I waved his words away. I couldn’t confide in my friend without falling apart. “There’s nothing we can do about that now. What’s going on here?”
“Where have you been?”
I raised my eyebrow. “In North Carolina.”
“Well, I know where you were physically. But where have you been in the world? Clematis was sold to McCann Media.”
My eyes widened in shock. Clematis had been independently owned forever—that was one of the best things about it. I loved the family feel, how I actually knew the powers that be, how we had the space to make our own decisions because we weren’t owned by the big guys. Everything was changing. Everything had changed. The one stable thing I had left was suddenly unstable.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
He looked mystified. “Well… you’re my boss. I assumed you knew.”
I took a deep breath and stood up straighter. And I realized that, across the way, one of my writers was crying. “Heather, what is going on?”
But I didn’t need her to answer. When your friend is putting the contents of her desk in a box that previously held printer paper, the dots are fairly easy to connect.
When Philip said, “Nanette needs to see you in her office,” it honestly didn’t even occur to me to be nervous. I mean, I was the managing editor, for heaven’s sake. She was the ideas; I was the execution. She was the big picture; I was the details. We had been a seamless team for three years, working so well together that it was hard to know where I ended and she began.
I tipped a fake hat to Philip, walked into Nanette’s corner office with the killer view, and closed the door behind me. My office one day… now was not the time. She was visibly shaken. But this was Nanette. She was shaken; I was steady. “Look,” I said. “Whatever McCann throws at us, we’ve got this, sister. We are an unstoppable team, and we will keep Clematis a preeminent magazine no matter who owns us.”
I sat down in the white slipper chair across from her desk and noticed she and the chair were precisely the same color. Wow. Nanette was easily ruffled, but I had never seen her like this. “Amelia, you are my best friend,” she began. I thought that was a little sad. I mean, I loved Nanette. But she was my work wife. We never socialized outside of the office. I had sacrificed a lot for this job, but not as much as Nanette had.
I smiled wanly at her. “It’s all going to be—”
“Please stop,” she said. That was when I started to feel sick. “I’m the new managing editor,” she whispered.
For a half second, I had the ridiculous thought that I was going to be the new editor in chief. But when I saw the tears in her eyes, I realized I was most certainly not getting promoted. I sucked in my breath. “And me?”
She shook her head. “You’re getting three months’ severance.”
I was gobsmacked. I leaned back in the chair, feeling as if I’d been punched in the stomach. I had devoted thirteen years of my life to this company. Yes, I knew that magazines were merging staffs and recycling content, that media jobs were fewer and farther between, that for everything the Internet had given us, it had also taken away something really big. And you couldn’t help but see the irony: McCann Media.
Nanette handed me a letter. “I wrote you the most glowing, most amazing recommendation I have ever written. I will do anything for you, and any publication would be lucky to have you, Amelia. You know that. You are the girl wonder. You took this company by storm. You’ll do it again.”
I was on the verge of tears. And furious. And I knew exactly who to take my anger out on.
* * *
As I thundered out of the magazine, I knew I was overreacting. But I’m not a fully rational human—no one is, really. Every now and then I’d get a nasty comment online and feel like quitting my job, throwing everything I’d worked for out the window. Or a friend wouldn’t text me back for a couple days, and I’d decide she hated me for some perceived slight. My mom would say something snide about my heels being too high or my face looking a little round, and I would fume that I wasn’t going home for Christmas.
I never let it show at work, though. I was the consummate professional; I kept everyone in line. I picked up everyone’s slack. I didn’t want to be the one to say it, but Nanette wasn’t half as good as I was at actually putting out a magazine. She was the Google think tank. I was the assembly line.
My layoff, all the layoffs, were probably not Parker’s fault. Probably. I looked at my watch. Eight ten. The high-and-mighty boss of McCann Media wouldn’t be in yet at 8:10. This was what happened when companies got too big and quit caring about the peons that made it all possible. Greer would never have stood for this.
“Parker!” I screamed, as I banged on the back door, realizing that maybe, just maybe, a small part of my freak-out had to do with the fact that I had run out of the hormones I took every day to make my body not think it was in menopause. He emerged at the door, bleary-eyed, in his boxers.
“Oh, it’s you,” he said sleepily.
“So you’d just open the door to any stranger off the street in your underwear?” I crossed my arms, trying to not think about how hot he was practically naked and barely awake.
He yawned and gestured for me to come in, saying nothing.
As I followed him inside, I said, “Well, this is rich. By now, I’ve usually already been at the magazine for an hour preparing for the day, making lists, putting finishing edits on articles. You haven’t even gotten out of bed yet, and I’m the one who’s fired?”
He rubbed his eyes. “Coffee.”
“I get laid off from the company I have dedicated my entire adult life to, the company that you run, and all you can say is ‘Coffee’?” I was doing something uncomfortably close to shouting. Proper Southern ladies do not shout.
He put his hand up, and I didn’t want to notice his abs, but really, you couldn’t help it. On the flip side, this was the same kid who had hidden a lizard in my backpack my first day of fourth grade. I shuddered. What was wrong with me?
His Nespresso spit as I looked around. Everything was the same. Not one single knickknack or design book had moved an inch since I was in this house four years ago, though now the book covers had faded. Four years ago, I had just gotten engaged, and I had just found out Greer was dying. Four years ago, I’d found out that my dumb kid neighbor was capable of loving a woman beyond anything I could imagine. I softened toward him.
I took in my surroundings. Greer’s house. Greer’s husband. I was thrust violently back into the past. Four years ago, I’d felt a little foolish admitting how entirely obsessed I was with Greer Thaysden. But, really, who wasn’t? She’d been the account to follow on Instagram, had hosted one of the most successful podcasts on iTunes when podcasts were in their infancy. I had read her first book, like, five times, was on the waiting list for a goal-setting notebook she had collaborated with Moleskine on. Let’s just say, she was one of my idols. The one thing that I couldn’t wrap my head around was why beautiful, perfect, together Greer had married boy-next-door, little-brother-annoying Parker Thaysden. Thank goodness, though. Without that lapse in judgment, I never would have met my heroine.