Chapter Four
Winter
Luca spots me before Kourtney does, and beelines in my direction the second I step into the Chuck E. Cheese entrance. “Aunt Win! Aunt Win!”
I grunt when he barrels into me, barely able to keep myself upright as I wrap my arms around the seven-year-old’s lanky body. “Have you grown since I last saw you?” I ask skeptically when I realize he comes up to my chest. In hindsight, that’s not hard to do. I’m only five foot three, but still.
He laughs. “Mom says I’m a weed.”
“Growing like a weed,” my sister corrects him, rolling her eyes over the top of his head as she approaches us. “It means you’re growing fast.”
Luca peels himself away from me to look at his mother. “Dad says I’m small for my age.”
The frown that curls my lips doesn’t compare to the one weighing on Kourtney’s mouth. “Your father is confused,” she says through gritted teeth. Apparently, she’s as done with Brad’s bullshit as I am. Maybe that’s a conversation we’ll have today while Luca plays.
When we’re done ordering a cheese pizza and fries, because it’s the only two things Luca will eat right now, we sit down at a table by the arcade games.
Kourtney sneers at the mouse mascot high-fiving a group of kids. “I hate that stupid mouse,” she grumbles.
I snort. “You’re still traumatized by the time Melvin brought that mouse into your bed, huh?”
Her face darkens at the reminder of our childhood cat. He was a mighty rodent hunter. Except that he rarely actually killed them. Melvin simply liked showing them off by bringing live mice into the house, and sometimes, into Kourtney’s bed.
“I’m glad he passed away before Mom and Dad, because I would have put him up for adoption if it were my choice,” she seethes, crossing her arms over her chest.
No, she wouldn’t have. “I loved Melvin too much for you to do that to me. Remember how much I cried when Dad told me he was gone?”
Kourtney’s face pinches. “You made us have a funeral with a eulogy and everything. Do you know how hard it was for me to come up with something nice to say about that pain in my ass? Once, he brought a half-dead bunny into the house. There was blood everywhere.”
I cringe. Okay, so I didn’t know that. “What happened to the bunny?”
“You don’t want to know,” she informs me, moving on. “Anyway, what’s going on with you? You’ve got that look on your face.”
My brows pinch. “What look?”
She sips the soda our waitress brought over and waves her hand in my direction. “The one that says there’s something on your mind. Spill.”
I want to talk about her and Luca and Brad, not me. “Is there something going on with you? It seems like you’re mad at Brad.”
She shrugs limply. “When am I not?” she counters, setting her drink down.
Okay. True. “Do you want to talk about it?”
The only response I get is her deadpan expression that says, Do I look like I want to talk about it?
So, I move on. “Do you remember when I went to the semi-formal dance in middle school with the new kid from my grade?” I ask her, folding my straw wrapper into an accordion.
She thinks about it for a second. “Jason? Is he the one who made you cry in the bathroom when he danced with that mean girl who bullied everyone?”
I nod. “That’s him.”
“What about that douche?”
I see she still hasn’t forgiven him for hurting me. That’s sort of sweet. “You told me to kill him with kindness—”
“No,” she cuts me off. “I told you to fill his locker with garbage and dirty gym socks, and you told me you weren’t doing that.”
I snort. “Okay, but after that, you told me the second-best option was to kill him with kindness. So, I was always nice to him. And he eventually apologized for ditching me for Marni and asked to be friends.”
Kourtney sighs. “I still can’t believe you agreed to that. He was a loser.”
“We were twelve,” I remind her.
She doesn’t reply.
“Anyway,” I go on, “I have a work thing that I need advice on. Because I don’t know if killing him with kindness will work. Our client is…” An asshole. Dickhead. Douchebag. All of the above. I filter those names out. “…stubborn.”
“Who is it?”
I give her a look. “You know I can’t tell you that. I signed an NDA.”
“Celeb,” she theorizes. “Cocky, probably. Let me guess. He’s either in a cheating scandal, a paternity lawsuit, or hit someone he shouldn’t have and is facing charges.”
I blink at my older sister and her dry delivery. I can speak about the case hypothetically as long as I’m not naming names that would give his identity away. “To my knowledge, he hasn’t fathered anyone or hit anybody.”
She hums. “Cheater. Got it. Okay, so he’s under fire for a cheating scandal, and you need to boost him back up. Don’t you just have to make up stories that put him in a good light? You don’t have to pretend to be nice to him.”
I wish it were that easy. “For me to figure out how to put him in a good light, I have to study him and learn his behaviors to train him on what not to do. My boss basically wants me to do PR 101 with him until I can come up with a few stories that could change people’s perspective of him.
Then there are the events he’d have to do to further that image, which can be hard if he’s not believable.
And that’s only if he agrees to go that far.
Some people prefer press releases online or statements on their Instagrams with half-assed apologies that they don’t mean. ”
My last meeting with Janel was not fun. Especially when she told me that Thomas Moskins wanted me to work with him one-on-one without Janel present. The only thing she’s concerned about is me calling him a dickhead, which is going to be hard. But I’ll manage.
Probably.
“I’m not sure what advice I can give you that you don’t already know,” Kourtney eventually tells me. “If you can’t kill him with kindness, then just make sure he knows his place since actual homicide is frowned upon.”
I glare. “That’s all you have?”
One of her shoulders lifts. “People who are used to getting their way aren’t going to change overnight, Winnie.
I wish they did.” Her frown twitches her lips, and I wonder if she’s thinking about her husband.
“But they all have soft spots and weaknesses. If he’s going to be a stubborn prick, make sure to knock him down a peg.
Match his energy. If he didn’t need you, he wouldn’t be in your life. Right?”
I slowly nod. I’d basically said as much to him during our initial meeting. A great first impression, but clearly one that didn’t scare him away. “Yeah…”
“So keep reminding him of that,” she finishes. “You’re Winter-Freaking-Bronte. You’ve gone through too much to let some rich dick try to tear you down. You’re here to make his life better, not to let him make yours worse.”
Would he try making mine hell? That’s the last thing I need. “What if I fail?” The thought isn’t one I like having, but it’s a real possibility.
Sometimes, these people come to our agency, do well with the first few steps of our process, and then go right back down the rabbit hole that got them into trouble in the first place. Then all of our hard work goes down the drain because they don’t know how to be decent human beings.
Like Kourtney says, they don’t change overnight. Some don’t change at all.
“Then that’s his problem,” she informs me firmly. “Not yours. You’re only paid to try making a difference in his public perception. It’s up to him to actually change for the world to believe it.”
I blow out a breath when I realize she’s right.
“If you have to do events together,” she adds casually, sipping her drink.
“Make them something important to Fairbanks. You know what this community is made of. If you’re stuck babysitting this guy, you might as well find ways to give back and use him to do it.
He probably has money and a fanbase regardless of whatever scandal he’s in.
It sounds like giving back to Fairbanks is the least he can do. ”
This community has done a lot for us. And if Thomas Moskins is worth what his Google page says he is, then he can afford to give back to the city that is now home to his new hockey team.
Luca comes running back with a long line of paper tickets trailing behind him. “Look! I can finally get that giant dragon.”
My sister hides her wince when Luca points to the stuffed animal that I’m not sure will fit into her car. “Great,” she murmurs.
She doesn’t enlighten me about her relationship, work, or anything personal, the rest of the day. That’s Kourtney for you. Closed off and far too focused on everybody but herself.
But when I get back home after our dinner out, I compile a list of ideas for Janel’s approval that could make a big difference to both Thomas Moskins and the people of Fairbanks.
*
I can smell my coworker Cody before he actually appears at my cubicle, thanks to the rancid cologne he bathes in. When I turn from my computer to see why the twenty-something-year-old is leaning against the wall of my cubby, I’m met with an arrogant smirk that I want to smack off his face.
Ever since I was hired, he’s been the bane of my existence. We went out on one measly date not long after I started, which I left early with a made-up excuse about a family emergency. I’ve never entertained him again, and I’d like to thank my frontal lobe fully forming for that wise decision.
My decision to let him take me to dinner has been one of my biggest regrets in the past year. But as someone who was broke and just starting out, the thought of getting a free meal from him sounded too alluring to pass up. It’s why I went on a lot of first dates and not a lot of seconds.
To me, the man currently poisoning my space with off-brand Axe body spray was a meal ticket and nothing more. But I learned my lesson, which was cemented by a scolding conversation with my sister after realizing Cody wasn’t getting the hint about my lack of interest.
“You don’t shit where you eat, Win,” Kourtney says over the phone. “Never date a coworker. Not even for a good steak.”