Pleased with the first segment—the light had been perfect—she went down to change her gear, maybe her hair before starting the next.

Teesha went with her as wardrobe assistant.

If it surprised Teesha that Adrian stripped down to the skin without a blush once the bedroom door closed, she tried to pretend otherwise.

“I was going to see if I can get my hair pinned back, but unless I spray it with concrete, it probably won’t stay through fifteen of cardio dance.”

Teesha pursed her lips as Adrian wiggled into sleek, snug, midcalf leggings. “Why don’t you braid the sides, pin those back?”

“Braids?” Adrian pulled on a matching blue sports bra. “With this hair?”

“Hey, I got Black girl hair. You see these braids? I can do it. What product you got?”

Adrian slipped a bright pink tank over the bra. And since she’d choreographed a hip-hop-influenced routine, she’d tie a plaid hoodie around her waist and wear high-tops.

“All of them, out of desperation and despair.”

“Sit down, girlfriend. I got this.”

And she did. Adrian stared in the mirror, awed with the results. “I can’t believe it. It’s a miracle. It looks cute and, you know, funky, but contained. You’re going to have to teach me.”

“Can do.” Teesha smiled into the mirror. “It’s nice, you know, having another girl join the club. I got me some balance now. You know, Rizz, maybe you can teach me some of the yoga stuff. It looks like fun.”

“It is fun. I’ll teach you.”

The cardio dance segment was fun, too. It took three takes before she and the others signed off with Loren working the audio, Hector the camera, and Teesha moving between both.

By the time the lunch she’d ordered in arrived, they had three segments. They fit in two more before the dinner break, and finished the day with the evening yoga at sunset.

“I didn’t think we could get so much done in one day. That only leaves the total body session, the voice-overs, and the introduction.” Adrian flopped down on one of the outdoor sofas. “Maybe I’ll work in a ten-minute ab bonus.”

“I’m going to burn a copy,” Hector decided. “I want to play around a little.”

“Like how?”

“Just try some stuff. No problemo if it doesn’t work, we’ve got the master. How about we start at like ten tomorrow? We keep up this pace, it’s done by one or two. Some production, editing, la-di-da, we get it up by the end of the week. If we need to reshoot anything, we can work that in, but I think we’re good.”

“That would be amazing.”

By the time they left, ravaging through any lunch and dinner leftovers, it neared midnight. Adrian stretched out in bed and smiled into the dark.

She had friends, she had work, she had a path, and she knew just where she intended to go on it.

* * *

They rolled right into it with Adrian doing the intro first so she wouldn’t get sweaty or need another change. She looked right into the camera, the city at her back.

“Hi, I’m Adrian Rizzo, and this is About Time.” She slid into her spiel, highlighting each segment, emphasizing the fifteen-minute length, the ability to do one, do a combination.

“You’re good at this,” Hector told her. “I hang with my dad sometimes when he’s shooting. The actors never—hardly ever—get it in one take.”

“I practiced. A lot.”

“It was solid, but let’s do a second take, just backup. And you could move around more. I’ll follow you.”

They wrapped the video by noon. They had to drag the furniture back into place before they set up in the quietest spot in the triplex: her mother’s dressing room.

“Wow.” Wide-eyed, Teesha wandered the ruthlessly organized room. “Your mom’s got some awesome clothes. I thought my mother had the duds, but yours beats her to hell and back squared. There’s like …” Her gaze tracked back and forth. “A hundred pairs of shoes. Twenty-six athletic shoes. Nice colors.”

“It used to be when she did a video or an appearance, they’d give her the workout clothes and shoes she wears in them. They get credit on the DVD, and she gets the gear. Now she has her own line.”

And so would she, Adrian thought. One day.

Adrian stood in the center of the room, Hector’s laptop open on a shelf in front of her and cued up to the first yoga segment.

“The mic has a pop filter,” Hector told her as he fixed it to the stand. “So you don’t like pop your p’s and all that shit. Dad let me borrow it. And the headphones. Everybody’s going to wear a pair and be like totally silent. You gotta fart, you hold it in.

“Loren’s on sound. He starts the recording, I give you the signal, I start the video, you start talking.”

“Got it.”

She put on her headphones, took some slow, easy breaths. When Hector swiped a finger through the air toward her, she began.

“Morning Sun Salutation. Stand at the top of your mat.”

When she finished with a Namaste, Hector waited a moment, then gave Loren the cut signal. “That was freaking perfect. Tell me you got it all, Loren, because that was freaking on!”

“Sound’s good. It’s really quiet in here. All inside walls. And she—you, Adrian—sounded, like, soothing.”

“Then the plan worked. Can we go ahead and do the sunset one, since we’re on a roll?”

“Fucking A!” Hector told her, and set it up.

At the end, Loren pulled off his headphones, shot up both thumbs. “Dudes, we got the gold.”

“We need to play them back, make sure everything worked like my dad said it would. Any screwups, he said I could call him and he’d walk us through.”

“He sounds nice,” Adrian said.

“Yeah, he’s a good one.”

“Let’s take it downstairs.” Blowing out a breath, Adrian rolled her shoulders. “Sit down, spread out, check it out.”

“And order pizza.”

She looked over at Loren. “We had pizza Friday.”

Rising from her seat on the floor, Teesha angled her head. “Your point?”

“Okay, I’ll order up pizza.”

She’d stocked Cokes, and knew she had to have any evidence of them out of the apartment before her mother’s return. She worried, a little, she’d developed an attachment to them that wouldn’t be so easy to break.

But as she sat slouched next to Teesha on the sofa while Hector cued up the video, she decided it was worth it. It was all worth it.

“You’re sure I sound okay? Not boring?”

“Calm,” Teesha said. “You got the calm down, Rizz.”

“Soothing,” Hector said at the same time.

“Do the cues really work? Wait! Let’s find out. I’m going to get a couple mats. Teesha and Loren can do the practice.”

“What? I can’t do that stuff.”

Adrian spared Loren a glance as she jogged up the stairs. “How do you know? And I’ll show you how to modify. Then Hector and I can do the sunset segment.”

Hector opened his mouth to protest, but she’d already jogged up to the third floor.

“I can’t do that stuff,” Loren repeated, his head ticktocking between his friends. “I could puke, or maybe break something.”