This was stupid.
And getting worse.
She wasn’t sixteen.
She wasn’t new at this.
She typed her script twice as fast as necessary just so she’d stop replaying the way Tilly’s eyes had lingered on her for that half second yesterday. The cursor blinked where she had left off in the tag. She typed a sentence. Deleted it. Typed another. Deleted that one too.
Her hands weren’t steady. Her breathing wasn’t even.
She pushed her chair back from the desk and walked to the break room because she needed water or air or something other than fluorescent lights and the sound of her own heartbeat.
The break room was half occupied by a photographer microwaving leftover chili. Savannah pretended to look for a fork in the drawer. The metal clinked against metal. It sounded too loud.
Footsteps passed behind her. Slow. Familiar.
She didn’t turn around, even though she knew exactly how close they were.
“Sorry,” Tilly said quietly, reaching past her for the box of tea bags on the counter.
Heat rose under Savannah’s skin. She kept her eyes on the drawer.
“It’s fine,” she said.
They stepped back, but didn’t leave.
And she felt it like pressure on her back.
“You need the bay?” they asked.
“No,” she said quickly. “I’m good.”
“Okay.”
They walked out.
She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.
She filled a cup with water and brought it to her lips, but didn’t drink it.
She avoided the edit bays for the next hour, even though she needed a soundbite from yesterday’s interviews. She asked Harper for it instead. Harper frowned.
“Tilly already pulled it,” she said. “It’s in the folder with your name.”
Savannah nodded. “Right. Thanks.”
She walked back to her desk and opened the folder.
The clip was clean. Levels balanced. Color corrected.
Tilly had done it without being asked.
Like they knew she’d need it.
Her chest tightened.
She didn’t like how that felt either.
