Silence.

“Alice?”

Zilch.

“Alice!” Theodore Ryans shouted from the door, trying to gain the attention of the blonde who was sitting intently at her desk. The shout made her jump, and she turned around, pulling out of her ears the headphones to her laptop, which was blaring rock music of some kind. Theodore sighed.

“And here I thought Alice Pieszecki was actually hard at work.”

Alice swiveled around in her chair, facing Theodore with a mock look of hurt.

“That cut deep Ted, but I’ll tell you what? You give me a raise and that dream of yours might come true,” she replied, arching her left eyebrow and putting on her best fake smile. He laughed, but of course he would – Alice knew how to work her boss and old friend, she had I been doing it for years. She smiled back. “So does that mean yes?”

“No Al”

“You know you want to…”

“Then you really know very little,” he quipped back, walking over to sit in the chair opposite her very messy desk. Throughout the five years Alice had worked at ‘L.A. Life,’ Ted could not remember a single time when one could actually see Alice’s desk. It was just packed with every possible object known to man – cds, food, figurines, photos, make-up… the only thing missing on Alice’s desk was actual work, a habit which had also been in place for the five years she had worked there.

“What is this rubbish you’re listening to?” Ted asked, suddenly aware of the very loud music that was still playing on Alice’s laptop.

“It’s some Swedish doom metal band,” she answered matter-of-factly, as she switched off her laptop and ceased the music, much to Ted’s pleasure. “It’s for the top ten loudest music genres ever. I don’t like it very much, but who knows? I could grow to it.”

“Please don’t. I’d even prefer your god awful 80s pop to that rubbish.” Alice smiled, knowing how much her music taste irritated Ted, but also aware that she would be able to listen to anything, including doom metal, without Ted seriously telling her to turn it off. He respected her, and her choices, regardless of how he made fun of her, and Alice had always known this, it was one of the reasons why she was friends with him in the first place.