Chapter 21 #2
It’s Jerry. Jerry from W2Beaver. He’s already halfway across the room with his arms out like he’s about to lift me off the ground.
“There she is,” he booms, because volume control isn’t a thing for Jerry. “There’s our girl. Zoe Lane, you look like a movie star.”
“Jerry.” I let him squeeze my shoulders. “Thank you for coming.”
“Holt called. Said you were doing big things. I’m sad to see you go, but I don’t blame you.
” He leans in, lowers his voice to what he thinks is a whisper, and it’s not.
“And listen. Since you left? It’s a disaster.
Donny Dexter? The man cannot read a teleprompter.
We had to bleep him on live air. Twice. Last week he called the mayor by the wrong name. ”
“Jerry, no.”
“Jerry, yes. Sweetheart, whatever you need from me—B-roll, contacts, a referral, my left kidney—you say the word.”
I laugh, grabbing Jonah’s arm to keep from tipping in my heels, and Jonah’s grinning down at me.
A flute of champagne appears in my hand.
I don’t see who hands it to me. The next hour is a tunnel of faces—producers, podcast people, a woman who runs a syndication network out of Seattle, and another who books guests for a morning show in Boise.
They all want to talk to me. They all want to talk about ideas.
Cross-promotion. A possible segment. A guest spot.
A panel. Someone uses the word “vertical.”
Sydney finds me by the second flute. She’s in a red dress, red lipstick, and a mood, and she pulls me into a hug that smells like her shampoo.
“You look so hot I want to cry,” she says into my ear. “Also, my brother’s not stopped staring at you all night, and I’m going to need you to give me a heads-up before I become an aunt again, because I will need to take a personal day.”
“Sydney.”
“Zoe.” She pulls back and grabs me by both shoulders. “He filled a ballroom. For you. Filled. A ballroom.”
“I know.”
“You know what that means.”
“Syd.”
“You know what that means.”
“I’m gonna need you to lower your voice in this beautiful hotel.”
She glances over my shoulder at Jonah, who’s across the room, cornered by Jerry, and she sighs the long, dramatic sigh of a sister who’s been waiting a long time. “You two are so disgustingly perfect together I might barf.”
“Please don’t barf.”
She squeezes my arms. “Go. Work the room. I’ll find you later. Also, your eyeliner is perfect. I hate you.”
I’m halfway to the bar when I hear my name again, and I turn, and there is Dylan Wright, Sawyer McDavid’s wife, leaning against the wall the way an eight-months-pregnant woman has to lean, one hand cradling the lower curve of her belly and the other holding a sparkling water. Dark wavy hair. Sharp red lipstick.
“Lane,” she says.
“Wright.”
I cross the room and hug her around the bump. “What are you doing here? You’re going to pop.”
“I’m aware. The doctor used the word ‘majestic,’ which I think is code.” She holds me at arm’s length and looks me up and down. “You look incredible. That dress is criminal.”
“Holt picked it.”
“Impressive. Sawyer can barely pick a sock.” She grins.
“Listen. I came to wish you well in the new job, although you can’t leave us, but also, because I have a friend in legal at a network in Seattle who needs a podcast partner for a true-crime spinoff, and I’m not above leveraging a pregnancy for a favor. I’ll text you Monday.”
“Dylan.”
“Don’t get weepy. My ankles are already swollen.”
“I’m not getting weepy.”
“You absolutely are. There’s a tear. Right there. Stop.”
“I’m not.”
“Get it together, Lane. You’re at your own party.”
I laugh and wipe under my eye with one knuckle, very carefully, because I can’t ruin this eyeliner. Dylan grins at me with the kind of warmth that makes me remember why I liked her before she became somebody’s wife and somebody’s lawyer and a person about to be somebody’s mother.
The rest of the night unspools like a dream.
I shake hands. I exchange cards. I get pulled into a corner by a podcast producer who wants to discuss a six-episode arc on small-town news ecosystems. I drink slowly, because I want to remember this.
Jonah floats in and out of my peripheral vision, never far, never hovering, just there—a hand at the small of my back when I need it, a champagne flute swapped out for a fresh one, a quiet “you good?” against my ear every twenty minutes that I answer with a nod and a squeeze of his fingers.
A woman with shoulder pads sharp enough to puncture drywall approaches me.
She’s a producer for one of the public radio stations east of the mountains.
I know this because she introduces herself before shoving a business card at my chest and telling me, with real gravity, “You need to say something, dear.”
I freeze. My gut—already a tangle of adrenaline and two glasses of champagne—goes polar.
I haven’t had to make a speech since my birthday party two years ago, and I was completely wasted, so it was fine.
I’m a behind-the-scenes person. What I say on Zoe Knows is edited.
My face in front of a live room full of people? I’d rather be set on fire.
Jerry, who has been eavesdropping at the cheese table, claps me on the shoulder. “Go, Lane! Give ‘em the reel, live and uncut!”
I want to sink through the floor, but Jonah’s here, his voice a calm rumble. “You don’t have to if you don’t want,” he says, and for a second I want to take the out. But then I catch the look in his eyes, and they’re filled with certainty—like he already knows I’ll do it and it’ll be fine.
I inhale, slow, and let it out even slower. “I do, and I have on my big-girl panties. Not literally, don’t worry.”
He grins, dimple deep. “Good.”
My heels click as I step onto the dais, and all heads rotate, eighty pairs of eyes fixed on me, waiting for the big moment. The string trio quiets. The air is thick with expectation and cologne.
I grip the microphone with both hands, just to be sure.
“Uh—hi,” I say, blushing. “So, ironic. I’m a talk radio host, I struggle with words. Go figure.”
The room laughs. Jerry booms, “That’s our girl!” from somewhere near the back. My knees threaten to liquefy.
I glance down at my white knuckles. I want to disappear, but instead I tell the truth.
“Two months ago, I started a podcast with a half-broken laptop and no idea if anyone would listen, except maybe my mom and my sister. If you’d told me I’d be standing in the Kingston ballroom, talking to most of the people I’ve spent my life admiring from a safe, digital distance, I’d choke on my coffee. ”
I pause. People smile, and the edge of my panic blurs.
“So, my apologies for keeping this short. But thank you, all of you. For coming. For listening. For making space for whatever this weird thing is that we all do.”
I finish, hands shaking, but there’s a warmth in the room that wasn’t there before. The applause that follows is real. Sincere. The string trio picks up a new song—cheerful—and I’m flooded with relief.
Jonah’s waiting at the bottom of the dais, arm out.
“That was heartfelt. Perfect,” he says, and I believe him.
I get stopped for photos, for handshakes, for more toasts, and through it all, Jonah’s hand keeps finding mine, like a touchstone, a silent message: you’re okay, I’ve got you.
By the time the trio plays its last song, and people drift toward the doors, I have business cards stuffed into a tiny clutch that was not built for this, four firm meeting requests in my inbox, a guest spot offer for the Seattle show, and a heart so bursting it might blow.
Walking out of the room with my coat, I say, “Jonah.”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know what to say to you.”
He glances over. “You don’t have to say anything.”
“That’s not how I work.”
“I know.”
I close my eyes. “You filled a ballroom.”
“I made calls.”
“You filled a ballroom.”
“Zoe.”
“You filled a ballroom with people who want to work with me.”
“You deserve it. All of it. Every bit.” The look he gives me is so unguarded, I feel it in my ribs.
Before we hit the lobby, he changes course.
My eyebrows dive. “Where are we going?”
He pulls me down a side hallway, past a fire extinguisher and a framed photo of someone’s prizewinning fish, and through a door I hadn’t noticed.
It clicks shut behind us.
It’s a lounge: some little side bar room the Kingston Hotel probably uses for cocktail receptions before big dinners, with low brass-pendant lights turned down to almost-nothing, two leather couches pointed at each other across a coffee table, a bar at the back that’s closed, locked, and dark.
A single sconce by the door glows amber.
The rest of the room is shadows and the green light bleeding under the bar.
It smells like furniture polish and whiskey.
I open my mouth to say something cute. Something like, A speakeasy, Holt? Or maybe, We could’ve just done it in the SUV.
I don’t get to.
His mouth is on mine before the door’s latch has finished settling.
It’s not a slow or patient kiss. This one is starving—both hands on my face, the wall at my back, his whole body pressed against me hard enough that the silk has nowhere to go.
I make a sound into his mouth that I’m not proud of.
His tongue. My hands in his hair. The coat hits the floor somewhere.
My clutch hits the floor somewhere. I don’t care about either of those items, and I’m not sure I ever will again.
“Jonah—”
“I know.”
“This is so—”
“I know.” His mouth is on my throat, on the soft place under my jaw, on the line of my collarbone that this dress was specifically engineered to expose. “Tell me to stop.”
“Absolutely not.”
He laughs—hot and ragged against my skin—and his hands find the zipper at the small of my back and pull, slow, all the way down, and the dress just—gives. Slides forward off my shoulders, down my arms, and pools at my feet in a midnight-blue puddle.
I should care. I don’t.
“Holt—”