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I stand halfway up, then stop. I wasn’t going to say anything, but that was a stupid question, wasn't it?
“Well, you know what's next for me, right?”
She shakes her head, shrugging. “Oh…. right. You wrote an article about this, right?” she asks, waving her hand in the air in front of her like she’s waving away a bad smell. “Yeah, we don’t need that anymore. You can just skip it.”
“Um, okay,” I reply slowly. I didn’t write an article, but I’m still a little miffed that she would just trash something I had been tasked to write, anyway.
“So what’s next?” she asks again.
I shake my head, sort of amazed she’s asking me this. Did the last three weeks just happen or what?
“My writing assignment?” I explain, feeling like I’m giving her Cliff Notes. “I get to go back to my personal journalism, like we talked about?”
“Oh, sure…” she says vaguely. “Well maybe not right away. But yeah. Sure.”
I stand the rest of the way up, leaning my knuckles on the edge of her desk.
“That was the deal, remember?”
“It's just that…” she starts, holding her hands palm out in a let's be reasonable gesture. “I mean, I don’t know if it will really be up to me? You know what I mean? With Google coming in and everything… I don't know what my role will actually turn out to be, so…”
“You promised,” I say, keeping my voice somewhere above a snarl.
“And I will totally try!” she nods vigorously.
I have to stop for a moment because suddenly I feel very dizzy. Maybe it's the residual rocking motion of the boat, or the whiskey, but I feel like the desk is going to slide out from beneath my hands. Everything is very bright. Something smells like it's burning.
“Hannah, I just put my whole life and my career on hold for the last three weeks to help you out. We had a deal. We had a negotiation. Please don't tell me that you're trying to wriggle out of this now.”
“And you are such a good team player!” she shrugs helplessly. “But, I mean, this is business, Bella! In a team, everybody just has a small portion of the authority. Everybody has to work as a team! So if it's possible for you to go off and start writing your little life stories again or whatever… I'm sure they'll tell you. Sure of it!”
“My little life stories —” I repeat vaguely, suddenly understanding what she really thinks of me.
“Not as good as your makeup reviews, if I'm being honest,” she wrinkles her nose and tips her head to the side before taking another sloppy sip of her drink.
“We’ll just have to see about that,” I snap, smiling.
“Yeah, we could totally could see about that. Totally. So…”
I feel like she's pushing me off, but suddenly I want her to know.
“I mean, I think it's a really good story. A really good story. An amazing story.”
She fondles the stack of papers with her fingertips, swirling in a slow circle, then stops. Her perfect brow wrinkles and the center as she squints up at me.
“What are we talking about?” she asks me slowly.
“The story…” I answer automatically. “This story. My story.”
She smiles again, but not a real smile. A competitive, dangerous smile.
“Your story just got cut, like five minutes ago. By me. Remember?”
I just shrug.
“Bella? Did you write an article about this?”
I shouldn't tell her, I know it. That's really not a good idea. But the look on her face is really getting on my nerves.
