Set in Stone

Chapter 22

"Your meeting is in the production office."

Hearing that from the runner who had summoned her and Zelina to go and see Lucy Thorne had surprised Grace, not least because Thorne was known to get to arenas early and have production meetings finished by the time talent started to show up.

"Unusual," Zelina observed as they headed for the locker room door.

"That's what I was thinking. In before she's decided to scrap everything we talked about the other day," Grace quipped.

With a laugh, Zelina opened the door and led Grace out into the hallway. "I don't know what's going on, but I'm confident it's not that. This isn't Vince McMahon we're dealing with, back when plans changed every twenty minutes. Once Lucy says she's going with something, she almost always goes with it."

"Almost," Grace said, picking out that word and imagining herself being the unlucky one whose push fell on the wrong side of it.

"Well, we'll soon find out. Here's the production office," Zelina said. They were already approaching the relevant door.

Grace hadn't spoken to Lucy Thorne enough times yet not to feel somewhat nervous at the prospect. She had been a wrestler her entire working life. Indy promotions were so much different to WWE, where booking and character development decisions were handed down by a multi-millionaire corporate businesswoman. Although their interactions had always been pleasant, indeed nice for the most part, something about Lucy intimidated Grace.

Simultaneously knocking the door to the production office and pushing it open, Zelina walked in.

Following close behind, Grace saw the boss sitting at the head of the long meeting table. Hunter Helmsley, the manager of NXT and a senior member of the main roster booking committee, was sitting to her immediate right. One of the men from the writing team was sitting next to Hunter. Grace knew that this wasn't the full booking committee because Bobby Roode and Paul Heyman were also on it.

"Afternoon, ladies," Lucy said as they walked in, also greeting them with a smile. "Have a seat."

Grace stayed behind Zelina, letting her go ahead and sit closest to Lucy's end of the table. Greetings were exchanged all round as they sat down.

"Glad to be back?" Hunter asked Grace, for the sake of making conversation.

"Oh yeah," she said emphatically. "Time off always makes me miss wrestling. But I missed Z even more." Everyone at the table laughed at the deliberately corny comment.

"Do you want to go outside and come back in again? We can pretend that never happened," Lucy said, drawing more laughter.

"Yeah, I think maybe I should," Grace chuckled.

Smiling in amusement, Lucy got the meeting underway. "Alright, I'm going to start with an apology. Zelina, I called Grace the other day to arrange her return for tonight, and we ended up talking over ideas for The Stones Roses. That shouldn't have happened without you being involved in the conversation. That is one of the reasons I most often have people see me face to face in meetings like this to discuss things. That didn't happen on this occasion, and that's on me."

"It's fine," Zelina assured her. "Grace and I have already talked about the ideas that were discussed."

Grace opted to keep her mouth shut. Lucy had said she was starting with an apology but hadn't directly given one. What she had done was take the responsibility for what had happened away from Grace, and she appreciated that. It showed how good Lucy was at managing her people. That simple little exchange had diffused any tension there might have been between The Stone Roses.