Three's a Crowd: Quitting My Couple Channel novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Grey Suit

At the agency Cecelia asks Emmett to write a snowy-mountain proposal for her and Cormac; he agrees to one last script and tells them about Iceland; Cormac swears in the stairwell that he is on Emmett's side.

I wore the grey suit.

It still fit, which felt like an insult.

The agency's conference room had a glass wall and a bowl of green apples nobody touched.

Cecelia sat at the head of the table in a cream sweater, looking rested for someone who had been awake until two.

Cormac sat beside her, and I took the chair at the far end with my laptop.

Across from us sat the brand manager from Northlight Jewelers, a brisk woman with a tablet and a tight smile.

"Seventy million followers," she said. "Congratulations. We want to be the first name on the next one."

"Tell them what you told me," Cecelia said.

The brand manager turned her tablet around.

On it was a mockup of a snowy mountain at sunrise, a man on one knee and a woman with both hands over her mouth.

"A proposal," she said. "On camera, in the snow, with our ring. The fans have wanted this for two years. We'll pay for the whole campaign."

"Cormac proposes to Cecelia," I said.

"The fans will lose their minds."

"They will," Cecelia said, and she smiled at me down the table. "That's why I need Em. He writes this feeling better than anyone alive."

The brand manager looked at me for the first time.

"You're the writer?"

"One of the team," Cecelia said, before I could answer. "He's behind the scenes. He's very shy."

I opened my mouth.

Cormac cut in, gently. "Cecelia, maybe he's tired. He's been up for forty hours cutting the anniversary stream."

"I'm fine."

"You don't have to do this one, Em." His voice was low, his hand open on the table toward me. "I can ask the agency to hire somebody. Really."

The brand manager glanced between the two of us and said nothing.

I looked at Cecelia.

She was tapping her pen against her notes, and she wasn't worried.

She had never once been worried that I'd say no.

"I'll write it," I said.

Cecelia's whole face lit up. "Thank you."

"It's my last script."

She laughed.

It was a pretty laugh, and I had made a lot of videos to get it on tape.

"Your last of what? The year? Em, you say that every December."

"I got a job."

"You have a job. You have the best job in the city, and I pay you."

"It's in Iceland. I leave on the twentieth."

The brand manager stopped scrolling.

Cormac sat back in his chair.

Cecelia kept smiling, but the smile had stopped in the middle.

"You're joking," she said.

"I'm not."

"After the shoot, you mean. We shoot the proposal next Saturday. You'll be here for that."

"I'll be here for that."

"Then we'll talk when you're not tired."

She said it kindly.

That was the worst part about Cecelia.

She never raised her voice at me, not once in five years.

She talked in a soft, reasonable voice until you gave up.

"Seven days," the brand manager said briskly. "Script by Wednesday?"

"Wednesday," I said.

We shook on it.

Cecelia reached under the table and squeezed my knee, the way she did when a take went well.

I let her.

When the meeting ended, she got a call from her stylist and walked out into the corridor with her phone at her ear, mouthing "Wait for me."

I took my laptop and went down the back stairs instead.

The stairwell was concrete and cold, and I stood on the landing, breathing.

Footsteps came down behind me.

Cormac stopped two steps above, one hand on the rail.

"Hey. Em. I didn't know about Iceland."

"I only decided last night."

"Is it because of last night? The stream?" He rubbed his jaw. "I know how it looks, with the cameras. It isn't how it feels, I swear. It's a job."

"I know."

"You're my best friend. That's the only thing I would never trade."

He said it with his eyes wet and his mouth soft, the way he said everything on camera.

I had watched him practice that exact face in a bathroom mirror at nineteen, before his first job interview.

He had gotten the job.

"Whatever you decide," Cormac said, "I'm with you. Always."

Then he clapped me on the arm and went back up the stairs two at a time.

I stood there a while.

His hand had left a small warm spot on my sleeve.

I brushed it off.

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