While I felt relieved, my decision also shone a light on the fact that this job was all I had.
As I walked into theClematisbuilding that morning, I could actually feel the way the energy had changed before I even got to my office. Usually when I arrived, people were sitting in their cubicles, writing, on the phone. There was an electric hum. Today, people were walking around, out of their desks, seemingly frantic.
I was confused. Finally, I stopped Philip, grabbing his sport-coat-clad arm. Philip was one of the coolest people I knew. The product of an Irish mother and an Italian father who had met, in true American dream style, on the day they’d become citizens, he had his father’s athleticism, his mother’s eyes, and a sense of what would make a layout come to life that I’d never seen before. That was evident from the day I first interviewed him. He had played pro soccer for two years before realizing that graphic design was his true love. “What is going on?” I whispered.
He engulfed me in a hug. His familiar scent soothed me. “Sheree and I are so sorry.”
Philip and Sheree were one of the most perfect couples I had ever known in real life and two of my very best friends. They were both fun and free and rode the line between responsible and irresponsible absolutely perfectly. They threw the best parties in town—meaning the most fun. In Palm Beach you had to clarify because, to a lot of people, the “best” meant the stuffiest and most overdone. Philip had invited Thad and me over for dinner his first week atClematisand Sheree and I had spent five hours drinking wine and divulging our entire life histories to each other. It hasn’t happened to me often in my adult life, but sometimes you meet someone, and you just know you’re going to be friends forever. That’s what had happened with us. Philip and Sheree had even come to Cape Carolina for the Summer Splash and Fish—the town’s biggest celebration of the season—a few years ago.
I waved his words away. I couldn’t confide in my friendwithout falling apart. “There’s nothing we can do about that now. What’s going on here?”
“Where have you been?”
I raised my eyebrow. “In North Carolina.”
“Well, I know where you were physically. But where have you been in the world?Clematiswas sold to McCann Media.”
My eyes widened in shock.Clematishad been independently owned forever—that was one of the best things about it. I loved the family feel, how I actually knew the powers that be, how we had the space to make our own decisions because we weren’t owned by the big guys. Everything was changing. Everything had changed. The one stable thing I had left was suddenly unstable.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
He looked mystified. “Well… you’re my boss. I assumed you knew.”
I took a deep breath and stood up straighter. And I realized that, across the way, one of my writers was crying. “Heather, what is going on?”
But I didn’t need her to answer. When your friend is putting the contents of her desk in a box that previously held printer paper, the dots are fairly easy to connect.
When Philip said, “Nanette needs to see you in her office,” it honestly didn’t even occur to me to be nervous. I mean, I was the managing editor, for heaven’s sake. She was the ideas; I was the execution. She was the big picture; I was the details. We had been a seamless team for three years, working so well together that it was hard to know where I ended and she began.
I tipped a fake hat to Philip, walked into Nanette’s corner office with the killer view, and closed the door behind me.My office one day… now was not the time. She was visibly shaken. But this was Nanette. She was shaken; I was steady. “Look,” I said. “Whatever McCann throws at us, we’ve got this, sister. We are an unstoppable team, and we will keepClematisa preeminent magazine no matter who owns us.”
I sat down in the white slipper chair across from her desk and noticed she and the chair were precisely the same color. Wow. Nanette was easily ruffled, but I had never seen her like this. “Amelia, you are my best friend,” she began. I thought that was a little sad. I mean, I loved Nanette. But she was my work wife. We never socialized outside of the office. I had sacrificed a lot for this job, but not as much as Nanette had.
I smiled wanly at her. “It’s all going to be—”
“Please stop,” she said. That was when I started to feel sick. “I’m the new managing editor,” she whispered.
For a half second, I had the ridiculous thought that I was going to be the new editor in chief. But when I saw the tears in her eyes, I realized I was most certainly not getting promoted. I sucked in my breath. “And me?”
She shook her head. “You’re getting three months’ severance.”
I was gobsmacked. I leaned back in the chair, feeling as if I’d been punched in the stomach. I had devoted thirteen years of my life to this company. Yes, I knew that magazines were merging staffs and recycling content, that media jobs were fewer and farther between, that for everything the Internethad given us, it had also taken away something really big. And you couldn’t help but see the irony: McCann Media.
Nanette handed me a letter. “I wrote you the most glowing, most amazing recommendation I have ever written. I will do anything for you, and any publication would be lucky to have you, Amelia. You know that. You are the girl wonder. You took this company by storm. You’ll do it again.”
I was on the verge of tears. And furious. And I knew exactly who to take my anger out on.
As I thundered out of the magazine, I knew I was overreacting. But I’m not a fully rational human—no one is, really. Every now and then I’d get a nasty comment online and feel like quitting my job, throwing everything I’d worked for out the window. Or a friend wouldn’t text me back for a couple days, and I’d decide she hated me for some perceived slight. My mom would say something snide about my heels being too high or my face looking a little round, and I would fume that I wasn’t going home for Christmas.
I never let it show at work, though. I was the consummate professional; I kept everyone in line. I picked up everyone’s slack. I didn’t want to be the one to say it, but Nanette wasn’t half as good as I was at actually putting out a magazine. She was the Google think tank. I was the assembly line.
My layoff, all the layoffs, were probably not Parker’s fault. Probably. I looked at my watch. Eight ten. The high-and-mighty boss of McCann Media wouldn’t be in yet at 8:10. Thiswas what happened when companies got too big and quit caring about the peons that made it all possible. Greer would never have stood for this.
“Parker!” I screamed, as I banged on the back door, realizing that maybe, just maybe, a small part of my freak-out had to do with the fact that I had run out of the hormones I took every day to make my body not think it was in menopause. He emerged at the door, bleary-eyed, in his boxers.
“Oh, it’s you,” he said sleepily.
“So you’d just open the door to any stranger off the street in your underwear?” I crossed my arms, trying to not think about how hot he was practically naked and barely awake.
