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I don’t know how long I slept, but when I woke, the room was dark and Neil was lying beside me, snoring softly. I smiled to myself and rolled over to snuggle him.
In his sleep, Neil wrapped an arm around me and shifted his body against mine. One foot crept between mine, hooking around my ankle.
My heart ached. I loved him. I loved him way more than I should have. And I was pretty sure he loved me, too. We hadn’t said it yet, and that was nice; I didn’t think I could handle an “I love you,” when “darling,” had thrown me for a pretty significant loop.
But that brought a whole other level of anxiety. He hadn’t said he loved me, and we weren’t exactly dating, no matter how much time we were spending together. I had meant to talk to him about Porteras tonight, about the lukewarm reception his changes had been receiving. Instead, I’d just gotten fucknesia and forgotten about the whole thing. Was that for the better? If I told him about my concerns with the magazine, would he think I was being too pushy? Would he end things with me if I spoke up? It seemed like a long shot that he might, but I was almost unwilling to take the chance.
That strengthened my resolve. There was no reason I should hold my tongue and not tell Neil something I felt he needed to know, just because I was afraid of his disapproval. If he did love me, then he would value my independent thought, right? And if he didn’t, would I really want to be with him?
Well, even if I did, I shouldn’t. I decided I’d mention my concerns over breakfast.
* * * *
“’Usually, Porteras is as thick as a Bible,’” I read aloud the next morning, leaning over the kitchen island while Neil whisked eggs in a ceramic bowl. He’d started cooking breakfast for us on mornings after I’d slept over. It had become a pleasant little routine. Except for maybe this morning. “’But the staggering volume of advertising has been notably trimmed. Is this the decision of Elwood and Stern, Porteras’s new parent company, or a line in the sand drawn by designers loyal to the toppled de facto fashion ruler, Gabriella Winters?’”
“We’ve made some changes, and people are welcome to respond to them,” Neil said mildly, pouring the thoroughly beaten eggs into a hot frying pan on the stove. He was wearing a t-shirt and sweats, the way he usually did in the morning, and the kitchen towel thrown casually over his shoulder made the ensemble oddly sexy.
“Yeah, but this isn’t people, this is an editorial in the New York Times,” I pointed out, as gently as possible.
“The digital edition,” he nodded to my iPad. “Hand me the peppers?”
I put my iPad down and reached for the shallow dish with chopped green bell peppers in it. “Don’t you think maybe too many changes, too quickly... It’s not going to inspire confidence in readers who kind of worshipped Gabriella. And what’s going to happen in January, with the new ban on all designers who use animal products? I think you’re limiting a lot of choices on behalf of the readers. That’s all I’m saying.”
“I don’t want to talk about work, Sophie. This is the rare occasion where I don’t have to think about the damned magazine at all.” He was definitely irritated with me. I wasn’t used to that, and I really didn’t like the sick feeling in my gut that resulted.
But this was important to me, and I had made a promise to myself that I wasn’t going to back down just to keep him happy. “That damned magazine is my job, Neil. My only job. I think I have a right to be concerned about it.”
He turned, whipping the towel from his shoulder to drop it on the counter. “Do you really think the magazine is going to fail over one bad issue? There are growing pains every time a company changes hands; it’s the nature of publishing.”
“It’s not going to be just one bad issue,” I argued. “Going entirely cruelty free severely limits the magazine’s ability to sell ad space, or to get designers to support us.”
“And that doesn’t really matter at all, does it? Because in the end, Porteras is the most important fashion magazine in America. In the world. If we decide no... orange, for example, then orange falls out of favor,” he explained distractedly, turning back to flip the omelet.
“But you don’t just say, ‘no orange.’ You feature the designers who aren’t using orange in their collection.” How could he not get this? “If you say, ‘no fur, no leather, no animal testing,’ you’re ruling out such a huge chunk of advertisers and designers. You’re basically telling some of the biggest, most important companies in the world that they’re not welcome at Porteras anymore.”
