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I sipped my coffee.
“Xander from San Diego says he’s hoping to become a filmmaker one day,” he said. “He wonders if there was a defining moment for us when we felt we made it—like, this is it, we’re doing it, we have our dream job. And…he attached this meme that’s popular right now—”
“You and your goddamn memes,” I groaned. Roe loved memes. He loved to spam my phone with them.
“Hey, blame poor Xander! I’m just the messenger.”
Yeah, whatever. I made a quick note to edit said meme into the footage later.
“Anyway, it’s four words every woman wants to hear,” Roe explained. “But it’s been changed to so many things—four words every soldier wants to hear, every man, every car mechanic, autism mom, and so on. So Xander wants us to go with four words every documentary filmmaker wants to hear.”
I squinted at nothing and scratched my chin, and the funniest response I could come up with kinda just popped into my head.
“We got the sponsorship,” I said.
“Right?!” Roe laughed hard. “Oh man, forget about ‘the award goes to’ and ‘we have been green-lit,’ it’s all about the sponsors.” He was down to chuckles and smiled at me. “I guess that was a defining moment for us—when Nomads got renewed and became a bigger production.”
Abso-fucking-lutely. I nodded in agreement. “Being able to afford the equipment we needed without renting it brought us a lot of freedom. Setting foot inside your house that you own—just you and the bank.”
Roe grinned. “Don’t get me started—fucking childcare? I was shell-shocked last week when I found out Sandra’s already looking at preschools. I was like, our kid’s not even born yet? But apparently that’s a thing. The waiting lists are almost as outrageous as the price tag.”
All right, talk about going off topic on a subject I wasn’t a fan of, but that was my jealousy talking. If I could even call it that. I just didn’t like Sandra. That was all. But I did like hearing Roe talking about his future kid, and the preschool thing was definitely a reality check for new parents.
“For those of you who didn’t tune in the last two episodes, Roe and his fiancée are expecting their first kid,” I elaborated. “Nikki’s all over that. We went to some interview when Bear was barely a year old—so we’re sitting there with a whiny baby in our arms, and a lady’s talking to us about creative opportunities and developmental learning curves.” I shook my head. “When I was little, Ma just dropped me off with a neighbor and let me run wild. And I turned out fine.”
“I can hear Nikki objecting,” Roe replied.
I laughed. Fuck off.
*
Filmed before a live studio audience…
How many times had I heard those words?
This was wild. A whole other world compared to what I was used to. The studio was huge, and a bunch of people were running around to prepare for the next shoot. Roe and I had fucking makeup on, thankfully the subtle kind that just gave you a better complexion.
Two box-shaped booths dominated the center of the stage; that was where the two competing teams would sit. Where Roe and I would sit. And the other “BFF” couple, two guys from San Francisco who’d gained fame for an animated series on Netflix.
Thank fuck we had both Seth and Haley here. If I’d known beforehand how major productions worked, I probably would’ve hidden under the bed. The legalese alone had almost put me to sleep. In times like that, I felt dumb and brand-new. I wanted to say any contract longer than four pages was excessive. But I didn’t do that. I just wasn’t involved in the legal aspect of things. That was for Seth to understand. He just told me where to sign my name.
We’d been quizzed a lot too. As part of the game. The questions centered around my friendship with Roe, so they had to be altered before every episode depending on the contestants.
They had the fancy sound equipment here, though. I could appreciate that. I was a little starstruck, to be frank. The three cameras that lined the stage, propped on dolly tracks—they were worth more than Roe’s ugly new car.
I adjusted the bodypack attached to my belt as some guy clipped a tiny microphone to my T-shirt. We were backstage, so I could only hear the audience on the other side. They would be here all day, because they were taping three episodes.
We’d been told it would take approximately two hours to record a thirty-seven-minute episode, and Roe and I weren’t allowed to see each other until we were headed for our booth. For chrissakes, I’d been escorted to craft services earlier. They took this shit seriously. All so that Roe and I couldn’t compare notes and prepare each other.
