Page 76 of Seven Percent of Ro Devereux
He blinks like I slapped him. He’s forgotten, maybe, that we aren’t friends anymore. But I can’t slip back into it—joking with him while I get ready, going through the motions like he didn’t keep the truth from me all this time.
“What should I do?” the makeup artist asks dryly.
Felix clears his throat. “Let’s stick with the peachy tones,please.” He turns away from us, takes a seat across the room. Down the hall and through another closed door, the flash drive waits in Miller’s back pants pocket.
“Small change,” Jazz says. We’re standing around the corner from the stage, minutes from my call time. “Hoda wants to talk to you both together. Questions will be the same; Miller, you’ll just be up there with Ro the whole time. Cool?”
My heart lurches upward into my throat, choking me. When I start to cough, Miller puts his hand on the middle of my back and says, “Cool.”
I look at him, gasping for air.Not cool.If he’s on with me, there’s no time to switch the videos. The whole week we spent doing interviews, everyone who told us their stories when they didn’t owe us anything at all—
“Great,” Jazz says. She tucks her clipboard under her arm. “Good luck up there. I’ll be watching from the back with everyone else.”
She turns on her heel and disappears, leaving Miller and me alone with Felix.
“We need your help,” Miller says, dropping his arm from my back to reach into his pocket. He hands Felix the flash drive, and Felix’s eyebrows shoot up.
“Miller,” I say, and he looks at me. “He’s not going to do it.”
“What other choice do we have?” he asks, and I know that there isn’t one.
“He’s not going to do what?” Felix says, looking between us.His hand’s extended, flash drive sitting in his upturned palm like a bomb that might detonate if he moves. “What is this?”
“It’s a video,” Miller says. He’s talking fast, rushing to explain before we’re called up. “Of a bunch of people we met with last week, their stories about MASH, how it’s hurt them, changed their dreams or what they believe about themselves or their futures.” As he speaks, Felix’s eyebrows hike farther and farther up his forehead. “We need to swap it with Jazz’s testimonial video. Show people the truth.”
When he’s done, Felix’s eyes snap to mine. “This was your idea?”
“It was our idea,” I say. There’s a short, stunned pause. “Please, Felix.”
“You know this violates your contracts,” he says. “Publicly defaming the company.” He looks down at the flash drive. “It would violate mine, too.”
“What can they do?” I ask, and my voice only shakes a little. “Fire us? When people see this, there won’t be anything to fire us from.”
Felix looks from me to Miller and back again. “This is stupid of you,” he says finally. “This is reckless.”
“This is the right thing to do,” Miller says.
“And besides”—I raise my chin, look Felix right in the eyes—“you owe us. You were our friend, and you lied.”
He blinks, and swallows, and closes his hand around the flash drive. When our eyes meet, I see it all—that first day we met in the conference room, and the night he followed Miller and meto the hospital from formal, and every time he fixed my makeup and smoothed my hair and made sure I was ready. Even before he speaks, I feel the shift: he’ll make sure I’m ready now, too.
“Fine,” he says. When I smile he says it again, on an exasperated hiss. “Fine.Can’t wait to be unemployed again.” He sighs harshly but then pulls us both into him, squeezing tightly. “You two are unreal.” He lets go and flaps his hands to shoo us toward the stage door. “Get away from me. I’ll take care of this.”
Just as he turns away, a producer calls our names.
Miller reaches for my hand. He kisses the inside of my wrist, then my palm. “You ready?”
I look at him, here with me until the very end. “I’m ready.”
42
In her jewel-purple dress andI’m so happy to see yousmile, Hoda Kotb looks like our luckiest break. Like of everyone on earth we could pull this stunt in front of, she might actually be the best option. She looks like she’d hug me if I started to sob.
The three of us sit on leather couches in front of a big screen bearing the MASH logo. I hope, desperately, that Felix didn’t change his mind.
“Well, thanks for coming back to New York,” Hoda says, smiling so graciously I could cry. She gestures to Miller, the conspicuous obstacle of his cast. “I know we were supposed to have you on a couple weeks ago. How are you feeling, Miller?”
“Oh, I’m fine,” Miller says. Felix has him in a short-sleeve button-down, the only kind of dress shirt he can wear with the cast. It’s navy with teensy white polka dots. “It’s great to be back in New York.”
