“It’s Friday. What can we possibly do that won’t get buried over the weekend?”
“We need to be fast,” I tell him. “We can’t fix this today, but maybe there’s something we can do to slow the damage.”
An hour later, we have a plan. And it’s a boring one. But hopefully boring enough to work.
The studio will release a statement. It will be basic—saying that the studio is focused on the continued production of season four of the show and that they are excited for fans to experience what’s ahead.
This will fix nothing. But that’s not our goal. The hope is that fans will be annoyed with the boring statement and focus on that, slowing down the attention on the PR-stunt narrative. Basically, we’re trying to buy some time.
We run it by Victoria, and she approves it.
“I want the real plan by Monday,” she tells us before we leave her massive office with floor-to-ceiling windows that face the Burbank hills.
We spend the next hour crafting the statement before sending it off to Victoria. She tells us it works and has it sent out through Silverline’s official channels.
By the time we leave the studio, it’s already making the rounds. And now we just have to hope it does what we need it to.
We’re both quiet as we start the drive home, stuck in stop-and-go traffic on Alameda. We probably should be brainstorming, figuring out what we could do on Monday, but I think we’re both mentally exhausted. The plan right now is to meet up this weekend and work on it.
“Oh, shoot,” I say when I realize what day it is.
“What’s wrong?” Luke asks from the passenger seat.
“Nothing. I just realized I was supposed to go to my parents’ house for dinner tonight.”
My mom called on Wednesday to see if I would be at dinner on Friday and said it was really important that I be there. I didn’t put much stock in it because she’s said that before, and one time it turned out she just wanted to show me the new rose garden she’d planted in the backyard.
There was also the time she had something important to show me and it was her new crafting room, which happened to be my old bedroom. That one stung a little.
The woman has cried wolf one too many times.
“You should go,” Luke says. “I can just take an Uber from your parents’ house.”
I sigh, keeping my eyes on the road. “No, I’ll take you home and then come back.”
That’ll be an hour and a half round trip. I’ve done worse things on a Friday night.
“We’re already in Burbank,” he says. “Don’t your parents live here?”
“Yes, but it’s fine. Maybe I won’t even go. I’m not really in the mood.”
“You should go.”
“Why don’t you come with me?” I ask, the words falling out of my mouth before I’ve thought them through.
You idiot, Claire.
My brain really is fried. Luke coming to my parents’ house for dinner is a bad idea. What would Gigi say? My mom? She’d embarrass me for sure. Ryan and Sienna? They’re fine. They’d be the most normal part of this. But what about my dad and his lobster mitt? No, this is a terrible idea.
“Never mind, you don’t want to do that.”
Luke laughs. “Arch, did you just invite me to dinner and then rescind the offer before I’ve even had a chance to answer?”
“Yes, but my family’s a lot,” I say, looking over at him for a second before looking back to the car in front of me as we inch along the road.
“Aren’t all families?”
“Good point,” I say.
