Page 7 of Bound By Brielle (Crave & Cure Productions)

brielle

“Has it been updated yet?”Winnie asks, a blueberry muffin halfway to her mouth.

I shake my head, a strand of my hair sailing into the air with my impatient exhale. “Not yet. I’ve been refreshing the browser approximately every thirty seconds, too.” Maybe even every twenty.

She takes an ambitious bite, chunks of muffin falling onto the table top. I wrinkle my nose. “You eat like an absolute monster,” I tell her as I make a show of bringing my scone to my mouth, held steady over a napkin. “Eat like a lady.”

She snorts, mouth full as she says, “Says the girl who ate her boyfriend’s ass.”

I jerk forward in my chair. “Shut up! God, I wish I hadn’t told you that.”

She smirks, taking a drink of her latte, washing down her humongous bite. After what appears to be a painfully large swallow based on the way she winces and her eyes water, she says, “You brought it up the other day so it’s fresh in my mind.”

“Let it rot,” I deadpan, hitting F5 on my keyboard for the millionth time.

“Anything?” she asks, staring at the back of my screen.

I shake my head yet again. “Nope.”

She picks clumps of coarse sugar off the remaining top of the muffin. “What if you got paired with, like, Steven Spielberg?” Her green eyes widen as she leans forward, excited energy oozing from her. “Oh my god, you get to know Steven Spielberg, start rubbing shoulders with Hollywood socialites, we meet Leo DiCaprio, you introduce him to me and boom, I’m the one who changed Leo’s playboy ways.”

I blink at her insanity. “Okay, first of all, that’s”—I wave my hand in her general delusional direction—“a lot of fantasy. I’m not going to get paired withSpielberg.”

“You don’t know that,” she wagers, plucking a chunk of muffin from the tabletop, tipping her head back, dropping into her open mouth. “You could.”

“It’s unlikely. And also, why wouldn’t I keep Leo for myself? Why would I introduce him toyouinstead?” I ask, folding my arms over my chest.

“You didn’t even likeGatsby,” she retorts, sipping her latte. “OrTitanic.”

I volley my head. “That’s true. And actually, I think it’s super weird and creepy that he only dates young women… and models. Like, he’s probably a mega tool in real life.”

Winnie tucks a curl behind her ear, leveling a serious gaze at me with those wide emerald eyes. “Don’t do that. Don’t humanize Leo. Just… let him be my fantasy.”

I roll my eyes, and hit refresh on my browser one more time. Sighing, I report back. “Still nothing.”

“Okay, if it isn’t Spielberg—which I’m not yet conceding to,” Winnie says, eyebrows lifting as she points at me. “Think it could be someone of that caliber? Like, a big, big name?” She rubs her hands together. “It has to be! It’s fucking UCSF, not somestateschool!”

I roll my eyes, which I do a lot with Winnie because of her insane antics and the way she says exactly what she’s thinking with zero filter. I love her for it, but my eye roll percentage is through the roof when I’m with her. “I started at a state school, asshole,” I remind her. “And I don’t know, I mean, I would think that in the graduate program at a prestigious school they’d pull some heavy hitters.”

“What’s your dad say?” she asks, nodding at me to refresh the screen again. I do, and still nothing.

“For as much as I pay for that school, you better be paired with fucking Kubrick!” I say, doing my best impersonation of my father, which at this point in my life is pretty accurate. Winnie opens her mouth but I hold up my palm, shaking my head. “I know, Kubrick’s dead. I told him that much. And he said,Dig him up! For what I pay, they ought to!”

Winnie snickers. “Oh Big Daddy, he’s such a character.”

I prod her with a pointed look. “Stop calling him that.” I refresh the screen again and sigh when nothing appears.

It’s been two weeks since I applied for the mentor/protégé program, and today is the day where we get assigned to our directors. Mr. Leon told me I was accepted into the program the same afternoon I applied, which was lucky because I think most candidates had to wait weeks to find out. Benefits of waiting until the last minute, I guess.

Even though I had no plans to apply to this program until the last day it was open, it quickly took over my thoughts. I’m desperate to change things up. I need to… dosomethingdifferent. Or else I’ll run into Noah and Tiffany with their kids at the grocery store while Tony is handing me my meat order, and the only thing I’ll be able to talk about is fucking trees! At that point my Crocs will have evolved into slippers and I will literally be a crazy cat lady, only swapping cats for trees. Is a crazy tree lady a thing?

Nothing wrong with trees. We breathe because of them. But I’m twenty six and feel more stagnant than a damn swamp. Something’s gotta give. This program is it, I can feel it.

For three hours, Winnie and I have been posted up at Rise & Grind, our favorite little coffee shop, waiting for the list to be posted. I’ve officially consumed a thousand calories of carbs while I wait, and copious amounts of caffeine. My leg has been bouncing beneath the table for the last hour.

Winnie chews her lip, crumpling the brown baggie her muffin came in. “Could be Spielberg.”

“It won’t be Spielberg.”

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