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“Not exactly,” is all I said to Clara.
“Well, let me give you some exactitude,” she mocked. “It is most definitely a forbidden relationship. So, forget about her and come back to me, or I’ll go to HR at your label, and then the media. Presidents have been impeached over flings with interns.”
I didn’t want to lose the label; I’d spent decades building it up and running things had become such a major part of my life.
What else could I do, without it? Launch a solo career? Not likely. There was only one path to take here.
My brain knew that.
But my heart had a mind of its own and was determined to follow a different path— the treacherous, unpredictable, but potentially more fulfilling one.
“No, Clara, fuck off,” I told her. “I could never forget about Jonna. You’re wrong that she’s just a fling. In fact, I think I’m falling for her, for real. And I don’t care if you try to mess that up, like you did with Luna. I won’t let you anywhere near Jonna.”
“Okay, have fun losing your career,” Clara snarked, heading for the door.
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh,” she asked turning on her heel, “why is that?”
“Because I know something you don’t know, that rather damages your credibility when it comes to me.”
“Oh, and what’s that?”
“Well, I know two things, actually. The first is that I have a standing restraining order against, which you have already walked right through.”
“And second?”
“Three, two, one.”
The infuriating beep filled the house, as Clara’s ankle bracelet started going off, alerting the police to her location.
“I would have heard if you lived around here. It’s quite a bit out of town, you know. Well outside any possible range of ankle bracelet.”
“But I had to come here to see you,” she protested. “I need you. I love you.”
“Well, as you can see, the feeling isn’t fucking mutual. Sit down and have a drink while we wait for the cops.”
Clara flopped onto the couch like a petulant teenager, and I got her mineral water from the kitchen.
It was all true, as much as anything could ever be said to be true. Clara was right that my relationship with Jonna was forbidden.
I was resolutely moral in what I did with Jonna, but moral and ethical were still two different things. Despite the fact we were both consenting adults, I could get in trouble with the company, even though I owned it. And I would also be in a lot of trouble in the court of public opinion, if not the court of law.
None of which mattered at all to me in terms of the greater Truth, though. Despite myself, I loved Jonna, and I couldn’t imagine my life without her.
Clara was out of the picture, forever. All that as left to do was try and convince Jonna she could trust me again.
The cops came and got Clara and thanked me for alerting them that she had violated the restraining order. She begged and screamed for me to be with her, not Jonna, but I ignored her and waved sweetly at her as I locked up my house while she was being put into the cop car.
The motorcycle rumbled under me as I drove into town. Once I arrived at the studio, it took me a while to find Jonna’s address in the employee files in HR’s office. It wasn’t the most honest thing I’d ever done, but desperate times and all of that.
It also wasn’t like I’d had to hack into her account. It was information she had freely volunteered to the company when she applied for the internship.
I could have looked her up in the phone book, but the risk of imprecision was far too high. The last thing one wanted when trying to do a romantic overture was to show up at the wrong house. So, I had been forced to get her address from her employee file.
There was still no guarantee that my plan to get her back would work, but I tried to cover all the bases I could. I was determined to do everything I could to claim her again as my own, forever, and not let her go this time.
When I arrived at the apartment complex that had been listed as Jonna’s address in her file at work, I saw that the occupants were listed by their last names first. I scanned the list until I got to “M” and once I found hers— Morris— I entered the corresponding numbers in the call box hastily.
The buzzer rang out as into the void, with only my ears there to hear it. I still wasn’t sure what I was going to say. It was something of a new situation, and I was still trying to find my footing, but that didn’t stop me from marching steadfastly ahead in my plan— or at least as much as my plan as I’d managed to come up with.
