"I need you to know something," I say, carefully. "I'm glad. I'm genuinely glad that you wanted to advocate for me and I’m glad the outcome is good. But, I need you to tell me when you're going to do something like that. I need to know what's happening with my own work. It’s not professional for you to go to my potential clients for me. I get it this time because it was Justin, but I need there to be a boundary between work and us. A boundary that doesn’t get crossed unless it’s a safety issue of some sort."
He's quiet for a moment. Reading me. "That's fair," he says. “I will stay completely out of your work unless you ask for my opinion or it’s a safety issue. I can respect that.”
"That's it. That's all I needed to say."
"Okay." He steps closer. "I'll respect your boundaries, baby girl. Always."
"Okay," I say.
"Good." He tilts my chin up with two fingers, tips my face toward his, and kisses me briefly. "Now come see how the fawn is doing. She stood up on her own this morning."
He ends the hard conversation and opens a good one without any gap between them.
Just like that. Done, and forward.
I follow him insidelike I’ve done this a hundred times before.
Tuesday and Wednesday are full.
The grand opening is Friday and the resort is shifting into a different register with more staff, final installations, the boutiques receiving their last deliveries, and the restaurants running full service trials. Holly is everywhere and anywhere all at once, managing what appears to be a controlled explosion with the calm of someone who has been building toward this and is not going to let it be anything other than perfect.
I work. I write the resort piece to final draft, post the first of the ranch content including pictures of the elk calves, the bottle feeding footage, and a photo of Anthony's hands with a description of how the animals are in the best of hands and a little bio about him, and watch my phone become something I need to put down periodically because the notifications are relentless in the good way.
The footage performs. The writing hits. The view counts are insane, the best I’ve ever done. Comments roll in from people who want to know about the ranch, about the resort, about the reindeer, about the tall quiet man in the background of three of the videos who someone has already commented is extremely distracting in the best way.
He is extremely distracting. I have unprofessional opinions about this. I won’t share those opinions on my platform, however.
I show Anthony the comment Wednesday night at the ranch while he checks on the foxes. He reads it with the expression of a man who is deciding whether to acknowledge it.
"Extremely distracting," he says.
"I thought you should know."
"Is that the consensus?"
"Four hundred and twelve people agree." That’s how many likes that one comment got.
He looks at me over his phone. "And you? Am I extremely distracting to you, baby girl?"
I'm going to need a moment.
"I plead the fifth," I say.
"That's not a no."
"That's not a no," I agree.
The fox in the nearest enclosure makes a sound that is aggressively pointed. Anthony looks at it. I look at it. It looks back at us with the expression of an animal who has seen this kind of thing before.
"Even the fox agrees," I say.
"Don't think so."
"She's supportive."
"She's a fox."
"Yep. She’s a fox with good instincts."
