Page 29 of Making It Live!

But the box didn't close as easily as it used to.The lid sat slightly ajar, and through the crack I could feel the warmth of a body that wasn't there, and the echo of a voice saying my name in the dark in a way that had nothing to do with camera cues.

I produced the rest of the broadcast without incident.When the red light died and the floor director called clear, I pulled off my headset, pressed both palms flat against the desk, and exhaled slowly through my nose.

The crew filtered out.Ray left with his usual nod.I gathered my things, locked up the control room, and rode the elevator to the lobby, where Jillian was supposed to be waiting to take me to dinner.

Jillian was waiting.She was also not alone.

* * *

I saw them from across the lobby, and my stomach dropped.

Jillian was standing near the security desk, holding her phone in one hand and gesturing with the other, talking to a brown-haired man in an impeccable suit who was crouching to pick something up off the marble floor.He straightened and handed it to her — a phone case, the cheap silicone kind Jillian bought in bulk because she dropped her phone approximately four times a day — and Jillian took it with the kind of laugh that meant she was embarrassed and overcompensating with charm.Which was how Jillian started every friendship she'd ever had.

The man was Harry Perricone, Nelson's assistant.And he was smiling at Jillian with the easy warmth of someone who'd just met a person he found genuinely interesting.

I had a very bad feeling about this.

From the fragments I could hear as I crossed the lobby, Jillian was explaining that she'd dropped her phone case while digging through her purse for her ID, and Harry had caught it before it hit the floor — "reflexes like a cat," Jillian was saying, "do they train you people for that?"— and somehow this had turned into an actual conversation, because Jillian could turn a dropped phone case into a twenty-minute friendship with the speed and efficiency of a woman who talked to New York City council members for a living.

I was halfway across the lobby, moving fast, ready to extract Jillian before whatever was forming could solidify into something permanent, when the side entrance opened and Nelson walked in.

He'd changed out of his on-air wardrobe into a long coat — black, beautifully cut, the kind of coat that cost more than my first car.He was looking at his phone, which meant he didn't see them until he was ten feet away.

Nelson stopped.

His eyes went to Harry first — a quick check, professional, the automatic scan of a man who always knew where his people were.Then his eyes moved to the woman Harry was talking to, and I watched recognition hit Nelson's face like a slow-moving wave.

"Jillian."

He said it quietly.Not cold, not warm.The voice of a man encountering a ghost in a well-lit room.

Jillian turned.For one second — just one — Jillian Morris, the loudest person in every room, went completely still.Then she recovered and met Nelson's gaze head-on.

"Nelson," she said."It's been a long time."

"Thirteen years."

"Give or take."

They stared at each other.There was history here that had nothing to do with me and everything to do with me.Jillian had been my best friend first — a full year before Nelson and I got together.She was there before Nelson, and she was there after Nelson, and in between she'd occupied the space Nelson could never quite reach: the person who knew me longest, who I called at two in the morning when I couldn't sleep.Nelson had never said he was jealous of Jillian.He hadn't needed to.I'd seen it in the slight tightening around his eyes whenever Jillian and I had our private jokes, our shorthand, our history that predated Nelson's place in my life.

And now Jillian was standing in Nelson's building, talking to his assistant, and the slight tightening was back — thirteen years older but otherwise unchanged.

"You look incredible, Nelson," Jillian said.Her voice was warm.Genuine.And then, because she was Jillian, she added: "Jimmy wasn't exaggerating."

The lobby went very quiet.

Harry's eyebrows rose approximately a quarter of an inch.Nelson's gaze shifted — from Jillian to me, because of course I'd arrived at exactly the wrong moment, standing six feet away with my bag over my shoulder and the expression of a man watching a car crash in slow motion.

Jimmy wasn't exaggerating.

Which told Nelson that I'd been talking about him.To Jillian.Recently.And that whatever I'd said had included some assessment of Nelson's appearance that Jillian felt comfortable referencing in a lobby full of people.

I was going to kill Jillian.

Nelson's expression didn't change.That was the worst part — the absolute stillness of his face while he processed the information.Ice-blue eyes, steady and unreadable.Then he turned his attention back to Jillian with the practiced ease of a man who had spent many years refusing to let anyone see him react.

"Thank you, Jillian.You look well."He glanced at his assistant."Harry.Goodnight."