The Protection Program

TPP : Chapter LVIII

"So, you were dead ass paired with drake? The actual drake?"

Nina forked at the mushy, indescribably disgusting food that sat on her metal lunch tray. She wouldn't dare eat it, it looked and smelled putrid.

The more the days passed, the closer sprat grew with Nina. They became friends to be in fact, Talking whenever they were allowed to speak. Sprat had the cell directly across from Nina so sometimes real late at night when the guards were in the back playing cards, Nina and sprat would sit in front of the paint chipped metal bars and converse.

"Yeah."

"Wow. Yo, that's crazy. I got paired with some old chick. She was nice but I didn't like her. She smelled like perfume and it was a lot of it."

Nina scuffed out a small laugh, Sprat was lucky and she didn't appreciate it. All of her pairs that she was placed with were all nice and very kind, so she claimed, but she picked out one thing about them and decided that is why she wouldn't like them. Nina often wondered what her one thing was to sprat, she wanted to know what sprat would tell others, "oh yeah, Nina's nice but she...."

She wondered what sprat thought. Sprat wondered what she thought too. Sprat was very curious when she spoke up and didn't have an attitude problem, question after question. Nina wondered if she was naturally like that or if it was because she was "Nina, the girl who was paired with the earths bachelor, Aubrey Drake Graham".

"What was it like?"

Nina swallowed down, not that she had problems talking to sprat, she enjoyed it. She looked forward to it, but she didn't want to bring up Aubrey. She didn't want to bring up what they had and she didn't want to bring up how it was staying with him. It would only make her sad because now that she had sprat she could sometimes, if she tried her absolute hardest, could take her mind from him.

"It was nice. He's a nice guy."

Sprat sipped her juice nonchalantly as she listened to Nina's short response. That was pretty much the only good thing about the program was that every meal there was fresh squeezed lemon juice, Nina always had to add more sugar then they put in because without nearly two pounds of sugar it was to sour. But other then that it wasn't half bad, that was if they bought fresh lemons and didn't get the free ones from the side store.

Nothing wrong with free, but when fruit was free it meant that there was something wrong with it, for example if it's peel busted open or it was so bruised you couldn't see the fruits natural color.

"Did you fall in love with him? I would have! He's gorgeous!"

Nina cracked half a smile, not a full one but not anything at all. It was definitely a forced smile though because she didn't want to smile at all, but she knew if she didn't sprat would have taken that as "I did fall in love, and now I'm heartbroken because he dumped me here after he promised not to". Which of course was the 100% truth but sprat didn't need to know all of that.

The rest of lunch was silent, sprat got in trouble for picking on one of the boys and was sent back to her cell until lunch was over. Nina just sit there in silence thinking about how sprat was right because

1. He was absolutely gorgeous
2. She did fall In love with him.

As much as it hurt to admit it, she had fallen madly in love with him and in all honesty, she still was.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Oliver, your a genius!"

OB squeezed Oliver's shoulders tight as if saying "great job". At the moment, the whole crew and there grandparents were in the studio. Well not literally, but it felt like that.

40 said he couldn't remember a time when his studio was so packed. There were nearly 30 producers who worked under OVO enterprise and obviously 40 got hooked up with the largest studio office and the largest, nicest sound board. So for the largest room on the musical production floor to be completely jammed packed you can imagine how many people were there.

They were all there for one thing though. They were there to hear the Aubrey Drake Graham use his musically talented mind to make a new song for the first time in years! It had been 1 week since Oliver had suggested Aubrey bring his music career out of retirement and he already had a hit in the making.

40 pressed the big red "TALK" button on the sound board and soon his voice filled the recording room in which Aubrey was placed.

"Okay man, you ready?"

"Let's get it."

The crowd hooted and hollered only boosting Aubrey's confidence a little more. He had been in a sickening depression since Nina and now he could finally see the little light at the end of the tunnel, music was always therapeutic to him so he didn't know why he didn't think of it.

The beat was vicious, it was like a disease and everybody had to be quarantined because nobody left the studio room, it only seemed to fill up more. The vibe of the room uplifted as Aubrey got back to his old ways, laying out a great track and "spitting bars" per se.

You could tell he was feeling relief, you could see it from a mile away. He groomed himself, he wore nice clothes and didn't smell like death. His breath wasn't riddled with an alcoholic smell and for once he had actually smiled. He was slowly getting back to the old Aubrey on the outside but on the inside Nina was all he could think about because in all honesty he felt like the love of his life had been ripped apart from him.

And that's a lot to say coming from a man who doesn't believe in love.