The Mentor

Chapter 35

**one week later**

Again, Kyle had made no attempt to contact me nor had he gone out of his way to speak to me. Even if we had been fighting about something else it was incredibly weird considering he literally mentored me. Scott was mentoring more than Kyle these days and that was a sad realization.

I pulled up to work one morning and Scott was sitting in his car having a cigarette when I arrived.

"Why aren't you inside?" I asked, getting out of my car.

"I own this place, I have the right to sit outside and have a cigarette."

I rolled my eyes and pressed the button on my key fob to lock the car.

I didn't say anything to him for a minute and let him snuff out his cigarette in the ashtray inside his car. His car was nice, but fairly messy if I must tell the truth. Boxes of books and cases of energy drinks were piled high in the backseat along with some questionable other things like pill bottles and small wooden planks. I leaned on the roof of the car and peered inside.

"Are you working on a project?"

Scott turned his head to face me. His eyes squinted in the sunlight before glancing into the backseat.

"Yeah, I think I'm going to redo the office or something. I haven't quite figured it out yet."

He suddenly burst into a coughing fit and grabbed another bottle of pills out of his inside jacket pocket, popping a couple in his mouth without a second thought. I saw him fiddling around with prescription sprays and different pills often enough but I just chalked it up to chronic pain from the past car accident and the infection coursing through his sinuses.

"What is that?" I asked.

"Chlorozoxazone, it's a muscle relaxer." he replied.

Scott eventually got out of the car and walked up to the front door, unlocking it and letting me inside. I got my room set up and eventually the other artists, including Kyle, started to flow in. But there was a lot more commotion outside than normal. I peeked out the curtain that I had put over my door and was not prepared for what I saw.

Kyle had an entire TV crew with him and a van parked outside. There were two cameramen and mic people  standing next to him while he went on about God knows what. I peered off to the side and into the ajar door of management office where Scott was stationed. There was no way he would've okayed that, right? 

I saw Scott take off his headphones and listen for a second once he noticed the bizarre change in the noise level. He hastily got up out of his chair and speed walked into the lobby and Kyle's tv crew.

"What's going on here? Who are these people?" He demanded.

Kyle chuckled and motioned for one of the tv guys to explain.

"These guys are from the Spike network, doing an interview for the follow up of Ink Masters."

Scott sighed and a couple of the camera people asked questions but he hastily waved them off.

"Do the interview outside" Scott demanded, marching back to his office.

I had completely forgotten that Ink Masters did follow up interviews with the artists a few months after the competition closed. They had done it in all the past seasons, I don't know why I thought my case was different.

"We wanna talk to Jamie too! Is she here?"

Shit

"Uh yeah..." Kyle admitted.

I saved myself the awkwardness and walked out of my room, agreeing to follow the stupid cameras outside.

We sat down on the bench in front of the shop and got as comfortable as we could. The sun was beaming down in my eyes so all I could do was awkwardly squint.