“Darling, are you sure you’re going to be okay?” Mom asks me as I get ready to leave One57. The King is standing next to her, a grave expression on his face.

It’s several hours after Derrick was taken away in handcuffs and I’ve just spent the entire time crying in my mother’s lap as the King and her have tried to calm me down.

I went through everything. How I jumped at the opportunity to teach Prince Derrick Blaine a lesson. How Mike helped me set up a secret identity. How this was supposed to only be a few articles before the DA took action and should have been over by now. But then how my apartment got broken into, Derrick saved me from Jake, and I finally gave into the fact that I had fallen in love with him.

“Oh, dear, you were in love with him even before you left St. Livy,” Mom told me towards the end.

I blush now thinking back to a few hours ago when I had looked at her with confusion when she said that to me.

She had only nodded her head and looked to the King with a slight smile.

“You were always so upset with him and he was always tormenting you that the King and I had several discussions after work,” she told me. “We got to know each other and that’s actually what started Leo and I on this journey we’re on together as well.”

I didn’t know what to say then and I don't know what to say now, but Mom continues, “When the King and I talked, we both found out that out of everyone both of you were always the ones that were secretly upset at each other. He thought you ignored him and you thought he tormented you.”

“It was pretty obvious it was love,” the King chimes in.

I smile, thinking of the two of them. At least Derrick and I were able to make someone happy.

“Are you sure you want to go back to your apartment?” the King asks me. “I think it’s perfectly fine for you to stay here.”

My eyes are still red from crying but I shake my head definitively. I can’t stay in Derrick’ place. Not until I get a chance to talk to him. I want to say how sorry I am. I want to apologize. But I don’t know where to start.

Luckily, the King sees my face and I think he understands, because he lays a hand on my shoulder.

“Don’t you worry, lassie,” he says in his off-English accent that I find so irresistible in him. “Derrick will come around, I know it.”

“I hope…” I was going to say more but my heart is literally afraid of hope. I stop myself. My mother comes over to hug me and the King squeezes my shoulder and gives me a friendly smile.

“Listen to me, Alicia,” he says, his eyes twinkling. “No matter what you may or may not have done, you alone brought my son back from a darkness which I helped create by hiding the truth from him. For that at least, I thank you, and pledge to do everything I can to help you.”

Wow. These Blaine men have a way with words. But it makes me feel a bit better. I manage a smile and I give the King a hug, and then I hug and kiss my mother.

They wave as I leave and get into a cab and in ten minutes I’m standing outside my door in the Lower East Side.

I walk in and look around. Derrick had Sam fix everything and put everything back in order so I could Airbnb out the place, but even so, it has an air of sadness as I sit on the couch. I remember how just four months ago I walked through the living room to find Jake and Chrissy in bed together, naked. I barely think of Jake anymore. I’m too busy being Daphne as well as Alicia.

I sit on the couch and sigh. Tears come out all over again. For Derrick, I can’t stop crying. I had the perfect life. But it was built on a lie.

“Those aren’t tears for that asshole Jake, are they?” a voice penetrates me out of my darkness and I look up.

Oh my God! It’s Jenna!

She’s standing at the door and has a duffel bag on her shoulder. Apparently I forgot to close the door, but that’s a good thing!

“Jenna!” I shriek and bound off the couch. Jenna drops her duffel bag and runs towards me. I give her a hug and then pull away to look at her.

“Are you moving back in?” I ask, excited.

Jenna gives me a sheepish shrug. “Alicia, I’m so, so, sorry,” she tells me the first thing out of her mouth. “I wanted to come back and apologize to you, and pay you back the rent I should have paid, but I’ve been too scared at what you’re going to say or do…”

I don’t let Jenna finish. “You can move back in whenever you want!” I say. I’m not thinking about Jake at all. I’m thinking instead about the fun that Jenna and I used to have. How we used to go for jogs along the water, or out to brunch after a night out. I miss those days. They seem so much simpler.

“No, I need to tell you, I seriously fucked up, Alicia,” Jenna tells me, sitting me down. I remain silent. “I believed Jake when he told me you were purposely withholding sex from him and using him to get him to do things for you. That you were using sex as a weapon over him.”

I gasp. “I never even…” I’m about to continue when Jenna shushes me.

“I get that now. It took me a long time but when I heard how he attacked you, I was glad that he’d stopped calling me after you guys broke up. I’ve been wanting to apologize ever since for what I did,” she says.

I’m about to tell Jenna that I forgive her when she continues, as if she’s reciting something that she prepared. “But I knew I couldn’t just come back and say sorry,” she says. “I had to make a gesture to show you that I meant it.”

Now I’m silent.

She takes a deep breath.

“It took a lot of work, and literally getting my Dad to talk to everyone he knows from his business contacts, but I think I got it,” she says, and pulls out an envelope from her duffel bag.

“I submitted some of your recent work and got it shown to the right people. There’s an interview ready for you as a Senior Politics Reporter at The New York Sun, if you want it.”

Oh, my. I don't know what to say. I can’t even begin to fathom how Jenna was able to get the necessary contacts to get me this opportunity to work with the most prestigious newspaper in the country. Literally, the paper of record for the United States of America. I’m literally speechless.

“It was hard,” she says, as if hearing my thoughts. “It literally took four months of digging while I lived at home, but it was worth it,” she says.

I don’t know what to say, so I barely manage a “Thank you, Jenna.”

She nods. “I needed you to know how sorry I was,” she says to me, looking me in the eyes. “And I knew you were miserable writing gossip, so I put everything I had to make a grand gesture to show you.”

I reach over to hug her. I have so much to tell her.

But what she said to be starts tickling at my brain. She was sorry. She made a grand gesture to show me how much.

It’s an idea that noodles around my brain while we open a bottle of wine and talk about our lives in the last four months.

It’s an idea that I wrestle with as I tell her all about Derrick and she consoles me.

It becomes a plan as we make dinner together.

And it gets me sitting at my desk after dinner, with Jenna’s blessing as I put it into fruition.

* * *

The next morning, I walk into work. There are some stares in my direction. People have either heard about what went down with Derrick yesterday from the newspapers or they’ve heard about Samantha’s meeting with Mike, Danielle, and me.

Whatever. I’m not some fragile little girl. I’m a force of nature today.

I walk into Mike’s office and he looks up and smiles at me.

“Tomorrow’s column,” I say and hand him my piece. He takes it and reads it.

Then he reads it again. And again.

Finally, he looks at me.

“You’ll probably get fired for this, Alicia,” he says. “I won’t stop you from running with it, but I won’t be able to protect you.”

I nod. I could probably be throwing away my chance at the most prestigious newspaper in the country, The New York Sun, as well with this piece. But that’s my grand gesture. “I know,” I tell him.

Then I walk out the door.