Page 18 of The CEO I Hate

“Seriously,” Tanya said. “It’ll get ugly.”

I laughed, inhaling the food in front of me. I hadn’t eaten much before the interview out of sheer nervousness, and now I couldn’t get the chopsticks to my mouth fast enough.

While I ate my weight in rice, Tanya told me all about her most recent horrible breakup and why she was absolutelynotready to mingle despite how much Jerome needled her about getting back on the apps.

And Kait had recently gotten engaged to her long-term boyfriend. She was apparently so stressed about wedding planning she was considering eloping.

“Why not?” Jerome shrugged. “Then you can spend all your money on some sexy honeymoon. You could go on a safari.”

“Or,” Tanya said, “cage diving with sharks!”

“Yassss!” Jerome said, getting on board with the ridiculousness. “Or climb Everest. I hear a lot of people are doing that now. You know, make it a once-in-a-lifetime sort of experience.”

Kait snorted. “Can we pick something that isn’t going to kill me?”

“Girl, you’re convinced that if you sneeze too hard, you’ll die.”

“Your eyeballs really can pop out of your head! It’s not just an urban myth!”

I laughed along with the table. The writers were an easy bunch to like, and I was pretty excited to deep dive into the storylines for season twowith them next week. “So,” I said. “How do you guys like working on the show?”

“It’s exactly what you think being a writer will be like when you’re young and dumb and don’t know what a meat grinder this industry is, you know?” Kait said, sounding way too worldly wise for someone who couldn’t be a day over twenty-five. “I mean, yeah, working with Lyle was definitely no walk in the park?—”

“You can fucking say that again,” Tanya muttered.

I made a face I hoped conveyed my sympathy. I didn’t have a ton of experience working for a horrible boss, but I’d once had a really shitty mentor who’d gone out of his way to ruin a big opportunity for me, so I could imagine how that felt.

“But for this show?” Kait continued. “Having the chance to work with these characters, to make something this juicy and fun? It was actually worth putting up with a control freak for a boss. And now with Paula running things and you pitching the ideas? This season is going torock.”

She grinned at me, and I smiled back, warmed by her faith in me. Still, I was a little surprised that their only complaints so far were about Lyle. “You never had any issues with Liam?”

“Boss man? Honestly, we didn’t see much of him until recently,” Jerome said. “But he’s been super great since everything went down, making sure we were all okay, that we felt supported. I think that’s why he and Paula tried to include us in the interview process. To make us a more cohesive team.”

“I’m sorry you had to deal with that,” I said.

“No shock that Lyle would leave us in the lurch. He always thought he was the only one in the writers’ room who mattered. He never told us what was going on,” Kait said.

“With anything. Plotlines. Characters.He’d reveal the elements one episode at a time, which made it really difficult to write because you didn’t know what the motivation was or where the plot thread was going.”

“And then he’d do massive revisions on our work. He’d literally cut entire scenes. Totally rework the dialogue,” Jerome said. “And my dialogue is on fire. No pun intended.”

The corner of my mouth curled. “I believe it.”

“But like Kait said, I think we’re all feeling a lot more positive about season two.”

When I’d first heard the news, I kind of assumed Liam had played more of the bad guy in the narrative. Like maybe he’d pissed Lyle off and driven him to quit. But clearly, Liam wasn’t the problem here.

In a surprising turn of events, he actually seemed to be looking out for his employees, trying to make things right.

“I wonder what made Lyle leave,” I said. “If this show meant so much to him.”

“I think it all boils down to control,” Jerome said. “Like he was asking for too much damn stuff in his contract. I guess whatever legal said no to was enough to make him walk.”

“Anyway,” Kait said. “Enough about that demon. Tell us about you.”

“And this hot firefighter brother of yours,” Tanya cut in. “I’m just imagining he’s hot. Because, you know, firefighter.”

“Oh, well,” I said awkwardly. “I’m no judge on whether he’s hot. And…he’s not actually a firefighter anymore. He was badly injured last year on a call, and he’s been on a rotation of surgeries since.”

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