She looked shocked.
“Greer would have liked you,” I said. “I don’t know how I know that, but I do. If she were sitting here beside me, she would say,Look, Park, yeah, her résumé isn’t the best one we’ve seen, but she’s smart and she has passion. And sometimes that’s enough. And so I’m going to give you a three-month trial. But I want to be wowed, Lindsey.” I wrote a number on a sugar packet and slid it across the table. “If you make it past the three months, this will go up.”
She nodded. “Wow. Just, wow. Thank you for taking a chance on me. I know I have a lot to learn, but I promise I will learn fast. And I will transform your digital media for a new generation. I swear I will.”
I believed her. I paid the check and walked Lindsey to her car.
She turned and grinned at me, saying, “See you on Monday, boss.”
As I smiled and shook her hand, I realized this lunch had been the first time in four months that I’d been immersed in work, the first time in four months I’d gone more than an hour without thinking about Amelia.
AmeliaTHE GREAT UNKNOWN
NEW YORK WAS MY FAVORITEplace. I couldn’t imagine how, why, and again, how I hadn’t realized how fabulous it was a long time ago. The restaurants, the theater, the people, the job… I mean, yes, going from managing editor to reporter had felt like a step backward. But I was only thirty-five, for heaven’s sake. I had plenty of time to prove myself at a new publication and work my way back up the ladder. I ignored the fact that doing so had taken me twelve years atClematis.
I was sharing a small but bright two-bedroom with Martin, who had decided he needed a fresh start, too, and, in true BFF fashion, had joined me in my life change. My secret nest egg was funding the venture, but, even still, Martin was footing more than half of the bills. I had protested, but he had insisted. And, much to my surprise, I had given in. He wasright. None of the places I could actually afford were suitable for our swanky new start.
As the captain of all things fabulous, Martin was connected to the coolest people. He was the reason I was having so much fun, the reason I didn’t feel lonely. And he was the reason I was going on this damn date tonight.
“Please, Amelia, please,” he had begged. “Do this for me. I promised Harris a smoking-hot date to the premiere.” Harris was Martin’s boss at the PR firm where he was now working, the sister company of his Palm Beach firm. The job was part of the reason that he knew all the fabulous people. The other part was that his soft hair and megawatt smile simply attracted everyone to him like moths to a flame. He was handsome and generous, and he had the best stories—which were at least thirty percent true.
Like the one he was telling now in the back of the car while Harris and I smiled shyly at each other. I thought it was sweet that Harris could smile shyly because he was forty-two, graying right around his temples, and a total fox in the most gorgeous custom suit I had ever seen. My heart actually started pounding when he stepped out of the car, took my hand, and introduced himself.
“And the craziest part about the entire thing,” Martin was saying, “is that after she confessed that she was pregnant with her lover’s baby, after he killed himself on their kitchen floor, her husbandstillwants her back.”
Harris smiled at me and said, “No!” I could tell he’d hired Martin ten percent because he was brilliant and ninetypercent because he was the most damn entertaining person in the world.
“Yes! Can you believe it?”
Harris squeezed my elbow and said, “I can’t. Can you, Amelia?”
I grinned at him. Was he flirting with me? I liked it. I liked him. Right away. Martin had been right. “Why would he do that?” I asked.
“He wanted to keep his family together.”
It was the first time in an hour I had thought of Parker and the family—albeit the unconventional one—that we had almost had. It still stung. But it stung a little less as Harris took my hand and helped me out of the car in front of the Paris Theater. The producer of this advance screening was the firm’s client, and I was happy to be there to support him. I readjusted the fitted black dress I was wearing and was glad I had gone with the stiletto boots, because Harris was tall.Talltall.
Inside the theater, we were handed Moscow mules and cute, retro boxes of popcorn. I put my hand inside the crook of Harris’s arm when he offered it to me. “I think you’re really going to like this film,” he whispered in my ear. Now I was positive he was flirting with me. Was this really so shocking? Was I that out of practice?
The movie wasn’t really my kind of thing. A sort of action-adventure film with a lot of boat racing and some stolen diamonds and some sex scenes that were, quite frankly, a little raunchy and very uncomfortable, especially while youwere sitting beside a boy you kind of liked. Okay, yeah. I knew Harris wasn’t a boy. But when you’re in the movies and you can’t concentrate because you’re wondering if he might try to put his arm around you or hold your hand, he’s a boy and you’re a girl. In a lot of ways, life never moves beyond seventh grade.
I must not have understood the movie, because afterward Harris and Martin absolutely fell all over their producer client, plying him with compliments. Martin deemed it “a sure box-office hit” and Harris agreed that “fans are going to go crazy.”
But when we were in the privacy of the car again, Harris exhaled long and slow and said, “Well, we better start working on a strategy.”
Martin groaned. “How do we even begin to defend that? That piece of trash is going to bomb.”
“I don’t know,” I said hopefully. “Maybe you’re underestimating how base the American population has become?”
“Even Americans won’t go for that drivel,” Harris said.
I could feel Harris’s mood begin to shift from lighthearted and fun to agitated. And I got it. I really did. Nothing could sour my mood like a perfectly good project gone wrong. My mind turned to the notes from my frozen embryo story, still sitting in my desk drawer. I hadn’t been able to stomach them, for obvious reasons.
But I was super bummed about what the shift meant for my night. I was hoping for a nightcap, a kiss at the stoop, a promise of a second date. New York Amelia was fresh and funand open to, if not love, at least a handsome man to escort her about town.
Martin cupped Harris on the shoulder and said, “I’ve got your back, man.” It was very reassuring and very… straight.
“You always do,” Harris said, as though they had been working together for decades, not months. “I’m just going to leave it all to you.”
