Tying You To Me

Chapter One: 2017

April 2017

"The stuff we see in this job should entitle us to financial compensation for emotional damage."

Quinn Roberts looked up from the papers she was sorting. "What is it this time?"

"Next week's musical guest has their lunch order in their rider."

"And???" Quinn silently cursed under her breath as she lost count of her stacks. Simultaneously sorting scripts and listening to Marcus complain was more difficult than it seemed. "That's not so bad. Remember the one host who insisted on fresh water for their cat every hour on the hour? Or the one who was just a flat out jerk about everything"

"This isn't demanding. It's just gross," Marcus sighed. "They want tuna salad and something called a 'bullet coffee' which, according to Google, is coffee, butter," he paused, "and some sort of supplement." He looked across the table at Quinn. "Whatever happened to iced coffee and a bagel?"

"You know how these Hollywood types are," Quinn shot back, turning her attention to the next set of scripts. "They'll spontaneously combust if they ingest a carb." 

When she started her internship at Saturday Night Live four months ago, Quinn hadn't anticipated that the majority of her job would consist of sorting papers.

Or that she would instantly become best friends with her fellow intern Marcus, who was putting in his time working in guest relations.

But things weren't so bad. At least that's what she reminded herself when she swiped into 30 Rock six days a week. She was one step closer to living her dream of being a real comedy writer, and she had already seen half of her favorite celebrities. Jimmy Fallon was even hosting this week. And though she considered herself to be more of a Seth Meyers girl, it was undeniably cool to see some of the biggest names in comedy and entertainment go through the paces of putting on a live show each week.

When she'd secured the spring internship after her final semester of college and been given the choice between working in the writer's room or helping with musical guests, her brother had jokingly teased her for picking the nerdy writer's room role over what he deemed to be the cooler job. But after worshiping at the altar of Tina Fey and Amy Poheler since she sneakily started watching SNL in the second grade, there was no way she could turn down her dream.

As she had imagined her time at 30 Rock over the years, she had always pictured herself rolling up to the iconic building in some chic outfit, with her iced coffee and canvas tote in hand. After seeing her talent early on, Sarah and Chris, the head writers, would take her to drinks at the Rainbow Room where she would pitch them on sketches before heading to a party with Amy, Cecily, and the rest of the cast.

The reality of her situation was much different. Rent in New York, even with four roommates, was astronomical, and dreams of the daily iced coffee and drinks at fancy bars were quickly replaced by her and Marcus raiding the breakroom and foraging for leftovers after table reads, hoping the cast wouldn't notice a missing slice or two of pizza. Her high-fashion outfits were traded in for jeans, t-shirts, and Birkenstocks – the only uniform she could tolerate during the 18-hour days she and her fellow interns worked.

But every time her parents and brothers called, she didn't tell them any of that, knowing it was simply the dues she had to pay to get where she wanted. A couple rough years would be a small price to pay for comedy fame.

Quinn started re-sorting the pages and Marcus continued to rant about the weird requests he'd seen over the past several weeks, determining that the two of them needed to make an official ranking at the end of their internship, before turning the conversation to what the two of them should have for lunch. As they were debating the pros and cons of Thai food versus burritos, they heard a knock at the door and instantly sat up straighter, making an effort to look more attentive, a dance all interns became familiar with, fearing that a supervisor could be just around the corner.