“She’s a singer-songwriter,” said Eric, “so her video could be a visual representation of the words in her single. It’s a top 10 record, so people are familiar with it. She says something about writing haikus in a field of daisies, so I could shoot some pickup of that. There’s a line about smoking in an outdoor shower. Maybe I could set that up.”
“I don’t know,” said Karen, who had called an impromptu editorial meeting on Monday morning to decide how to handle Misty Cox’s Perfect Find video. The singer was the biggest name they’d ever filmed. The red-headed executive editor usually gave Eric and Jenna carte blanche with the videos—they’d been such a smash. But Misty wasn’t just a fashionable “real” person or a model—she was a pop star with an agent, a management team, and record label execs behind her. So, when Karen got the call that Misty was interested, she knew she needed to give it extra attention.
“I don’t think we want to show smoking,” she said. “It’s not politically correct.”
“It’s just a line in the song, Karen,” he said. “It’s not literal.”
“Well, what are some other lines?”
“Honestly? Those were the best two ones. Let it be known that I find her music to be utter trash.”
“I love her,” said Jinx. “She’s a slutty Taylor Swift.”
“Taylor Swift is a slutty Taylor Swift,” said Mitchell.
“Word,” said Terry. “I love how she maintains her good-girl image when she’s boned every dude in Us Weekly.”
“No smoking, Eric,” said Karen. “I can guarantee that Universal wouldn’t go for that.”
“Her name is Misty Cox,” said Eric, his voice dripping with disdain. “The label sent her out into the world with a porn star name. I doubt they’d trip over a Marlboro Light.”
“Do I have to say it again?” asked Karen, surprised at his attitude. Eric always stood up for what he believed in, artistically, but never with such petulance. “Come up with something else.”
He shrugged, his body language radiating exasperation. “Whatever you say.”
“Why are you in such a bad mood, E?” asked Jinx in her sing-songy whine. She rested her hand on his arm.
“I’m not in a bad mood,” he lied. He was in a terrible mood. Jenna was sitting five feet across from him, he hadn’t spoken to her all weekend, and he didn’t know where they stood. That was the worst part. Not the actual fight at May’s party, but having no idea what it meant.
“This is not me in a bad mood,” continued Eric. “This is me, trying to make something out of nothing. This is me, trying to figure out how to make a girl who rhymes ‘daisy’ with ‘Bolognese’ seem interesting. Yo, she pronounced the ‘e’ at the end of Bolognese. What do I do with that?”
“Well, this is an important shoot,” said Karen. “You need to figure it out soon.”
“When have I not figured it out? Given my track record, I feel like I should’ve be trusted to make the right decisions.”
“I agree,” said Jinx. “I think we should give him the space to create, right?”
Karen glared at her. “Jinx, either ask him out or take a seat. It’s becoming uncomfortable to watch.” Jinx gasped with embarrassment. “Jenna, what’s your input?”
Like Eric, Jenna was not in a great mood. But instead of getting prickly, she handled the weirdness between them by going mute. Over the past two days, Eric and Jenna had missed each other completely, literally and figuratively. First, Eric ignored her calls, then she missed his when she was with Brian—and when she called him back, it went straight to voice mail.
But she had no idea what she was going to say to him, anyway. The one thing she knew she definitely couldn’t say was where she’d been on Saturday night. He’d never understand, and he’d never get over it.
But what I think I might have to tell him is so much worse, thought Jenna.
“Jenna?” Karen addressed her, again.
“Sorry.” Jenna, who hadn’t devoted two seconds to thinking about Misty Cox’s Perfect Find, kept things diplomatic. “I like Eric’s idea about bringing some of her lyrics to life. But you’re right, it’s just about finding the right ones. Which we will.”
“Love it,” she answered. “I know you two’ll come up with something cool. EOD today, please.”
An hour later, Jenna still didn’t have any usable ideas. Her brain was too cloudy. She couldn’t focus on the silly-named Misty Cox without thinking of Eric. And she couldn’t think of Eric without getting stuck in a quicksand of confusion. So, she decided she needed a creative palate cleanser—which was focusing on busy work around the office, things she never got around to doing. She’d just gotten a huge shipment of summer pieces—bikinis, sundresses, strappy sandals, sunglasses—and it was time to replace the springy clothes from the fashion closets. Even though StyleZine had interns to work on inventory, Jenna felt like doing it herself. And since the fashion closet on her floor was filled to bursting, she loaded up the clothes on a rolling rack, wheeled them to the elevator, and took them up to the 10th floor closet.
Jenna was knee-deep in color-coding tankinis when she heard a knock on the door.
“Come in, it’s open,” she yelled.
She looked up from the cluster of bathing suits in her hands. “Hey.” It was Eric. He locked the door.
“Hey.” Jenna dropped the bathing suits to the floor. “I’m sorry. For everything.”
“No, I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m don’t know what happened, or who was wrong or why, but I’m sorry.”
“It was me,” said Jenna, grasping her hands together. “I’m to blame. And I…”
Eric’s mouth was on hers before she could complete the thought. They kissed with grasping desperation, like two dying people breathing their souls back into each other. When Eric felt Jenna crumble a little in his arms, he scooped her up and laid her on the table. And there, the whole world fell away.
They’d done this dozens of times, in a dozen different ways, and the details in the little closet—the racks of clothes, the accessories-stuffed bins—had always been the same. But today, one thing was different. And if they’d looked up, they would’ve noticed. On the ceiling, in the right hand corner, was a small black security camera, the blinking red light signifying that it was recording every minute.
Jenna sat on top of her desk, in a sex haze. She was still breathless. Her heart was still throbbing, her legs still liquid. Eric always did this to her. He dismantled her, and nothing felt more right.
So why, now that she was back in her office, had she fished into her wallet to find Rosie the Riveter’s business card?
Call me if you ever want pregnancy advice, she’d said. Freeze your eggs. Adopt. Get donor sperm. I know a brilliant fertility specialist.
She held the card in her hand and her phone in the other. Rosie the Riveter, whose real name was Lisa Defozio, had offered to help her. But help her do what? Help her get knocked up by some stranger’s sperm she picked up at a bank (didn’t she read that homeless junkies donated sperm to pay for their drug habit)? Have a baby that was fertilized in a lab (seemed so cold)? Adopt a stunning Ethiopian girl who looked like Zahara Jolie-Pitt (did she have a baby sister somewhere in Addis Ababa)? These weren’t the ways that Jenna had imagined herself becoming a mother, but dammit, they were choices. They opened up a world of possibilities. It was freedom.
Every cell in her body came alive at the thought of being able to go out and get what she wanted, without permission. Without negotiating with someone else.
Someone else.
Then, she crumpled the card in her hand. She couldn’t bring herself to call. Because she couldn’t entertain these thoughts without accepting that they left Eric out of the equation. She couldn’t call Lisa without being willing to give him up. And the thought was unfathomable.
How could she possibly let him go?
Jenna covered her mouth with the back of her hand, feeling queasy. Then, she clutched her stomach, grabbed the trashcan under her desk and threw up.
Sweating and shaking, she sat back up and gripped the edge of the desk for support. There was a terrible lump in her throat, and she was trembling all over. Her stomach lurched again, and she took a couple of deep breaths to calm it down.
God, not now. I can’t start stress-hurling now.
This had happened her entire life. Before the SAT’s. The night she decided to quit medical school and move to New York. The worst was when she was a twenty-four-year-old assistant editor and her boss went into labor—and, all by herself, she had to present a March fashion spread in a meeting with Oscar de la Renta and Bruce Weber.
Panicking, she knew she had to go home. It was only 1pm, but she had to get out of there.
She grabbed her purse and shot out of her office, slamming the door. Everyone in the cubicles looked up, including Eric. The rest of the staff went back to their business, but when he saw the look on her face—sallow, stricken, with bright pink blotches on her cheeks—he dropped his camera on his desk.
She couldn’t let anyone see her like that, especially not him. So she put her head down, and speed-walked down the hallway.
Eric sat at his desk, fidgeting with worry. He wanted to run after her, but knew it would be so incriminating. He tried to wait a respectable amount of time, but after roughly thirty seconds, he bolted out of his chair, caught an elevator, and was gone. He didn’t give a damn what anybody thought. Jenna was in trouble.
In her palatial office, Darcy sat behind her desk, chewing on the business end of a pen. She observed Jenna sprint out of the office, followed shamelessly closely by Eric. She also observed that one else noticed. Darcy didn’t know what she loathed more—that they’d had the balls to carry out this affair, or that she hadn’t picked up on it. Because it was so terribly obvious.
She almost wanted to laugh. This was going to be good.