Quaranteam Ch. 26

Lunch had been great fun. Once Aisling and Niko had told Andy, they'd wanted to tell everyone as soon as possible, so the moment they'd sat down for lunch, they'd told everyone straight out, which had led into a small celebration, and sort of let Andy slip into the background with his thoughts.

Sure, the girls all congratulated him, but they were all much more interested in how Niko and Ash were feeling about everything, so Andy could do a little bit of his own research. When he had half a minute, he asked Katie for both more about Lexi, and what she thought of Jade Dillon. He also did a little bit of talking with Sarah about Maya Steele, since clearly they ran in similar circles. When he had a moment, he also pinged Hannah to see if she'd heard anything about Olivia Shoemaker, Asha's "influencer" friend. Finally, he asked Jenny about Katie's ex, Dr. Morgan Fitch.

By the end of lunch, he almost wished he'd brought his yellow notepad with him. It was a lot of names, a lot of opinions and thoughts to keep from getting scrambled around in his brain. But his own opinions were starting to bake in, to settle and coalesce into something more solid.

His mind was so wrapped up in his thoughts, he almost overlooked how lunch was, as it always was, amazing. He made sure to tell Jenny just how excellent it was, and she said he could thank her by making sure to bring Alexis into the family. He didn't answer her, but his smile probably gave him away. He didn't mind.

When they were walking back towards the meeting room, Aisling slipped her arm around his waist, leaned in and kissed his cheek. "You're happy Niko and I are expectin', right, love?" She had a smile on her face, so she was simply reinforcing what she already knew. "Sometimes you can bit understated 'bout these kinds of things."

Andy chuckled a little, leaning down to kiss her forehead. "You know that I am, Ash. I'm sorry if I seemed a little distant at lunch. This is just a lot of information to take in all at once, lots of people to consider, lots of decisions to make. Shit, people's lives and livelihoods hang in the balance of my stupid judgment. The decisions I'm going to make tomorrow have real, genuine consequences, things I gotta live with for the rest of my life, and I don't want to let anyone down. Turning anyone down feels like--"

"Stop," Ash said, holding him from walking any further. "I told you up front that nobody was going to hold anything against you, and we're all going to honor that. You didn't have to let anyone have a say, and you're letting everyone have a say. That's all anyone has the right to ask of you." She sighed, then laughed for a second. "Jaysis, if it was me, I'd have thrown the towel in and just taken nobody, but you're not doing that, despite the fact that nobody would've blamed you if you did. Instead, you set down what your reasonable capabilities are, and everyone agreed to them. So stop getting in your own damn way and just get on with it already."

He had to laugh with her at that point, nodding in agreement. "Okay, okay, I get it. No more moping about this, and no more overthinking it. Just listen to the pitches, make my decisions and move forward with our lives. I'll hold you to nobody being mad, though."

"Everybody knows what's coming down the pipeline, Andy," Ash said. "It'll be alright. I promise you, it'll all be alright. Now let's get these last four underway. There's still a few surprises left to spring on you, and it's always fun to watch your expression when you're caught off guard."

"What kind of crazy surprises do you have lined up for me?" he said, as Piper strode through the door confidently, dressed in her Team USA gear, some sort of warm-up suit. He was certain she wasn't wearing the full Olympian gear underneath it, but the very presence of the outfit seemed designed to send a message.

"You should know she doesn't have anything planned for you, Andy," Piper said, smirking at him. "This is all us."

"How are you feeling, Piper? Head starting to clear up? Starting to feel more like yourself again?" Andy asked.

"A lot better, yeah. The first few days, it was like, I dunno, like I was walking through fog, like every inch of my body was coated in maple syrup," the brunette volleyball player said, looking around the room a bit before looking back at Andy. "I was living in quicksand, but over the last couple of days, all of that's been lifting and I've felt mostly like myself again. I've been trying to get back on my work out regimen, so that's helped some. But I think the further I get away from that state, the better off I'll be." She looked better, there was no denying. Her eyes didn't have the dark, heavy bags underneath them that they had when they first met. She'd also put a little bit of weight back on, but Andy suspected that was because she had been massively dehydrated when they'd first met. He was glad to see her coming back into being her full self. "A couple more weeks and I'll be right as rain again. But that's not why I'm here today."

"Yeah, well, it doesn't hurt for me to ask about you first."

"Yeah yeah," Piper said, as she picked up the remote, pressing the button as a Nordic looking blonde appeared on the screen. "I don't know how much you follow the Olympics, but if you do, you might recognize my friend Brooke Maloney here. She's being hyped as the next big thing for the woman's swim team. She's going to enter a number of various swim competitions -- breast stroke, freestyle, relay -- but obviously there aren't any games this year, and she's going out of her mind swimming laps in the compound's pool."

The blonde, much like Piper, looked fit, although she looked much shorter in comparison, with broader shoulders and a wide smile on her face, sitting at a table full of athletes. Piper pushed the button again and the screen advanced to a new image, one of Piper and Brooke sitting on a blanket at some outdoor concert.

"What do you mean 'compound?'" Andy asked.

"A lot of the soon-to-be Olympians were at the US Training Camp, putting in a hard six months before the Olympics," Piper said. "Me and the rest of the volleyball team were going to be diverted there when the lockdown had been going for a few months, but it was deemed 'too risky' for any of us to be moved. Well, up until our dear Mister Covington decided to scoop me up and tried to make me into his own personal plaything. Thanks again for rescuing me from that, by the by."

"I'm just glad you're not mad it's me you're bound to."

"We've been over this, Andy," she sighed, a polite smile on her face. "I'm happy it was someone as nice as you. Let's move things forward. Now, one of the dirty little secrets you may not have heard about the Olympics is that after an athlete competes in their particular event, they go back to the Olympic village and they let off all that pent up steam that's been building in them for years. I haven't had a chance to experience myself personally, but our trainers and coaches have been telling us about it for as long as we've been old enough to hear the stories. I don't need that pressure valve any more because, well, I have you. But my friend Brooke, well, she doesn't have that."

She pushed the button and the image advanced to another picture of Brooke, this time in Daisy Duke cutoff jean shorts, a white tied up shirt and a wide brimmed stetson hat, somewhere at a country bar, a Corona in hand with a lime. Her blonde hair was done up in short pigtails, which looked odd on her by Andy's reckoning.

"Brooke and I have been friends for a couple of years now, and believe me, the Olympics is literally all she thinks about," Piper said. "She wants to win gold medals so much it, it's eating her up inside. Now with the 2020 games being pushed back until at least 2021, she's going out of her mind, like a predator able to see its prey under glass but not being allowed to hunt it."

Piper pushed the button and the picture changed to an image of Brooke leaning against a Shelby Cobra, dressed in overalls, covered in grease, a wrench in her hand. "Her only other real passion is classic cars. She's something of a gearhead, and any time she's not training, she's working on cars. She's done more than a couple frame off restorations and more than a handful of heavy mods. She's had a couple of boyfriends over the years, but they never last all that long."

"So what's she like in the sack, Pipes?" Ash asked her.

"She's about as vanilla as they come," Piper answered. "She likes things slow and steady, smooth and soft. But she'll be a good lover, and a good friend."

"Complications you anticipate?" Andy asked.

"You're from pretty different worlds, but I've often been told that opposites attract, so maybe that won't be as big an issue as I think it might be," she shrugged. "You're pretty rock'n'roll, and she's a country girl at heart. You're a big city guy and she's a small town girl. She's at church every Sunday and I'm pretty sure you're an aethist. So maybe that's all too much to scale, but then again maybe it isn't. I'm sure whatever you decide, it'll be the right decision."

Piper pushed the button and the screen advanced again, back to a black screen, with the words "Next: Sarah" in a cartoonish white lettering.

"Any reason you didn't suggest any of the other girls from your volleyball team, just out of curiosity?" Andy asked. "I would've figured they would've been some of your best friends."

The brunette smirked, flashing him a little wink. "Oh they are, but there's no way in hell I'm sharing my man with the likes of them. Let'em find their own hunk and they can keep their sticky fingers off of mine."

With that, Piper headed out of the room, leaving the door open behind her, striding confidently down the hallway.

"So, just to warn you about the next one, Andy, we do know in advance that you have met her a couple of times, but in the pictures we've seen, you always looked friendly, so we're going off that," Aisling said to him, as she texted Sarah to head to the conference room. "If we're wrong in those assumptions, ye can tell us and we'll let the matter drop then and there."

"Oh yeah?" Andy said, suddenly wondering what familiar face was going to grace the screen in moments. "Where do I know her from?"

The Irish redhead waggled a finger in his direction. "Just be patient, love. She'll up and in front o' ya in just a minute or two."

Andy rolled his eyes with a grin. "Then what's the harm in telling me early?"

"The harm is Sarah will have my tits in a wringer if I spill the goss before she's here."

"Good lord, you girls and your secrets," he muttered in amusement.

The statuesque redhead arrived moments later, and she immediately came over to hug Aisling, a giggle slipping from Sarah's mouth. "Congrats again, Ash," Sarah said to her. "I didn't want to say it in front of the others, but I am totally fucking jealous of you right now, you wouldn't even fucking believe me how jealous I am. Today is obviously the day I stop taking my birth control, because, damn, my clock is ticking, girlfriend."

Ash shook her head with a mischievous grin. "You don't want to wait until you're a little more settled in first, Sarah? Or until you're married?"

Sarah pulled back from the hug, looking over at Andy, licking her lips with a wild smile. "Shit, if I thought I could get him to do it, I'd beg him to fuck me until I was knocked up right here on this table, right here and now. But I've only got ten minutes, so maybe I should just get to the presentation."

Andy gestured to the remote with a smile. "Maybe."

"One thing first, though." Sarah had come into the meeting in a dress skirt and a dark red silk blouse, but she turned around, did something, then turned back, bringing a glistening finger to Andy's lips before the actress slipped it into his mouth, and he could taste her pussy on it. "Just so you know how much the idea of you breeding me turns me on." She winked at him as she pulled her fingertip from his lips and walked back to the other side of the table.

"On with the show, Sares," Aisling poked.

"Yeah, totes, Ash, I'm getting' there." Sarah picked up the remote and clicked the button, as the screen behind her flickered to life. "Oh look! It's you! And you're with one of my other total favorite writers, Larissa Cotton!"

Andy immediately recognized the shot. It was taken about five years ago, at DragonCon. Andy hadn't wanted to go, but he'd been nominated for a Hugo, an award he'd ended up winning, for "Behind The Darkest Sky," the most successful of the Druid Gunslinger novels, partially because it was the most risky of the books. When Andy had written it, he'd almost thought it might be the end of the series if it didn't work, if the audience didn't trust him to stick around long enough to see the story continue in the next one. He'd left the Gunslinger in a hell of a mess at the end of the book, and while he was over half way through writing the next one when "Behind The Darkest Sky" had come out, he'd still been in a very nervous place about going to a convention.

At the Hugo awards for the night, he'd found himself sat with a handful of authors he hadn't met before that night, including Larissa Cotton, a Hispanic woman from Portland who'd written an amazing book called "Ions At Dawn," a technothriller about a woman who finds herself grappling with an archaeological find that threatens to rewrite the basic underpinnings of science. Andy had read all the nominees and found her book fascinating, although maybe a bit too heady for the average reader.

Larissa was nothing like any writer he'd ever met before. She was brash, confident, boisterous and outspoken, the loudest presence in any room, and yet, never in a harsh way. She was a plus-sized woman, thick but not in an unappealing way. The silver hoop in her nose had been a little off putting, and Andy had found the overwhelming number of tattoos more than a little distracting, almost perhaps no more than the goth Lolita look meets skater punk she'd been rocking at the party.

They'd gotten along reasonably well, although Larissa had gotten rip roaringly drunk by the end of the night. Andy and a couple of others had needed to help her back to her hotel room, since she was nearing blackout stages by the end of the night.

Andy and Larissa had reminded occasionally in contact since then, but they certainly weren't what Andy would describe as close. They'd met up a couple of times in the years since, but generally it had just been if they'd been in the same town, and then only within a group of people.

"Larissa lives up in Portland," Andy said.

"Sure, but that can change," Sarah said. "I mean, Emily and I both lived in LA until we moved here. Asha's lived most of her life in London and Piper spent most of her life in Florida. People move, Andy. That can't be an excuse."

"Well, no," Andy laughed, "but she was also engaged last I heard."

"Wait, what?" Sarah asked. "I talked to her like three months ago, and she didn't mention it, and I didn't see any engagement ring."

He shrugged. "Maybe I misheard, or maybe they called it off. It was a couple of years ago, when a bunch of us were getting drunk after our ComicCon panels. She said she'd just sold the film adaptation rights to 'Ions At Dawn' to somebody and we all went out to celebrate."

Aisling nodded. "She sold the rights to Sarah, as a matter of fact."

The taller redhead pushed the button on the remote and the screen advanced to an image of Sarah and Larissa at a conference table shaking hands. "My production company, Awkward & Dorky Films, to be more specific. We agreed to let her give us a first draft if she agreed to go through the notes and revisions process without too many complaints."

"Heh," Andy smirked. "And 'Ris agreed to that? Talk about being prickly to editors. She damn near took my head off when she had me read a first draft of her third book, 'Castle of Yesterdays,' and I gave her notes on it."

"It totally couldn't have been as bad as you're making it out to be, Andy," Sarah teased. "Don't be such a baby. Suck it up."

"I believe she told me that I could roll up my notes and shove them into my dick until I was crapping them out," he said.

"Fuck," Sarah muttered. "You must've been really hard in those notes."

"Not really?" He shrugged a little. "I mean, I offered some opinions and I told her that a couple of the chapters went on too long with nothing happening, and that the climax felt overly weak but that it was a great first draft. I mean, I liked the book a lot. But that's what you do with first drafts -- show them to someone, figure out what works and what doesn't, then make a real book out of it."

"I liked 'Castle of Yesterdays,' though, Andy!" Sarah whined.

"Sure!" he said, waggling a finger at her. "You just read the final version, which went through about six revisions. And, for what it's worth, she ended up using most of my notes. I mean, I didn't hold it against her that she didn't like getting notes. Every author can be a little bit of a prima donna sometimes."

"Well, as of July, I don't think she was married or engaged or whatever, and she's completely rad. Also, you two get along, because you've obviously gone out for dinner and drinks before, and she trusted you enough to let you read her first draft of a new book, so that seems good enough to me, don't you think?"

"I mean, we weren't close friends, but we were, er, are friendly acquaintances. I don't know that either of us thought the other was their type, though. She seemed to be into people who were way more of the 80s skateboard punk ethos than me."

"You saw her with a man at some point?"

"Oh yeah," Andy said, "Well, no. I mean, not directly, but she showed me a picture of her and 'her man,' she called him. He was big, fit fellow. Broad shoulders, six pack. About as far from me as any man can possibly get. He looked like he could've bench pressed me for hours without breaking a sweat, and she, well, she looked happy."

Sarah shrugged a little bit. "Whoever he was, Andy, he completely didn't last, because when she and I were meeting to discuss our notes for the screenplay, she was sniping about how she hadn't had a proper lay in months. So big and hunky didn't work for her, so maybe you could. I know she thinks you're cute. I told her I had a crush on you and she said 'Well, who could blame you?' so I think she does too."

"How well do you know her, Sarah?"

The taller redhead shrugged. "Not all that well, but she's been nice to me, and she's someone you know, so maybe that could be something that would work for you."

"Do you have any idea whether or not we'd be sexually compatible?"

Sarah shrugged with a smile. "It's never come up, so I don't have any idea."

"Possible challenges?"

"Two writers in the same room might always want to be editing one another?" she giggled. "I genuinely don't know, Andy. But I thought it was a good idea so I wanted to suggest it."

"Fair enough then."

"One last thing before I go," Sarah said, pushing the button to advance the screen to an image that read "next: Sheridan" on it in a frilly cursive font. "I was telling you at lunch that I think bringing Maya Steele into the family is a great idea, so I wanted to stress that while I haven't changed my mind on that, I did forget to tell you not to ever get into a drinking contest with her. Your head will hurt and your liver will be punching you for days."

"And yet, you still think I should bring her in?"

Sarah nodded emphatically. "Maya's a bad ass, and you need someone as direct as her in your life. I mean, Neeks handles most of that, but really, Maya's got her beat hands down."

"Are you trying to convince me not to bring her in? Someone more direct than Niko?"