Chapter Twenty-One
Harper stared at her phone so hard that the screen went fuzzy. Or maybe it wasn’t so much the screen as her eyes. She hadn’t blinked in minutes, or at least it had felt that long. If she did, she was afraid the words would disappear.
We would like to offer you a position back at National Geographic.
She reread the sentence three more times, just to be sure. But the words didn’t change. They were still there, staring back at her.
Harper sank into a dining chair and slid her elbows across the smooth wood of the table.
Her legs felt heavier than they had in a long time.
She could compare it to the time she’d been knee-deep in snow in the Rockies watching a herd of elk move through the frozen valley below, but any sort of comparison to her old life felt wrong.
And yet here she was being handed back a key to everything she’d spent nearly a decade building.
Harper pushed the cellphone away and turned to the sliding door. Through it she could see the sky, a dark indigo with stars scattered across it, disappearing in pockets where clouds crept in. The weather forecast for tonight was rain, which perfectly reflected her mood.
But why? She wondered. Wasn’t this good news? They wanted her back.
It didn’t matter that she was shoved out the door because she dared speak up.
What mattered was that the senior editor she’d complained about had apparently harassed other women too and had finally gotten his punishment.
What mattered was that Harper had been right.
Vindicated. Yet the victory felt oddly hollow.
Even Jack finishing off the email with work doesn’t feel the same without you here, didn’t feel entirely right.
It didn’t feel quite as good as she had expected.
Harper laughed. It was too loud for the silence.
She felt it rattle so deep in her bones that her body broke out in goosebumps.
Great. Now she was officially going crazy.
She’d always assumed senility would creep in slowly—maybe in her late eighties—but she hadn’t considered the process to be fast-tracked by something so unexpected.
Getting her job back wasn’t just unexpected. It was seismic.
She stared down at the phone again. What should she say? Yes, I’d love to. I’ll see you next week. Or no, I can’t, because being right in the end didn’t undo how easily you believed someone else over me. Trust, once cracked, didn’t magically repair itself with an apology.
The thought curled inward like a hook beneath her ribs.
Was it the same as what she’d done to Elise ten years ago? Had she broken Elise’s trust by leaving without an explanation? And if that was the case, had time done anything at all? Was that why everything was falling apart?
Harper suddenly felt an undeniable urge to find Elise and show her the email.
To tell her just how ridiculous it was that they were offering her job back when they never should’ve taken it in the first place.
How, if it hadn’t happened at all, she might never have realized that Elise wasn’t just some dog-eared chapter from her past she could skim and forget. She was actually the whole damn book.
In a perfect world, Elise would snatch the phone from Harper’s hands, fling it like a frisbee off the balcony, tug Harper closer, and press her lips to Harper’s neck.
She would nip at her ear, kiss her full on the mouth, and right before she dragged her to the bedroom, she would whisper and say that Harper was absolutely, and under no circumstances, allowed to leave.
But the world was anything but perfect. And in this version of reality, Elise would tell her to go.
Harper swallowed and exhaled slowly.
Elise had asked for space, and for once Harper was going to respect it.
Besides, Megan had declared her love for Jamie.
There would be no final rose ceremony. Harper would be surprised if the contestants hadn’t already been told to pack their bags.
Her job was done. She’d probably get a boot tomorrow when Elise felt up to speaking to her again, something Harper desperately wanted, but she could already picture Elise’s professional tone, her voice clipped: Thank you for everything this season, Harper.
The footage has been incredible. Production won’t need you any longer.
There would be no mention of them. Not that there had to be.
More than enough had been said the other night.
Elise didn’t want Harper. Full fricken stop.
Harper pressed her tongue to the back of her teeth and flicked her cellphone’s screen on. She read the email for the hundredth time, and before she could overthink it, hit the reply button.
Hi Jack,
Thank you for the message. I’d love to come back. Please let me know the next steps.
She hit send.
The whoosh of the email leaving felt strangely anticlimactic.
No fireworks. No drumroll. Harper set her phone down and listened to the rain pick up outside.
She glanced through the sliding door. The stars were gone behind a sky full of clouds.
Then she pushed back her chair and headed to the bedroom.
~~
Harper stepped onto the cliffside launch platform in Furore.
The wooden planks were sun-bleached from years of tourists’ sneakers, and the view was spectacular.
The Fiordo di Furore yawned open beneath her, splitting the coast open like a jagged seam.
How lucky was she to experience it twice, but from a different angle?
Across the gorge, two parallel cables stretched toward Conca dei Marini, which looked more like gleaming silver threads than anything else.
Today, Megan and the contestants were being treated to a ziplining group date.
Which, frankly, was quite a shock to Harper’s system.
She’d been genuinely surprised when Gillian had shown up at her door that morning, looking far too cheerful—sign number one that something was amiss—informing her of today’s group date.
There had even been a brief moment of panic where she’d scrambled to find her phone to check if Jack had emailed back.
He had. A very polite email telling her she could return to National Geographic on her own time.
No rush. Which was good. Harper would stay and finish The Sapphic Match, and once production was done, she’d fly back to London and step into the life she’d built for nearly a decade.
Minus Harry, of course. A life that was taken from her in the blink of an eye and given back on a silver platter.
“I have never ziplined before,” Megan said, looking as ecstatic as a person who was terrified of heights peering over the edge of a platform suspended about half a mile up in the air.
“Don’t worry,” Jamie said, slipping an arm around Megan’s waist. “It’s really not that scary. The worst part is stepping off, and I’ll be right—” She cut herself off the moment she caught sight of the warning on Tori’s face. Then her arm dropped to her side as if her leg were a magnet.
If Harper hadn’t been informed of the contestants’ entanglements—Rebecca sleeping with Amelia and Tori sleeping with Elena—she would’ve wondered what the hell was going on.
But she had. Gillian had given her the scoop that morning.
While it felt entirely wrong, they were all going to keep pretending for the rest of the season. Harper was somewhat relieved.
At least Elise would finally get what she wanted.
“If we’re doing tandem rides, I want to ride with Megan,” Amelia said, stepping forward just as she knotted the arms of her cream sweater around her hips.
“You can’t just call dibs on the bachelorette,” Elena said, frowning deep enough for her eyebrows to nearly meet.
“Who says?” Amelia shot back.
“Pairs have already been assigned,” Gillian said, stepping onto the platform.
She wore jean shorts and VEJA sneakers, and sticking out just above the sock of her left foot was a beaded bracelet in every shade of the rainbow.
A tiny plastic turtle sat between the pink and purple beads.
Harper assumed Gillian’s son Hunter had made it at school and insisted she wear it for luck.
Gillian turned to Harper. “You’ll go first. Elise wants you positioned at the Conca side to photograph the arrivals.”
Harper had expected as much. Luckily she loved the thrill of a zipline and mostly just wished it could go on longer than it usually did. “Sure.”
“We’re also mounting GoPros to their helmets for social clips,” Gillian added, fussing with her iPad.
The way her fingers flicked across the screen was like Mozart playing the piano.
“But your shots will be used for the hero stills. Elise is looking for a billboard image over the freeway outside LAX. Preferably Megan with a rose in her hand, looking radiant and in love.” She glanced up and caught Megan standing as far away from the edge as possible.
“Though right now she looks like she’s being escorted to her execution. ”
“Got it.” Harper was already mentally lining up the shots: wide angles of the gorge swallowing the contestants whole, close-ups of wind-flattened smiles and if she was lucky, a hair-whipped moment where Megan was smiling instead of crying.
Gillian turned her attention to Megan and the contestants.
“A safety briefing will take place first,” she said, addressing them.
“Please pay attention, everyone. We don’t want any injuries.
Maurine’s in bed with the stomach flu, and she’s asked me to tell you she won’t get out for anything less than a broken neck. ”