Chapter 48 - 47 : Ten-Thirty

Chapter 48: Chapter 47 : Ten-Thirty

Rhett dropped the plan on the table in B14 and handed out the work one person at a time.

"Claire, the button. Every click, the back end logs who clicked and where they came from. One click per account per day, or somebody’s going to write a script and run it all night."

Claire didn’t look up. "Already on it."

"Sam, you’re cutting the promo. Ninety seconds. I’m not looking at a rough cut. Bring me the finished thing."

Sam gave him a thumbs-up.

"Dom, the library’s yours. Staying open all night means talking to the head librarian. Where the contest goes, camera positions, lights, power. Go scout it. And the promo shoot is yours too. You shoot, Sam cuts."

Dom wiped his forehead and nodded. "Okay. Okay."

"Kevin, professors." Rhett pulled a page out of the plan. "Communications, economics, biology, history. The biggest lecture courses with the worst failure rates. Knock on every door yourself and ask if they’ll let us write questions from their lecture notes."

Kevin read the first name on the list and sucked in a breath. "Pendelton? The whole school knows he can’t stand you."

"Which is why he’s first."

Sierra raised a hand. "And me?"

"You’re hosting. Two hundred people are going to be standing in front of you, and you have to make every one of them feel like you’re talking to just him. Starting today, sit in on every review session at the tutoring center. Listen to how they ask questions."

"What about me?" Mac asked.

"You’re playing a guy in the promo who’s failing three classes and will be paying off his loans for the rest of his life if he doesn’t win."

Mac shot to his feet. "I’m only failing two!"

The room went quiet for a second, and then everybody burst out laughing. It was the first real laugh B14 had heard since last night.

The rest of the work, Rhett kept for himself. He sat down by the phone and started dialing, one number after another, and he booked every one of them for the same time and the same place.

Ryan Cho at Sony listened for five minutes and said he’d be on the first flight to LA in the morning. The man who ran retail marketing for Wells Fargo in Southern California asked who else would be there, and Rhett told him he’d find out when he arrived. The guy who ran campus marketing for Red Bull heard the word MrPelican and asked if he could get a meeting on his own, a little earlier. Rhett told him no. Ten o’clock. Everybody’s at ten.

His last call went to a business center in Century City. He rented a conference room that sat twelve on the twenty-eighth floor of an office tower, by the day.

Three sponsors would be sitting at one table at ten tomorrow morning.

After dark, the only sounds in the room were keyboards and the fans in the editing machines. Kevin looked up from behind a stack of faculty lists and asked, offhand, "Hey, you still going tonight?"

"Going where?"

"Kelsey’s birthday." Kevin blinked. "Her dad rented her the whole rooftop at some hotel on the beach in Santa Monica. Nine o’clock. Her roommate’s been posting about it all week. I figured you knew."

The pen in Rhett’s hand stopped.

The new dress this morning. The ends of her hair, freshly done. The tonight that she’d started and never finished. The phone buzzing in her pocket over and over, and her not answering any of it. It all fit.

Since that night on the cliffs at Palos Verdes, with the cold wind coming off the water, they’d barely seen each other. Episode two first, then the server, New York, the squid game, San Bruno, one thing after another without a breath in between. He owed her a real dinner. He owed her a ride in a car worth showing up in. He owed her the pictures off that memory card, counted twice before he sent them. Not one of those had happened. He sighed to himself. Of all the days for it to land on.

Even as he thought it, he was pulling the laptop over and opening Facebook. His hands were a step ahead of him.

Kelsey Daniels’s Wall was several times longer than the last time he’d looked.

Wednesday, from Kelsey: casino royale. 16 days. daniel craig in a tux leaning on an aston martin. if anyone needs me I’ll be in the front row, crying.

Sunday, from Kelsey: dear universe. a boy who remembers things. that’s it. that’s the whole list.

Sunday, from her roommate Jess: why r u posting so much lately lol

Kelsey’s reply: no reason ;)

Last Thursday, from Kelsey: update. still haven’t gotten my pictures back. apparently counting them twice takes two months.

Monday, from Kelsey: PR 301 midterm, 94. whoever said sophomores can’t do crisis comms, hi.

He kept scrolling. Some of the posts were written for him, and he could tell at a glance. Some weren’t. They were just a girl lying in bed late at night, typing out whatever was on her mind, not thinking about who might read it.

He stopped on one of them. He read it, scrolled back up, scrolled down to it again, and read it once more.

The newest post was from this morning. Jess: HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my favorite human!!! rooftop in santa monica, 9pm. be there or be a pelican.

Rhett closed the laptop. "Kevin, I need a favor."

Kevin glanced at the clock on the wall. "Now?"

Rhett was already on his feet, grabbing his jacket off the chair and the Ferrari keys off the desk. "Now. Who do you know in the music department? And does the drama department lend out bow ties?"

Kelsey’s dad had rented out the entire rooftop of a boutique hotel by the beach in Santa Monica for the night.

Little lights glowed all around the pool, and pink and gold balloons were tied along the glass railing. Jess had skipped two classes that afternoon to blow them all up.

A DJ in the corner was playing the new Justin Timberlake album. The hotel staff had wheeled out a three-tier cake with a lopsided crown piped on top. The bar was serving mocktails only. That had been her dad’s one condition.

More people had come than Kelsey expected. Girls from her PR classes, her sorority sisters, neighbors from up and down the hall, and a few people she couldn’t name who hugged her and yelled happy birthday anyway.

She was wearing the dress from this morning. She hadn’t worn it for those ten minutes this morning. She’d told herself that several times.

She checked her phone once at nine-thirty. Again at ten. At ten-fifteen she was swiveling the Sidekick’s screen open and shut, open and shut, the little click lost under the music.

Jess squeezed over with two cups of soda and pushed one into her hand.

"He’s not coming, babe." Jess kept her voice down. "The whole city’s yelling at him. It was on the news just now. He’s got his hands full."

"I know."

"Then stop checking your phone."

"I’m not."

She checked it again.

She hadn’t invited him. The words had been right on the tip of her tongue this morning, and she’d swallowed them. His eyes were red, he hadn’t slept, every paper in the city was tearing into him, and she was going to say, by the way, it’s my birthday tonight? She couldn’t do it. And she knew, too, that part of why she hadn’t asked was to see if he’d remember on his own.

At ten-thirty, the elevator doors at the edge of the deck slid open.

It wasn’t Rhett. It was Trent, two of his Sigma brothers behind him, a little Tiffany-blue box in his hand and a rolled-up newspaper tucked under his arm.

"Happy birthday, Kelsey." He set the box down next to the cake, then tossed the newspaper onto the table, front page up, the red Ferrari taking up half of it. "Your friend’s having quite a day."

The music kept playing, but the people nearby had gone quiet.

"Nobody invited you, Trent," Kelsey said.

"Doesn’t look like anybody invited him either." Trent looked around and smiled. "At least I showed up."

That landed right on the spot she’d been pressing on herself all night. Kelsey didn’t answer.

"Guys like that don’t remember birthdays," Trent said lightly. "They remember view counts. My car’s downstairs, and there’s a place in West Hollywood holding a table for me tonight. If you want a birthday that actually feels like one—"

He didn’t get to finish. From the street below came the roar of an engine. Not the Hondas and Toyotas that rolled down that street every night. This was a V8 in a low gear with somebody stepping hard on the throttle, and the glass railing along the deck buzzed along with it.

The girl nearest the railing looked over first and clapped a hand over her mouth.

"Oh my God."

Half the party crowded to the railing. Kelsey got carried two steps forward and looked down through a gap between shoulders.

In the valet lane at the hotel entrance sat a red Ferrari, hazards blinking. It was parked right behind a black Cayenne, boxing it in completely.

The driver’s door opened. The guy who got out wasn’t wearing a hoodie. He was in a black suit, a bow tie hanging untied around his neck. The valet hurried over for the keys, and he waved him off, glanced up at the roof, then turned and ran in through the hotel doors.

Jess squeezed in next to Kelsey and squinted down at the street.

"...It’s not an Aston Martin."

Kelsey didn’t hear her.

At the railing, Trent’s face changed a little at a time. His Cayenne was boxed in.

A few minutes later, the stairwell door banged open. He hadn’t waited for the elevator. He’d run all eight flights, and he was still catching his breath, the bow tie still dangling from his collar.

Every head on the roof turned toward him. He didn’t look at any of them. He searched the crowd once, and then he found her.

"Kelsey."