Chapter 8
CHAPTER 8
NOW
Clutching my phone between ear and shoulder, rushing out of the HBP —past Eddie’s office and two floors up—I realized I’d definitely be late. Without looking at the time, I just kind of knew. Felt it in my bones. “I’m good, mami. Sí.” I exhaled into the phone.
If I could only get my mother off the line, maybe I’d actually be able to read the documents in my hands. Maybe if she hadn’t called an hour ago, barely taking a break between sentences since, I could’ve adequately prepared for Henry’s first interview.
Sure, her endless monologues were currently saving me from unbearable anxiety and nerves I could not afford, but at what cost?
They’d robbed me of the one hour I’d set aside to prepare questions.
I’d called Eddie two minutes after my conversation with Maeve, mostly to make sure I didn’t have to change my mind again. Unfortunately, that still didn’t keep me from going through the motions.
I can’t do it. I have to do it. Do I really? I shouldn’t even care who the profile is on. But I do care ; that sort of thing.
“Are you busy, Paulita?” Mom asked through the phone she surely had on speaker with all the background noise it was picking up. Clattering dishes, animated conversations, cicadas, the ocean. “You sound like you’re busy.”
“Well—”
“Is it school?” She cut in before I had the chance to gracefully exit the conversation with a Why yes, I’m very busy. Talk to you later! When I saw my destination at the end of the corridor, my steps slowed. “How is school? You know, your cousin Sofia dropped out just last week. My God, can you believe it?”
The line went silent just for a moment, like she was thinking. Then, panicked, she asked, “You haven’t dropped out, have you?”
“Ay dios mío, mami, no.” I came to a screeching halt outside the room I’d been looking for, maneuvering the papers from my hand under my arm.
Knowing Henry and his rigid schedules, he was already inside. Just a closed door away. A glance at my phone told me it was two minutes past.
“Listen. School’s good, I’m actually—” I hesitated, only for a second. “On the way to speak to my professor about an upcoming tax law exam?” I sounded less sure than I intended. “Gotta go!”
“Good, good,” Mom sighed. “Our little American businesswoman. We’re so proud of you, Paulita.”
“Te quiero, mom. Bye!”
Hanging up, I exhaled forcefully—an effect my mother had had on me for as long as I could remember. I glanced at the screen just to make sure I’d really ended the call.
Little American businesswoman.
I’d laugh if it wasn’t so unnerving.
The fact that I still hadn’t told my parents about the change in my major, almost four years ago. Honestly, I’m not quite sure how I’d gotten away with lying about the degree I’d been working toward for that long. It kind of just happened.
And sure, I loved journalism. And I did not regret spending the past three and a half years perfecting it, instead of learning how to run a business and commit legal tax fraud. But I still hated lying to my parents.
To them and everyone else back in the Dominican Republic, I was Paulita , their little American Businesswoman.
Here at HBU, I was Paula, that failed journalist who used to date Henry Pressley. What a legacy.
Shaking myself out of the thought with a scoff, my hand ruffled through my curls. I took one deep breath to get into character. Ex-girlfriend who didn’t at all still care and actually kind of despised him . It had worked last time, right?
I silently counted one, two, three , and pulled the door open.
Usually, my interviews had been in classrooms. Long, multiple rows of desks and chairs. Big windows, plants that were at least my size in the corners. Bright. Spacious.
Eddie had organized this room, and it was… not at all that. Best described as somewhat of an expanded broom closet, maybe a luxury storage space, it was too small, and a little too dark for today’s sunny weather.
By the only window, Henry leaned with his shoulder against the wall, arms crossed in front of his chest in that way. Whatever he saw in the courtyard must’ve been interesting enough to keep his attention. His gaze didn’t shift when he said, “I thought you might not come.”
I couldn’t interpret the tone in his voice. Relief? Disappointment? Annoyance?
I cleared my throat, closed the door behind me. “Hope you haven’t been waiting for long,” I said, trying to force as much confidence into my voice as I could. “I would’ve been on time if it weren’t for—” Turning back to him with my best shot at a polite smile, I realized he was still not looking at me. My tone dropped, so did my lips. “No matter.”
With a straight face, I sat on the chair closest to the door. A desk separated it from Henry’s on the other side. To avoid eye contact, I rummaged through my tote bag for a pen and paper.
“Was that María?”
Hearing my mom’s name come out of his mouth caught me so off guard, I froze in my search. Something about it felt too familiar. Like we were still part of each other’s lives. “On the phone, I mean.”
His voice continued to rumble through my brain without any sense of reason. Deep, silky, with the tiniest hint of a British accent—a leftover from his childhood in Chelsea.
I blinked into my bag, unable to meet the gaze I could now clearly feel on me. After a few more seconds of silence that I couldn’t for the life of me break, he added, “Sorry. Didn’t mean to eavesdrop.”
“Oh.” Say something , I begged myself. Anything . “Yeah, my mom. Still haven’t told her about the whole journalism thing.” I was well on my way to oversharing, and I almost sighed in relief when Henry spoke quickly enough to stop me.
“About that,” he said. I could hear him make his way over to the other side of the table. I could feel him take a seat opposite me. I could not see him. Because I was still staring into my bag. “We’re focused on project management, business simulation and thesis writing this semester. Tax law was last.” Henry cleared his throat. “In case they happen to ask again.”
They being my parents. This conversation showed he still knew them way too well.
I finally drew my eyes away from the contents of my bag to meet his. As expected, green and big, they reflected the humor previously prominent in his voice.
Like a mantra I repeated the role I was supposed to play in my head. To make sure it stuck.
Ex-girlfriend who didn’t at all still care, and actually kind of despised him.
“Why don’t we get started?”
Although I plastered an innocent smile on my face, I’d never been good at hiding my thoughts and feelings. Maeve had said they were written all over my face, free for anyone to read. She’d also said it was her favorite thing about me.
Right now, with the way Henry scrutinized that smile, I wished I’d taken Riley up on her offer to pokerface me.
“Of course.” He paired the words with a courtesy nod. So far, so good.
Eddie had shared his expectations for the profile as soon as I’d… officially agreed to do it. Characterization, more than just a list of his accomplishments. Anyone could Google those , he’d said. They wanted me to focus on him . On the Henry beneath that carefully crafted mask—one he hadn’t even fully let go of, months into our relationship. Childhood, family life, personality… with a side of stats and soccer.
Someone should’ve told Edward Smith that asking Henry’s ex-girlfriend to pry on personal details like that probably wouldn’t have the Post end up with the information he’d hoped for. But here we were.
My phone sat on the table between us, unlocked, screen facing up. “I’ll be recording our conversation,” I informed him unnecessarily. “So, make sure not to say anything you don’t want to read in an article later on.”
Henry cocked an eyebrow, a teasing smile hanging in the corner of his lips, just waiting to be unleashed. “I thought your job was to get exactly those kinds of things out of me.” His tone was less question, more challenge.
I leveled the man opposite me with a look that screamed professionalism. I needed to, to keep myself from letting every word he said affect me—to keep my chest from tightening in his presence.
I can do this.
I’m the journalist. I’m the one in control, and I needed to start acting that way. Henry was just another subject. His story was, in a way, in my hands.
Even if I didn’t quite believe it myself yet , fake it till you make it. Right?
That finally made me find my footing. “Don’t worry,” I said. “If there’s something I want to know, I’ll get it willingly, and on the record.” I paired the words with my sweetest smile.
Henry shifted in his seat, sweeping a hand through his brown middle part. When his head tilted slightly, taking me in from across the table, he matched my smile with one of his own. Blinked once. Leaned forward. “I’d expect nothing less from you.”
He was the one to press start on the recording.
I tried not to let that get to me—his smiles, the pride in his tone. Surely, it’s what he was trying to do: get to me. Controlling the room by controlling me, my reactions, the effect he had on me. After all, one could not separate Henry Parker Pressley from his need to be in control.
“Let’s start with…” My eyes fell on the blank page in my lap. The same page that was meant to hold all my prep—talking points, questions—but was virtually empty, apart from the heading on top of it: Henry Pressley, 1 st ; 15 th of March. Thanks, Mom.
Alright, then. Improv it was.
I cleared my throat. “Start with… your name.”
I wasn’t great at improvising, by the way.
Henry’s gaze dragged away from the potted plant in the shelf behind me to connect our eyes. He huffed, lifted his eyebrows. “Seriously?”
“Yes.” I levelled him with a glare. “I’m taking this very seriously. Aren’t you?”
I may be overcompensating for that blank page in front of me and the fact that I hadn’t taken this seriously enough at all. I suspected he knew, too.
But he just nodded, a smirk in the corner of his lips he couldn’t help. His hands raised in mocked defense. “I am.”
“Good.”
A second ticked by.
“I just think it’s funny how…” He hesitated, which was a first. The one thing Henry Parker Pressley didn’t do, on or off the field, was hesitate.
And it piqued my interest. “How what?”
His eyes flicked to my phone resting between us, seconds of the recording running by. 00:55, 00:56, 00:57. He shook his head. “Forget about it.”
But I couldn’t, wouldn’t, and really, didn’t want to. My job was to pry, wasn’t it?
“Oh no,” I said. “Don’t hold back on my account. What’s so funny?”
In the seconds of silence that lingered, when his gaze swept across my face, he was trying to figure out my game plan. So was I.
The analytical expression washed off his face a moment later, like he’d figured me out before I’d done so myself. He shrugged, and it felt as if he knew he had won before he’d said a word.
“I just think it’s funny,” he repeated. “How you’re pretending you don’t know my name when it was loud and clear that you did most nights.”
And there it was.
His winning hand revealed. He could tell by the violent blush across my cheeks. I could tell by the simmering flame ignited low in my belly. “Way back when, of course.” Now, the challenging tone was back. He was dangling it like a carrot from a stick, like he knew it would make me want to bite back, throw professionalism out the window. I swallowed the urge.
Instead, I plastered on that same smile and vowed to make use of Riley’s how-to-fake-facial-expressions-101 when I got home today.
“Just for the sake of it, why don’t you?” I halfheartedly gestured toward the recording, then settled into my chair, notebook and pen in hand. “Maybe I’ve been mispronouncing it.”
Henry nodded, eyes drifting to my phone before settling back on me. He got closer to it, leaned halfway across the desk. “Let the record show,” he said, gaze fixed on me, mouth by my phone. “My name is Henry Parker Pressley. Twenty-two years old. Defender for the Hall Beck soccer team.” He raised his eyebrows, then asked, mockingly, “Like that?”
Solidifying my fake smile, I nodded curtly, eyes twitching into a glare. “Perfect. Thank you so much.” Irony dripped from my voice, laced every single sound I made.
He was playing me like a fiddle, and I couldn’t have that. “Tell me, Henry .” I emphasized his name, and something in his smug expression twitched. If only for the fraction of a second, as he leaned back into his chair, I took it as a small win. “What made you get into soccer?”
It was the easiest question I could think of. Safe terrain. A way to get the ball rolling and our solely professional relationship off the ground.
And it worked beautifully.
Our previous tension seemed to be forgotten. “Most people think it was Felix.” His dad, whom he rarely referred to as such. “Makes sense, right? Pro player without a life outside the game. People thought it kind of just rubbed off on me. I did too, for a while.” In the silence that lingered, he gathered his thoughts, rearranged them in his head to craft the narrative he wanted out in the world. I knew that look on his face: calculating, assessing risks.
“I think it was actually my sister. Athalia.” His eyes darted toward mine at the mention of her, his smile growing. “Big pain in the ass when we were growing up. More of one now, probably.” Henry huffed at the memories. “She used to hate soccer so much; I think I started training just to get under her skin. To force her to my games. We were eight.”
His attention was on something behind me again, an inward smile on his lips. That distracted look on his face, eyes glazed over with a mixture of glee, and joy, and pride—it was his soccer-face. He’d always looked like an excited little schoolboy when he talked about it.
Although he’d had a jumpstart with Felix Pressley’s legacy, not everyone who dreamed of going pro would end up making it. Actually, only about 1.4% did. Henry had every right to be proud of himself, even with the advantages that came with his last name.
Knowing that he’d made it, that he’d been drafted by a Major League Soccer team, and that I was to write a profile about him that bigger press had already expressed interest in… made me feel that way, too.
Proud.
I was right, by the way. That single question did get the ball rolling and held him over for the majority of our time. Apart from obvious follow-up questions to his answers, I hadn’t said a word.
“After that, I had a few college choices, but HBU was my best, and I met Coach Hepburn way before once or twice. It felt good to know I’d join his team. Like I was meant to be there.” No mention of his parents, or the fact that they’d both studied here; that that might have made his decision easier.
“We’ll see if he has as high an opinion of you,” I challenged lightheartedly, watching my voice rip him out of whatever soccer-trance he’d previously been in. Blinking rapidly, his gaze found mine.
“Most definitely not,” he said. My lips almost twitched at the humor in his tone.
A buzz on the table kept me from answering, and we broke our eye contact simultaneously to look. Minutes still ticked by on the screen, though it wasn’t the 50:27, 50:28, 50:29 , that caught my attention.
JACK:
Still on for tonight?
While, yes, my phone was turned toward me, I had no doubt Henry could read the text, even if it was upside down. I didn’t know why I cared.
Henry’s nose twitched, but he sounded more amused than he looked when our gazes crossed again. “Big plans?” he asked, nodding to the phone now in my hand.
I turned the recording off and threw the thing in my bag, where it could no longer wreak havoc. Because the light almost -comfortable air we’d been working toward for the past fifty minutes was gone. So fast, it gave me whiplash.
“Something like that.” Actually, nothing like it. I’d probably end up cancelling on Jack because I had to transcribe those fifty minutes of audio he had just brutally interrupted. But I’d be damned if I told Henry that.
If he could flirt with a beautiful brunette, I could very well be texting potentials.
“Did you already get our schedule from Eddie?” I asked to move things on, throwing the rest of my equipment into my tote like I’d gotten an emergency call.
Henry stood as soon as he got that. He’d always been great at reading the room. “No,” he huffed, the sound incredibly close to his usual grumbling self. “Never thought I’d get one,” he confessed bluntly. “I don’t think I’ve ever even heard you say the word schedule before.”
Granted, he wasn’t wrong. Still. “I told you,” I snickered, scraping my chair back and getting out of it hastily. “I’m taking this very seriously.” He opened the door for me, and I stepped through like it was second nature.
I think in the four years I’d known Henry, I hadn’t opened a single door in his presence. I didn’t even question the gesture, just silently appreciated it. He fell into step beside me.
“I’ll email the schedule —” I stressed the word, and he had to keep his lips from twitching. “To you by tonight.”
It made me realize that I had beautifully method-acted my way into the role of ex-girlfriend who didn’t at all still care and actually kind of despised him. Glares and teasing comments and all.
“Oh no.” He waved off, eyes not even on me. “Tomorrow is fine. Don’t let me spoil your fun with—”
“Henry!” We both twirled around at the call from behind. Really, though, I didn’t need to turn to recognize the voice that regularly ordered me on coffee runs.
“Lacy,” we said simultaneously, which made me turn to him with the obvious question written all over my face.
I had no idea the two knew each other. In fact, they hadn’t a year ago. Despite the first-name basis, looking at him now, the crease between Henry’s brows pleased me more than it should.
Clutching the strap of her messenger bag, Lacy came to halt by his side. “Back again already,” she mused. “To what do we owe the pleasure?” she tugged some of her blonde, freshly blown out hair behind one ear. Her head tilted slightly when she looked up at him, and I wasn’t quite sure whether she ignored me on purpose or genuinely blanked me out.
Henry’s brow lifted as if it was obvious. When he pointed at me, and Lacy’s gaze followed his gesture, I could see her awareness latch onto me in real time. Her eyes widened just a little as she put two and two together. It took another second before all the dots were connected.
“Oh!” She shook herself out of her surprise to see me. “Paula! Hi.”
Her tone was perfectly friendly, but the pointed look didn’t match the attitude. Just as quick, it was gone again, and she looked back to Henry with a smile. “The profile. Of course.” She nodded. “Such a shame I have too much on my plate already. We would’ve made a great team, don’t you think?”
The revelation wasn’t necessarily shocking. Of course the only reason I’d gotten this opportunity was because Lacy Halloway had too much on her plate .
Still, it kind of stung anyway.
Getting her leftovers. Being second, perhaps third— fourth choice. Even after a year on the metaphorical writing bench, I wasn’t used to it.
“Sure,” Henry said roughly, ripping me out of my thoughts. “You’re saying this was supposed to be your thing? The profile?” His follow-up question seemed to take her off-guard, but she nodded grandly.
“Oh, yeah,” she said, as if it should’ve been obvious. Maybe it was. “Edward basically begged me to do this.”
Just like he had begged me to.
This was quickly turning into one of the worst conversations of my life.
Didn’t matter that I’d just somewhat survived an interview with my ex-boyfriend with little to no preparation. A sixty-second conversation with Lacy had flushed it all down the toilet.
“It really is a shame,” she doubled down. Her eyes swept across his frame once, not very subtly.
Mierda.
“So fun catching up with you!” I basically beamed, my smile so fake it hurt. Almost as much as leaving them by themselves. “But I’ve gotta go.”
Henry’s eyes were already on me when I turned to him. “Big plans. Remember?”
He huffed, a shadow moving across his face. “How could I forget?”
Lacy didn’t give me the courtesy of leaving before involving Henry in another conversation. Still, I felt his eyes on me until I’d disappeared down the stairs.