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Jody isn't expecting visitors. Not today, at least. In fact, Jody has brushed herself off, resolved that being petty and bitter over a fling is a waste of her time (not that it felt like that...) and is working on contacting various studios for scripts.
So when her doorbell rings, she's surprised. Jody hopes it isn't David, who had been a terrible lay and a bit stalker-y, and hopes its maybe April giving her a surprise pick me up.
She's still debating between both options when she opens the door.
It's Colt.
The door slams before she even registers herself moving, pressing her back into it. He-- he just showed up??? To her address?? No-- message, no warning? Did he think this was a joke?
"Jody-- uh, listen, please let me explain?" Colt calls out weakly. He sounds so...un-Colt.
But he'd broken his back. Cut off everyone. Maybe he's feeling very un-Colt.
Well, she was feeling very un-Colt, too.
"You think this is a game??" she asks, through the door.
"Please open the door."
She waits. She can still hear him breathing even after five minutes, and finds herself relenting. She opens the door only slightly, peering through it.
Colt looks...nervous. Jittery in a way she has never seen Colt look. He's also wearing a button down and a cardigan, which while comfortable looking, is very much unlike him.
"Jody?" he asks, and she notices he's wearing glasses. "Um, it's nice to meet you. I'm Ryland."
She squints at him.
"So you do think this is a game."
Colt pinches his fingers together, holding them up as he presses his mouth into an annoyed line. "Why are twins foreign concepts to you people??"
Jody blinks.
"Well, you're--"
"Identical, monozygotic, that's what happens when a zygote splits into two embryos. Listen, I'm really sorry for dropping by unannounced, but I don't have a lot of time. I have to teach tomorrow and that's in San Fran."
Jody looks across to her clock. "It's early?"
"This might take a few hours. Can we speak? Inside?"
Jody hesitates. Maybe this was Colt playing a weird prank...but no. The more Ryland speaks the more she's sure that he's not Colt and definitely his sibling. They have a similar energy in many ways, and a very different one in many others.
"Um, sure."
Jody lets him inside. It’s technically a two bedroom flat, but one room has been dedicated to a viewing room for the sake of filmmaking. The kitchenette and actual lounge space are conjoined, with a hallway leading off to the right of the kitchen toward the bathroom and the bedroom. The walls are cream and most of her furniture is beige, IKEA built, but framed posters dot the walls, a soft mink blanket is draped over the mocha-coloured couch, and blown glass figures dot the counters and tables.
"Tea or coffee?" she asks.
"Coffee please," Ryland asks, shrugging off his cardigan and rolling up his sleeves. He said he was a teacher, right? He's pretty well-built for a teacher. If it wasn't for his nervous jitters he really could walk onto a set and pretend to be Colt.
"How do you take it?" She's already getting milk out. "I have a proper set up."
"Oh, you don't have to--" he cuts himself by holding up his hands. "I'll take what you have."
Pointedly, making eye contact whenever she can, she makes Colt's preferred way of taking his coffee, and herself her usual white mocha. She kind of wants to put alcohol in it.
He accepts it with a grateful nod, taking a sip and pausing.
"...Colt's coffee?"
A laugh erupts from Jody. "You knew that immediately?"
"I've lived with him," Ryland says with a dismissive shrug. "We've picked up each other's coffee a few times by accident."
It's weird to talk about Colt with someone at all, let alone casually. It's especially weird to talk about him to someone who has his face.
"Now, um. This isn't just a house call," Ryland says, leaning on the back of the couch. He taps his foot a bit and stops, switching to folding his arms and tapping at the inner elbow. "And I am sorry to bring this up, but uh. Do you have the footage of Colt's accident?"
Jody's blood goes cold as the memory flickers in. The fall, the rig, the malfunction, Colt not moving--
"I do," Jody's voice is frayed. "I...I handed over copies for the investigation, but--"
Ryland makes an annoyed noise, and pulls out his phone.
"Do you have yours?" he asks, and she also pulls out her phone. Ryland yoinks it out of her hand before she can protest, half stumbling into the kitchen as he gets out two containers. One small enough for both phones. One large enough to fit the container.
He puts the phones in the container, seals it, saran wraps it, then shoves a few hand towels into the box and puts it into the fridge.
"Okay."
"Are you...being followed?" she asks, and Ryland shakes his head.
"So I've...been busy. It started when I was making some insurance calls and the stories were coming back different."
He's pacing. The air is static, heavy. Jody's nerves are on edge.
"One tried to say rig malfunction. One said user error. So I asked for the official ruling. Which I'm allowed to request because I represent Colt for medical purposes. They fought me on it, I started issuing threats, and lo and behold..."
Ryland stills, his fist clenching and unclenching as though to self soothe.
"There wasn't an investigation."
"What?" It's practically a croak. Colt's injury had nearly killed him. Who would've stopped an investigation?
"So you think it's weird, too. I started digging. Pretty much every line of inquiry dries up as soon as Colt got out of the hospital. Studio told law enforcement they were handling it. Health insurance were told law enforcement were handling it. And no one has the footage. Not the studio, not the LAPD, not the hospital, not the insurance companies."
That was unfathomable. This sounded like a cover up.
"But why?"
"Best guess? Because Colt says he messed up. And writing it off to user error is easy. So nobody kept pressing."
It’d plagued her for a long time, and it seems it plagues Ryland, too. The idea that Colt would make an error like that. It’s not impossible, but there’s a reason Colt’s a legend.
Was a legend.
“…But why cover it up?”
They sit in a tense silence for a few seconds. She doesn’t want to give it words, and she doesn’t think Ryland does either.
“…We’re just going to have to figure that out,” Ryland says, his voice quiet. “I need to see the footage, Jody.”
Jody’s breath stills as she realises that Ryland hasn’t ever seen the fall that nearly killed his brother. This will not be kind, or easy, on him. She was there, she couldn’t avoid the memory. But Ryland could.
Jody wrings her hands. “Ryland, it’s not—“
“I…I’m the only one who can do it. I have to do this."
Jody bites her lip, then nods.
She takes him into the viewing room, with its multiple monitors and a large TV in the middle. A desk with her laptop and other equipment sat against the back wall.
"I kept everything on personal drives," Jody says, quietly. "I...I don't know. I wanted to have it just in case the studio lost it."
"How many cameras were live during the take?" Ryland asks. "Oh. There was a take before that too, right?"
Jody nods. "In front. The accident was, um. Backwards."
Ryland's face is pale in the lounge's dim lamps.
"Are you sure you want to see this?" she insists.
"Yes."
Ryland pulls a bundle of paper from his pocket and a stopwatch. "I've been collating data with...with my points of contact. I'm a little paranoid after hearing that the footage is gone, so I'm trying to be careful..."
"A little paranoid, hm?" Jody teases, thinking of the phones in the fridge.
"I don't know, Jody. Things haven't felt right in a year."
She pauses over her laptop at that. She's in full agreement, of course. Since Colt was injured, the world felt hazy. Pilates and revenge just seemed like distractions. Being ghosted after a few wild nights was one thing but...
"Wait. Who sent you to me?"
"Dan," Ryland says. "I met him when I was living with Colt, before he started his contract with Ryder. He said you were the main camera operator that day and that I could trust you--"
Oh. Her mind starts spiraling.
Ryland had no idea. Why would he? They were playing a will-they won't-they game on sets, and while it was an open secret, it wasn't anything official. But cut deeply despite herself. Colt--
"I mean, I would've asked Colt, but he clams up like an oyster if you're mentioned. Between them I knew I could be frank with you."
Ah. Is that better or worse? She can't tell. He does know of her. But he is speaking to Colt, and...she's not.
"How...how is he?" she asks, trying to keep the shake out of her voice.
"Improving. Some days are worse than others," he murmurs, and the murmur sounds experienced. It sounds like Ryland is familiar with the worse days.
Was Ryland his…his carer? It made sense. They were blood related, they would usually be the first point of contact for something like this.
"Um. I've got it," Jody says, projecting her laptop to the TV. The screen appears, the raw footage sitting paused.
Ryland shuffles. She can hear fabric being pulled taut.
“Press play.”
Jody doesn’t watch but she hears and she remembers. She sees it in nightmares sometimes. She sees it in nightmares and she can’t reach him, there’s a glass wall between them and she’s hitting it, hitting until she’s hoarse and her hands hurt and she wakes up
Screaming. That’s her screaming, the video rolls until the paramedics come in and someone remembers to turn the cameras off.
The room is deathly quiet, until she hears a hitched breath.
“Oh, Colt.”
His voice is barely audible. Jody turns, and she can see there are tears streaming down Ryland’s face. He takes in a big, sucking breath. Then another.
And then scrubs desperately at his face, grabbing his pen and starting to write on the paper.
It’s some blank pages, but it’s also diagrams of the fall rig, it’s the blueprint of the building used, it’s notes on traction and wind speed and drop speed. It looks like some of the work she’d seen Colt do, but way, way more detailed; there were things Colt would leave out because he just knew them.
“Jody, can you please give me the laptop?” Ryland asks, trying to keep his voice soft but it cracks as he speaks. She hands it over to him as he places it on the table.
“All angles are here? And the previous version of the stunt?”
Jody nods, and Ryland exhales.
“Okay, um. I can make copies—“
“No. Whatever you need to do, do it here,” Jody says. “I’ll make backups later. Good ones. But for now we’ll keep the data where it is.”
Ryland licks his lips, then nods.
“…You won’t want to be in here for this, then. Whatever you’d be doing normally, go back to that. And, uh…do you have headphones, maybe?”
Jody goes and gets him the best set of headphones she has and his coffee.
“What exactly are you doing? I mean…what are you trying to find?”
Ryland frowns, looking at his notes.
“It’s the contradicting stories. Rig malfunction versus user error. If it were the first stunt of the day…no, not even then. Do you also find Colt calling himself dumb annoying?”
The last question comes so out of field it leaves her numb for a second, and she can only sniffle and rub her forehead. This is a lot. Ryland is weirdly awkward but earnest and she can’t help but find it both endearing and frustrating.
A little like Colt, admittedly.
“Yes,” she says, finally.
Ryland throws his hands up, and they slap back down onto his legs. “It drives me crazy. I’m just the guy who gets hit, Ry, but get him started on friction and he sounds like one of my former colleagues. My point is…I don’t think he would have made this mistake. So it has to be a rig failure. I’m going to prove it was a rig failure.”
Jody nods, feeling a little winded. “Your…? Other teachers, talking about friction?”
“Oh. Um. I’m…I have a PhD. Molecular biology, used to be an academic. I teach now.”
Oh. Ryland was smart-smart. But that didn’t come as a surprise, which was a surprise in and of itself. They were twins, and Colt is brilliant. She wasn’t agreeing with Ryland on a whim, it was really annoying when Colt called himself stupid.
They were…probably very annoying as children.
“Alright, I’m going to get started. Wish me luck,” Ryland says, and the smile he gives her is barely a smile at all.
“…Are you going to be alright?” Jody asks, and Ryland’s expression turns into something half thoughtful, half wry, as his eyes flick toward the screen and back to her.
He gives her a thumbs up.
Stunt guy bullshit. But it sums it up, too. He’s about to take a nasty hit for the sake of something he cared about.
Still, she glares at him and leaves the room.
About a minute later, she’s sure she hears herself scream again. Either he has the headphones up high, or she’s just mentally timing the length of the video.
She goes and gets the list of scripts she’s been looking at and tries to focus on that.
The day fades into an odd fugue state. She tries to work but she keeps hearing herself scream intermittently. At one point, she’s sure he’s just letting it run on loop, and she can’t tell if he’s self-flagellating or he actually needs to.
He comes out after a few hours and gets his phone in silence, giving her a small wave in greeting and nothing else.
“Hey Dan,”—
She hears Dan greet him as though he’s someone else.
“Does anyone in this fudging town check their caller ID?” Ryland hisses at her and she blinks in surprise. He’s back to the phone before she can respond, walking away to where their voices are muffled. She catches some things; tensile strength, rig age, sensitivity, angles, g forces.
For a brief moment it actually sounds like Colt, and the hollow she’d managed to somewhat patch up in the last year is yawning wider and wider.
It’s not Ryland’s fault. Well, it kind of is, he showed up unannounced to her place determined to investigate his brother’s accident. But she was the one with the footage, and he couldn’t control the fact that he and Colt were identical.
All this had done was remind her of a truth she didn’t want to admit to herself — she wasn’t over Colt. And probably never would be. But Colt has cut off contact with her, didn’t want to see her, and she’s not sure now if he did it to everyone or maybe she was the only one who was left in the dark.
Ryland comes back, still on the phone.
“Thanks. Oh, uh, this might be a bit of a stretch, but do you know anyone in security?”
She doesn’t hear Dan’s reply.
“…Your cousin? Wow. Uh, okay. Well…I want the CCTV from the building. It should have been handed over as part of the investigation, so it’ll either be in the LAPD records or still in the building files.”
Dan sounds…absolutely flabbergast.
“You think I don’t know that?! You think I would be asking if I didn’t think it was necessary? Christmas Eve, Dan, I’ve been looking at the footage for hours—“
Dan cuts him off and Ryland pushes his thumb and forefinger into his eyes.
“You think I want to be doing this?”
…
“Colt wanted me to fudge off back to San Fran and drag his sorry ass around his apartment on his own, too. Sometimes what Colt wants can go suck an egg.”
Ryland exhales, before adding…
“…If it were me who’d been hurt, he would’ve been here six months ago.”
Jody’s eyes burn and she swallows thickly. So it is self-flagellating. It was Colt’s knee-jerk instinct, too. Why did both of these men instinctively turn blame inward?
“No— Dan, no. It’s fine. I…I’m here now. So let’s get this done, okay?”
They talk for a moment longer before Ryland hangs up. He’s crying again, and he wipes at his eyes.
“Sorry,” he says, and his voice cracks through the whole word. “For…everything, today.”
He waves his hand around the room.
“I just needed a little bit longer and I’ll be out of your hair.”
Jody slaps the counter and Ryland jumps.
“You better not be implying you’re just going to show up and then never speak to me again.”
Ryland blinks like a frightened animal. That was his plan, apparently.
“Like? Not even a lunch? A proper chat? Is your whole family made up of neanderthals with triple digit IQs?”
His mouth falls open. “You…y-you want lunch?”
“I would like for you to treat me like a human being,” Jody says, a hint of exasperation in her voice. She’s kind of glad Colt was the brother she met first, because Ryland’s kind of…off-putting.
“Sorry. I’m, um. Sorry,” Ryland mumbles, running his teeth over his lip. “S-sure. If you…if you want? I’d be happy to go to lunch and um. Get to know you a little better besides—“
Ryland huffs a laugh.
“Besides what?” Oh, Jody, that almost sounds hopeful. Stop that.
“When Colt is, um. A little loopy. The things that he says get colourful.”
Jody wants to press so, so badly. But she also wants Ryland to finish. She’ll press this nerd for answers during lunch.
Ryland gives her a thin smile, and shuffles back into the lounge and shuts the door.
Jody goes out the front for a breather. She still hears the scream.
It’s dark by the time Ryland emerges from the lounge again, and he has a haggard look on his face.
“Hey, um. Jody,” he says, and his voice is edged in a way she doesn’t like. His hands are shaking and she’s not sure if it’s exhaustion or something else.
“What is it?”
Ryland presses his knuckles into the door frame and now she realises why he’s trembling. This is anger. He’s so angry he can barely speak.
“…Ryland?”
He clenches and unclenches his hands a few times, then shakes them, drawing in a steadying breath that doesn’t seem to do much. He looks like a spring wound too tight. The anger isn’t directed at her, and she’s glad for that. But now all she can think about is why he would be so angry, the reason why he’s here, and--
“It wasn’t an accident.”
Her stomach falls likes she’s been dropped twelve storeys.
“What?”
Her voice is small. The implications are…astronomical. She had thought this would amount to determining a rig failure, not…this. Not…
“What does that mean?” she adds, unable to hold back tears leaking from her eyes.
Ryland turns away from her and does the motion with his hands a few more times. Every breath is shaky. If they manage to get lunch she needs to get Ryland a stress ball.
The absurdity of that in wake of the revelation almost makes her laugh manically. Almost.
“I’ve run the math…probably twenty times. Maybe more. I haven’t counted,” Ryland murmurs. “Tracked Colt’s movements, tracked the rig, tracked the rig in the previous stunt, tracked compared to historical failures. This wasn’t a failure and it wasn’t Colt.”
“So if it wasn’t an accident…”
Ryland turns back and exhales.
“…It’s tampering. Someone fudged the rig values between takes and…someone else, not Colt, hit the cessation trigger.”
Jody’s mouth falls open.
“Someone tried to kill Colt.”
The world spins.
Someone tried to kill Colt.
Someone almost succeeded in killing Colt.
Someone almost succeeded in killing Colt and has gotten away with it.
“B-but why?!” Her voice breaks, a new wave of tears falling down her face. “We have to go to the police, we have to—“
“We can’t, Jody. I’m hoping Dan can get my the CCTV from the building but without it all I have is math,” and he grinds on that word. “Math and the cover up.”
Jody wipes at her face. Ryland is also crying but he’s not even bothering. “The cover up?”
“Someone tried to kill Colt,” he says, raising a finger, “and someone in the studio went through a lot of effort to cover it up.” He raised a second finger. “Getting the investigation dropped by OSHA, getting the LAPD to let it go, giving false information to the health insurance companies. It’s all the studio, Jody. This is…thousands. Tens of thousands of dollars spent on a cover up, maybe even more.”
Ryland’s hands are still shaking, but he’s trying to stay focused, and she stays with him, nodding her head with her hand covering her mouth.
“So. There’s two options. The studio covered it up to get the movie finished. Or the studio covered it up because someone high profile on set was responsible. So I want to know what you think it could be. What makes the most sense to you, Jody?”
None of this made sense. The studio going so far out of their way to cover up Colt’s…well not an accident now, is it? Cover up the attempt on his life, was just so out of the scope of where her mind was at before today. But now she’s trying to come to terms with the idea that everything that’s happened is not just some horrible luck and a terrible tragedy, but the work of someone who had it out for Colt.
“I mean,” she mumbles into her hand. “The movie…it was…it was a b-big hit, but. Um. Do you know the movie ‘The Crow’?”
Ryland’s expression remains oddly still.
“I do. I saw it with Colt, once.”
“High profile death on set. People came to see it just because of that. It’s…it’s bad publicity. But any is good, you know? So if one of the tech crew had…if one of the tech crew were responsible I think they would’ve allowed it to be reported properly. People would’ve come to see it for that.”
People already came to see it just knowing it might be Colt Seavers’ last stunts. The Variety article had really given him a shot of fame he had never really wanted, even with him refusing to interview for it. Tom had been sore about it for weeks leading up to the accident, playing it off then grumbling about…
Oh god.
Ryland purses his lips. “So a studio goes out of their way to cover up an attempted murder. Has to be for someone they really want to keep. Someone who’s worth keeping around even with the capacity to hurt others.”
“H-he wouldn’t…he’s stupid, but he’s not—“
Malicious? Petty? So full of himself that he wouldn’t consider the consequences? He was all of those things. God, he is all of those things. He’s working on sets, right now, while Colt—
Jody draws in a sobbing breath and it sounds pitiful in her throat, as Ryland swallows, rubbing his hands together. She can see small smears of blood from him pressing his nails into his hands.
“I think Tom Ryder tried to kill Colt by tampering with the fall rig,” he says, his voice stilted as he tries to contain the anger. “And the studio covered it up because Tom Ryder is worth more than Colt’s life.”
“We have to go to the police,” Jody stresses.
“I want to! Believe me! I want the bastard—“ he sucks in a breath, “at least arrested!”
Jody is absolutely sure Ryland would love to do much more than that if the blood on his hands was an indicator.
“But we don’t have any evidence. Like I said, I have math. But without anyone seeing Ryder do it, or CCTV footage, no jury is going to indict him. It probably won’t even make it to court.”
“So that’s why you asked Dan? For the footage?”
Ryland nodded.
“If…if we were going to sting him, I think we’d need three things. The footage. Ideally a confession. And…testimony. Colt’s testimony.”
Ryland bites at his knuckles. “But Colt will not talk about it. Colt won’t let me go anywhere near the subject. Fudge, I could’ve shaved two to three hours off this whole thing if I’d been able to run the numbers past Colt, this is his thing, not mine, but he clams up the moment the word stunt is even breathed.”
“I think he’ll be a little more receptive if you lead with someone tried to kill you,” Jody hisses, and Ryland shakes his head.
“He won’t believe me. Jody, that’s why we need the CCTV. Unless it comes out of Ryder’s mouth or he can see it himself, he’s going to chalk it up to his error. Even if I hand him my math. And I can’t even blame him, because who would want to believe that someone you trusted tried to kill you?”
Ryland looks utterly devastated by that.
“It’s…hard. I’m sorry for what…for everything,” Ryland murmurs, and it sounds like Colt and Jody wants to punch him and hug him. She wanted to help. Now not just Colt, but Ryland, too.
“What do we do if we can’t get CCTV footage?”
“Nothing,” Ryland looks like he wants to punch something again. “Unless you think you can get Ryder to confess?”
There were a few things she could think of, but honestly? It would have to be Colt. They couldn’t do this without Colt.
“I will try to talk to him. About…everything,” Ryland says, and the pointed manner indicates that means about her, too. “But until then, we’ll…have to keep our heads down. Keep the footage safe, make back ups. I’ll make copies of my calculations. Look for opportunities if we can spot them, and…”
He looks at Jody, eyes softer, worried. He rubs his thumb over the top of the thumbnail on the other hand.
“Be careful around him. Take him seriously. I always thought he was a drip, but this isn’t just egomania anymore.”
“I’m…I mean, I’m a camera operator. A director, hopefully. It’s not like tampering with my equipment will…will hurt me.”
“No. No, thankfully. But people who do things like this aren’t one and done. His new double, for example? Who I hear is worse? You think that isn’t grating on his ego?”
Ryland is talking from experience and Jody suspects she’s starting to learn why both brothers turn the blame to themselves.
“We can’t even do anything about that, unless I’m working on the set…” Jody says, her voice small. “I feel helpless.”
“We are. But we have more knowledge than what we started with. We’re not out of options, Jody.”
Jody draws in a deep breath, nods her head…and steps forward, wrapping Ryland in a hug.
He and Colt don’t smell the same. Colt always had a tinge of engine grease to him, he used a menthol 3-in-1 shampoo that, really, did a great job and made him smell nice. Ryland wore something a bit cleaner, a faint hint of lemon and fresh cotton over the day’s odor.
But for a moment it feels like Colt, especially as he hugs her back.
“I’m sorry for putting all of this on you. I just…I knew I could trust you. You might be the only person I can trust with this.”
“Are you going to tell Dan?” she asks, and she can feel Ryland tense slightly.
“I will, later. While we still don’t have a path forward it’s safer if he doesn’t know.”
Safer. The studio covered up an attempt on Colt’s life. Who was in on it? Ryder? Gail? They’d managed to get the LAPD to stand down on the whole business. If someone got wind that they knew about what Ryder did…
“That’s…smart,” she says, drawing back from the hug but not letting go of his shirt just yet. “You’re a pretty smart guy, huh?”
“The brains to the brawn,” Ryland drawls, rolling his eyes.
Jody huffs a laugh. “I think you might both be brawny and brainy.”
A deep flush appears on Ryland’s face as he takes a step back, fully separating them. “Yknow, it’s Colt’s fault. Started taking me to the gym to, uh. Cool off. I might be in the gym more regularly for a while after this.”
Jody couldn't blame him for that, she felt wound too tight, too. This whole day had left her tense and fidgety.
But also... there was a queasy sense of relief. A phyrric victory, perhaps. Jody had long wondered if she had distracted Colt, turned over the idea that maybe he blamed her and that's why he'd cut her out so thoroughly. It was unkind to herself, and out of character for Colt, but with nothing to go off of her thoughts had spiralled into worst-case scenarios, trying to find some justification as to why Colt had ghosted her.
"Do...do you know why he...um. No, nevermind," Jody mumbled, walking back toward the kitchen. The look Ryland gives her is unabashedly sorrowful.
"Jody...he, um. He tried to do it to me, too. But, I had a pretty bad thing happen, just before he started working with Ryder. And when I tried to pull the same thing he told me to shut up and housed me for six months."
"So going awol is a both of you thing," Jody says, pointing and doing a circular motion. "Good to know."
Ryland huffs, shrugging his shoulders.
"I...I did almost just let him do it. Let him tell me to fudge off. But...I dunno. Colt's the one who gives me the little kick I need to do things...I wanted to make it up to him. I wanted to do the same for him as he did for me."
Jody exhales. There's something so conflicted in the way Ryland speaks about it. He's started picking at his sleeves, his eyes still wet.
"...Anyway. I...need to get going. I have a long drive ahead of me."
"You're not going to drive back to San Francisco now?"
Ryland nodded. "I have students--"
"It's a nine hour drive!"
There's a slight smirk on his features and Jody points at him.
"And please don't reply to that with something like 'I could make it in seven'."
"Aw, hey, I was going to say eight. I'm not Colt," he says, his tone light. "But I do have to go."
"...Why not call in and stay with Colt?"
Ryland fidgets. "W-well..."
"...Does Colt know you're in LA?"
He fidgets more, tapping his leg for a second before switching back to his arm. "Uhm...no. I'm not due for a visit. I can do...I do a lot of the insurance stuff from home. I drove here after making those calls and finding out the footage was gone."
"...Today?"
Ryland counts on his fingers for a second. "I got here yesterday...seven am?"
So he drove through the night?
Jody looks at Ryland for a minute. Really looks, at the slightly greasy hair and the dark circles.
"Have you slept since?"
"Uh. No. But it's fi--"
"Holy shit. You are not driving. Call your boss."
"Jody, they have to organise a substitute, I can't just--"
"You can't drive to San Francisco after not having slept for three days! Are you mad? Why am I asking that. Of course you are. But the point is that you aren't going anywhere."
Jody stomps off to her closet and grabs a spare pillow and a blanket.
"I'm ordering food. What do you want?"
"You really don't have to--"
Jody walks back out, shoving the blanket and pillow into Ryland's arms.
"If you don't tell me, I'm just going to order what Colt gets and remove your sense of individuality. Last warning."
"Okay, okay!" Ryland huffs, planting himself on her couch. "Uhm, I actually wouldn't argue with Taco Bell--"
Jody looks at him, a half-lidded glare that makes Ryland squeak.
"But t-they discontinued my usual! So. Uh. I usually just get whatever chicken burrito they have and a jumbo Baja Blast."
"Sure. Taco Bell it is."
Jody goes and gets her phone out of the fridge to start the order, before looking at Ryland and handing his phone back too.
"Phone number."
"What?"
"Give me your phone number."
"Oh," Ryland says, taking his phone. "It's--"
He rattles off a few digits and Jody takes an unprompted photo of him.
"H-hey!"
"Candid. Captures all facets of a person," Jody says, creating a contact for him. She hovers over the name and decides to have a little fun with it.
"Seavers?"
"Grace, actually," Ryland says quietly.
Jody presses her lips together and finishes making the contact.
"There. No getting out of that lunch."
Ryland huffs a laugh, shrugging. "Sure. I'm sure I can handle lunch."
Despite feeling like she'd taken five hundred steps backward regarding her plan to become a hot, independent woman who didn't care about the sweet man who's ghosted her, this felt like progress. A different progress to what her original plans were, but progress. A new friend, a new-- if much darker-- perspective, and, maybe...a way to help Colt.
All thanks to Uncolt Grace sitting on her couch, glasses hanging around his chin, already looking like he was going to drift off.