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My answer should be obvious.
“No.”
“No?” Mr. Shoemaker clears his throat and glances to the woman beside him. “You mean you won’t accept our offer?”
“I haven’t decided about the offer yet.” I wave my hand as if the idea of the job is of no concern to me. “I’m saying ‘no’ to this.” I gesture between the two of us, him and me. “This farce. This idea that we’re going to sit here and pretend you didn’t fire me after agreeing to let me work remotely. If you want me to even consider working with this company in the future, you’ll need to explain why we are in this situation in the first place.”
With a confidence I’m just starting to get comfortable with, I nod my head, indicating it’s his turn to talk.
My old boss sits forward in his chair, his easy posture gone as he fiddles with the papers in front of him.
“Well, Ms. Herbert, you see…when running a business, it’s important—“
“Oh, just stop.” Ms. Walters glares at her colleague before turning to me. “I apologize for the way that you’ve been treated in the past. You are familiar, I’m sure, with Marianna Tweep?”
“I’m the reason she’s a client of this publishing house.” This whole confidence thing is kickass.
“Yes. A fact we are extremely grateful for.” I’m sure they are. Marianna publishing a book means the company is making millions. “It seems when she was informed that you were going to work remotely, that she expressed dissatisfaction in communicating with an editor electronically.”
I hide my wince, barely. Apparently, my worries that Marianna wasn’t as attached to me as I was to her weren’t unfounded.
But Ms. Walters continues. “My colleague here,” she gestures at a red-faced Mr. Shoemaker, “took that to me your services were not vital to the company and could, therefore, be done away with.”
“At the time, it made sense,” he mutters, the man I used to have a level of respect for now sounding more like a sulky child.
If Ms. Walter’s glare is any indication, she holds an equal level of disdain towards him. “Upon further, more detailed, communication with Ms. Tweep, she explained that she finds your one-on-one in-person meetings to be a vital part of her creative process. Her original comments were meant as a demand for us to offer you incentives to stay within the city. When she found out you had been fired…well, let’s just say she was not pleased.”
“I don’t think it’s out of the question to ask an author to work with a different editor.” Mr. Shoemaker’s comment seems more directed at Ms. Walters than me, and I wonder if I’m the only one under consideration in this meeting.
The woman in charge ignores him, her focus solely on me. “Ms. Tweep is under contract with our publishing agency for her next five books. However, she claims that without your assistance, anything she sends us would be, and I quote, ‘utter shit.’ And it seems she meant that literally. These are the last pages she sent in for editing.”
Ms. Walters opens a folder and slides a stack of papers across the table. When I lean closer to read the type, I can’t help letting out an involuntary snort.
Over and over, almost like the printer had a glitch, one-word marches across the page.
Shit.
SHIT. SHIT. SHIT. SHIT.
Just to satisfy my curiosity I flip through the rest. Every so often there’s an “UTTER SHIT” thrown in. To mix things up, I guess. If I were alone, I’d be curled up on the floor, driven to the fetal position by laughter. But in this meeting, I only let a half-smile grace my face.
“Seems like a very Marianna thing to do.”
The HR guy chuckles but tries to cover it with a cough. Mr. Shoemaker scowls at the offending pages. Ms. Walters meets my eyes with a firm stare of her own.
“She wants you back. Back with our company and back in the city. We never should have let you go. I’m hoping my honesty about the situation will help smooth over some of the hurt from the way you’ve been treated in the past. Now, if we could discuss you potentially rejoining the team?”
I barely register her words, too focused on how happy I am at the loyalty Marianna showed me. This woman wants me so badly she’d piss off her publisher.
That’s the kind of badass I hope to be one day, and it sets off little happy bubbles in my chest that I still have a friend here in the city.
“Thank you for inviting me to meet with you all and explaining the situation. I’ll have to consider your offer. I’ll be in touch.”
As I stand to leave, I gather up Marianna’s beautiful prose, slipping the pages into my bag before I stroll out of the room.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Dash
