Chapter 17
CHAPTER 17
NOW
After that, I managed to get back on track, remembered why I joined Henry on his night out in the first place, and actually managed some decent material. Most likely because the Jack incident, followed by the vastly different Henry-interaction, sobered me up enough to focus on the bigger picture again.
I needed to impress.
This profile had to show Eddie that he’d made a mistake (which he admitted to rarely), by benching me for a year. And more than that, it had to show whichever bigger press had expressed interest, that they were right to do so.
Which meant I was vigorously working on increasing my document’s word count at the HBP office. With the amount of time I’d been spending with Henry, it wasn’t hard. Noting down the conversations I hadn’t recorded with him, then the ones with his friends and teammates on Saturday, went down like butter. Easy.
Who would’ve thought that the real challenge was transcribing our post-run gym interview. Not for Eddie anymore, who’d been happy enough with the stuff I’d shared, after my butchered first attempt. But for me, to make sense of my notes later on, when I’d begin drafting the profile.
I was locked in, focused. My headphones were blocking out any distracting noise, which was usually very prominent at the Post . And yet I couldn’t concentrate.
PAULA:
This is what you usually do? Fifteen minutes of a light jog?
HENRY:
Yeah. Followed by an hour of weight training, and then another half an hour cooldown in the off season. Well, for about a year now, anyway. I changed it up around that time, put more of my focus on running.
The transcript made it sound like a normal, coherent conversation, but through my headphones, Henry’s words were paired with his heavy breathing, panting.
I could almost see the way his chest heaved, the way his throat worked—all through a few minutes of audio I must’ve been so immersed in, I didn’t notice anything else around me.
Before I could get the next words down, or stop what was about to happen, Riley snatched one of the headphones out of my ear and plugged it into her own, hands on my desk, and leaning forward to get a better look at my screen, presumably.
I jumped. I gasped. And the moment I needed to recover was enough time for Riley’s eyes to triple in size. Her head snapped in my direction.
What is this? she mouthed, shellshocked by what she thought she’d discovered. A million things were going through her mind, and by the sheen of red on her dark skin, none of them were holy.
Another one of Henry’s huffs rang through the recording, and I finally turned the thing off.
“Paula!” she gasped. “I did not think you were the kind to—” Her eyes scanned my transcript again, hoping to find clues that would support her theory. “To get him off for information—”
“Dios mío!” I screeched. But she’d already said enough for me to glance around the office, scared someone had overheard her. When no heads turned our way, and no one peeked out from behind their screen, I turned back to her. “No. No, of course not!”
Riley’s perfectly trimmed eyebrows rose.
“Why is he all hot and bothered then?” She wiggled the little earpiece between us like a friendly reminder.
“He’s not—” I hesitated. It felt wrong to say it out loud. “ That . He’s out of breath. Because we were at the gym.” Running five-minute miles. “And this was right after his cardio—”
“Cardio. Of course.”
I groaned, falling back into my chair, arms slack at my sides and kind of hoping a bolt of lightning would take me out.
Riley suppressed a chuckle, the sound rumbling through her throat. “Hey, I’m not judging, girl.” Grabbing the chair from one desk over, she sat and rolled back beside me. “You gotta do what you gotta do.”
My eyes sliced to hers with a glare. “I’m not sleeping with him!” I cried.
Too loudly.
One second to the next, the office fell quiet. Although everyone was trying to be inconspicuous, I could see a few heads turn our way, pop up from behind computers. Someone was pretending to look out the window behind us, but was very clearly looking at me.
“I did not sleep with a subject,” I amended, calmer. “Now, if we could all just go back to ten seconds ago, when conversations were very animated. Thank you.”
I turned to Riley again, and the look on my face made her wince.
Sorry she mouthed. “I was joking!” She raised her voice, notifying the rest of the office of her nonexistent sense of humor as well. Just for me, she added, “Mostly”, before her attention went back to the open document on my screen.
“Don’t get me wrong, Paula,” she sighed after reading a few lines. “I love that Ed finally got over what happened last year. I just don’t understand why he had to give you this .” Her hand swept toward the interview, and I echoed her earlier sigh, defeat in the sound.
Yes , working on something again was nice, but no , it didn’t have to be this.
“I mean, just ethically speaking,” she said. “You’re not even supposed to get close to your subjects like that. It’s in The New York Times ’ guidelines! Does Eddie think he’s better than The New York Times ?”
“Probably.”
Riley huffed, half humored, half frustrated. “He probably does.”
“And it’s not like I didn’t ask,” I remembered out loud. “I literally said why do I have to do this? And he just… went on a different tangent.”
Before Riley could form a reply, Alfie’s cheery voice announced that he’d decided to join this conversation. Which completed our usual Post Trio.
“I know why!” he said from a neighboring desk. With his chair, he rolled to ours and huddled between Riley and me. One of his red hairs tickled my nose: that’s how close he was.
“You don’t.” Riley decided just one glance later. I wasn’t convinced either.
“I know something ,” Alfie amended. “Maybe. I was leaving when Pressley was in Ed’s office, door open like always. Just before he assigned the profile to you.”
Oh?
“Your talents are wasted with horoscopes,” I marveled in amusement. “Do go on, investigative journalist.”
With a content grin, Alfie’s gaze traced the room like he might find someone in it who shouldn’t be. His smile dropped just before his head snapped to the exit. “Follow me,” he said, very vaguely, and got out of his chair.
We both did.
Alfie let go of the breath he was holding once the door closed behind us. He led us to the stairs, taking two at a time toward the exit. “I was, like, ninety percent sure Eddie was this close to kicking Paula out of the paper. You know, with the way he didn’t even give you that lame article last month, and then you tried talking him into it? I thought after a year of benching you, he finally had enough.”
I remembered vividly. The way I’d chased my editor out of the building, begged and pleaded for something to work on. I nodded as we stepped into the afternoon sun.
“So, I went to look for him. Because really, if he’s starting to clean out the crew, I’m next. Which was terrifying.” Hums of agreement from Riley and me, even though with his dad basically owning the Hall Beck Post , I didn’t think Alfie was going anywhere.
But perhaps he knew his father better than that.
“Anyway, he must’ve just gotten back from an errand or something. He was kind of out of breath when he’d asked Pressley into his office.” My fault , I realized. “Which is when I decided to hide behind a wall and listen. I was like, What’s Paula’s ex doing here? And can I give Henry a piece of my mind while we’re at it? ” Alfie glanced at me, a little sheepish. “I didn’t do that.”
“Obviously,” Riley added helpfully.
“Well.” He shrugged. “Long story short, all I heard was Eddie asking Are you sure? Like a million times. Let me tell you, whatever it was, Pressley was very sure of it.” Alfie stifled a laugh. “He said something about you, started with your name.” His eyes were on me again. “He was all Paula should —”
Alfie’s Henry-impression was just a swoony, deep voice. It kind of worked.
“And I wish I could tell you what he said next, but Miss Lacy thought hiding behind a wall and spying on our editor was weird . Suspicious, or so she said. When she saw me, she told me to stop—threatened to tell on me, that little snitch.”
The aggravation in his tone dropped when he threw me another apologetic glance. “I would’ve told her to screw herself, if I hadn’t thought I was minutes away from being kicked out. Promise!”
Computing the information took me a second, and all I could latch onto were his last words. “Alfie,” I hummed with a smile on my lips, bumped his shoulder with my own. “You don’t need to justify that. At all.”
I shook my head in amused disbelief at him. It was enough that he’d stayed and tried to listen—who’d willingly go head-to-head with Lacy Halloway?
Riley nodded grandly. “You tried!” she encouraged. “It’s all anyone can do.” Then, her expression darkened. “Why is it somehow always Lacy, though? How? ”
“She’s obviously the reason I didn’t just tell you inside,” Alfie disclosed. “Her desk is suspiciously placed right in the middle of the office. Where she can pick up gossip from every corner.” The way his voice dropped, and he looked around a little… honestly a little frantic, he sounded like he was sharing his greatest conspiracy with us.
And the fact that Lacy somehow always knew everything wasn’t very farfetched. It might as well be printed in next week’s issue, that’s how much of a fact it was.
Which also meant she knew what had happened in that office of Eddie’s after she’d hypocritically sent Alfie away for eavesdropping, then most likely stayed to do the exact same thing.
She knew whether Henry had been very sure of wanting me on this profile or not. She knew if he’d said Paula should have this . Or if it had gone a little more like Paula should not even be close to my profile .
Though after he broke up with me, I doubted Henry had wanted me anywhere near himself. Never mind his story literally in my hands.