“But you spent so much time working on this. I don’t even know how you got them to talk.”
“I spent a lot of time hanging out by the marina this week.” I laugh. “Thank God caffeine knows when to do its job. Let’s just say, it’s what’s been keeping me alive this week.” I look down at my watch and frown.
“You always dig deep when you need to, Gina. You’d make a great investigative reporter.”
“It’s what the story deserved, but thanks, Louise. That’s very sweet of you. But I need to hurry to the pitch room. Holly has another meeting.”
“Good luck, Gina.” Louise’s eyes are bright, and I can tell she’s glad she doesn’t have to be in the pitch room, as well. “Thanks again.”
“You just need to ask him how he feels,” Emma whispers to me from the back of the pitch room. It’s dark, and we’re not really listening, so I hope no one calls us out. “If it were me, I’d be like, ‘Patrick Adams, we need to have a serious talk.’”
“I’m not calling him by his full name. I’m not his teacher, nor his mom.” I glare at my best friend while pretending to be intellectually stimulated by the conversation at the front of the room. “He’s going to think he’s in trouble if I start a sentence with,Patrick Adams, we need to talk.”
“Fine, then just say, ‘Hey, Patrick, I think we need to have a conversation that defines what we are and what you want fromme.’” There’s a hint of annoyance in Emma’s voice, but I know it’s not directed at me, but rather the subject of our conversation.
“That sounds so high school.” My voice is a little too loud, and I quickly grab my pen and notepad and start scribbling, pretending I’m making notes as our editor in chief, Holly Unger, talks about dwindling circulation numbers and possible layoffs. “Wait, did she just say layoffs?” I glance over at Emma, who is drawing a picture of a cake on the top of her yellow legal pad. “Are we going to be fired?” My heart thuds uncomfortably at the thought. I do not want to lose my job right now. I literally can’t afford to. Not now that I’ve just rented an apartment next to Emma and furnished it with almost all new furniture. I think of the three grand I just put on my credit card, and my stomach twists and turns like it’s hurricane season.
“I don’t think so, but revenue is down, and Maverick and Logan told Dad he should think about downsizing in the next year if it doesn’t pick up.” She makes a sad face as I watch her familiar brown eyes crinkle in the corner. She plays with the tips of her long, dark hair and reaches over to touch my hand to comfort me. “You know my brothers are all about profit, and they don’t care that these are actual jobs for real people in Whisper Cove. We are numbers drawing salaries, not people with bills and dreams.”
I nod my understanding because, of course, I know her brothers and how focused they are on business and making money. Emma and I have been best friends since we were in kindergarten, and I’ve grown up around all the Bonds. In fact, sometimes I felt like I only had my job because Emma was my best friend, but she’d assured me several times that her family had nothing to do with the hiring and firings of reporters, a fact that I believed because our editor in chief hated us both with a passion.
“It’s not your fault. I think...”
“Did you have something you wanted to add to the conversation, Gina?” Holly says my name, and everyone in the room turns to me. I try not to groan as I see the innocent-eyed faces of the other reporters in the room who hope that I’m the one who’s going to get toasted today. Because one thing was certain: Every week that we had pitch day, Holly was going to call out someone, and if that someone was you, you’d better watch out. Holly Unger is the sort of editor that makes you hate your job, mainly because she hates her job. Everyone at the paper knows that she hates Whisper Cove and wants to be working in a metropolitan city or a national syndicate. Whisper Cove is small fries for someone with her dreams and goals, but she’d taken the job because our small East Coast island had the most billionaires per capita of any other location in the United States. Not that that meant much to my broke ass. I had twelve hundred dollars in my checking account and ten thousand in my savings. I was proud of the 10k, but it was small potatoes to most of the island's inhabitants. Including Emma’s family, who, to be fair, never treated me like Emma’s poor best friend, but that was because her parents were away most of the time, and her brothers were too busy with sports to bother with me. The Bonds were my second family, but I was still nervous about my job.
“I had some ideas for new columns I’d like to write,” I speak up and gaze at our fearless leader. She stares back at me ominously. Holly Unger is everything I am not. She’s got an angular face, sharp blue eyes, and a short white-blonde bob that accentuates her rosy—from makeup, not the sun—cheekbones. Not a hair is out of place. Unlike me, my hair hangs in a ponytail down my back that is messy and unkempt. I have no makeup on today because I was running late to work, and I’m wearing a pair of faded blue jeans that fit a little too tightly and a big sweater that reads,Don’t Talk to Me Until I’ve Had My Coffee, and I haven’t even had my coffee. I look down at the small ketchupstain on my sleeve, then back at Holly. My outfit is givingI spent the night sleeping on the couch while stuffing a cheeseburger into my mouthvibes, while her outfit screamsa black card was swiped to take this right off the New York Runway. I know everyone is judging me, but I can’t exactly tell anyone I was helping Louise with her article, not if I want her to keep her job.
“And those are?” Her voice is clipped, and there’s a hushed silence in the room. The two Jennys are practically salivating, waiting for me to be torn to pieces. Jenny A. covers restaurant reviews, which I think is the easiest job at the paper. Who doesn’t want to eat free food? While Jenny S. gives money advice, which I think is a joke because she doesn’t even know the difference between a traditional, Roth, and SEP IRA.
“I was thinking of a column where I would give love advice to people who write in.” I hate the fact that my voice sounds hesitant, like I’m unsure of myself. Like everyone knows I need the advice myself and wouldn’t be the best person to give it. “Everyone needs feedback in different dating situations, and I think it would be fun.” Plus, it would be a learning experience. I’d like to write in myself and ask if it was normal for your maybe boyfriend to be interested in the net worth of everyone you know. And ask for invitations to expensive homes. My brain was screamingred flag, but my heart was embarrassingly screamingdesperate.
“But you’re constantly asking for advice yourself,” Jenny A. chimes in, and I look over at her smarmy face, with her perfect blonde hair and pink outfit, and say nothing. I hated that her words were true. “Weren’t you literally just asking Emma what to do about your own man?” She tosses her hair back like she thinks she’s on video. Poser.
“Like literally,” I mutter under my breath, but I hold in the snide comment simmering on the top of my tongue about not all of us being Barbie and having a perfect Ken because I knowthat’s a surefire way to be sent to HR again, and they’ve already given me one warning about how I talk to her. “It could be a fireable offense,”Betsy from HR had said after I’d gotten told off for telling Jenny A. that the only way she’d ever become royalty would be to marry the Prince of Bastards. Granted, even I knew that saying she could be the Princess of Bitches was just a tad too far.
“I don’t think that’s relevant,” Emma speaks up. “I, for one, think that’s a great idea, Gina.”
“Thanks, Ems.”
“It’s played out.” Jenny S. yawns, looking like the stalker twin version of Jenny A., with her similar pink outfit and blonde extensions that are practically falling out of her hair. “'Dear Abby’, and all those sorts of columns are boring. Gen Z doesn’t care about that. They want crowdsourced advice, like the “Am I the Asshole” column I suggested for the web.”
“But I’m talking about print.” I will not let her goad me. “As of right now, I’m thinking about print.”
“But that’s your problem, Gina.” Jenny S. sips her decaf coffee like it’s been imported straight from the coffee fields in Guatemala. “Print is dead. Everything is online now. No one cares about your antiquated ideas. Even the revenue at the paper mainly comes from online ads and not our rapidly declining circulation. We only still have a physical paper because Whisper Cove is full of rich old farts that don’t want things to change.”Don’t do it, Gina. Do not bring up the fact that we all know she’s been sleeping with a rich old fart, and it’s not because he’s hot.
“It was just one of many ideas that I had.” I stare back at Holly, who looks bored. Holly wants to win a Pulitzer. She wants to be involved with hard-hitting stories, and I know she’s not impressed with any of us. That is the only reason I don’t take the way she talks to me personally. She talks to everyone like shit.
“I need everyone to put their heads down this week and really get those brain cells working.” Holly turns off her PowerPoint presentation and heads toward the door. “We will reconvene later this week, and I want everyone to present at least one good idea. Our readership wants hard-hitting stories. Stories that uplift. Stories of peace, of love, of war.” She grabs her Louis Vuitton handbag and lets out a long-suffering sigh. “This is a newspaper, folks, not a yearbook for the local high school. And we are working adults, not cheerleaders or...” She looks over at me. “Geeks. Let’s get it together.” And with that, she leaves in a flourish.
“Did she just call me a geek?” I ask an astounded Emma, who appears just as taken aback as I was. “I mean, I get it. The Jennys are definitely cheerleader types, but am I really giving off a geek vibe? Am I a twenty-five-year-old geek? I don’t even play video games. I was never in band or drama club.” I sit back and run my fingers through my ponytail. “It’s my appearance, isn’t it?” I shake my head before Emma can respond. “Don’t say anything. I know it’s my clothes.” I make a face. “Is this why Patrick is playing games with me?” I stare at my best friend, whose open blue eyes give away every thought she has in her head, and I groan. “It’s because I’m not sexy, isn’t it?”
“No,” Emma says quickly. “I’m sure that’s not it.”
“Don’t lie.” I lean back in the black chair and watch as the two Jennys and the other reporters leave the small room and head back to their desks or maybe to lunch. “I was going with the whole grain Gina look because I thought men liked women who weren’t all put together, but maybe I’ve gone too far.” I look at the Birkenstocks on my feet and the chipped nail polish on my toes. I am far away from the pre-dating Patrick Gina, who used to get her nails done every week, even when she couldn’t really afford it.
“Did he tell you he was into that look?” Emma asks, pulling out her phone and texting someone back.
“Not in those words. He said he enjoyed being low-key and under the radar. He said he didn’t care about designer clothes as much as he did designer watches. He said he wasn’t in his line of work because he was materialistic, but rather because he liked spreading the wealth.” My head pounds as I rethink our earlier conversations and my own interpretations of his words. “Maybe I got it wrong?”
