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“I didn’t. She won’t talk to me,” Quentin said. “She wants to be on her own.” The truth of the words made his heart clench.
“Well, shit,” Maggie said, collapsing in her chair. “She’s damn good, then.”
“We can’t afford to lose her,” Quentin said.
Maggie’s eyes flashed. “But it’s not fair to the other interns.”
“It can’t be fair. She’s fucking better than them. Better is never fair.”
Maggie couldn’t bicker with that logic. “I have almost no edits,” she told him. “And I’ve decided… I don’t think I’m going to press the issue. The issue of you and Charlotte, I mean. You tell me it’s over, and I believe you.”
“It is,” Quentin murmured sadly, his eyes turning toward the office window, where he could see Charlotte leaning over the coffee machine, filling her cup. The curve of her ass was a perfect arc beneath her white dress. His hands clenched into a fist with sudden, indescribable sexual passion.
Maggie eyed him curiously, rising from her chair. She no longer spoke to him with any sexual attraction, with prowess. She seemed tired, lines drawing themselves in circles beneath her eyes. “You’ll find happiness again, Q,” she murmured, turning toward the door. “Just hopefully not at the mercy of some little girl like that.”
This felt like a slap. It stung for many minutes, long after Maggie had returned to her closet-sized office, after Charlotte had filled her coffee and dropped a tiny dreg of milk within. Would he ever learn how she liked her coffee? Would he ever make her laugh in bed again? Would their worlds draw together again?
He supposed he couldn’t think about it.
He sent the magazine to print, knowing they’d be at newsstands on Friday morning, one delivered to his apartment as early as seven a.m. through a special courier service. He sensed, with the single click to send, that he was altering Charlotte’s life for good, spinning her toward a trajectory of new life, and new professional status, and perhaps many new loves.
The little Ohioan girl he’d met would be long gone. And his heart ripped at the sadness of saying goodbye.
31
Charlotte rushed to the newsstand on Friday morning, her heart fluttering. Her black coat, one reserved for winter, had been drudged up from the bottom of her suitcase with a sudden burst of fall chill. With one week to go till October, the earth had taken a dramatic turn, bursting them toward winter all too soon. And her skin drew dots of chill in response.
The MMM magazine was featured on the top rack, with other music and movie magazines, complete with a cover of the Thick Soled musicians—those familiar faces she’d interviewed a few weeks before. She wrapped her fingers so tightly around the magazine, digging her nails into the glossy exterior.
“Ma’am? Are you going to pay for that?” the newsstand worker demanded, his thick, black eyebrows rising high. “Because otherwise, you gotta put it back.”
“I wrote this,” Charlotte murmured, tossing a five-dollar bill at the man. “I wrote the feature!”
“Congrats,” the man said, his words flippant. “Now, go tell the rest of New York City.”
Charlotte raced into a nearby coffee shop, wrapping her palms around a ceramic mug and sipping at a cappuccino, her stomach clenching with fear. Her name—Charlotte Barracks—was listed at the top of the article, beneath the title. It could be mistaken for no other name, no other writer. It was hers.
She read it once, then again, diving through her words and celebrating the pattern of them, the utilization. It hadn’t been edited a single bit, not by Maggie, nor Quentin, and she cherished this fact, knowing it was a rarity in the writing world. Sneaking the magazine into her bag, she rejoined the crowded sidewalks and marched toward her office building, sensing movement and change in the air. With this article, New York seemed to echo her name back to her, telling her, once and for all, she belonged. And not just because she’d once been sleeping with a rock star-turned-editor.
Passing hipster coffee brew houses on the way, her eyes craned to see that several mustachioed men, and their scarfed women, bent their heads to MMM magazines, diving through her words.
She was taking them on a journey.
About twenty-five minutes later, Charlotte entered the offices of MMM, her tongue turning to sandpaper with panic. Once inside the intern office, she spun her head to see that most of the interns were reading her feature, their nose pointed toward the bottom of pages, showing their interest. Joining Randy at her desk, she elbowed him softly, ripping him from the magazine.
His eyes were warm, friendly. He’d forgiven her, maybe. Or perhaps he just didn’t care anymore.
“The big fucking day, huh?” he said, his voice bright. “Charlotte, this is incredible. Really. And it wasn’t even edited from the original you sent.”
