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“You know what, I'm not entirely sure,” she shrugs, her blouse slipping over one shoulder. “I thought we still had a couple of days left, and was really waiting for Perez's story to get out. I thought
we might even have to wait for yours to go live on TurnPost for a day or two. But they must have already had the docs ready to go by messenger! When I talked to Rick — you remember Rick at Google — he said it just felt right.”
“That's amazing!” I smile, feeling all the tension drifting away from me.
“No, you're amazing!” she grins. She leans forward, pushing her elbows on her desk and holding her hands out as though gesturing to me like I am something amazing on a game show. “It's you! Our plan… you did it. We did it. You guys just kept pounding the media until everyone believed. To be honest, I didn't even think you had it in you!”
“Well, you know,” I pout, shifting uncomfortably, “I am familiar with men. They are just people.”
“Ha!” she barks, rather cruelly, I think. “You know they exist, but you don't know anything about men. You never have. You’re stuck between reality and fantasy and always get all… twisted around. Like you just got thrown from a horse!”
She laughs for a really long time, obviously amused by herself. I feel myself straighten in my chair and slide the glass back onto the end of her desk.
“Well I’m just glad it worked out,” I mumble.
“Turned out what you really needed was two men!”
“So, I'm really glad this all went so well,” I finish as a way of saying goodbye. I want to stay polite, and moreover, I really don't need to hear her critique of my love history. I think I should leave while I still have any love left for her.
“Me too,” she sighs, smiling obliviously. “So what's next for you?”
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.
