’d never behaved that unprofessionally in her life, never. Blowing the man, fucking him on his desk, then turning away, and letting the lust get to her brain and alienate a source. Seriously? It was the kind of trick that one of the girls she’d gone to high school would have pulled to “punish” some guy for not behaving in the way she thought was best. The look on Alex’s face as she’d pulled up her skirt was awful. The anger in his eyes after she’d been so rude about his father left her feeling ashamed.
It wasn’t just that he was a source. That was bad enough, but he’d genuinely left her feeling cared about. Noticed. And that was more than she felt, most nights in her crappy little apartment.
She’d grown up in Ladel, just outside of Covington. Everyone there mostly considered themselves part of Covington, unless someone from Covington implied such a thing, in which case, they were absolutely part of Ladel. Or if someone pronounced the town name as LAY-dle, like the kitchen spoon. You knew to say LAH-del, or you would be mocked forever. The house she’d grown up in had been perfectly nice. New, a bedroom each for herself and her sister, an office for her mother, a kitchen big enough for Daddy to cook when he got excited about some new recipe. But compared to the older homes, with their wrap around porches and their sprawling gardens, or the plantation house that marked where Ladel ended and Covington began? Nothing to talk about.
Mama had always been pleased with what they had, and Daddy kept his envy subtle. It was only when something around the house broke that it came up. Toys that couldn’t be replaced right away, if at all. The stress when the house needed a new roof, and she took peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to school for a month. But even then, she’d been very well aware that she was better off than plenty of kids in the county. She wasn’t what the wealthier girls called trash. Sometimes that meant that she was hated by kids on both ends of the spectrum, but more often than not, it meant that she could be invisible, blending in as much as possible and just trying not to make too many waves. Of course, that talent had faded with time.
She changed out of her ridiculous outfit, put her jeans and T-shirt back on, and after a minute, pulled up Helen’s contact information on her phone. Helen answered on the first ring.
“Tell me everything,” Helen said, before Zoey even got a chance to say hello.
“Everything about how I just blew the one chance I had at making my career something other than a lifetime of regurgitating trending news?”
“Well fuck,” Helen said, “Give me a second.”
There was quiet for a moment while Helen wrapped up something, and then she came back on the line. Zoey had collapsed into a corner of the couch, pulling a pillow into her lap and squeezing it tightly.
“I was talking about last night,” Helen said, “but you sound like you’ve got something else on your mind.”
“It’s all a big clusterfuck, sha,” Zoey said, not even caring about her accent. “The guy last night—he was amazing, it was everything I wanted, and he seemed to enjoy himself too, but then this morning.”
“Did you stay there all night? Or go home with him?”
“Neither. I came back to my place. But I got a call from Devin this morning, and he had scheduled an interview with Alexander Blankenship.”
“Wait, from AEGIS.”
“Yes.”
Zoey couldn’t bring herself to say the words. Helen was quick on the update, though, and it only took a moment.
“Holy fuck, Zoey, it wasn’t—”
“It was.”
Helen let out a bit of rhyming slang that Zoey didn’t catch. “How did you handle it?”
“I blew it. I utterly blew it. I—things got out of hand, and then I started talking about his father, and it all went to hell.”
Helen was quiet for a bit, and Zoey waited. Helen had about five years on her, and she’d spent all of them in publishing. She was one of the lead editors for a major national website, and she knew her stuff. “Love, I’m not trying to minimize how wretched that must have been, walking in and seeing him, but for that rag of yours, I’m sorry, but you can make up the quote and no one will care. Am I right?”
“Yeah,” Zoey said. “About the gossip piece for the Voice, yes. But there’s something else going on at AEGIS. And I can’t write about it, because of last night. I have no credibility at all.”
“What do you think is going on?”
Zoey laid out what she’d seen conducting the background research for the interview with Alex. Stocks being bought and sold in weird patterns by companies that seemed to only exist on paper. Oddness about the company products, specifically in the weapons division. Production numbers that didn’t seem to match sales. And the strange wording that some people, privy to the information, had reported about Philip Blankenship’s will.
Helen listened to all of it, and Zoey could hear the moment when her friend’s brain crossed over from “listen to friend’s frustrations” to “listen to a writer pitch.” The quality of her really and her shut up changed. When Zoey had spun herself out, Helen was quiet again, for several minutes. Zoey could hear the clacking of a keyboard, and assumed Helen was checking out a few of the facts Zoey had mentioned on her own.
“I want you to write this, Zoey,” Helen said.
“But—”
“No. It was just the one time, and Marie will ban anyone who ever breathes a word of it. I’ve got a guy on staff here who has connections within some of AEGIS’ competition. If you’re willing to work with him, give him a co-author, I think we can protect you and get the piece written.”
Zoey took a long look around the shitty studio, with its cracked walls, the perpetually leaking faucet, and the windows that didn’t close properly, letting in frigid gusts in winter, and rivers of rain in summer. A serious byline on an investigative piece, sold to Helen Maxwell, or through her contacts—that would be a coup. It wouldn’t give her a step up, not right away, but it would open doors. It would put her name in the minds of editors for something more than the train perv. A co-author byline was still a byline. “Okay,” she said. “That sounds—okay.”
Helen saw through her hesitation. “You were thinking of seeing him again.”
“This morning, yeah, but I blew any chance I had of anything else.”
“What if you hadn’t blown it?”
Zoey sighed, and the exhalation said everything she needed to say.
Helen tut-tutted. “Zoey, love, you’ve heard of NRE, yeah?”
She rolled her eyes, even though her friend couldn’t see her. “I don’t live under a rock. But there’s no relationship here, so no new relationship energy present.”
“Sure, love, whatever you want to tell yourself. Just call me before you start in on the second tub of ice cream.” Zoey blew a raspberry into the phone, and Helen cackled. “Get started on that article, and I’ll hook things up with my guy here.”
When they’d hung up, Zoey pulled out her laptop. This was the good part of working from home, after all. Banging out an article on the couch in her jeans. When the words were hard to come by, she’d been known to reach for her fleecy pajama pants with the little foxes on them, but their magic was precious, and she was careful not to over use them. She twisted her hair up and out of her way, and go to work. It would take about half an hour to get the piece written and sent to the Voice, and then she could start outlining the longer piece.
Her belly fluttered just thinking that this might provide her with another excuse to see Alex. Maybe, this time, she could avoid screwing everything up.