Chapter 4
Chapter four
Will’s phone jingled from somewhere underneath a pile of papers on the floor of his hotel.
Problem was, he didn’t know which pile of papers or even which room.
The stacks of documents, ranging from background dossiers on officials to redacted statements from the FBI, reached from his bed to the cramped bathroom.
Being anywhere but home on a Saturday was par for the course for Will.
He hadn’t had a weekend off since he had started working for Nightly Global News.
This was, partly, because he loved the work.
But, also, because there was so much work to be done.
And it didn’t help that Freya never, ever, took a day off.
He didn’t mind, though. He had started working at Nightly Global News the same day he had moved to Chicago so he hadn’t had much time to build a life outside of the office that he could miss.
It also wasn’t too far off from the life he’d known growing up on a dairy farm.
Cows, like the news, don’t take weekends or holidays.
They don’t even take the night off. Come rain, shine, snowpocalypse, or stomach flu, from early in the morning until late at night, those cows needed to be fed and watered, put out to pasture and brought back, their babies delivered, their health managed, and of course, they needed to be milked.
Even though his family lived on the farm, and the barns were mere steps from their house, it hadn’t been unusual for him to go a day or two without seeing his father.
And while his father had been absent tending to the cows, his mother had been ever present tending to the business side of the farm and their home.
If she hadn’t been meal prepping for the week or helping him with homework, she’d been on the phone with suppliers or paying bills.
So, for Will, a job that never stopped felt—quite literally—like home.
He followed the music until he spotted some papers that were vibrating and lifted them to reveal his phone.
The number on the screen was one he knew—it was the main line for Nightly Global News.
It wasn’t completely out of the ordinary to be receiving a call from his studio on the weekend.
Nightly Global News was, as the name suggested, a nightly program which meant that the studio was staffed seven days a week.
What was out of the ordinary was that the front desk was calling him.
They only called if someone was in the lobby for a meeting or an in-studio interview or if he was having food delivered.
For a millisecond, he wondered if he had accidentally ordered food when he fell asleep on his laptop in the airplane.
“This is Will,” he said, answering his phone.
“Hi, this is Carli at the front desk, so sorry to bother you,” a voice said.
“No problem, what’s up?”
There was a pause that lasted a second too long, suggesting a flicker of uncertainty. “I’ve got someone who called the main line asking for you.”
“Me?” Will tried to get his brain to rustle up some guesses as to who might be reaching him through this circuitous route.
“Yes, normally I would have sent them to your office phone voicemail. But they said it was an urgent issue regarding an interview and that they had misplaced your business card, which is why they were contacting the front desk. Do you want to be connected to them, or should I send them to voicemail?”
“No, I’ll talk to them.” His stomach lurched and he prayed this didn’t have something to do with Luna’s interview.
“One moment.”
He settled onto a small, clear patch of floor. After only a few seconds of jazzy Muzak, the line rang and then, “Hello? Is this Mr. Quinn?” asked a woman with a voice he didn’t recognize.
“Speaking,” he said.
“Yes, how are you today?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “This is Naomi Hoffman’s personal assistant, Rebecca.”
Naomi Hoffman? He scrambled to connect the name Naomi Hoffman to Luna Mendez, but nothing surfaced.
Then, clear as day, he saw the nametag in his mind’s eye.
Hello, my name is
NAOMI HOFFMAN
His anxiety transmuted into delight, like an alchemist turning lead into gold.
He’d been playing whack-a-mole with thoughts about the woman at the reunion since they parted ways, but his adeptness at the game in real life did not translate into his internal world.
He hadn’t been able to stop himself from remembering tidbits of their conversation, that flirtatious glimmer in her eye, or how her soft, curly hair brushed against her neck in a way that he wished his lips could.
Was it possible the moment hadn’t passed and there was still a chance?
Rebecca continued. “You met Ms. Hoffman at the—”
“Reunion,” he said, unable to hold back.
“Yes, yes, the reunion last night.”
“I had a really nice time talking with her, but things ended a little, um, abruptly.” He cleared his throat uncomfortably.
In his line of work, he was no stranger to talking to people’s people.
But it had always been in a professional capacity, and it felt more than a little strange to be para-wooing Naomi via her assistant.
“I see. Well, Ms. Hoffman was wondering if you would be interested in having dinner sometime in the next—”
“Yes,” he said before she could finish her sentence. He couldn’t have kept his cool if he wanted to. At least it was only her assistant on the other line, and he was saving a little face. He held out his phone and put it on speaker. “Let me check my calendar.”
His calendar was a mess. It was always a mess, which was one of the main reasons his social life—and by extension, his dating life—was almost non-existent.
Monday was back-to-back appointments that started with a staff meeting at 8:30 a.m. and ended with a call to a contact in Tokyo at 7:30 p.m. Then he was heading out of town on Wednesday to do some legwork for a story on the hidden impact of abandoned mining operations on small communities in the Appalachian region.
That left only a small block of time on Tuesday, in between meetings that ended at 5:00 p.m. and an interview that started at 9:00 p.m.
As Freya had told him early on, “In this job, you have to make time for your life in between the work, otherwise you won’t have a life at all.
” It wasn’t unusual to add in a doctor’s visit or a friend’s birthday party in the small, scattered moments when the interviews, calls, meetings, and deadlines paused just long enough to let something else in.
Sometimes, when the situation called for it, he and Freya would even go along on personal outings together.
Like, for instance, to a high school reunion.
Which meant that doing something like squeezing in a date right before an interview was nothing out of the ordinary.
It could work. He could have a few hours with Naomi and then head straight to the interview.
He briefly considered looking into another week, but the image of those gym doors swinging closed behind her filled his vision, and he decided against it.
She had already walked away once; he wasn’t going to give her a chance to walk away again.
“I’ve got some time on Tuesday,” he said. “Any chance that would work for her?”
“Tuesday?” she repeated.
“Yes,” he said. “Six o’clock?”
“Six o’clock?” she repeated again. “Could you hold one moment while I check her calendar?”
“Sure,” he said.
She was silent for a moment. “Yes, it looks like she’s available during that time.”
Will fist pumped into the air. “Awesome. I can tell you where in a sec. Hang on,” he said, pulling up OpenTable and then hurriedly putting in the date and time. On a Tuesday night, there were a decent number of options. “How about the Bella Luna. It’s in the Fulton River District, on Halsted.”
“Bella Luna. On Halsted.” The repeating thing was getting a little strange.
“Obviously, she—or you—can reach out if that time or location doesn’t work.”
“Of course,” she said.
“Can I text the number you called from so you have my direct cell?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, I’ll send it shortly. Sound good?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“OK, well,” Will hesitated, suddenly aware that he had no idea how to end the call.
Should he say something nice about Naomi?
Ask Rebecca to pass along a message? It felt weirdly like passing notes in middle school.
“Um, yeah—just, please tell Naomi I’m really looking forward to it.
To her. I mean—to seeing her, on the date. That’s what I’m looking forward to.”
He winced. He didn’t consider himself a smooth talker, but this was bad, even for him.
The lack of sleep, combined with the sheer weirdness of setting up a date through an assistant, had completely thrown him off what little game he had.
Hopefully, Rebecca was the kind of assistant who would convey the message, not the delivery.
“Anyway, thank you for the call,” he finished.
“Have a wonderful afternoon,” Rebecca replied, her voice not giving any hint as to whether she was smiling politely or rolling her eyes on the other end.
His screen went dark.
He sat on the floor, trying to decide what to do next. His stomach was a Gordian Knot of delight, excitement, and anticipation.
And after a little bit of time, he realized there was, perhaps, a little apprehension too.
“Naomi was always hanging on to her like a bad case of fleas,” one of The Shining twins, Will couldn’t remember which one, had told him.
“If she’s stayed friends with Abby all these years, and it seems she has, imagine what kind of Stockholm Syndrome she must be living with,” the other one had said.
Not that he gave their opinions any weight, but there was that whole thing with Freya and Abby, which he was now willingly putting himself adjacent to. What was he walking into?