15. On The Grind
On The Grind
Cam
First thing that hit me was the smell: floor wax, lavender air freshener, and the sour reek of a thousand caffeine drinks.
The second was the music, a competing soup of bass lines leaking out of every studio, each one straining to out-flex the others.
Some of the doors were wide open—dancers in sweats lunging into the mirrors, a fashion team unpacking rails of performance wear, a percussionist hammering what looked like a car part.
Other doors were cracked just enough to leak drama, the low hiss of arguments about staging or—once—a meltdown about vegan catering.
Even on the day before a live taping, nobody in this building knew how to act normal.
I tucked my bag under my arm and made a beeline for the central desk, where the rehearsal coordinator (manic ponytail, three phone holsters on her belt) was fielding a call and mouthing at me to wait.
She looked up, gave a half-mouthed "one sec" gesture, and clicked her tongue while the phone blared on speaker. She clicked it off.
"Cam Wolfe," she said. "Here for the Liora block?"
I nodded. "Where do you want me?"
She flicked through the schedule sheet. "You're B. That's the smaller soundstage, third door on your right."
I thanked her and started down the main drag, dodging a guy with a stack of folding chairs and a small herd of backup dancers in coordinated baby blue sweats. All of them were chattering in Spanish, moving in sync when they were just walking, like they didn't know how to be off beat in any context.
For a minute, I let myself watch them, shoulders loose, pretending I was simply another body in the room.
It worked until the next door opened and a camera team almost ran me over, arms full of lenses and Steadicam rigs.
Everyone in the hall was either moving too fast or not at all; there was zero in-between.
It was a miracle this place ever produced anything but lawsuits.
As I neared Studio B, I started scanning for familiar faces, but no Romi.
Not yet. The nerves I'd tamped down all morning started bubbling up again, static under my skin.
If she was here, she was either in A (the big room, of course) or still chilling in her car until the very last minute, letting the rest of us stress-sweat through warmups.
Studio B's door was propped with a sandbag, and the inside was a mess of mirrored walls, modular risers, and a mat of coiled cables that looked like a python nest. A guy in track pants and a headset was taping down spike marks on the floor; across the room, two dancers were stretching in impossible directions.
The air was humid and a little musty, like all rehearsal spaces, with an overlay of eucalyptus from someone's bottle of essential oil.
Skye was already there, sitting on the floor with her legs crossed, scrolling through her phone.
She was in rehearsal gear, but her hair and liner were camera-ready and her nails were a bright lime green that you could see from across a parking lot.
She looked up, made direct eye contact, and smiled.
"Damn, you made it before call time?" she said. "Someone's taking this shit seriously."
I rolled my eyes, but the tension in my chest dropped about three clicks. "I could say the same about you, Miss Early Bird."
She wrinkled her nose. "I never left. They booked me for three blocks in a row, so I'm basically furniture now. You want in on this misery, or nah?"
I laughed and dropped my bag by the wall, then sat next to her, careful to keep my knees from cracking too loud. The mat was slick with sweat, even at this hour.
"How's the choreography?" I asked, stretching out my hamstrings and ignoring the tiny popping sounds in my hips.
"Not bad," she said. "They're actually letting us do some of Liora's original moves, with, like, actual respect. For once."
"Guess the budget's real if they're not making us Fizzr it up."
She side-eyed me, lips quirking. "Don't say that. If we say it out loud, a social media rep appears and makes us dance with a child influencer for promo."
We both shuddered in solidarity.
For the next few minutes, we traded horror stories from previous rehearsals.
Skye told a story about a pop singer who refused to walk on the main stage unless the floor was wiped by hand between each run.
I countered with the time a DJ had a tantrum and set off the fire alarm by lighting a scented candle in the green room.
In the telling, the room felt less like a trap and more like a safe zone—a space where the job that mattered was getting the music right.
At a quarter past the hour, the choreographer arrived, a tall, bald guy in a mesh tee who looked like he woke up pissed off.
He greeted us by name, gave a rundown of the schedule, and then got straight to business.
First: group warmup. Then: mark through the opening.
Then: solo blocks for the verses. We had an hour to learn the number, then another hour to drill it before we ran with the other performers.
I tried to focus, but my mind skipped like a scratched CD: what if she was in the next studio? What if they made us do the duet section together? What if she was watching right now, through the porthole window in the hallway?
At the halfway mark, we broke for water.
I stepped out into the hall, blinking at the change in light, and nearly collided with a gurney of riser parts being wheeled by two production dudes in matching backward caps.
They barely noticed me as they passed, laughing about something on a phone.
The hallway had cleared out some, but not enough to make it comfortable.
I grabbed a bottle from the craft services table and downed half of it in three gulps until the cold filled my chest.
On the way back to Studio B, I spotted Stacks poking her head out of C, waving me down with a stage-whispered "CAM! YO!"
I ducked over, skirting a stack of amp cases, and poked my head inside. Stacks was in the middle of a small crowd—her own dancers, plus a couple of the stagehands. She grinned wide, then gave me a bear hug that almost lifted me off the ground.
"You look like you're about to fight a bitch," she said. "You good?"
"Mostly," I said, wondering what my face was doing. "Just trying not to fuck up Liora's legacy on national TV."
Stacks made a face. "You could fart on the mic and it'd still be better than half the lineup. Trust."
Her dancers snickered. One of them, a willowy kid with green eyebrows, asked if I'd heard the rumor about an afterparty.
I said no, and he launched into a story about a rooftop bash with a rumored pop-up from a certain washed-up boy band.
Stacks rolled her eyes but let him finish, then turned back to me.
"For real, though," she said, voice lowering, "you see your bestie yet?"
I shook my head. "Not yet. You?"
"She's in A," Stacks said, "but she's doing that thing where she sits in the dark with her phone and makes the crew nervous for like, an hour, before actually rehearsing."
"Classic," I said.
Stacks shrugged. "If it ain't broke…"
We both snorted, and for a second I forgot why I was so nervous in the first place.
"Gotta bounce," I said, glancing at the clock. "If I'm late, Skye will roast me and the choreo guy will make me do suicide drills."
Stacks grinned. "Get it, Wolfe. We'll catch up after."
I dapped her up with a wink and headed back toward B, my mind buzzing but lighter.
Inside the studio, Skye had staked out her own territory at the mirrored wall, a stretch mat, and a little encampment of water bottles, snacks, and a cracked phone balanced on a rolled-up hoodie.
She lay back, legs scissored in a split, arms overhead, face tilted up to watch herself in the reflection.
I reached for my toes and tried to focus on breathing, not the tightness in my hamstrings. "We ready to start?" I asked, nodding at the row of speakers up by the glass. "Or are we just gonna vibe until the end credits roll?"
The choreographer called us over for warmups: thirty minutes of planks, wall sits, and endless variations on burpees.
It was hell, but also familiar, and the soreness kept me from spiraling about what was coming next.
Skye kept pace with me on every rep, cracking little jokes under her breath that made the time pass faster.
Whenever I flagged, she'd nudge me with her foot or make a face, like, Don't even think about it. I tried to match her—and mostly did.
When the music started for the first run-through, the room lost some of its edge.
The mirrored walls filled with bodies: us, the choreo team, a cluster of techs at the far end setting up camera angles for the director.
The bass rolled underfoot, and even though the speakers weren't at full concert power, you could feel it in your jaw.
For two minutes, all that mattered was the song, the moves, the next mark on the tape.
After the first run, I was already sweating through my shirt, but it felt clean. Skye grabbed a towel and mopped her brow, then tossed it at my head.
I ducked it. "Ew."
"You look tense," she said, settling back against the mirror. "More than usual."
I shrugged. "Me, stressed? Nah. Focused."
"Right." She stretched her legs out, studying me. "So what's the real story with you and Romi? Like, beyond the Chattr drama."
Something in her tone made me pause. Too casual. Girl was casting a whole line and waiting for me to bite. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, everyone's got theories about what went down between you two. The leak, the photoshoot, all that." She tilted her head, smile innocent but eyes sharp. "Must be awkward being stuck here together."
"We're professionals. Sorry if that's not tea, but that's all I got." I said, but I caught how stiff it sounded. It felt weird discussing this with Skye, of all people.