Miss Cleopatra: In Love I Fall

5

"Are you sure you can't hang out any longer? I thought the label gave you the day off." Sarah pouted from behind the steering wheel of her car. She was nice enough to drive me back down to LA this morning: after dropping Kayla off at the restaurant to take care of a "brunch emergency", the two of us  hung out at a coffee shop in a quieter part of town. But after it turned noon, I knew I had to say goodbye.

"Yeah. Under normal circumstances I could just skip, but the album's in a critical production stage right now. So technically I have the day off, but the band doesn't." That was one thing that sucked about being a music producer. I didn't really have a set schedule for when I'm in the studio. Music is an impossible thing to predict because it's always changing: so 80% of the time I'm working off the clock. But I do get paid overtime so most of the time, it's worth it. But other times, like right now, it isn't worth it. "And Paul said he could handle all the tech, but he keeps texting me with questions."

I kept looking down at the phone buzzing in my lap, and quickly switched it to silent. I was literally parked right in front of the studio. Whatever the band had to say could wait a minute until I got inside.

"I'm sorry that you had to get dragged all the way down here." I told her and Sarah just shook her head.

"Seriously, Anna: I don't mind! I love LA. I just feel bad that I'm stealing your car for the day." I told Sarah that she could borrow the car- I mean, it was the least I could do after interrupting our girls' weekend.

"No, no! Don't feel bad at all. I can get a ride home from the band." It was no big deal, really.

"Okay awesome. I wanted to go into town anyway and talk to a couple of wedding planners." Just thinking about the wedding had Sarah getting little heart-eyes.

"Have you guys picked a date?" I asked, realizing I hadn't taken the time to ask that very important question. Sarah just gave me this weird look and blinked for a moment.

"Wait... you're serious? Wow, someone really needs to cut you off after five glasses of champagne." Sarah laughed, and I furrowed my eyebrows in confusion. "Okay well, we made the announcement at the party last night: the date's set for April 14th."

"No you didn't." I couldn't believe my ears. "There's no way I missed that." But Sarah's face on the verge of laughter told me that she wasn't joking. "Oh my God." I finally said after realizing she wasn't kidding. "This is so embarrassing."

"Don't worry about it. Maybe just lay off a little next time?" She suggested with a small grin. I laughed along with her, but I was a little concerned that Drew just being there caused me to spiral like that.

"Will do, Sar. Just drop it off at the loft whenever." I was referring to the car now. "Do you have a ride home?"

"Yeah, Marco's gonna swing by and pick me up. All good."

"Alright. I'll see you soon, okay?"

"Bye, have fun at work!" I heard her call out to me after I had turned to walk up to the door. Once I reached the door, I looked back out to the street to give Sarah one final wave before stepping inside. Immediately, the blasting AC took me by surprise. It was so cold that I could actually feel the hair on my arms standing on end. "What the hell?" I mumbled to myself, just as I flailed my arms around a little bit in attempts to generate body heat.

"Afternoon, Miss Kade. Something happened to the air conditioning unit- it seems to be stuck on the lowest setting, and no one knows exactly how to fix it. We've got someone coming in approximately a half hour to try and repair it."

"Wow, how long has it been on like this?" Not only was it freezing, but the air being blown out of the vents was whipping by at incredibly high speeds. It felt like I was in a wind tunnel in the middle of Antarctica as opposed to a music studio in downtown LA.