She turned the phone back so it was facing her. “I’ll let you know what we come up with.”
I stood as she lowered the phone. “We have a problem.”
When she noticed that my hands were held out to give her a hug, she shook her head and wrapped her arms around me. “Sorry. Hi! It’s so good to see you!”
Mia and I had been friends since freshman year, which happened to coincide with the reality show and scandal. When I’d stopped going to classes, she had come by my dorm room every day and checked on me. Other kids on campus sold stories to tabloids, but Mia protected me. She lied to reporters about where I lived, or if she’d seen me. She brought me food, we watched movies together and she let me talk, or cry. Sometimes she just sat in silence with me. She was there for me at the worst time in my life, and I would do anything for her.
“It’s good to see you too,” I exclaimed. When I pulled back, I looked down at her belly. “All of you.”
“Yeah, I really popped these last few weeks.” She ran her hand over her protruding stomach.
“How are you feeling? Is everything okay?”
“Yeah.” She avoided my stare as she slid into the booth.
“Mia James. I know that yeah.” My tone was accusatory as I lowered onto the bench seat. “Is the baby okay?”
She sighed. “The baby’s fine. I’m fine. But the doctor did say that I might want to slow down and try to limit my stress.”
“Then that’s exactly what you need to do.”
“You sound just like Travis.”
“I like Travis.” I wasn’t just saying that. I did. Mia seemed so happy with him. I’d missed their wedding because my grandmother’d had a health scare, but I’d met him when they’d come to visit a few months after their wedding.
They’d met when she’d come down to work on a reality show with her ex, who was an asshat. She’d recruited Travis Briggs to be her “fake” boyfriend. Obviously, things didn’t end up being so fake after all. It didn’t surprise me at all that she’d wanted her first documentary to be about love since she was living out her happily-ever-after.
“I am slowing down, I promise. And I’m trying not to stress, but we have a problem.”
“Okay, what is it?”
“Seraphina is out.”
“Seraphina Gold?” Our host. The heart of the show. The reason we’d pitched the format we had to the network.
“Yes. She heard about the funding falling through at the same time she was offered a primetime gig.”
I tried not to panic, but we were set to start filming in two days. “What about Violet?” I suggested our second option. She didn’t have the journalism background that Seraphina had, which was important for the interviews, but she could definitely host.
“Violet isn’t available.”
In production, things changed quickly and often. Being a producer was mostly problem-solving. Losing your host, the heart of your show, less than forty-eight hours before principal photography started was just something that happened. “Okay, what are our other options?”
“Randy is sending us tapes in a couple of hours.”
“Okay.” I nodded and took a sip of my tea, trying to re-envision what our show would be now that Seraphina was out.
“But I have an idea. What if you did it?”
I almost spit my tea out, but instead inhaled it and choked. “What?”
“I’m serious. Since Seraphina and Miles are both out—”
“Wait, Miles is out?!”
“Oh yeah, sorry. I got an email before Randy called.”
“So, we don’t have a host or a field producer?” I honestly wasn’t sure which was worse. I was beginning to think that this entire project was doomed. In the span of three days, we’d lost three-quarters of our funding, and our D.P., host, and field producer had pulled out. And Mia was very pregnant and needed to rest.
“No, we don’t have a field producer. Which is why I think you’d be perfect. You are a producer and the camera loves you. It’s in your blood. I know it’s a lot of work, but Jackson would help.”
“Jackson?”
“Yeah, it would just be the two of you. It’s a skeleton crew, but at this point, I’m not sure we have another choice.”
So not only was Mia asking me to be on-air talent, which was my worst nightmare, she was also suggesting I spend the next week traveling across the U.S. with Jackson Briggs, interviewing people about love.
No. That was not possible. I hadn’t even trusted myself to take a short