something better. | calum hood

3 : grown

CAMILLA

When she first came to L.A she was thrown off by how fast-paced it all was. Well, in comparison to small town Vermont, anything was fast-paced. Briar laughed and told her that she should see New York, if she thought Los Angeles was a fast-moving city. Sometimes it still catches her off guard. Redding was a slow, sleepy town shrouded in woods and old buildings. The nearest McDonalds was forty-five minutes out and the most traffic they'd get would be on the main road stretching from end-to-end of their square-mile town. Contrarily, it feels Los Angeles has a fast food spot every couple of blocks, and the traffic is inarguably miserable.

She'd met Aaron not too long after she moved out to record her album. They'd really only met a handful of times before they were bound to Zoom calls for most communication. Still, he'd always been nice to her, reminding her that he wanted her to go far. Whereas it'd taken trial and error to find Briar — it'd been easy to put her faith in Aaron.

His office is in a high rise building with glass elevators and a fancy fountain in the lobby. She's better dressed today — taking a diffuser to her curls in the morning, putting on a nicer pair of jeans and a button-down shirt that actually fits the way it should.

She breezes inside and makes for that glass elevator, pressing the number for the right floor and then watching as the street below gets smaller and smaller with a childlike wonder to her staring. Her gifts for tonight were already wrapped. A stack of new games for Remi's Xbox, a portable easel for Julia, and a care package of crochet materials for Marco (along with some headache-helper candles for him, all things considered).

The plan was to go home, change into something comfier and maybe buy a bottle of wine for the occasion.

All she had to do was get through this meeting with the man she'd affectionately named Old Man #2 in her contacts.

Fist knocking on a heavy black wooden door to his office, all she gets is a gruff 's'open' on the other end, and she steps inside all the same.

Aaron sits behind his desk, earpiece on, in his typical suit-and-tie dress and salt and pepper hair neatly combed. The faint taps of him typing on his Mac desktop fills the space, and he would be intimidating were it not for the steaming 'We ♡ Dad' coffee mug right by his mouse.

His intimidation-factor is also ruined when he looks at her, and his stern brow breaks in favor of a smile — all crows feet and pearly-white teeth.

"There's my girl. Missed you over the holidays."

"Been getting that one a lot lately," Cam acknowledges with an easy smile. He gestures to the chair across from his own, raising a brow at her. "I missed you too." And then he's nodding, approving, really sticking true to his title as the second most important old man in her life.

"Well, a lot of people want you around," is what he offers as explanation, blue-gray eyes shifting to his monitor again to click and type at breakneck speeds. Quick enough to make her head spin, but also an acute reminder of all that he does — not just for her, but the other artists he manages, most of which she's never met beyond passing exchanges in this very room. "Speaking of which, I wanted to talk to you about that."

"About..." Aaron looks at her again, pushing his keyboard aside to lean forward on his desk.

"I'll keep it short and simple so you don't start picking your nails and Briar calls me up about stressing you out again," her cheeks flush at the memory — the early days where her producer had called her bloodied cuticles a tragedy. "You got asked to join a band on tour as their opener. And I told them I'd talk to you about it first."