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Easier said than done, Gemma thought. Her fear of Nigel was one thing, but the bigger issue holding her back was one she kept close to her chest. She hadn’t told anyone, aside from her therapist, the true reason she held back in her career, and waffling over interviewing her favorite rock star provided a convenient excuse to keep it that way.
“I’m not canceling it,” Carmen said. “If you don’t want to talk to your old-man crush, it’s up to you to pull the plug.”
Gemma’s face flushed as she thought about the choice before her. Through the whole saga of getting Nigel Black on the show, she had only dealt with his people. She’d planned to merely shake his hand when he arrived at the studio and pray he didn’t remember her as a shy seven-year-old before Marsha, seasoned, intriguing Marsha, swept in and monopolized his attention. Though terrifying, shecould not deny that getting to talk to him face-to-face and ask him all her questions would be a dream come true.
If she could get any words to come out of her mouth.
At least she had a few hours to figure it out.
Gemma sighed as she passed a slow-moving minivan. “Gotta go, Carmen. See you soon.”
“Ten-four. You know where to find us.”
She jabbed the screen to end the call and opened a text message to dictate.
“I’m coming over; I hope you’re up,” she said slowly and clearly to her console. She knew from experience that speaking too fast resulted in jumbled, often comical translations.
She hit send and settled into her seat to slide down the 101 toward Silver Lake. The tight cluster of skyscrapers in downtown L.A. poked up like a crown from the smog in the distance. As the city came to life, she would have to keep an eye on traffic to avoid getting stuck, especially if she was going to be running around when she normally would be at work.
It took twenty minutes to get to Lila’s complex from her own, a drive Gemma knew well. She had a slight head start, having left from the coffee shop. She poked her console to turn up the radio’s volume, and her favorite song came rushing through the speakers.
She almost swerved into the next lane at the sound of it.
She knew all the lyrics; she and Lila used to sing it in their dorm room. It wasn’t a shock to hear the classic pop song on the radio more than a decade after it had come out. The shock was the image of Jack it conjured in her mind. She suddenly saw him softly smiling at her as she told himit was her favorite song. The hazy mental picture blurred around the edges like an old photograph. It triggered the same murky feeling his smile had back in the coffee shop, and that same fold deep in her brain that had sparked faintly when his knee bumped hers beneath the table now lit up like New Year’s Eve in Times Square.
It was all familiar, which made no sense at all. Unless, of course, Jack had been telling the truth about everything and she had in fact met him and they’d shared smiles and knee nudges and listened to her favorite song together.
“Impossible,” she said, and poked the console to change the station.
She blindly selected a classical music channel and let the innocuous tones of strings and horns score her drive. She tapped her thumbs on the steering wheel and told herself it was all a coincidence. There wasn’t an ounce of truth to any of it.
There was also the chance that she was dreaming and would wake to the feeling of Rex’s wet nose in her palm any moment. That seemed like a much more likely explanation.
“Wake up, wake up, wake up,” she muttered, trying to will herself into consciousness despite being behind the wheel in high-speed traffic. She was pretty sure she was already awake, but it didn’t hurt to double-check.
An incoming call cut through the soaring symphony filling her cocoon, and she saw her brother’s name on the screen.
She pressed the button on her steering wheel to answer as fast as she could. “Patrick?”
“No, this is your other brother,” he said, deadpan.
Her lips twitched into a smile despite her distress. “Any news?”
“Yeah, actually. Things are looking good for this 1:15. They’ve called Alan Nguyen’s name like ten times, and he’s a no-show. That seat’s as good as mine.”
“Good!” she cheered. “Well, not good for Alan Nguyen, but good for you.”
“Yep. It’ll be a quick stopover in Atlanta, then I’m Cali-bound.”
Gemma’s heart felt like it sank through the floorboards and bounced down the freeway behind her. “Atlanta?”
“Yeah. It’s only, like, an hour to change flights in between, so hopefully everything stays on schedule.”
Jack’s words came back to her:He gets stuck in Atlanta, Dallas, or Salt Lake City.As did the feeling she’d had this conversation with Patrick before.
She didn’t want to admit there was a chance Jack had been right, but she also didn’t want her brother moving essentially parallel to his current location and no farther west.
“Are there any direct flights?”
