Chapter 2
Chapter two
“Napkin, honey?”
Will, who had been watching Naomi lead her friend out of the gym, looked at the pile of napkins the bartender was holding out to Freya. By the time he glanced back again, Naomi had vanished, leaving only the swinging double doors of the gym as evidence that she had been there.
Should he follow her? Or should he stay here with Freya?
The internal debate was so heated that he felt like he was going to break out into a sweat. Although it was also getting a little warm in the crowded gym.
He certainly hadn’t planned on meeting anyone at his boss’s high school reunion. In fact, he hadn’t even planned on coming in. He’d intended to wait in the car and clear out his active volcano of an inbox. But at the last second, Freya had suggested he accompany her.
“I feel bad enough dragging you to this,” she had said. “At least come in and use my drink tickets.”
Standing in the corner of someone else’s high school reunion didn’t exactly top his list of fun ways to spend an evening. But he didn’t want Freya to waste her few precious moments not working, being worried about him. So, he’d agreed.
It wouldn’t be all bad, he had told himself. After all, he was curious to get an opportunity to see another side of Freya, to learn about her life outside of Nightly Global News, and maybe even get a glimpse into what she had been like in high school.
Will had been an Associate Producer with Nightly Global News for a little over three years, and most of it had been spent with Freya.
According to the job description, he was supposed to rotate working with the NGN correspondents, but after his first story with Freya, he never left her side.
It wasn’t intentional, more of a natural progression as he consistently volunteered for her segments, and she constantly requested his assistance.
Eventually, it became an unspoken expectation within the newsroom that Will and Freya were a package deal until last year, when it became part of his contract.
Freya fascinated him. She approached the world and people in a way he had never seen before.
At first, he thought that was because he was a farm boy from Indiana who didn’t know much about big media personalities, but over the years, he came to understand it had nothing to do with him and everything to do with her.
She was razor sharp and laser-focused. She could spend three days reading through hundreds of pages of police records to find that one missing piece of information everyone else had missed as easily as she could sit across from the most prepped and lawyered-up celebrity and still get them to share their darkest secrets.
He had made her his job, as much as his actual job.
It had become a sort of game for him, trying to learn what made her tick and how he could keep all the cogs moving so that she could get her work done.
And he considered himself pretty good at it.
But who Freya was outside the role of Senior Correspondent for Nightly Global News, now that was an entirely different story.
He thought he got glimpses of what else lay behind those arctic blue eyes on occasion, but he was never quite sure because she was as good at hiding her personal life as she was exposing others’.
What she thought or felt, beyond the scope of her professional life, was almost never expressed, no matter how hard he tried to get a peek behind the curtain.
So, the opportunity to possibly see another facet of Freya was too good an opportunity to pass up.
Except not even a million AI simulations could have guessed what he had seen.
Not that he had seen much. Only a few seconds.
But the fire in Freya’s eyes was undeniable.
Not only her eyes, her entire demeanor had been engulfed in flames like a meteor hurtling towards earth.
This was a woman who had listened to a serial killer detail his gruesome crimes without remorse and had barely blinked.
What could Abby have done to elicit such a reaction?
And, equally, what could Freya possibly have done to incite Abby to throw a drink at her?
Freya could be difficult at times, but she would certainly never do anything to risk an errant tweet or TikTok about her. What could have happened?
It seemed like Naomi knew. The way her head had turned when she heard Freya laugh, the determination with which she walked over to them, and the familiarity in how she handled extricating her friend only added to the puzzle he couldn’t quite solve.
He wanted to ask her to put the pieces together.
Truthfully, he wanted to ask her a lot of things.
Like had she planned to take his card before they got interrupted?
Could they go to that jazz show sometime?
Could she explain how she absolutely knocked the wind out of him when he turned around and saw her for the first time?
But she had left, never once pausing to look back.
Naomi was witty and funny and gorgeous and in only a few minutes had left him wanting to chase after her.
He continued to consider it as he stared at the gymnasium doors, still swinging in her wake.
But the seconds dragged on, and so did the reasons why he shouldn’t.
Chasing down a woman he hardly knew was only romantic in the movies—in real life, it was plain creepy.
Besides, he was here in a professional capacity.
He wasn’t necessarily on the job at this moment, but he would be shortly, and, in the meantime, he was with his boss at her reunion.
The same boss who was standing across from him, soaked in cheap, blue booze for reasons of which he still wasn’t entirely sure.
The right thing to do, he decided, was to stay with Freya. He would make sure she was okay and then later he could figure out if there was anything he could do about the Naomi situation. Maybe there was a non-creepy way to find her. Or maybe even Freya could introduce them.
He took the napkins from the bartender. “Here, let me,” he said, turning to Freya.
He looked again at the mess and realized he wasn’t sure what to do with the napkins.
Wiping off liquor of the front of your boss’ suit hadn’t been covered in their HR training on the rules of touch at work.
Also, while he considered himself close to Freya, he could count the number of times they had had any form of physical contact on one hand, and most of those were accidents.
He took the stack of napkins and patted uncomfortably at her arm.
He was grateful when Freya took the stack from him. “I’m fine; it’s just a drink,” she said, picking up where Will had left off. “I’m pretty sure cleaning drinks off my clothes was not in your job description.”
Will shifted uncomfortably, trying to decide the best course of action.
Freya wasn’t a big fan of having people care for her.
He usually had to do it surreptitiously, by finding little ways to help her that didn’t look like that was what he was doing.
Like today, for instance, when she was looking particularly tired and he went to “get himself” coffee as a pretense to buy one for her too.
Or last week, when she commented that her back was hurting after a long day at the computer, and he ordered her a lumbar support pillow and told her that the station had sent out ergonomic supplies to all their shows.
Or three years ago, when he figured out that June fourteenth was her birthday but also National Bourbon Day, which happened to be her favorite drink, and had since made a point to give her a bottle of bourbon as a birthday gift disguised as a silly holiday gift.
He considered himself fairly adept at reading her, even when she didn’t have much to say—which was often—but in this moment, he couldn’t glean anything from the tone of her voice or her expression.
Was she hurt or angry? Embarrassed? Did she need a minute alone?
Did she need someone to help her laugh it off?
She disliked being asked those kinds of questions even more than she enjoyed being cared for. But he felt like he had to go for it. So, he did. “Are you … okay?”
“Yep.” She kept her eyes on her task, but the slight tinge of annoyance in her words was the first indication of how she was feeling. Still, she kept things light. “Good thing I wore black, huh?”
“It’s just …”
She cut her eyes to him for a moment. “It’s only a drink, Will. I’ll be fine.”
“I think what your friend here is trying to say is, we’re all dying to know what just happened,” the bartender said, the New Orleans accent drawing out each word.
When Freya looked up at her, she lifted her hands innocently.
“Now, I know it’s none of my business. But I work a lot of these reunion-type events and that was a first for me. ”
“You’re right. It is none of your business,” Freya snapped.
Will’s eyes widened in astonishment. Freya could get testy, but she never snapped. Even she seemed taken aback by her reaction, and she cleared her throat before saying in a much friendlier, much more Freya way, “To be honest, you know about as much as I do. Um, what was your name again?”
“Caroline, but Lena is fine.”
“Lena. Thanks for the napkins, by the way.” Freya’s body language and tone had completely shifted now, and she smiled at Lena.
“I think I was able to get most of it off me before it soaked into my jacket too much. As I was saying, I wish I had more to tell you. I came over here to get a drink, we exchanged a few words, and then …” Freya set down the napkins on the bar with finality.
“Oh, I get it.” Lena threw the napkins away. “You two dated or somethin’? Bad breakup?”