Page 26 of No More Bad Boys
Maybe they were meant for one of the anchors or reporters upstairs in the newsroom?
I walk over to the table. There’s a card. Still convinced the flowers are here by mistake, I reach for the little envelope. My name’s written on the outside.
Now my heart is pounding like I’ve got a migraine in my chest. I drop the envelope on the table, then immediately feel silly.
It doesn’t contain anthrax, Cadence.
Picking it up again, I lift the little flap to pull out the card inside. And drop that.
“Looking forward to having no fun with you…” is all it says.
The pulmonary migraine intensifies. This is… this is weird. Andromantic. And though in movies I laugh at stuff like this, I’m not laughing now. I’m sort of hyperventilating, truth be told.
No one’s ever sent me flowers before. There was the dyed carnation wrist corsage Tyler gave me for prom and the single rose Troy handed me the other night at the start of our date. But no one’s ever had a whole bouquet delivered.
I lean in and sniff the sweet perfume of the roses, and it only increases the swirling sensation in my belly.
What does it mean? I guess he didn’t end up in an inebriated booty call with Alissa last night, a thought which pleases me more than it probably should.
Unless he’s such a player that he was kissing her and texting his florist order at the same time. But I don’t think that’s who he is.
And so I’m a complete and utter mess for the rest of the morning. I hide in the engineering dungeon, half-hoping Blake will show up at the door and half-hoping he’s called in sick today.
The thought of seeing him excites me, but I need some time to think first. I need to contemplate this whole thing logically, to go back over the pros and cons list I made at around midnight last night. But Ican’tthink.
I hardly slept last night, and when I did, it wasn’t good sleep—short periods of unconsciousness broken up by frequent dreams of a red-haired, dimpled baseball player, sharks, and worst of all, Karaoke.
My singing hadn’t improved a bit, not even in my dreams.
I work on a malfunctioning news camera, enjoying the relaxation afforded by simple things like CMOS sensors and image stabilizers.
Fixing camcorders is easy—it’s relationships that are hard.
About fifteen minutes before the noon newscast, I’m called up to the director’s booth. The switcher isn’t working properly, and Frank wants me to watch him work on it, so I’ll know what to do if it happens again while he’s not in the building.
Without the studio live switcher, the newscast would consist of a single camera shot instead of the two or three you’d normally see over the course of a half hour show.
I’m shining a flashlight on the underside of the equipment, watching Frank jiggle first one wire then another, when a raspy baritone voice comes through the monitors in the booth, startling me and giving me instant goose bumps.
“Three, two, one… mic check. Coming up today at noon… a routine shark attack goes horribly wrong.”
Blake’s deep laugh follows his silly made-up news tease, and the audio board operator chuckles.
She glances over at me. “He makes up a new one every day. It’s always ‘a routine drive-by shooting’ or ‘a routine nuclear attack’—something like that. Yesterday, it was ‘a routine F-5 tornado goes horribly wrong.’”
She chuckles again and shakes her head, hitting a button so that Blake hears her in his IFB. “Okay honey, you’re good.”
I look up at the screens lining one wall of the small room, and there’s Blake, in beautiful hi-def living color. He’s in the studio, getting ready to do a live intro for his story on the noon news.
The studio camera op zooms in tight to focus, and Blake’s gorgeous light green eyes fill the screens.
God, who looks that good in super-close-up? Even his pores are beautiful.
“He’s a cutie, huh? If I wasn’t old enough to be his mama, I’d go for it myself.”
I look over at the audio lady and realize I’ve been staring at Blake’s image an embarrassingly long time.
“Oh, uh, I was just thinking, those monitors should probably be recalibrated. The… color looks a little off to me.”
