AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It did lead the business top five, but she’d effectively out eyeballed the human headline. She took a screenshot of the list with the intention of printing it out and pinning it up by her bed as motivation for those mornings when getting out from under the sheets was hard work.
An hour later, her story had dipped to number four and by lunchtime it was gone from the list. Shoot. Consigned to the recesses of a URL wasteland, but she had the proof it had briefly shone and the determination to make it happen again. With Jack’s existing fame, imagine how long the love experiment story might rate, long enough to make her feel like floating instead of treading water.
That meant not accepting any excuses from Jack about getting together again. Except he wasn’t anywhere to be found, and he didn’t answer either his phone or his email. The next day, she tracked him to his cubicle. He sat with his back toward her, with his earpiece in. He was editing a story on his screen. She didn’t know if he was listening to a call, so she coughed.
He didn’t quit what he was doing. Didn’t spin around to face her. He kept tapping away, eyes on his words.
“Jack, it’s—”
“No.”
“Derelie.” The earpiece was a ruse.
“No.”
He was cutting straight to the chase, she might as well too. “You do.”
“No.”
“We need to—”
“No.”
“But you—”
“I didn’t.”
She made a Muppet sound, very Oscar the Grouch. “What do I have to do to—”
He swung around. She got to look down at him, but that didn’t make up for what a bad dog he was being. Shame she wasn’t holding a rolled up copy of today’s print edition.
“Look, Rookie, I don’t have time for experiments. You’re going to have to spike that story.”
Rookie. That was worse than being called Clickbait. “But you—we—ah.”
He spun back to his keyboard. “Scoot back to your celebrity pets and listicles and let the real reporters do their stuff.”
Her mouth opened, but no sound came out. Her eyes probably looked like they were on stalks. She’d kissed this man’s condescending mouth.
“Jack, can you check this lede for me?” One of the business writers, Annie Berkelow, stopped beside Derelie. “Hi, who are you?”
It took time to get her jaw to work. She got out, “De.” And Jack said, “Works for the blogsite.” Blogsite. No one called it that. She wrote for the electronic edition of the paper, but so did Jack and Annie, it’s just that their stories also went in the print edition.
“Oh,” said Annie, and put a page in front of Jack. She wore a black pants suit with lace-up shoes and her short hair was stylishly tousled. Her dinkus was more glamorous and made her look older. Jack made an edit to the page and handed it back. Annie said, “Ah, that’s better, thanks,” and left.
Jack didn’t turn around, so he couldn’t see how red Derelie’s face was. He wouldn’t see her furled fists or the tension in her neck. He pressed a button on his earpiece and said, “Haley,” and she knew it wouldn’t matter how long she stood there, he was going to ignore her. But there had to be something wrong with the connection between her mental faculties and her legs, because she was standing there when Annie came back a few seconds later.
“Still here?” Annie said. She put a data stick in front of Jack. “He’s busy. You need to get out of his way so he can do this. It’s the biggest story we’ve had all year. It’s prize-winning stuff.”
“He had time for you.”
“He always has time for me.”
Jack put his hand to his ear and disconnected the call. He swung around to face them. “Is that the Shenker case study?” he said to Annie.
“Yeah.”
“Thanks.” He looked directly at Annie. “I’m going for a smoke.” He rummaged on his desk for his tobacco.
