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Chapter Eight
Friday morning,Buzz dressed in her best gray slacks and navy blouse to get fired. It wouldn’t have been the first time she had been fired in the outfit, and probably wouldn’t be the last time with the way her life was going.
Maby hadn’t found any jobs on campus for her yet, but it was October, and all those jobs were full for the year. Buzz had abstained from looking until she was actually fired, so this afternoon, she was going to update her resume before heading out for drinks with the sisters. They were having one last outing with their single mom.
Pushing into the old building that housed the Times’ offices, she wondered if her mom’s work needed anyone like her. Probably not, but she would send her a text after the deed was done. Or after the woman came back from her week-long honeymoon in Hawaii. Maybe by then, Buzz would have found herself something, anything.
Sitting at the desk she shared with four other people, she pretended to work as she waited for her editor to call her into the office. Yesterday she had promised an exclusive report that was supposed to be on today’s front page, but she had messed that up so much the only words he had said to her could in no way be printed in a newspaper.
But maybe she should write it down; it would make a great story. Then she’d hide it in her underwear drawer, where it would never see the light of day. But she could read it on lonely nights and relive it.
“Did you get the story, Bea?” Grace Atwater asked from the next desk over. They were friendly, but Grace was a backstabber, so Buzz kept her stories close. Grace knew there was an interview, but not with who or what it was about. And, hopefully, she would never know Buzz slept with the subject instead of getting the interview.
“Nope, missed him. Just my luck,” Buzz lied and turned back to her.
“It sounds like Meghan Murphy is getting to cover the senator’s scandal from over the weekend. You should have been at The J on Friday,” Grace said in a stage whisper so that everyone could hear.
Meghan was Buzz’s arch-nemesis; she got all the good stories. Okay, the woman had no idea who she even was, and Buzz wanted to be a real journalist, not a tabloid one. The only story Buzz had gotten was her sister Mabel’s wedding write-ups, fluff pieces. It had been all beautiful bride and handsome groom, but nothing meaty.
“Good for her,” Buzz fumed. It didn’t matter that Meghan Murphy got a good interview … and all without hiding in a hot closet for hours.
Pulling her phone from her pocket, she was about to shoot her mom a text to find her a job when her name was barked from across the room. Allen Jasper sounded just as excited to talk to her as she was to talk to him.
Buzz slowly slipped her phone into her pocket and grabbed her purse. Most likely, she wasn’t coming back to this desk. No way was she walking through these so-called friends after being canned. She wasn’t giving them that satisfaction.
Allen did not get up from his desk. “Bea.”
“Allen,” was all she said. No matter what, she wasn’t groveling for this job. It was so not worth it.
“You promised me an interview for this morning’s paper, front-page worthy. Instead, I had nothing.”
“I’m sorry, I tried. I really tried.” She really wanted to keep her job, okay?
“You assured me you had a friend of a friend, and it was big. ‘Slam dunk’ were the words I think you said.”
“Maybe I was more optimistic than I should have been,” she admitted, not sitting down.
Allan shook his head. “I need to have people on staff who actually write more than two or three articles a week. More than fluff pieces.”
“I had that exclusive about the Lovely-Scott wedding and the Lovely-Hawthorn wedding. That was me.” And it might have been a better storyline if she had known they were both getting married within a few weeks of each other when she had written the first article. But no, her sisters seemed to want to get married quickly, sometimes even too quick for the press that lived in their house.
“They were both your sisters. How many sisters do you think can marry well in a few months’ time?” She wanted to say all of them if their mom had any say in it.
“My mom is getting married tomorrow,” she hedged, though she was sure nobody actually cared except her family. They were pretty excited.
“Do I know her?”
“Sera Lovely marrying Harrison Dean.” She knew he hadn’t heard of them.
“Nope. How about you focus on freelancing and submitting a few stories a week? Some might even be printed.” Allan didn’t even sound convinced that would happen.
“I think not. If I have any stories, I’ll submit them at the Herald. I won’t darken your door again.” She stood and proudly walked out of the office. As she headed for the door, she ignored all the eyes on her—they all knew already.
Two floors down in the lobby, she stopped to talk to Chelsea King, who she had graduated high school with. They liked to chat about people they knew, but more importantly, Chelsea was the current owner of the house Sera and Harrison were buying this afternoon. It was down the street from the house the family currently lived in. Chelsea had nearly demanded that they be friends in order for her to sell to Sera, which meant Buzz became her friend, begrudgingly.
Buzz got in line to talk to Chelsea. Though Chelsea loved to ambush her on breaks, Buzz liked to talk to her when she was working since the conversation would be shorter if there were people waiting to drop off ads or payment. Chelsea was the face of the paper; she handled subscriptions and want ads that walked in the door. There were a few others who handled it behind the scenes, but Chelsea did the foot traffic.
In front of her was a woman dressed so close to her that Buzz was starting to think she needed to update her wardrobe. If she was wearing the same thing as a woman twice her age, she wasn’t dressing right. Maybe she needed more of a change than just her job.
