She was already talking, but I didn’t hear the words.
“You’re fired,” I told her.
My manager abruptly stopped speaking and glanced around us. She urged me away from the crowd, and I followed.
“You cannot be serious,” she hissed when we had relative privacy. “All of this over some farmer and a spray tan. Over someone who doesn’t even?—”
“Not another word about Joan,” I said, and I thought it was a miracle that I sounded so calm. “You’ve done enough.”
Gloria’s dark eyes narrowed to slits. She opened her mouth, presumably to deliver another zinger, but instead I lowered my voice and said, “Not another word at all, or I’ll tell everyone how petty and jealous and vindictive you are. How all your girls’ girl empowerment is just bullshit. You were wildly unprofessional today, and this wasn’t the first time. I’ve overlooked things because you did your job.”
“My job? I made you everything you are,” she insisted, vitriol leaking out of every pore.
“No, you haven’t. I’ve gotten where I am on my own talent and hard work. I was your only client for a reason. I was the only one who’d put up with you, and you made enough money off of me to set yourself up for life. But you’ve always had a bad habit of ignoring what I want. You made decisions behind my back. You worked for your own best interests. You didn’t support me in assuming custody of Georgie. You told me my nephew would negatively impact my career and to let someone else who didn’t have eighty-eight million followers raise him. And tonight ... you probably cost me the only other thing that’s ever mattered to me.”
With that, I stepped around my former manager and went back to work.
My stomach sank as soon as I walked into the beach house. I knew she wasn’t there.
Joan’s things were gone, and my sweatshirt that she’d worn was folded neatly on the end of my bed.
It had been naïve to imagine that this might have been a fun night of dress-up and playing pretend. Bringing a date to any event meant drawing attention. Even if everythinghadgone to plan—the optimistic, unrealistic one in my head—I still would have been exposing Joan to widespread judgment and media attention.
What had I been thinking?
Maybe I’d wanted the whole world to know she was mine. Maybe I’d wanted her to know it, too.
But that had been a cowardly and selfish way to go about it—vicious, too. Throwing Joan into shark-infested waters without a life raft.
I rubbed a hand over my jaw in mute frustration as I took in the emptiness of the beach house.
I hadn’t looked out for her. Hadn’t taken care of her the way I’d promised. She’d been insulted, humiliated, and angered, rightfully so. I’d ruined more than an idealistic night out, more than our public debut.
I’d ruined everything.
It was late, but I pulled out my phone.
I paced in the kitchen as I waited with my device pressed to my ear.
She answered on the fourth ring. “Hey.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
I toyed nervously with the elastic around my wrist. “Can I ask where you are?”
A beat of silence. “I’m at the airport.”
“I’ll come there. We can talk. Please don’t leave this way.”
I was halfway down the stairs to my garage when she said gently, “No.”
My feet slowed to a stop.
“I need some space, Ian.” Her voice was soft, but unapologetic. I knew her well enough to recognize how hard she was trying. She was making an attempt to let me down easy.
The phone was clutched so tightly in my hand that I knew there’d be marks on my palm. I made myself breathe when all I wanted to do was argue, plead, and beg on my knees.
