Page 39 of The Crush Next Door

Blind Melon

Turns out, I actually slept rather well. Normally, something like that would keep me up. But walking Magic last night, Josh had reassured me that even if we messed up royally, there was a magical little thing called editing that could fix all of our mistakes. And worst case scenario, we could delete the entire podcast and try again next time.

The presence of Magic sleeping on my bed all night certainly helped too. I was beginning to love that guy. Maybe Josh and I could carve out a doggie door between our apartments so Magic could come and go as he pleased.

I laughed at the idea as I picked out some flip-flops by the door, looking for the perfect pair that reflected casual yet career girl who had a stellar podcast. Yeah, there was no such thing.

But I found my favorite pair, grabbed my stuff, and met Josh down by his car. While he drove us to the studio, we went over every little detail that we planned to discuss. And by the time we fought our way through traffic and arrived, I had an outline written out for each of us, including a huge scribble down the middle from when Josh had to slam on the brakes.

It was all good, though. We were ready. I was ready. I was going to kick some podcast ass!

Walking into the studio, I felt my first flutter of nerves. The people working there were super nice as Josh introduced me, leading me to the sound studio, complete with a big table and microphones, plus large, comfortable-looking chairs.

We settled in, a friendly producer taking a seat nearby in front of a computer and some kind of soundboard with a million dials on it. Goodness, did he seriously know what all those knobs did? Whatever. It wasn't my problem, was it?

I just needed to be Jessica Santoro, sports podcast queen.

"How ya doing?" Josh asked, handing me an ice-cold bottle of water from his bag.

"Thanks." I took a breath. "I'm good. Good. Definitely good. Yep. Not nervous at all about speaking into this ginormous microphone looming in front of my face."

Laughing, he settled into his seat across from me. "You're going to be great. Just pretend we're chilling on the couch, arguing about which pitcher to send in."

"Right. Right." My chair squeaked loudly as I sat down. Please don't be that kind of chair that makes farting noises, I thought while I wiggled around, trying to get perfectly comfortable.

"Or just pretend this is only practice. In a way it is. Remember? If it's total crap, we're throwing it out, right?"

"Yes. Definitely. I figure it's about fifty-fifty," I said as I began to chew on a fingernail.

"Hey, wanna make it a little more interesting?"

"Excuse me? What?"

"You know," Josh said, unscrewing the lid from his water bottle and taking a big swig. "Make a little bet."

"Oh, geez. What kind of bet could we possibly make about our podcast?"

Without even pausing, he said, "I bet you're going to screw up more than me."

I glared at him. "What the hell? That's so rude."

He shrugged. "Afraid to take me on, bro?"

"You're on, jerk." I shook my head at him. "Winner buys dinner the rest of the week."

"Deal." He nodded at the producer. "You ready?"

The producer nodded back and began to count down as I adjusted my papers, ready to blow this asshole out of the water.

And then, the game was on. We easily filled the thirty minutes, barely referring to our notes, but keeping to some kind of order that included plenty of talk about the Dodgers while discussing the rest of the league too.

One time, after I made a kind of dirty joke about balls, Josh choked on his water, and the producer had to pause it while he coughed and caught his breath.

Screw-up number one went to Josh! Yes!

But not long after, I got the hiccups, and once again, the producer paused the action so I could do my water-sipping trick to get rid of the damn annoying things.

Screw-up number two went to me. Darn it!

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