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“Have you decided to come back to work for Jail Records?” His answer is almost immediate.
“No, I just thought I’d do a friend a favor.”
“You’d be a great talent scout. This girl is fantastic,” he replies after about ten minutes, during which I stay anxiously glued to the phone.
After our encounter at Aaron’s house five days ago, we haven’t had any contact. Even though the memory of him ordering me to undress makes me want to hop on a flight to New York and fall down at his feet. We’ve always been in tune with each other at work, but I didn’t think you could be so compatible during sex that you perfectly complete each other. Evan likes control between the sheets; I’m looking for someone to take the wheel and bring me to orgasm. We couldn’t be more compatible. Unfortunately, being great at fucking doesn’t solve all our other problems.
“I know, I’m good, but I work for your brother now.”
Several minutes go by before he replies, and I realize I’m waiting for his text, like when you crave good news after a rough time. On the one hand, my heart hopes he’ll offer me a job as a manager and not just an assistant, but I’m also afraid to go back to New York. After a month and a half in this city, I realize how I’d given up and accepted the assistant job to stay with Jail Records and work alongside Evan. I value his experience so much I would have done anything to work with him, even at the cost of not having a job that explores my full potential, settling for less.
“You know if you decide to come back, your job is waiting, right?”
My job. The assistant. There is nothing else for me in New York and having this confirmation hurts and makes me angry.
“Give up my job as a talent scout and project manager to be your assistant? You sure know how to lure me in.” I think about it before sending the sarcastic remark, but in the end, I do. I’m not a project manager in Aaron’s company, but he understands my potential and lets me explore it.
Evan begins to write, but the three dots disappear, and the apology text I hoped would come remains unsent in New York. My heart sinks when I realize how much I was craving that text.
I inhale deeply and look at my cell phone one last time, then get up, knock on Aaron’s door, and enter before he even responds.
He arches his eyebrow, silently scolding me. “The correct sequence would be for you to knock, me to say ‘come on in,’ and then you enter.”
“Would you have given me permission to open the door and walk in?” I cross my arms.
“No, because I’m busy with a very important document.”
“See? I was right to not wait!”
“I swear I have yet to understand how my brother endured working with you for more than two years.” He rubs a hand over his face.
I sit in the chair in front of him and cross my legs, waiting for him to give me all the attention I need. He continues to look at his computer for a good ten minutes, then he snorts impatiently and shifts his annoyed gaze to me. The nerve! “So, you’re just going to sit there until you tell me what you have to say?”
“Was there ever any doubt?”
“No, actually not,” he mumbles as he leans against the back of his chair and gestures for me to continue.
“BookTok.”
He watches me for a few seconds waiting for me to continue with an explanation, then frowns.
“It’s what young people are following now. Video reviews of books on TikTok. The romance community is very active and engaged, and what you need to do is take a book and make a TV show or a movie out of it.” I explain.
He frowns and shakes his head. “Isn’t that what everyone is already doing? That’s not new.”
“Do the opposite of what others do.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Everyone else waits for a book to get popular and famous and then make the film. You take a story that has potential, buy the rights, and then promote the book during pre-production of the show. What you industry bigwigs underestimate is the power of word of mouth from micro-influencers. If you sign someone who’s not famous, all the little blogs that have read that book will create a buzz online saying, ‘I discovered this book,’ and build the hype. The big blogs will do anything to grab a copy and ride the trend. Small authors often don’t have money to promote themselves, but they have great stories to tell, and you have a big budget to make them famous. No sane author would ever say no to you.”
The smug smile on Aaron’s face tells me I have all his attention. “I like how you think. But how do we discover these fantastic new authors?”
“Does the intern out there have anything important to do?” I point at the door behind me.
“I have an intern?”
I raise my eyebrows, surprised. Has he really never noticed the girl trembling across the room every time he passes by?
