to spare.

"You made a spreadsheet out of a shopping trip," Rose said on the sidewalk, eyeing the folded list in his hand.

"It’s a list."

"It has a total."

"Totals are how you avoid a second trip."

"Mm-hm. You’re enjoying this."

He didn’t answer, because he was. On the walk to the car he ran the rest in his head. The second light could wait until the channel had fifty regular viewers. The better stand could wait for the first sponsor email. The software was free, which was the nicest thing software had ever done for him. Everything else could be earned.

The store sat across the plaza behind a neon blue sign, its automatic doors opening with the slow reverence of a bank vault.

To be honest, Adrian had expected clutter. What he got was a wall of microphones lit like jewelry.

Two sat at eye level. One was $289, black, heavy, with a cable thick enough to tie a boat. The other was $119, lighter, plastic where the first was metal, and reviewed almost as well. The difference was $170. That was a second light, or a better camera, or three weeks of groceries he no longer had to count.

He held one in each hand. A clerk with a lanyard full of pins watched with the calm of someone who had seen this exact negotiation a hundred times and knew how it ended.

The first purchase would set the standard for everything after it. Buy the good one, and every later choice would climb to meet it. Buy the cheap one, and the setup would learn that corners existed.

"You’re doing the face," Rose said.

"I’m calculating."

"You’re comparing two microphones like it’s a custody case." She nodded at the heavy one. "That’s the one Jenna would pick."

"Jenna said not to buy things just because she’s the project."

"Then buy it because it’s the first thing we’re making." She took the cheaper mic from his hand and put it back on the shelf. "Spend like it’s ours."

He weighed the $289 in his palm. Heavy meant metal. Metal meant it would still be working in a year.

"Mic first," he said.

"Mic first." She hooked her arm through his. "Let’s go."