Daisy
Istep into Central Park and onto the paved path near Tavern on the Green, leaving behind my apartment on the Upper West Side.
Tourists cluster near the restaurant’s brick facade, posing with cocktails.
I slip past them, weaving through families with strollers, joggers in head-to-toe Lululemon, and a man strumming a six-string with his dollar-filled guitar case showcasing a solid day’s earnings.
Heels are a bad idea. They always are, and today they feel like punishment. I make it halfway down West Drive before ducking onto a side path shaded by American elms. At a quiet bend in the trail, I stop, toe off the heels, and swap them out for the ballet flats in my tote. The relief is immediate.
Near the lake, where the path bends beneath elms that have turned amber, a woman sits cross-legged on the grass with a canvas propped against her knees.
She’s painting with oils (actual oils), her coat streaked with reds and blues at the cuffs, a tin of turpentine glinting beside her.
She’s just decided this patch of ground belongs to her art, and apparently that’s enough.
I slow without meaning to.
Her brushstrokes are fearless, broad, confident sweeps.
Whatever she’s rendering bears no resemblance to the landscape before her.
It’s abstract, all fractured geometry and blazing warmth, as if she’s capturing the feeling of the park rather than the reality of it.
Hundreds of people have probably walked past in the last hour without stopping, because the world doesn’t tend to notice women doing quiet, defiant things.
People notice the spectacle. But a woman on the ground with paint under her fingernails, building beauty from nothing? Invisible.
I recognize a feature in her that unsettles me.
A version of myself I’ve been neglecting—the one who got into journalism not for access or prestige but because she believed a well-told truth could reshape how people saw the world.
Somewhere between getting fired from Contour and agreeing to babysit a volatile hockey player, I stopped creating and started managing.
The woman leans back, loads her brush with a streak of vermillion so vivid it looks like a wound, and drags it across the center of her composition without hesitation.
It’s bold. Reckless, even. And absolutely as it should be.
A smile forms instinctively. Part of me wants to walk up to her and thank her, but she seems so at peace, I don’t want to disturb her. I keep walking, carrying her image with me like a small, sharp stone in my pocket.
Past the fountain, a couple strolls toward me on the path.
Mid-twenties, I’d guess, her hand tucked inside his back pocket like she’s borrowing his warmth.
He says something and she shoves him sideways gently with her shoulder, laughing.
He catches her by the waist and pulls her back without breaking stride.
It’s nothing, really, just a two-second exchange that means everything to them and nothing to the world.
Except the jacket. It’s his, draped over her shoulders, sleeves hanging past her fingertips. That old, wordless gesture—You’re cold, take mine—and it lands deep within me, in a part I thought I’d sealed off.
Connor used to do that. Give me his jacket before I even asked, like he had a sixth sense for when I was about to shiver.
Connor Marsh. The boy who sat behind me in sixth-grade history and passed me notes folded into triangles.
We were twelve when he first held my hand, thirteen when he first kissed me.
We survived junior high, high school, four years of long distance through college—him at UVA, me at Duke—held together by stubbornness and the belief that a love story that started that young could endure.
A year after college graduation, I found out he’d been sleeping with my childhood best friend for over two years.
The girl who braided my hair at slumber parties and held my hand at my grandmother’s funeral.
I lost them both in the same week. Twelve years of Connor.
Fourteen years of her. Gone, like they’d been written in pencil, not pen, the entire time.
New York was my clean slate after that. A city loud enough to drown out the silence two people left behind. I funneled everything into my career with a ferocity my editors mistook for ambition. It was survival dressed in professionalism.
The couple passes me, oblivious to what their little interaction set off, his jacket still warming her shoulders. I don’t feel bitter anymore. I outgrew that particular poison, but the scar tissue is real. Trust, for me, is earned in increments and revoked without ceremony.
Elias is the exception. Everyone else starts at zero.
I start east, deeper into the park. The noise of the city dims but never disappears. You can still hear the rumble of buses on Central Park West, the distant wail of a siren, the endless drone of a city that’s always just one crisis away from boiling over.
It feels fitting as I mull over my meeting earlier with Grizz McAvoy.
The man is all jagged edges and bad decisions wrapped in muscle and myth.
In person, he’s bigger than the camera makes him seem.
Not just physically—though, yes, there’s that—but in presence, he fills a room like he’s not sure if he should sit down or punch a hole through it.
Langley described him like he was a challenge to solve, but thirty seconds after meeting him, I realized he was a fuse waiting for the wrong spark. The fact he ended our meeting just moments after Langley left us to get acquainted tells me all I need to know.
This won’t be easy, but it’s a job.
I keep walking and emerge from the Ramble near Bethesda Terrace.
There’s a wedding shoot happening on the steps—white dress, forced smiles, the photographer barking instructions like he’s conducting a battlefield instead of a fairy tale.
To the left, kids are tossing pennies into the fountain.
A couple of street performers breakdance for a circle of tourists holding iced coffees and recording it all on their iPhones.
As I get farther east, the park begins to dissolve around me once again. The gravel underfoot gives way to concrete, and soon I’m stepping out onto the corner of Fifth Avenue, where the world explodes back to life.
The quiet of Central Park is replaced by the hard asphalt pulse of the Upper East Side. Cars blare their horns. Pedestrians swarm the crosswalk with lowered heads and purpose.
I head east on 60th Street, weaving through the sidewalk gridlock. Every block is a battle between speed and image. I spot the restaurant, Le Soir, with its low awning and gold-lettered signage. An establishment that doesn’t advertise because its regulars already know where to go.
Elias picked it, obviously. He always chooses places with character and good lighting and a ma?tre d’ he knows, because who doesn’t Elias know, really?
I spot him at a corner booth and move his way.
He rises, sleeves rolled to the forearms as if he’s ready to do serious work.
There’s a half-empty bourbon neat on the table beside a martini glass, and I note that Elias wears his signature amused smirk that usually precedes a story I don’t want him to tell in public.
“Still allergic to being on time, I see,” Elias says as we embrace.
“You’re lucky I showed up at all,” I reply.
“You walk or fight your way here?”
“Bit of both.”
He nods, smiling but reading me like always. Elias Reed has a presence that doesn’t need to ask for attention. Casual, always in control, but never loud about it.
“Figured you could use a drink. Bartender owes me a favor, so I told him to make yours strong.”
“God bless.”
I take a sip of the martini and glance around. This is Elias’s kind of place. He always knows the spots with a back entrance where you don’t have to worry about the person next to you live-streaming their meal on Instagram.
“You know,” he says, studying me, “you’ve got that look again.”
“What look?”
“The one you had sophomore year when you were about to torch the campus paper for misquoting a protester.”
I raise an eyebrow. “They did misquote her.”
“And you did torch them. Elegantly. Publicly. While eating an everything bagel.”
“That bagel was the only thing keeping me from throwing a chair.”
“God, I miss that version of you.”
“She’s still here. Just better dressed.”
Elias and I met freshman year at Duke, during some awkward, half-hearted ice cream social on the quad. He was wearing a leather jacket in ninety-degree heat, holding court about media ethics. I was wearing boots, melting in the sun, and stole his waffle cone because mine sucked.
We’ve been each other’s first call ever since, whether it was a professional or personal success or crisis.
We’ve been there for each other for the ups and downs.
So it’s only fitting that when I lost my job at Contour, Elias was there for me.
His family has that level of wealth where they buy things not to make money, but just to say they own them.
Like professional hockey teams.
And since I come from a world where paying my monthly rent requires I hold a job three hundred and sixty-five days a year, I immediately took Elias up on his connections, which include his uncle Julian who owns the New York Vipers. With just a simple phone call, I had a job offer.
It certainly wasn’t my first choice and I put in calls to the other top fashion magazines, but none are hiring.
Sure, this role isn’t in fashion, but it’s PR and in New York, and the two worlds often intersect.
More importantly, working for Elias’s uncle at least allows me to continue living in Manhattan with a start date that ensures this month’s rent will be paid in full.
“So, how is Uncle Julian?” says Elias as he takes a sip of his bourbon.
“You know, I haven’t properly said thank you for doing what you did,” I tell him, ignoring his request for a family update.
He raises a brow, clearly surprised. “For what? I just made a call. It was nothing.”
“It wasn’t nothing. You made a call that got me a job. Three days ago, I was being iced out of the magazine industry for asking the right questions. Now I’ve got a chance to redeem myself and I’ve got a salary with benefits.”
Elias waves a hand, brushing it off like it was easy. Maybe for him it was.
“I’m serious,” I press. “You didn’t have to go to bat for me, especially not with your uncle. He doesn’t exactly strike me as the second-chance type.”
“He’s not,” Elias says with a laugh. “But he is the desperate type when it comes to keeping the Vipers relevant and winning. And Grizz? He’s an expensive disaster waiting to get suspended into early retirement. Julian needs someone who can rein him in and I think you’re perfect for the job.”
I fiddle with the olives hanging off the edge of my glass. “That’s the part I’m not sure I can do,” I say finally.
Elias sets his glass down, suddenly more focused. “What do you mean?”
I exhale. “If you think Grizz is just a troubled superstar, you’re wrong.
He’s a full-blown demolition site with a smile.
He doesn’t trust anyone. Doesn’t listen.
I’ve read all about the drama he caused at the end of last season.
He’s used to being the sun while everyone else orbits him.
The man picks fights with the press for sport.
You should’ve seen his face when Langley introduced me. ”
“I bet he loved the idea of a fixer with a press pass.” Elias smirks.
“Oh, adored it,” I say dryly. “Practically threw me a parade.”
Elias chuckles, but I’m not laughing.
“I can manage narratives. I can rebuild reputations. I can even take a hit, metaphorically speaking,” I say, leaning forward. “But managing Grizz McAvoy? That’s hostage negotiation–level stuff.”
Elias considers this. “You think you can’t handle him?”
“I don’t know if anyone can. And I’m not sure I want to spend the next six months cleaning up after someone who thinks a fistfight is foreplay.”
He watches me, then says, “You said the same thing about Giancarlo once.”
“Giancarlo didn’t throw punches in skates,” I say. “He just did it with NDAs and offshore factories.”
“Still an asshole,” Elias counters. “Just wore better shoes.”
I sit back, rubbing my temple. “I need this job, Elias. I know that. I’m not naive. But if your uncle’s real plan is to have me muzzle a man like Grizz—”
“It’s not about muzzling him,” Elias interrupts gently. “He just needs focus. Discipline. You’re not there to change who he is.”
I glance out the window, watching a cab streak down the street, headlights diffusing through the window into a faint rainbow. “You believe I can do this?”
Elias doesn’t hesitate. “I wouldn’t have made the call if I didn’t.”
His voice is sincere, firm. He has faith in me.
“I didn’t think I’d end up here,” I say. “Not in sports. Not with… someone like Grizz as a project.”
Elias leans back, nodding. He gets it. “No one ends up anywhere on purpose. Julian doesn’t hire people who are trying to be seen. He hires the ones who already survived something.”
I think about Grizz and how he looked at me like I was a joke. The coiled violence that lives in his posture. He doesn’t want help. He wants to be right, even when it burns everything down.
“I’ve spent my whole career calling out men like Grizz,” I say. “Now I’m supposed to fix him? Make him palatable enough for sponsors and kids with jerseys and the league’s press department?”
“No,” Elias says. “You’re supposed to keep him from blowing the whole damn team off the map.”
I look at him. “You make it sound easy.”
“It won’t be. He’ll test you and the team will watch you.” His eyes soften. “But you’re up for it, I know you are. You’ve got steel under all that truth-telling. You know how to stand in a room full of men, each convinced he’s the smartest one in it and ultimately get them to listen to you.”
The restaurant has gotten louder.
“I don’t know if I can manage him,” I say. “But I can manage the chaos around him.”
Elias smiles. “Same thing.”
And maybe it is. Maybe that’s all Langley really wants—someone to play defense against the collapse.
I finish my drink and set the glass down. “All right,” I say. “You’re right. I can survive this.”
Elias raises his glass. “You won’t just survive it, Daisy Turner. You’ll succeed in ways Julian won’t even expect. You always do.”
I don’t believe him. Not fully. But I believe that he believes in me.
And for right now, that’s enough.