Page 49 of Meet Cute or Your Money Back

Soleil never requests in person meetings with me. At worst, I get a phone call from her. At best, we correspond mostly via email.

“Hey! Ms. Larsen!” a young voice pulls me out of my spiraling thoughts that I’m being fired and when I look up, I see the teenage boy who tried to rob Thatcher and me standing outside the building. His bike is perched next to him and he has a parcel tucked under his arm.

“Logan, right?”

“Yeah! Good memory.” His cheeks tinge a little pink. “I wanted to say thanks again for giving me this chance.”

“So it’s going well? Being our bike messenger?”

He nods. “Your boss has already given me more gigs. More responsibility.”

“That’s amazing, Logan. Congratulations.”

“Thanks. Well…I, um, I better go. Need to get this across town in thirty minutes.”

“Don’t let me keep you!” I step aside as he straps a beat-up looking helmet to his chin and throws his leg over the bicycle, taking off into traffic. I watch him pedal away, something akin to pride warming my chest.

I take a deep breath and push through the heavy glass doors to head up to Soleil’s office where she’s already waiting for me, clacking at her keyboard from behind her desk. Somehow, she spots me before I’m barely in the doorway and beckons me inside with a crook of her finger.

“Allie! Sit.”

I do what she says and take a seat across from her in the empty armchair. Before I can say hello, she spins her iPad around and shows me the images I tried to take at the gala. “What the hell are these?”

I grimace, looking at the blurry images that are nearly indecipherable. I can kind of make out Thatcher’s general shape in the corner of the picture, but his tuxedo combined with his dark hair and the way my hand moved as I took the shot created a blurry mess.

“Okay, so the lighting was bad and my hand might have been a little shaky,” I start, my fingers playing an anxious rhythm on the table, betraying my nonchalance as she clicks through the measly four photographs I emailed to her earlier today.

Soleil’s brow furrows as she peers down at the gala’s blurry evidence before her. “Allie, these look like they were taken during an earthquake.” She looks up, eyes filled with a mix of exasperation and amusement.

“Or maybe the socialites were just dancing really, really fast?” I offer with a hopeful grin, knowing full well that myattempt to capture the essence of the high-society event has fallen flat.

Soleil leans back in her chair, arms crossed over her chest, yet a smile tugs at the corners of her lips. “High-quality photos, Allie. That’s what brings an article to life,” she says, her voice firm but not unkind. “These look like abstract art.”

I nod, feeling the weight of her expectations settle on my shoulders, even as my mind buzzes with potential solutions. “I get it, high-quality or go home. No more action shots unless the action is standing still.” My comment lands with a soft chuckle from Soleil, which feels like encouragement enough.

“Exactly,” Soleil agrees, her tone softening. “You have a real talent for storytelling. We just need pictures that don’t require a magnifying glass and some imagination to interpret.”

“Okay, but…”

Soleil’s brows lift. She’s not used to hearing people argue with her. Especially not when they’re as low on the hierarchy as me. “But?”

“But I signed a contract stating pretty explicitly no pictures. I don’t know how we’re supposed to get high-quality images of these matchmaking dates while protecting the faces of everyone around me, Thatcher included.”

Soleil’s mouth presses into a firm line. “You’re not wrong,” she says quietly, tapping her pen to her bottom lip in thought. “Initially, I thought it’d be enough to blur everyone’s faces, but that’s not really a compelling visual story either. What’s the point in having you take crystal clear, high-quality images if we’re going to blur all thefaces. No…what we need is your face in the photographs since it’s the only one we can show.”

“But how am I supposed to take photos of myself on these dates?” I ask, worrying my bottom lip.

“You need to enlist help. A friend. Confidant. Someone who can fly under the radar and capture some good images from afar while you’re on these dates without rousing suspicion from Thatcher.”

“Understood,” I reply with a nod, already going through the short list of people I trust to orchestrate a photo redemption. Abby. She’s really the only person I fully trust. Plus, she already knows about the article. It’d be the easiest to explain if we get caught. “I’ll fix this, Soleil. I promise.”

She gives me a long look, seeming to measure the sincerity of my pledge. Then, nodding, she waves a hand toward the bustling room beyond. “Go on, then. Work your magic, Larsen. And I still expect a thousand words on that new fusion place by tomorrow.”

“Consider it done.”

Evening drapesthe city in a cloak of twinkling stars and neon buzz. When I walk into the jazz-infused sanctuary of La Cucina di Lucia on Tuesday night, it’s like stepping into a different world. A world where clinking glasses orchestrate a rhythmic backdrop to the soft crooning of old-world Italian music, setting my heart on a jittery dance of its own.

“Kenneth,” I greet when I see him already seated at a table. He rises from his seat wearing a well-tailored suit that hugs his frame and a smile that could light the dimmest corner of this place.

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