That was probably the hardest interview of my life, but not because Pat was difficult at all.

I’ve met a million women like Pat. She’s strong, fiercely independent, and incredibly family-oriented. She’s tied to the land in the way any multi-generation family gets when they stay in one spot. For her, history is everything.

And she’s watched her entire family decimated, one after the other, because of the opioid epidemic.

That’s something I can understand. Not because I have any firsthand experience with it, but because I can comprehend it intellectually. I’m not emotionally attached to any of it. I sized Pat up immediately and I knew what I had to do to get her talking. From there, things were pretty easy, since she’s more than willing to tell us her story. She wants revenge against the people that did her wrong, and she’s not backing down.

I respect that. And I want to try and emulate that.

No, that interview was hard because every time I saw Henry, I wanted to kiss him. It’s an irrational but intense desire, and part of me hates it. I don’t want to feel like a little puppy dog around him, not after what he did. But last night, it blew my fucking mind, to be cliché about it. I don’t think I’ve ever felt quite so… liberated before.

His body just clicked with mine. We fell into each other and I never wanted or needed to stop, not that night at least. I let myself feel it, really feel it without any hesitation.

That night, he was fire and I was freezing, and the only way to feel good was to get as close to him as possible.

But the next morning, he was gone. He didn’t say a word to me in the morning, and I woke up to the sound of the door clicking shut behind him. I don’t know why he snuck off, but I can probably guess.

All day, I kept stealing glances at him, but he never looked back. He never gave any indication that what happened the night before was important to him. He had a million chances to pull me aside and say something, absolutely anything to make me feel better about it. Instead, I just felt more and more used as the day dragged past.

I couldn’t let that get in the way of my work, and I didn’t. But now, back at the hotel, I can feel that anger and resentment starting to bubble.

“Want to go over the footage?” he asks me, leaning in the doorway to my room.

I shrug a little. “Sure, can’t hurt.”

“Come on. You’re gonna like it.”

I follow him into his room. He has his laptop set up on the desk and I lean up behind him as he scrolls through the footage.

It’s raw, but it looks fantastic. Pat was right, the lighting in that room was beautiful. It filters down around her like a halo and instead of the rough, tough woman I know she really is, she looks like some kind of savior angel or something.

“Right there, you see what you did there?” Henry asks, rewinding the footage. “It looked like she was about to clam up, but you somehow made her feel at ease again. How do you do that?”

I shrug a little bit. “I don’t know, honestly,” I admit. “I guess I just figured her out.”

“It’s impressive,” he murmurs as we skim through the footage.

Soon, I forget about my anger. It’s not gone, not at all, but it’s just simmering below the surface. I can ignore it, because we have a job to do. And I want to do this job well, as well as I possibly can. Still, I keep getting glimpses of that anger underneath what I’m saying and doing.

We get through about half of the footage before we stop on a moment where Pat’s getting a bit choked up. It’s only a brief moment, because a second later she steels herself and pushes forward with her story. It’s not a graceful moment, and it didn’t film particularly well, but Henry stops on it.

“We gotta keep this,” he says.

I frown at him. “Seriously?”

“Seriously,” he says, nodding vigorously. “It humanizes her, you know? Up until now, she’s just this tough old lady, but this gives her a little emotional depth.”

I take a sharp breath. “I can’t disagree more,” I say.

He looks surprised. “Really? This is the big moment, the humanizing moment. We always show them crying.”

I take a deep breath and get my thoughts together. I know I’m the novice in this room, and I am definitely mad at him for pretending like nothing’s happening between us all day today, but this is important to me.

“That’s not the kind of woman she is,” I say. “She just watched her whole family die, but she’s still gardening. She’s soldiering on, moving forward. She’s strong, unbelievable strong, and poised. If we show her crying, that’ll lighten her image, but I don’t want her light.”

He leans back in his chair and swivels a bit toward me. “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t see it, honestly.”

I move away from him, toward the bed. “She’s not some weak, crying woman. We always make women softer than they have to be. But I don’t want Pat to be soft, because she’s far from it.”

“We can’t make her look like an emotionless monster,” he says to me. “We need the crying.”

“There’s more emotion in everything she says than you or I can feel in a year,” I say to him. “We don’t need the crying.”

He stares at me and sighs. “I can’t bend on this. I’ve done enough of these stories now to know that we need this moment, Viv.”

There it is, that’s what I was expecting him to say. I know what that’s code for. I know better than you do.

“It’s my story,” I say through a clenched jaw. “And we’re doing it my way. The crying gets cut.”

He looks a little surprised, but I don’t give a shit. I’m getting what I want here, because I know I’m right. And after all, this is my story, and it should be my vision that moves this forward, not him.

“I think you’re wrong about this,” he says.

“I don’t care. It’s what we’re doing.”

He looks surprised and I actually feel a little bad. I know I shouldn’t blow up on him like this, but I can’t help it. All that anger is bubbling up now and I can’t help it.

“Maybe we should take a little break,” he says to me.

“Yeah, perfect. I think that’d be great.”

Without another word, I turn and leave the room.

I feel stupid. I know I shouldn’t have blown up like that. I need to keep things professional, or at least I can’t let my personal anger bleed over into work sessions. I just can’t help it. I’m a passionate person, and I truly believe that I was right back there.

He wasn’t being unreasonable. He was making his arguments based on his experience, and most of the time he’s probably right. But I wasn’t going to let him make that decision for me. I believe this is the right thing to do, and I want my first story to be mine, not his.

I am worried, though. I’m worried I won’t be able to keep things separate. I’m worried it’s just going to get worse from here. But most of all, I’m worried that these feelings are going to go away when this is all over.