December 24th [COMPLETED]

Chapter 9: Twenty-Eight Part 1

It was over.

Done.

There was nothing else George could do.

That one word played on repeat in her brain, falling in rhythmic time with the subway car as it swayed on its tracks, a constant, never-ending "Done. Done. Done. Done. Done."

Vivian was still fighting. George had to give her mom the credit she was due; Vivian Burns did not give up easily. She was giving it all she had and was holding down the front lines for George while George hid out in New York. Vivian wasn't ready yet for George to walk away from Concept with nothing.

George's retreat hadn't been her choice nor was it her idea. Vivian had sat George down and told her to go home while Vivian worked on George's contract negotiations with Concept. It didn't take much convincing. George took the chance of a hasty retreat and caught the next plane to New York. For a week, she had been hiding out in her apartment alone. Completely alone. Not even Sydney was there to keep her company.

There was only so much silence and ambient city noise George could take before it started to drive her mad. She had only been home a week but already the apartment was clean, her clothes were organized, and even her furniture was rearranged. It had been rearranged out of its staging layout and into something a little more organic, something that looked a little bit more like a home, like someone actually lived there instead of occasionally using it as a way station between jobs.

A week in and George was going mad. She needed to do something. The silence was too much. The loneliness was too much. She missed Felix. She missed Sydney. She would miss Julien too if he let her. He hadn't stopped calling since she had left LA, giving her constant updates of the contract negotiations happening with Concepts.

Updates that came on top of Vivian's constant updates. But there was nothing either of them could do, as hard as they tried, as much as they wanted to fix this for George. There was nothing they could do.

George knew this, she was just waiting for her parents to figure it out.

Her career was done. George Briggs was dead.

That sad, depressing, infuriating fact followed George as she left her apartment and caught the subway headed for Brooklyn. It followed her down the narrow avenues, past the shops decorated for Christmas, through the farmer's markets filling the parks, keeping pace with her as she braved the December chill. That one fact followed her as she headed for the more industrial sector of Brooklyn, down streets less crowded, past stores more for convenience than aesthetics. That one word "Done" pounded in her head in time with the sound of her boots as she climbed the worn wooden stairs to the second floor above a paint shop. And it didn't stop when she did in front of a door with frosted glass.

There was a note on the door waiting for her.

Covering the I and C of TRICK STUDIOS, a post note read, "Went out for pizza. Back in ten."

Somehow Anton had known she was coming. George wasn't surprised. Somehow Anton always knew everything.

The door was unlocked so George and her emotional baggage had no trouble getting in but even if it had been locked, she simply would have used the key Anton had given her years ago.

Inside, the studio was truly silent. In a city that never slept, George found for the first time all week a moment of true quiet. The soundproof padding and the ancient area rugs on the worn wooden floor dampened all outside noise and filled George's ears with silence.

It was strange, being back in this particular room, one of the many where her career had all started, in this particular moment, as she found herself at the end of her career.