My entire family were yappers.

God forbid you ever asked my mother to recount a story for you, because she'd take six detours on her way to the point of the story, resulting in six other stories that also needed to be told in their entirety before getting back on course. My dad was a history professor at North Dakota State, so all of his yapping was rooted in facts about the World Wars.

Of course, it took many years of self-reflection and being surrounded by people who were not yappers to understand that I unfortunately shared the yapping gene, but not like my sister. My sister had Olympic gold in the sport of yap.

"So then she tries to tell me that the Keurig pods I bought were decaf, even though it doesn't say decaf anywhere on the box." Addie had been going on about her faculty lounge drama since I'd stepped out of the Park Place subway station. I scurried across the crosswalk at Barclay Street just as the sign began flashing DO NOT WALK and weaved through a group of people at the corner.

"So what did you say?" I asked, trying to mask the boredom in my voice. A blaring horn from a passing taxi drowned out Addie's response, but it didn't really matter, since I'd heard enough variations of this story to predict the way she'd tell me she didn't want to cause discourse among the faculty.

Addie was a sixth grade teacher - which, if you asked me (she obviously didn't) was the worst grade she could have chosen. Sixth graders were right at the cusp of their terrible teenage transformation, like werewolves in their first full moon. I would know, because I vividly remembered being one of those terrible teenagers, howling and all.

I pressed the phone in between my shoulder and my ear as I wound my hair up in a claw clip. "If I were you, I'd just stop offering to buy the coffee."

"In theory that would be the best option, but-" She paused when a clattering sound came from the other end of the phone. "Mckinley, would you please leave your sister alone and get your lunchbox out of the fridge. No, you cannot take Binkey to school with you."

This part of the conversation was also admittedly predictable. North Dakota was an hour behind New York, and so Addie would call me every morning on my way to work, while she was busy rallying the troops for school or camp or god knows what else she has my nieces doing nowadays. Binkey was the family's pet bearded dragon that Mckinley had grown attached to - but because she was four, didn't quite yet understand that Binkey is a cold-blooded creature and would die the moment she took him outside in the frigid North Dakota air. This would now result in an argument while I was still on the other end of the phone.

While Addie dealt with that, I veered around two younger guys in stylish suits probably headed for Merrill Lynch or Ameriprise, but based their walking speed, they weren't native New Yorkers. I wasn't either, but after six years of breathing in the air and drinking the water here, it probably morphed parts of my DNA and turned me into an instinctually fast walker.

I spotted Lyanna standing on the corner of Vesey St with two iced coffees in her hand, glaring searing holes into the back of the very obvious tourist that had stepped in front of her, selfie stick and all.

"Look I'm about to go into a meeting, okay," I cut Addie off as I approached Lyanna, who snickered.

"Don't forget to speak to Mom about Thanksgiving," Addie said while the ruckus in the background intensified.

"I know, I know, okay I really gotta go I love you bye," I blurted out before quickly hanging up.

"You're such a bad liar." Lyanna shook her head at me as she handed me my large iced lavender honey latte.

"Well if I didn't say anything, she'd keep talking my ear off about her latest middle school teacher drama." I rolled my eyes as I took a necessary sip.

Lyanna held the big glass door of the building open for us as we made our way inside. "She just misses you."

"I know, I know," I sighed. "I haven't been back since last Christmas and so she's already started guilting me about coming back this year, and since her and Rad are going away with Rad's family for Christmas, she's wigging about me coming for Thanksgiving."

"Thanksgiving?" Lyanna slid her big Prada sunglasses on top of her head of braids and arched a perfectly sculpted eyebrow at me. "Thanksgiving is in like, three months."

"I know." I shot her a look. "Believe me, I'm all for the planning and execution aspect of it, but..."

"You don't really want to go home," Lyanna finished with a wry smirk as we joined the herd of professionals making their way through the lobby of One World Trade and to their respective offices.

I tapped my nose with my finger, and Lyanna laughed.

"Alright, change of subject. For someone who just did a walk of shame from the Upper West Side, you still managed to look cute this morning, and I want your secrets." Lyanna gestured to the oversized brown leather jacket I wore over the white button down shirt and jeans that were definitely from last night.

"I believe the secret is theft via suggestion." I shot her a grin as we swiped our badges and slid through the turnstiles. "I told him the office is cold in the mornings, and he just gave it to me. All Saints, I'm pretty sure."

Lyanna scoffed. "Good in bed and stylish? God, you lucky bitch."

"Well, I hope he won't miss it too much," I mumbled with a smirk.

We joined a mob on one of the six shiny chrome elevators in the lobby, and I reached around an older woman in a lavish trench coat to eagerly press the button for floor 45. When I first started working here, I used to get super claustrophobic and terrified the elevator would just break down because there were too many of us on it and plummet to our doom, but I'd matured since then. Hardened by the trials and tribulations of being a young professional in New York City. Or something like that.

"Oh no," Lyanna shook her head. "This one too?"

"He was fine, I guess," I shrugged. I blew out a sigh before lowering my voice. "I just...there was no umph, no spark, no love potion number 5."

"Uh huh," Lyanna rolled her eyes. "If there was Mambo Number 5, would that have made a difference?"

"Almost funny. You get like, half a point for that one." I chided her with a grin as we stepped off the elevator on our floor.

"I'm not trying to date just to date, ya know," I continued, waving my sunglasses around. "I spent all of undergrad and graduate school focused on school. Which was fine, but I just think I'm ready to start looking for a real, legitimate relationship that isn't founded on how quickly he can make me orgasm or his taste in leather jackets. I don't want to think I'm being too particular, but I also don't want to rush it, but I also don't want to deny myself a good orgasm every now and then. Does that make sense?"

Yap, yap, yap. Lyanna knew it too as she gave me a sideways smirk.

"On a base level, yes," she nodded.

"Morning ladies," Harper chirped up from behind the big glass reception desk. Above her head, the neon pink script sign above her head that read HUDSON PR & ENTERTAINMENT flickered.

"Morning Harper," Lyanna and I greeted her.

"I like your jacket, Sienna!" Harper called after us, and we shot each other a grin as we made our way to our desks.

Martina Hudson prided herself on running a "fun" office - but not in the cringy tech startup type of way where we got pizza on Fridays and had a foosball table from Craigslist at the center of the office that got used once a month. The dress code was chic but not business, you could come in as late as 10 in the morning as long as you put in a full day's worth of work (and subsequently earlier if you wanted to leave early), and dogs were encouraged in the office. Binkey probably would have been too.

"How many emails do you think I'm going to have from Alexia at Kiehl's about their upcoming Aspen trip?" Lyanna scoffed as she dropped into her desk chair. "Despite the fact that I've told her on multiple occasions that I am not available via email on Sundays."

Lyanna had become my mentor by proximity last year when I started working at Hudson and was given the conjoining desk across from her. She graduated from Barnard and immediately started working for Martina after a successful internship, and by now she oversaw most of the firm's beauty and skincare accounts. She'd quickly become one of my closest friends, since most of my college friends moved out of the city after school, and my roommate was home once every three months. She'd say I only befriended her for the free samples, but I still deny this.

"Well, we can't all have such rigid working boundaries like you," I shook my head at her as I powered on my desktop. I'd only started to feel really at home here within the last few months - enough to finally keep a few succulents at my desk and hang my NYU pennant.

I'd wanted to work at Hudson from the moment I finished grad school, and when I got the job, there was part of me that was worried that any ounce of comfort would result in the jinx. As in, the moment it felt too good to be true, it would be. I liked my job. I wanted to keep it.

My sister never believed in the jinx. She'd say to me, "If I had those kinds of powers, do you really think I'd be teaching middle school?"

She had a point. However, I would not be so easily dissuaded.

I kept my work calendar organized, color-coded, and meticulously time-stamped down to the minute, but I'd barely opened my meeting schedule for the day when my computer pinged with a Webex message notification.

HUDSON, MARTINA: you free?

I guess it depended on the word free. Free time? Yes. Free of potential anxiety when your boss messages you for an impromptu meeting? Not in the slightest.

"Oh god," I muttered. "What do you think she wants?"

"Probably to pick up a bag at Bergdorf's or something," Lyanna said into her compact mirror. She swiped on a deep purple lip gloss that complimented her dark skin before snapping her compact shut. "You are still technically the new girl, mostly because nobody's been hired since you."

"Right, right," I sighed out. "I hope that's all it is."

"It'll be fine, don't worry."

I nodded and pushed myself away from my desk and took measured steps down to Martina's office. Her office was all frosted glass, jutting up against floor to ceiling windows that looked over the Hudson River (irony most definitely not lost on Martina). Door open meant come right in. Door closed meant I'm busy and important. The door was open, and Martina's white pit bull mix Butter lifted his head up to greet me, but didn't get up from the plush bed beside her desk.

"Hey," she greeted me with a thin smile, gesturing for me to sit down at one of the deep, rose-colored velour chairs on the other side of her desk. "How was your weekend?"

"Pretty good," I responded, folding my hands in my lap. I wondered if my borrowed jacket was enough subtext as she continued wearing that thin smile. "Yours?"

"Also pretty good," she echoed. Butter shook his head, making the charms on his collar jingle.

That one moment of silence felt like a lifetime. It wasn't that I thought Martina didn't like me or that I wasn't doing what I could to be a good employee, but the genuine unknown of what she was going to say made me squeamish.

Finally, she asked, "Sienna, do you know why I hired you?"

I arched an eyebrow. "Is this a trick question?"

"No." She shook her head.

"Well...we both really like the color pink," I offered, gesturing to the blush pink blazer she wore.

She chuckled. "Good guess, but no."

I pinched my lips together. "Does it have something to do with the way I pronounce my o's?"

"Getting there."

I chuckled. "Must be my charming wit then."

"Wit helps," she nodded. "And you are one of the most adaptable girls I have on my payroll. I knew that about you almost immediately, and that is why I hired you."

I sat up in the chair. "Oh, thank you. That's really flattering."

Martina turned her attention to her computer, where she began clacking away at her keyboard. "I know you've mostly just been assisting the other girls with some accounts, but I've felt like anywhere I've thrown you, you've succeeded. So I think it's time for your first account that is solely yours, and you're the only person I feel is right for it."

"Okay, I-"

A knock at the glass door cut me off, and a middle-aged man in a deep green flannel shirt leaned into Martina's office.

"Impeccable timing," she said to him, and gestured for him to come in and sit next to me in the other velour chair. "Sienna, this is Rafael Salinas, long time band manager and a personal friend of mine."

Inwardly, I cringed. Despite what Martina believed, music wasn't exactly in my wheelhouse. Not that I'd let her know that. Adaptable is my god damn middle name now.

"Just Raf is fine." His thick southern drawl took me by surprise as he extended his hand out to me.

"Nice to meet you. Sienna Stuart," I replied as I shook his hand.

"Raf and the band he manages are our newest clients," Martina explained. "I think he'll do a better job of explaining the situation."

Raf glanced at Martina, in a way that almost felt a little prolonged, before shifting in his chair slightly. He was tan and rugged in a way that suggested he saw more open sun and sky than a standard New Yorker did, but still good looking for his age - if in an untraditional way.

"Well, I guess I'll just get right into it," he said with a sigh. "I've been with the band since they started, back in 2018. Devon, our frontman, had surgery about a year ago and the band's been on a hiatus since then. They're just getting back into it, and trying to make some new music."

"What kind of music is it?" I asked.

He hesitated slightly, putting a hand to the peppered scruff that dotted his chin. "They're rediscovering their sound."

It was my turn to glance at Martina, who gave me an encouraging look - encouraging and firm. As in, I know you can do it, but it's not like you have a choice.

"Oh, okay." I forced a thin smile.

"The band is going on tour in October with Beyond the Pines," Raf continued. "It was a last minute thing after the original opening band for the tour dropped out, and I'm basically a one man show right now. All this social media and marketing stuff, it's not really my thing."

"So that's where you come in," Martina added. "Help Raf with managing the band's PR, press and social media."

I leaned forward in my chair and nodded slowly. "Just so I'm clear on this - you want me to go on tour with you guys?"

"That's the idea, yeah," Raf nodded. "It's just throughout New England, 12 shows in a month."

"Understood," I nodded again.

"Sienna's helped run a good handful of successful social media campaigns for some of our other clients," Martina stepped in again, calm and cordial in a way that made me feel like whatever faith she had in me wasn't about to be displaced. She wanted this for me, so I wanted it too.

"They never really hit it big, ya know?" Raf lowered his voice, hesitating again just slightly. "But I think this whole reinvention might be good for them. New sound, new look, new audience."

I looked over at Martina again, and she smiled at me. "All you, girl. If you'll have it."

"Absolutely," I blurted out. "I mean, I'd love to help you. And the band. I love music, and I've been looking forward to getting the opportunity to travel for work."

I could now add yapper and liar to my updated CV.

"Great, that's great." Relief flooded Raf's voice. "They're performing just a small show tomorrow night at Sweet & Vicious in Nolita. You should come, check the band out, and we can get into the nitty gritty then."

"Perfect. Can't wait."

⋆ ★

HELLO & welcome to FEEDBACK. things to expect from this story include but is not limited to: high key grumpy x sunshine, lots of metal, horror movies, and nerd shit, some found family nonsense, and probably too much sarcasm and wit

do we LOVE my girl sienna already bc i do! in the words of sabrina carpenter, please please  please vote, comment, leave your thoughts, etc because heartbreak is one thing but my ego is another <3

& don't worry, you'll meet our boy next chapter ;)