Being Rick’s daughter meant the studio was less a workplace and more a second home. You were there constantly curled into chairs during table reads, sitting cross-legged on the floor during recordings, always just outside the booth with your notebook and headphones. No one questioned it. You’d grown up between scripts and soundboards, learned the rhythm of production before you learned how to slow down.

You watched everything. You listened to every take. You followed the recordings like they were something sacred.

Somewhere along the way, the cast stopped seeing you as Rick’s kid and started seeing you as you. You laughed easily with them, blended into their space like you’d always belonged. You stayed late. You remembered small things. You were steady in a world that moved fast.

Leah noticed before anyone else did.

She noticed the way you always sat in the same spot beside the booth. The way your attention never drifted when someone was speaking. The way you smiled when things went right, and how quietly you retreated when they didn’t. She noticed how you never talked about yourself unless someone asked and even then, only enough to deflect.

Her crush didn’t announce itself. It settled in slowly, patiently, like it had nowhere else to be.

She told herself it was harmless. You were constant. Safe. Untouchable in a way that made it easier to pretend nothing was happening at all.

But it became harder the longer she watched you stay. Harder every time your knee brushed hers, every time you leaned in just a little too close while listening back to a scene. Harder every time someone else laughed with you and Leah had to remind herself she didn’t get to want more.

You didn’t act like someone who stayed anywhere for long. You talked about the studio like it was part of you, but never about yourself like you were rooted. You carried yourself like someone already halfway gone, like the door was always open behind you.

That scared her.

There were moments. small, devastating ones, where Leah caught you smiling at your phone, or listening a little too intently when someone mentioned your name in connection with someone else. She told herself not to care. She told herself it wasn’t her place.

She told herself good luck—to you, to herself, to whatever this was.

The studio emptied one night in slow increments, voices fading until only the hum of equipment remained. You lingered like you always did, gathering your things without any urgency. Leah stayed too, pretending she wasn’t watching you from the corner of her eye.

Something shifted in the quiet.

You looked tired——not physically, but in the way someone looks when they’ve been holding themselves back for too long. Like you were waiting for permission you didn’t think you deserved.

Leah realized then that you weren’t distant because you didn’t care.

You were distant because you did.

The understanding hit her all at once, sharp and undeniable. All the half-steps you never took. All the feelings you folded away. All the ways you chose familiarity over honesty because it was easier to pretend you didn’t want anything more.

You moved closer without noticing, drawn by something unspoken. Your presence felt heavier in the silence, charged with everything neither of you had named.

Leah didn’t say much. She didn’t need to.

She let the truth sit between you—visible, fragile, impossible to ignore.

And for the first time, you didn’t look away.

You stayed.

Not because the studio asked you to. Not because it was expected. But because someone saw through you and didn’t ask you to disappear.

The quiet wasn’t empty anymore.

It was full of something waiting to begin.