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Kennedy looked up at her grabby friend.
“Don’t read the questions. I’ll ask them to you, that way you don’t sound rehearsed. I think off the cuff is the best way to do this.”
Kennedy had a bad habit of overthinking, over-studying, over-preparing. She was a perfectionist which sometimes led to performance paralysis. Laura knew that if Kennedy read the questions, she’d spend a week trying to come up with the perfect answers.
“Fine, but I need to go home and change. Freshen up my hair and makeup.”
“No,” Laura stated firmly.
“No?” There was no way her friend actually expected her to film the audition looking like this. She was rocking an athleisure look today because her morning had consisted of yoga, a therapy appointment, and visiting Nana.
She didn’t have a speck of makeup on. Her hair was in a ponytail. She was mortified enough that she’d looked like this meeting Hot Tattoo Guy, there was no way she could record a video.
“You are stunning. I think it will be better to just be natural. Sit down.”
As badly as Kennedy wanted to argue with her friend, she decided to let go and let Jesus take the wheel. Well, Laura take the wheel. If she insisted on going home, then the same problem would happen if she read the questions. She’d overthink what she wore, her makeup, her hair.
Maybe her friend was right. And if she wasn’t, it’s not like she had a lot to lose.
“Okay, sit there. The light is perfect!” Laura directed her to a chair beside the large picture window that overlooked the lake the town was named for.
Laura set her phone up on the table opposite Kennedy’s seat, resting it against the napkin dispenser. “So first say your name, age, and a fun fact about you, then I’ll start asking you questions.”
Fun fact. That question might catch others off guard, but Kennedy had become a master at answering questions like that. She was an inherently private person. She hated talking about herself, but between all of her dating experiences and real estate conferences where she had to introduce herself and say a fun fact, she had about a dozen to choose from.
Laura pressed the record button and pointed at Kennedy.
“Hi, my name is Kennedy Dawes. I’m a thirty-five-year-old real estate agent in Whisper Lake, Illinois. A fun fact about me is that I have an eidetic memory. It’s sort of like a photographic memory but people with eidetic memories typically don’t retain the information as long as people with a photographic memory. My party trick in college was saying the alphabet backward.”
Kennedy waited for the first question, but instead of asking it, Laura set the paper down and turned the camera off. “Is that true? They might ask you to prove it?”
“It’s true.”
Laura’s mouth dropped open. “How have we been friends for almost seven years and I didn’t know that?”
“I don’t know.” Kennedy shrugged. Even with Laura, who she was really open with, she rarely ever talked about herself. “It’s not something I really talk about.”
Laura blinked at her. “You canreallysay the alphabet backward?”
Kennedy could see her friend wasn’t completely convinced. “Z-Y-X-W-V-U-T-S-R-Q-P-O-N-M-L-K-J-I-H-G-F-E-D-C-B-A,” Kennedy quickly rattled off.
“Holy shit! That’s crazy! How did I not know that you could do that?”
“I used to do it as a party trick in college, but it doesn’t really come up a lot now.”
“What else can you do?”
“I mean, it depends. I retain images more than audible cues. Like, if I see a series of cards, or numbers, or symbols, I can recall them by picturing them in my head.”
“Wow, okay. I feel strange that I never knew that. But, moving on.” Laura turned the phone back on and finished asking her the questions on the sheet. When she finished, they watched the video again. As a perfectionist, she wanted so badly to redo it, but she decided to let it go.
She sat back as Laura sent the video and her mind drifted back to Hot Tattoo Guy. She bit her lower lip and touched the inside of her wrist where his fingertips had grazed.
“Kennedy!” Laura’s voice cut through her thoughts.
“What?” Kennedy blinked up at her friend.
“Whatwere you just thinking about?”
