“What exactly is going on between you and Archer?” my agent demands over the phone.
My face goes cold as I imagine what she might have heard. “Nothing. I swear.”
And it’s true. Right now there is absolutely nothing going on between Archer and me, and that has been true for four days. He hasn’t called, emailed, or sent a carrier pigeon and I haven’t either. Total blackout.
It’s been the worst four days of my life.
Next to me, Alanna frowns, asking silently who I’m talking to. We’re in the art co-sharing space, going through possible names and logos together. My heart isn’t really in it though. And then my agent called and now apparently I’m going to get grilled on the Archer situation.
“Really?” Jane asks skeptically. “Because he just had the weirdest request for me. I had to email you a document, but I had to swear not to read it. And he had a lawyer give me an NDA to sign that was so broad I’m not even sure I can talk to my husband anymore.”
“He does love his NDAs.”
“What?”
I blink. “It doesn’t matter. Did you email it to me?”
“Yes. I didn’t want to get sued.”
I pull my phone from my ear and quickly click over to my email. I hear Jane squawking through the speaker, demanding to know where I’ve gone. In a few seconds, I’m looking at the document Archer sent over.
Lila is completely fine and physically safe. She only has to give up the location of a certain person, and she’ll be free. The moment she does that, it’s over. No charges pressed.
He signed it at the bottom by hand. His signature is so precise it makes me want to cry.
He went to all this trouble to make sure I knew Lila was okay. And he didn’t communicate with me directly, just as I asked.
I put the phone back to my ear. “It’s proprietary information about the imprint,” I tell Jane. “You don’t need to worry about it.”
“Then why did he have to send it through me?”
“Because I dislike him so much”—my voice catches—“that I can’t stand to talk to him. It’s better that everything goes through you. Thank you for sending on the message,” I say quickly, hanging up before she can ask any more questions.
When I look up, Alanna is staring at me, her phone in one hand. She looks to the phone, then to me, then back to her phone.
“What?” I ask. “Did you find something gross on the internet?”
“Not gross exactly.”
“Well, I don’t want to see. I don’t care what it is.”
“It’s poetry.”
My stomach drops. I haven’t been able to write anything since I ended things with Archer, not even terrible breakup verses. I should be able to write at least those, dammit. Heartbreak is supposed to be the best kind of inspiration, but I’m not even getting that benefit out of this.
“I definitely don’t want to see it then.” I force myself to look at all the terrible ideas for names we’ve come up with.
“Um, you should really look at these poems.” Alanna has an odd expression on her face as she tries to hand me the phone.
“Are these more of the ones like you found last week?” I shudder. Anyone can write poetry on Instagram and I encourage everyone to try, but those poems involved “extremely large breasts” and “excavating her love cave.” My eyes are still burning. “I can’t handle seeing those. Or any other bad poetry.”
“Oh, it’s bad,” Alanna says. “Like, bad. But you have to see it.” She practically shoves the phone at me.
I take it, if only so it doesn’t fall to the floor. The first thing I see is that she’s looking at Lingvar’s Instagram account. Although I know Archer doesn’t run it personally, my heart still twists. “Why would I want to see this? It’s just corporate bullshit.”
“Go on,” Alanna urges.
The grid is filled with words, not stock photos of people enjoying Lingvar products. I read through one. “Roses are red, violets are blue, I love you, pretend… pretend this is a poem that doesn’t rhyme?” I stare at Alanna. “What the hell is this?”
“Keep reading.”
That… travesty of a poem was signed by Archer himself, meaning he wrote the horrible thing and the post is tagged with my Instagram handle. The comments are filled with people speculating what this all means.
There are dozens and dozens of poems as awful as that one filling the Lingvar feed, all declaring their love for me, and all are crimes against literature.
Archer’s name is on every one. I’m tagged on every one.
My hand drops. “Oh my God. He’s telling everyone he loves me through the worst poetry imaginable.”
There’s a hashtag too: #ArcherLovesZara. When I search it, there are thousands and thousands of accounts asking what is going on, linking back to our debate or the press conference we did, describing how wonderfully romantic what Archer’s doing is, asking why the hell I haven’t responded, and even writing some very strange fan fiction about the whole thing.
We’ve even got some memes about us going on. Memes. We are a meme.
Does Archer even know what he’s unleashed here?
“This is insane,” I mutter.
“They’re really bad,” Alanna says. “And raw. Both emotionally and lyrically.”
They are, because Archer isn’t a poet. He doesn’t even understand poetry, or so he claims. I’m certain he hates Instagram too. But I love poetry and Instagram and him, so that’s why he’s doing this. Why he’s being so vulnerable in front of the entire online world.
I bite my knuckle, my eyes stinging. I’ve inspired him. The same way he inspired me.
“I have to go find him.” I get up, scattering scratch paper everywhere. I don’t care though.
“Hold up,” Alanna says. “You look like you’re about to run into traffic, shouting his name.”
I wasn’t going to quite do that, but she’s right. I need to slow down, to think. But God, my heart is so overflowing right now. I check the time on my phone. “He’s in his office. I know it.”
“You know you wanted me to slap you if you brought his name up again.”
I cock my head and stare at her. “That was… that was before the awful, terrible, eye burning poetry. That he wrote himself.”
She shakes her head. “You’re going to declare your love in front of his entire company?”
I think about it for a moment. “Sure. Why not? He’s just declared his love in front of all of the internet.”
The more I think about it, the better it sounds. The love declaration part; I don’t really care if we have an audience or not.
As long as Archer hears what I have to say, that’s all that matters.