But mostly I hadn’t been.
Mostly, Salem’s compliment about my work means nothing compared to the grudging one Jess Greene gave me at midnight by the pool.
“Thanks.”
“And whatever you said to Jess last night—I wish you’d recorded it, honestly. It’s good that it worked, because right now those two are like cats in a bag with their fighting. Except one of the cats is determined to keep them both in the bag forever.”
I feel a prickle of annoyance on Jess’s behalf. The comparison feels pretty incomplete, pretty unfair.
We’re the bag, I want to say.This story is the bag.
“I don’t know how you did it.”
I shrug. “Just tried to keep it simple.”
It hadn’t been simple; it’d been like defusing a bomb. Like looking at a bunch of wires all tangled together, all but one ready to cause an explosion. I didn’t know Jess well enough to know about her wires, so it has to be that I got lucky.
It’s really the only explanation.
“I know it probably doesn’t seem like it,” Salem says, “but yesterday was good practice for you. Both things.”
“What?”
“The people you’re looking to talk to for the Copeland Frederick story—they’ll have things in common with MacSherry, and with Jess, too. There will be people who have lawyers and PR people in their ears, and they’ll be like MacSherry—too slippery to talk. And then there will be people like Jess. Too hurt to talk.”
It’s the first time she’s mentioned my story in a couple of days, and guilt nudges me. For years, my focus has been Cope. I’ve worked on other stories—when I was in school, when I was an intern, and in the time I’ve been at Broadside, too—but I’ve always managed to see them as stepping stones to my bigger goal.
Now, with that goal in sight—with an actual, if conditional, promise from Salem to help make it happen—I’m losing touch.
It isn’t that I’m not thinking about Cope; I’m thinking about him all the time. In fact, I thought of him last night, when I sat down next to Jess and apologized in advance for maybe smelling bad after my run. I could practically hear his laugh. I could practically hear him say,You have no game, Adam, in that teasing way he had, and he would be right. Just seeing her long, bare legs made me flush with a heat that had nothing to do with my run.
I wish he was here to rag me about that.
Salem’s phone pings and she pulls it from her back pocket. I’d be more relieved by the distraction from talk of Cope except that when she looks down at her screen, she rolls her eyes and mutters something in clear frustration. I’ve always known Salem to be tied to her phone, but that’s not unusual for the people I work with. On this trip, though, it’s been unreal—not just constant, but also seemingly stressful to her.
“Everything all right?”
“Don’t ever get married,” she says, which . . . is a lot. We do not have that kind of relationship.
I figure I ought to not respond, in case she forgot that for a second.
“I don’t mean that,” she says, once she’s sent off a text reply.
“Sure.”
“And anyway,you’dnever have this problem. No one’s saying anything about you going on a three-week business trip.”
That’s true, no one is. In part because I’m single, but more importantly, because of the bigger thing I’m smart enough to know Salem is talking about.
“No one would text you to ask where we keep the snack packs for recital days. No one would expect you to remember where the drop-off area is.”
I open my mouth to agree.
“Never mind,” she says. “Here they are.”
I look toward the doors and see Jess and Tegan coming out, Tegan a couple of steps ahead, dressed for Florida seaside gift shopping in a bright pink tank top and jean shorts. Jess is in her usual.
Beautiful, as usual.
