Chapter 9
Justin says yes to the pitch Tuesday morning.
Not a modified yes. Not a ‘let's discuss the terms’. A yes to the revised rates and a note that says: I should have offered this to you in the invitation. Consider it the plan going forward.
I read it three times.
Then I put the phone face-down on the desk and sit very still for a moment.
It's real.
The Evergreen is my anchor client. The content series is funded. The gap the big client left is not closed but it's bridgeable, and I know what the bridge is made of now.
I text Anthony first.
Me: He said yes. Full rates.
The response comes in forty seconds, which for a man who moves through the world as unhurriedly as Anthony Rossi is essentially immediate.
Anthony: I know. He told me this morning.
Me: He told you?
Anthony: I may have had a conversation with him yesterday.
Me: Anthony.
Anthony: You wrote a good pitch. He needed to see it. I pointed that out.
He went to Justin. He went to Justin and advocated for the pitch before I'd sent it, probably, or the moment I did. He didn't tell me he was going to. He just did it.
I have a very complicated set of feelings about this and the most complicated one is that I love it and I need to also say something about it.
Me: I need to talk to you about that.
Anthony: I figured you would. Come find me when you're done celebrating.
Me: What makes you think I'm celebrating?
Anthony: Because you should be. Give yourself twenty minutes.
He's giving me permission to feel the good thing before I confront him about talking to Justin without me.
I give myself twenty minutes. I text the group chat.
MAYA: JUSTIN SAID YES!!
HOLLY: I KNOW HE TOLD ME!
HOLLY: FULL RATES, MAYA!
EMILY: SHE DID IT!
LILY: THE PITCH WORKED!
MADISON: I need you to understand how proud I am right now!
CHLOE: This is the beginning of everything for you, Maya!
AMBER: The luxury resort content empire begins!
MAYA: I'm shaking a little.
HOLLY: You're allowed to shake.
MAYA: Anthony went to Justin. He advocated for it.
EMILY: ...
LILY: He what?
MAYA: He had a conversation with Justin about the pitch.
MADISON: Without telling you? Or asking you?
MAYA: Without telling me.
HOLLY: How do you feel about that?
MAYA: Complicated but in a good way. But like, I know he was just being a Daddy, looking out for me but also he should have talked to me about it first. I’m going to talk to him about it.
HOLLY: Good. That's exactly right.
LILY: Go talk to him.
MAYA: I'm going.
Then I go find him.
He's at the reindeer enclosure, which is becoming its own kind of landmark in my internal map of this week. He's checking feed supplies with Colt, and Colt takes one look at me crossing the garden and finds something extremely important to do on the other side of the building.
"Subtle," I say, watching him go.
"He's learning." Anthony closes the feed locker. Turns to face me. "Congratulations."
"Thank you." I look at him. "You went to Justin."
"I did."
"Before I sent the revised pitch, or after?"
"After. I read it on your laptop and I knew what it was worth. I wanted to make sure he knew too."
"I need you to know something," I say, carefully.
"I'm glad. I'm genuinely glad that you wanted to advocate for me and I’m glad the outcome is good. But, I need you to tell me when you're going to do something like that. I need to know what's happening with my own work. It’s not professional for you to go to my potential clients for me. I get it this time because it was Justin, but I need there to be a boundary between work and us. A boundary that doesn’t get crossed unless it’s a safety issue of some sort. "
He's quiet for a moment. Reading me. "That's fair," he says. “I will stay completely out of your work unless you ask for my opinion or it’s a safety issue. I can respect that.”
"That's it. That's all I needed to say."
"Okay." He steps closer. "I'll respect your boundaries, baby girl. Always."
"Okay," I say.
"Good." He tilts my chin up with two fingers, tips my face toward his, and kisses me briefly. "Now come see how the fawn is doing. She stood up on her own this morning."
He ends the hard conversation and opens a good one without any gap between them.
Just like that. Done, and forward.
I follow him inside like I’ve done this a hundred times before.
Tuesday and Wednesday are full.
The grand opening is Friday and the resort is shifting into a different register with more staff, final installations, the boutiques receiving their last deliveries, and the restaurants running full service trials.
Holly is everywhere and anywhere all at once, managing what appears to be a controlled explosion with the calm of someone who has been building toward this and is not going to let it be anything other than perfect.
I work. I write the resort piece to final draft, post the first of the ranch content including pictures of the elk calves, the bottle feeding footage, and a photo of Anthony's hands with a description of how the animals are in the best of hands and a little bio about him, and watch my phone become something I need to put down periodically because the notifications are relentless in the good way.
The footage performs. The writing hits. The view counts are insane, the best I’ve ever done.
Comments roll in from people who want to know about the ranch, about the resort, about the reindeer, about the tall quiet man in the background of three of the videos who someone has already commented is extremely distracting in the best way.
He is extremely distracting. I have unprofessional opinions about this. I won’t share those opinions on my platform, however.
I show Anthony the comment Wednesday night at the ranch while he checks on the foxes. He reads it with the expression of a man who is deciding whether to acknowledge it.
"Extremely distracting," he says.
"I thought you should know."
"Is that the consensus?"
"Four hundred and twelve people agree." That’s how many likes that one comment got.
He looks at me over his phone. "And you? Am I extremely distracting to you, baby girl?"
I'm going to need a moment.
"I plead the fifth," I say.
"That's not a no."
"That's not a no," I agree.
The fox in the nearest enclosure makes a sound that is aggressively pointed. Anthony looks at it. I look at it. It looks back at us with the expression of an animal who has seen this kind of thing before.
"Even the fox agrees," I say.
"Don't think so."
"She's supportive."
"She's a fox."
"Yep. She’s a fox with good instincts."
He laughs loud and full, and it does what it always does to me, which is make every other sound in the room irrelevant.
Thursday is the last quiet day before the opening.
Holly declares it a rest day for the preview group and spends it visibly not resting.
Justin disappears into the kitchen at dawn and does not emerge until dinner.
The other travel writers start heading home.
Their jobs are done. They came up for the preview, not the main event.
But, Holly invited me for the whole shebang. Perks of being a bestie.
Anthony takes me to the ridge trail he told me about. Not the overnight one, not the January elk migration, just the path, forty minutes up, to show me the shelf.
We hike up in the cold clear morning and he walks slightly behind me on the narrower sections, close enough that I can feel him, and points out the tracks in the snow, a raptor hunting the eastern updraft, and the place where the trail opens and the valley below suddenly appears.
"Oh," I say, when it opens.
"Yeah," he says.
We sit on the rock shelf for an hour with a thermos of coffee and the whole valley spread below us, and at some point, I'm leaning against him with his arm around me and we've stopped talking and the silence is the best kind. It’s not empty, just full of something that doesn't need words.
I keep thinking about Sunday. I haven't said it out loud, but it lives in everything I do. It’s in the way I look at the mountain a beat too long, the way I notice the golden evening light, the way I've been trying to memorize the smell of cold pine and wood smoke and cedar.
Trying to memorize everything about this place.
I don't want to leave.
I know what I'm going to do about that. I'm just not ready to say it yet, not up here where everything feels permanent and possible.
"I'm going to miss this view," I say.
"I know." His arm tightens briefly. "It'll keep."
It'll keep.
Like of course you'll be back. Like the view and the ranch and the reindeer and all of it will be here because they belong to this mountain and this mountain isn't going anywhere, and neither is he, and so neither, it turns out, am I.
"I have some things to figure out," I say. "Logistics. The lease on my apartment. What remote work looks like when it's actually remote."
"I know."
"I'm not saying anything is decided."
"I know that too."
"I'm just thinking out loud."
He's quiet for a moment. "There's a cabin on the east side of the ranch property that belongs to me. I’ve occasionally allowed new staff to stay in it while looking for places to live.
It's been empty for almost a year. It’s nothing fancy.
One bedroom, a full kitchen, beautiful front porch.
It has good light and fiber internet was installed last spring because Colt complained about the signal. "
I sit very still.
"You're telling me this," I say.
"I'm telling you," he confirms. "About its existence in case you need options."
He didn't ask me to move up here, because he knows it’ll be hard for me to say no.
He wants this to be my decision and not one he makes for me.
I don’t have to make it right now, in the cold on a rock shelf.
He's just placing the piece on the gameboard, the way he does, and giving me the whole board to look at.
The cabin on the east side with good light and fiber internet. Near the elk calves and the foxes and the fawn who stood up on her own and the reindeer who are earning their names.
Near him.
"Thank you for telling me," I say.