Chapter Fourteen
Autumn
The reporter has been talking about the album for twelve minutes, which means he's almost ready to ask the question he came for.
Nix knows it too. She's sitting across from him with one ankle tucked behind the other, water untouched on the table beside her.
Six hours ago she would've glanced toward me by now.
Nothing obvious, just enough to make sure I was still in the chair off to her left before she walked into whatever came next.
She hasn't looked at me once.
The reporter closes the notebook resting on his knee but leaves the recorder running.
"There are people who think you've spent a lot of time talking about how young you were and not enough talking about the person you hurt. Do you think that's fair?"
Nix's fingers tighten briefly around the arm of the chair.
I keep my pen against the page.
We've done this question in three different forms. She has an answer for it. There are phrases we spent half an afternoon getting right because one sounded defensive and another sounded like a lawyer wrote it. Nix doesn't use any of them.
"I think I've been angry about being asked to answer for something I said at nineteen for so long that sometimes I forget there's a reason people keep asking."
The reporter leans forward slightly.
Nix takes a breath and keeps going.
"What I said was shitty. I hurt somebody, and being nineteen doesn't make that less true.
I also don't think anybody should have to spend the rest of their career pretending the worst thing they said as a teenager is the only true thing about them.
" She shifts in the chair, but her eyes stay on his.
"I have to own what I said without letting it own everything I've done since. "
My pen stops.
That's better. It isn't cleaner, but it sounds like her.
The reporter asks another question, then another. Nix answers both without reaching for anything we've rehearsed and without looking at me.
By the time he switches off the recorder, I've closed my notebook.
He thanks her, shakes her hand and finally leaves.
The door has barely shut before Nix reaches for the water she ignored through the entire interview. "That's the answer I'm giving from now on."
I close my notebook and slide the approved language to the bottom of the stack. "Then I'll build around that one."
Nix twists the cap off the bottle and drinks for the first time all afternoon. I check the time. "Your next interview starts in fifteen minutes."
"Twenty."
"Fifteen."
"I finally said what I meant in there. That has to be worth five more minutes."
I smile despite myself. "Seventeen."
"Done."
She reaches for the water again, and I pick up my phone to tell the next reporter we're running late.
Anna calls after the interview goes online. By then I'm back at the hotel, sitting at the narrow desk while rain ticks against the window.
My damp coat hangs over the chair nearest the radiator, and the kettle clicked off ten minutes ago. The tea bag is still dry beside the mug when Anna's name takes over my screen.
I answer and put her on speaker. "Please tell me nobody has spontaneously combusted."
"The interview is doing exactly what we wanted. The sponsor is happy, the label has stopped sending me messages with the word concern in them, and Nix sounded like a human being instead of somebody being held hostage by her own statement."
My smile comes before I can stop it. Anna continues before I can say anything. "You did excellent work today, Autumn."
"That's a suspicious amount of praise from you."
"Enjoy it. I'm not repeating myself."
I close the schedule I had already started looking at for tomorrow. "Noted."
"And before you rearrange the entire morning because Nix yawned once at four-thirty, take the win for five minutes."
"She yawned twice."
"Of course she did."
"I moved one interview."
"Autumn."
"One."
Anna laughs. "Five minutes. You can survive it."
"I'll consider your proposal."
"Goodnight."
"Night."
The call ends while I'm still smiling. For once, I don't open the schedule again. I pick up my phone instead.
The interview has already been sent to the group chat from the label. Someone has pulled the quote from the middle, the one Nix came up with on her own. There are congratulations underneath it, a handful of messages from people who spent most of the last month convinced this was going to go badly.
I should send Nix something obnoxious. I probably will. My thumb moves down the screen. Past Anna. Past Summer. Sam's name is still there.
I stop.
He would understand why today mattered. The thought arrives without warning and without any of the careful sorting I've gotten good at since I left Chicago.
He knew about Nix before any of this worked.
Before London. Before press days and sponsor emails and rooms full of reporters waiting for her to screw up.
He sat on his apartment floor with me in the middle of the night while her entire career was spread across his coffee table and asked me which part was the problem.
He'd ask what she said. I'd tell him she changed the answer.
He'd probably say, Was it better?
And I'd say yes.
My thumb stays over his name.
I don't open the thread.
After a few seconds, I lock the phone and set it beside the laptop.
The room doesn't change. I'm still smiling a little, which makes it worse.
I wanted to tell him.