My earpiece fills with security coordinating a corridor exit.
I pivot toward the service door without breaking stride, steering them through before the room has finished reacting.
George texts before I've even finished rerouting:Engagement spike +310%.
I type backYou watched that and your first thought was a percentageand I am smiling in a way I'm glad no one can see.
His reply takes four seconds.My second thought was that you moved fast. Well done.
I read it twice. Then I pocket the phone, because that is absolutely enough of that.
***
Across the room, something crashes.
I look up in time to see Arthur Dupree standing over a man who is flat on the floor, Lindsay's rhinestone purse clutched in the man's hand. Arthur removes the bag from his hand with the calm efficiency of someone who has been through considerably worse and found it merely inconvenient.
He steers Lindsay toward a private alcove a moment later, one hand light at her elbow, while half the room raises their phones and the other half takes one large coordinated step backward.
George's text arrives:Arthur trending under "hero billionaire." Unexpected but favorable.
I reply:He took care of a thief, George, that's not just favorable,it'sextraordinary.
I watch the dots appear.
Fair correction. Logging "extraordinary."
My phone buzzes again. Callie.How's fake-dating George going?I can practically hear her grinning through the punctuation.
I typeStill fakeand move toward Seamus and Rosanna, who have moved to a quiet spot.
Rosanna is sketching, tongue pressed lightly to her lower lip, pencil moving in quick certain strokes. Seamus is watching her draw with an expression that has absolutely nothing to do with PR, nothing to do with optics or positioning or any of the words I use to describe what I do for a living.
I stop walking.
Callie texts:Is he still holding your hand?I roll my eyes.
Photos of Seamus and Rosanna surface in my analytics feed within minutes, already captioned "the calm couple," and something in my chest pulls in a direction I don't quite have language for yet. George sends me Seamus's approval ratings, and then, a beat later, another message:You're doing excellent work today.
I stare at it long enough that a passing server pauses and asks if I need anything, which is how I know I've been standing still too long.
***
All around me, three couples move through the choreography I've built for them, hitting marks I've set, playing roles I've helped design. I am the only person in this room whose role has no assigned ending.
George sends the final report.Relationship metrics highest since launch.
I think about his hand over mine at dinner. The electric feeling of his skin against mine, and how I'd told myself it meantnothing, how I'd been telling myself a version of that story on a loop for days.
I open the reply field and typeI keep thinking about dinnerand then delete every word carefully, one by one.
The atrium lights dim for the closing remarks, and in the softer glow the whole evening looks less like a PR operation and more like something I don't have a metric for. Something I'm not sure I'm supposed to be watching this closely.
I type:Glad the numbers are happy.
I pocket the phone and watch the last of my couples drift toward the exit, and I understand, with a clarity that arrives about three weeks too late to be useful, that I have been constructing a very thorough dataset with a gap in it the exact size and shape of one very specific data analyst.
My earpiece crackles.
Marissa’s voice cuts in, threaded with something that sounds like satisfaction. “Press just doubled at the south entrance,” she says. A beat. “Whatever you did today—keep doing it. Our couples are trending, for all the right reasons.”
Then George. Not a text this time. His warm voice comes through my earpiece. He sounds a little tired, and I stop walking.
"Nice work, Bloom. Time to wrap up. Go home. Get some sleep."
I press two fingers to the earpiece like I can hold the sound there a little longer. Like if I'm careful enough it won't dissipate into the cold air I'm already stepping into, through the service corridor, away from the lights and the crowd and all the perfectly managed feelings of other people.
I don't answer.
I walk out into the night and decide, with great sincerity, that tomorrow I will be much more professional about all of this.
