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He grinned. “That’s good,” he said. “Keep that up. They’ll think it’s a lover’s spat. Very believable under the circumstances.”
“I told you not to come here today, Jake. I told you I was calling the whole thing off. Weren’t you listening?”
“Oh, I was listening,” he said. “And I was also listening when you and Michael talked about that this morning. I heard the end of your conversation on my way in. I thought you said you had already told him I wouldn’t be here and that he was fine with it.”
“He would have been fine with it.”
“Didn’t sound that way to me. It sounded like he was saying he’d fire you if I weren’t part of the deal. If you remember, that is exactly what I warned you was going to happen.”
“I don’t need your help,” I told him icily.
“Yes, youdo, Olivia. You were about to lose this job. And it’s not any crime to need help, you know. I don’t know why you’re so ashamed of it.”
I was infuriated. “I’m not ashamed,” I bit. “I’m fine with people helping me, as long as helping is what they’re doing.”
“You would have been fired. How ismeshowing up here not helping?”
“I had a plan, Jake. I was going to make this work. And you decided you didn’t think I could handle it and went over my head.”
“Your plan wasn’t working.”
“We’ll never know now because you’re so sure that you know better than I do that you weren’t even going to let me try it,” I said. “I didn’t want you to come. If I got fired, that would have been my problem. It had nothing to do with you.”
“You’re so stubborn.”
“I’m stubborn because I don’t want you calling mesilly thingin front of Michael Sanders?“ I shook my head. “Don’t you realize that even if I do keep this job, I’m losing my chance at making a good impression every time you treat me like I’m a child in front of him? He now officially thinks I’m so stupid that I can’t even remember things my husband says to me.”
“He thinks it’s your artistic temperament. Don’t worry about it.”
“No, that’snotall he thinks. He thinks I don’t have my feet on the ground. You heard him, Jake. He thinks I’m too stupid to know what’s going on around me. And you encouraged that. Don’t you get why I don’t want you here? You’re supposed to be consulting on military details, not talking like old buddies with the director I’m trying to make an impression on—in between selling him your stupid app.”
“I knew it. “ This has nothing to do with the impression you think you’re making,” Jake said. “This is all about Branches.”
“No.You think everything is all about Branches, though, so I’m not surprised to hear you say that. I’m sure you think there’s no use to any of this if you can’t use it to push your app on others. Why else would you even be here? And don’t say it’s because you want to help me. You can pretend I’m stupid to Michael Sanders, but you and I both know it isn’t true. And if you’ve known me all these years and you still think I’m such an idiot, maybeyou’rethe one who isn’t so bright.”
His face darkened. “You really don’t want me here, do you?”
“Was I fucking unclear about that in some way?”
“When you asked me to do this job—“
“Whoasked you? You practically forced yourself into the situation! And now I know why! It was never about me. It was for personal gain.”
“I never claimed I didn’t give a shit about my own stuff at all,” Jake said. “I do want Branches to get a boost from this. I’m not going to lie to you about that. But I don’t see why that would mean that I don’t want to help you,too, Olivia. I do care about you, you know, even though you seem determined to think that I don’t.”
I sighed. The thing was, he probably believed that was true. Jake had been so selfish to me his entire life that he probably didn’t realize how indifferent he was to me. If I had meant as much to him as he claimed, he would have stopped arguing and done what I had requested him to do instead of presuming at every turn that he knew best, and I knew nothing.
But I’d learned not to count on that from him.
“Let’s get through today,” I told him. “Maybe after that, we can make some new arrangements.”
“I’m not going to stop showing up to work,” he said. “It’s clear by now that Michael wants me here. So you can tell him we’ve been lying if you want to, but I wonder which one of us will keep this job when he finds that out?”
“You’re such an ass.”
“All I’m trying to do is get something good out of this for both of us,” he said. “I don’t know why you’re complaining about that. If you relax and go along with it, I’ll be able to promote my app, and you’ll be able to go get a foot in the door as a screenwriter.”
It was obvious to me that he wouldn’t try to understand the problem, and I had enough of this argument.
