Wendy & Boots
“Tell me you countered and Alan’s ready to play ball,” Wendy says into her phone, her voice all business.
The NDA parking lot glows with the last of the sun, chrome and glass catching fire as she weaves between the rows of cars.
“Almost,” Boots replies.
“Almost what?” Wendy slows, eyes narrowing as she watches her own reflection pass in a car window.
“I countered his counter.”
She stops mid-step, presses the phone tighter to her ear, squinting into the fading light. “Wait. Seriously?”
“He came back strong,” Boots says. “I couldn’t let him think I’d fold.”
So Boots had been negotiating with Alan all along, playing hardball behind the scenes, and neither of them had thought Wendy needed to know? She was the one who scouted Boots, pitched her, made the damn introduction. She opened the door, and now Boots was striding through it without so much as a glance back? And Alan? He hadn’t said a word. Like she didn’t even matter.
“Wow. Last time we talked, it was barely a maybe.” She forces a light laugh. “Guess Alan pulled out the big guns.”
“Kinda,” Boots says, like she’s enjoying the reveal too much.
Wendy’s gaze sweeps the lot, eyes narrowing against the gold flare of sunlight. “Would’ve been nice to be looped in. I might’ve helped steer the angle.”
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“That’s sweet of you, Wendy. But I had it under control.”
A pause. Wendy softens her voice, just enough to sound gracious. “Well. This calls for congratulations. Let me buy you a drink. Let’s celebrate my good instincts.”
The sun’s already down by the time they meet on the rooftop restaurant. The last of twilight clings to the horizon, casting a faint blue haze over the city. Lights flicker on below, soft and scattered across West Hollywood, and the hills beyond.
“To knowing your worth,” Boots says, raising her glass with something like conviction.
Wendy taps hers against it. “To taking risks.”
Boots smirks, but doesn’t clink again. “That’s your toast?”
“Why shouldn’t it be?”
“You were the one who fought for me! Now I’m a risk?”
“Not you,” Wendy says, not looking for a fight, just not dodging one either. “The decision you made. Pretty big one-eighty from our first conversation. You had zero interest. Now you’re walking away from your own company. I’d call that risky.”
“You were the one pushing it. Now you’re second-guessing me?”
“Just making sure it’s what you want, not what someone else made sound tempting.”
“Alan made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Told me he’d been waiting for the right moment to bring me in.”
The right moment? Wendy made the moment. Alan had just swooped in and claimed the win.
“Anyway, this is just the beginning,” Wendy says, eyes tracking the breeze shifting through the nearby palms. “I’ve been thinking. While you build out the division, we should build out your brand.”
“My brand?” Boots leans back, her silhouette still, unreadable in the fading light. “What exactly are you thinking?”
“A book.”
“A book?”
“A proposal. How to turn any private gathering into a headline-worthy spectacle. No one does it better than Boots Plotkin.”
“You think there’s a market for that?”
Wendy lifts a brow, amused by how obvious it seems. “I think there’s a market for brilliant women with impeccable taste, yes.”
“I like the way you’re thinking, Deerwood.”
Boots raises her glass. They toast again. A softer clink this time.
Let Boots have this, Wendy tells herself. Let her think it’s hers. Because every step that brought her here, every single one, had been engineered by Wendy’s hand.
Let her toast. Because Wendy built the runway. And if Boots ever forgot that, Wendy could end the show just as fast.