Chapter Fourteen

Brandy

“This will be great B-roll for the talking head. Keep mixing. Perfect. Can you tip the bowl this way a bit? No, no, not that much. Make it look natural. There you go. Perfect! Now, what’s next? You dump it out on the board? Okay, everybody stop. Reset the lights, please. Make sure that board is covered. We need a bounce board? I like the natural light, but it’s just so… yellow. It’s going to clash. All right, everybody take five while we reset.”

“But I need to make bread.”

“What?” Mr. Danielson, who I had been told repeatedly to simply call Phil, said.

“Bread,” I said. “I need the bread. To make sandwiches. It’s kind of what we do here.”

“Ha ha,” he said, shaking his head. “No, darling, what you do here now is make a television show. If you need bread for sandwiches, I’m afraid you’re going to need to get Basil to make it or whip up another batch. I need that one for the shot.”

“I thought this was supposed to be a reality show,” I said. “Aren’t you supposed to be filming, you know, reality?”

Phil simply laughed like I had made a joke, then walked away, pulling out his phone and poking away at it like he did eighty percent of the time. I tried not to make frustrated noises under my breath, but I caught Basil looking at me and knew she knew anyway. So I let one out.

“Breathe,” Basil said, handing a customer a receipt and turning away from the register. “It’s going to be all right. Look, we’ve already hit this week’s sales goal. It’s only Tuesday!”

“Yeah. Great,” I said. “That’s great.”

“Brandy, you know I know when you’re being like that.”

“I know.”

“It’s for the good of the shop. You know that.”

“I know.”

“So you have to make an extra loaf of bread. Who cares? We always need more bread.”

“It’s not that,” I said.

“Then what?”

“It’s everything. Stopping every five seconds to do stuff. Having him tell me what to say and then having to say that to customers. This weird fake drama he’s been trying to create with the people who live here by being intentionally obnoxious.”

“What?” Basil asked. “I don’t know anything about that.”

“He’s been hounding people for waivers. Accosting people in the street who come and take pictures. In general, being a big-shot dickhead. And people are starting to associate that behavior with our shop.”

“But people have been streaming in every day since they got here.”

“Out of curiosity,” I said. “Not because they really want our food. How many orders have you filled for one sandwich? Just one.”

“A lot,” she said.

“Exactly. People don’t come here and pay that money to get one boxed lunch. They come get them for coworkers, for their family on picnic, for their kids. Rarely did people ever come in here for just themselves.”

“They rarely came at all,” Basil said under her breath.

“And now,” I said, talking over her but letting her know I’d heard that, “they are coming in and getting one sandwich. Usually the cheapest one on the menu. Why? So they can see for themselves what the hell is going on in here. And even then, he badgers them if they take out their phone. God forbid someone gets a behind the scenes picture.”

“Well, it was part of the contract,” Basil said. “We would discourage anyone from sharing images of the show.”

“But our shop is the show,” I said. “We have to let people use their phones in our shop. Otherwise, we don’t have a shop.”

“So what do we do? Do we sit him down and tell him to cool it?”

“It won’t work,” I said. “It might just egg him on further. He’s not going to bend to that. We have to make it worth his while not to stir up drama. Give him some kind of story he can sink his teeth into.”

“Oh, so we are going to fake drama for the reality show? How Hollywood of us.”

“At this point, everything’s fake anyway. My poor dough. It should be cut into loaves by now.”

“All right, so what do we do? Should we pretend to fight? Like, I could get mad about my pay or something?”

“Are you mad about your pay?” I asked, suddenly concerned. “I mean, when the show gave us the check, I thought I bumped you up to where you belonged. Not that I can ever really repay you, but…”

“No, no, I’m fine. That’s not what this is. I’m saying for the show. We can make up something really stupid for the sake of the show. Something that you and I will know is fake, but we can convince him it’s real.”

“Maybe,” I said. Then I looked down and groaned. “Ah, dammit.”

“What?”

I lifted the microphone that was attached to my shirt and shook it. Then I turned to look into the corner of the seating area of the shop, where the sound engineer sat, slowly looking up at us and waving.

“We’ve been eavesdropped on.”

“Not technically,” she said. “We should have remembered we were on a hot mic. Like that guy who confessed to murder when he was taking a bathroom break, remember? The streaming documentary thing I showed you the other day.”

“I don’t remember,” I said. “We watch a lot of those.”

“Dammit, I can’t remember the name. It was really good, though. Anyway, it’s like that.”

“Only we didn’t admit to a murder.”

Basil suddenly turned her attention to the sound engineer, a maniacal grin spreading across her face.

“Or did we?”

“Jesus, Basil,” I muttered.

“Excuse me,” a familiar voice said from the doorway.

It felt like my entire body went stiff. I knew that voice. I hadn’t heard it a whole lot, but I sure as hell knew it. It had been talking to me in my dreams for a month.

“Ah, hello, just one second. Hey, Jimmy. Come here and film him coming in. Can you back out and come back in again?” Phil asked.

“Collin?”

The name tumbled from my lips before I could stop it. He looked up and smiled at me, shooting off a little wave, and for a moment, nothing else in the room was in focus. Just him and his smile.

“Could you re-enter, please?” Phil asked again. “Do we need a slate? Where is the goddamn slate?”

Collin held up a finger, then pointed to Phil before slinking backward through the door again in an overly-comedic way. I couldn’t help but laugh. The slate was put in front of the camera, and suddenly the door opened again.

“Hello,” Collin said.

“No, no, no, dammit,” Phil said. “Wait until I call ‘action.’ Please. Go outside again.”

“Again?”

“Yes, again,” he said.

“All right,” Collin muttered, going back outside and closing the door.

“Jimmy? Ready? Sound! Action!”

Nothing happened.

After a long moment, nothing continued to happen.

Just as Phil threw his arms in the air, letting them slap down on his thighs, the door opened, and Collin poked his head in.

“Just to be clear, when you say ‘action,’ right? Because I could hear a muffled sound, and I thought it might be you saying it, but I wasn’t sure…”

“Outside!” Collin, clearly enjoying himself, ducked back outside, slamming the door. “Sound! Action!”

This time, Collin came in, just as he had done the first time, and looked around the room in an overly cartoony way before finding me behind the counter.

“Ahh, Brandy. There you are.”

“And, cut. Jimmy, I need that one red-marked. Make sure the editor knows about the thigh slap. All right, everybody, places for the bread. Not you, Jimmy. You stay here and cover… whatever this is.”

He motioned toward Collin in an annoyed way and wandered away to fuss at the lighting people, who were struggling to remove all the yellow from the sunlight coming in from outside. It looked like they had decided to board up the windows with cardboard, then light the room as if it were day.

“Hi,” Collin said as he approached the counter.

“Hi,” I said. “It’s nice to see you.”

“It’s nice to see you too,” he said. “This is… a lot.”

“Yes, it is,” I admitted. “A whole lot.”

“You didn’t mention any of this to me before,” he said. “I would think you would have.”

“It’s really recent,” I said. “Kind of happened pretty fast. Besides, I didn’t get a lot of chances to talk to you.”

“I know,” he said. “That’s on me. I made a couple of decisions that weren’t… great.”

“Like ghosting me?”

“Like ghosting you,” he said. “I just… I figured you’d be freaked out by everything that happened and would probably see me differently after that.”

“I was worried about you,” I interrupted. “He attacked you. For nothing. For the record, I know all about the Andersons now. I know he only did that to get back at your family.”

He seemed to brighten up at that.

“You know about my family and the Andersons?” he asked.

“I know some. I’d like to know more.”

He grinned. “Well, why don’t we go out sometime, and I’ll tell you the whole story.”

“Phil!”

We both turned to see Jimmy, the cameraman, flailing and calling for the producer while maintaining the camera’s focus on us. Phil came running over, and Jimmy took his eye off the viewfinder long enough to look at him.

“He asked her out,” he said. “He asked her out!”

“What? Really? That’s amazing! Do it again!”

“I’m sorry?”

“Ask her out again. For the camera,” Phil said.

“But you filmed us already,” Collin said. “When I asked her out the first time.”

“Yes, but we want to make sure we get a good shot,” Phil said.

“It’s too late,” I said. “Just make sure your camera is on me. Ready, Jimmy?”

I paused only a second to go from looking at Jimmy to looking at Collin, taking a deep breath and trying not to let the jittering in my heart affect my voice.

“Brandy?” he asked.

“I would love to,” I said. “You tell me when and I’ll be there.”

“And cut! That’s perfect. You two, I need to see you both in a minute. Let’s get the bread!”

As they walked off toward the back, Collin turned to me, raising an eyebrow.

“What does ‘let’s get the bread’ mean?”

“They want to film me making a loaf,” I said. “I have to go do that now. But, for real, I want to go out with you. But we shouldn’t talk about what happened on camera. Unless you want that to be on television.”

“I do not,” he said. “We can keep that between us.”

He grinned, and I found myself grinning back, feeling like a lunatic because my smile was so wide and I couldn’t force it closed if I had to.

“I’m glad you came in, Collin,” I said.

“Me too. Only one problem.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m actually really hungry. I was going to get a sandwich…”