Page 126 of The Thing About My Prince
“She’s the executive editor ofThe Sentinel, but I’ve never met her. Why?”
“That’s who this message says it’s from.”
“Hilarious.”
“Seriously,” she says, then reads from my phone. “‘Hi Lexi, this is Amanda Lagden fromTheSentinel. Hope you don’t mind me contacting you out of the blue, but your number was passed on to me. Do you have an hour free to meet this week?’”
“What? Is that some weird scam?” I push myself upright and take the phone from Becca to read it for myself. “Hm. It’s not written like a scam.”
“Could Julian have put in a good word for you?”
“Maybe. No one else knows I’m suddenly jobless. And it’snot like Amanda Lagden’s ever heard of me. Even if she had, there’s no reason for her to come seek me out. I don’t have a revered reporting reputation among New York’s journalism elite. I’m just one of hundreds of other writers in this city.”
“It’s good though, right?” Becca gets up and walks to her bedroom. “Timing doesn’t get much better than that,” she adds from out of sight.
“Or more suspicious.” I can’t stop reading the message over and over. There’s something not right about this.
“Well, things are looking up.” Becca emerges from her room, pajama bottoms replaced by leggings. “I’m going to get us breakfast.” She grabs her jacket from the closet by the door and pulls it on over her pajama top while shoving her bare feet into a pair of boots. “This calls for celebratory bacon, egg, and cheese bagels.”
My stomach growls. “That sounds perfect.”
It’s the right thing to say, the brave face I need to put on. But I’m not sure I’ll actually be able to swallow solid food, or whether my churning guts will hold on to it.
“And you can text Amanda back and tell her you’ll see her tomorrow. Because I’m officially declaring today a rot day.” She circles her finger, indicating my general appearance, then grimaces and disappears out of the door.
I stare at my phone again and try to make my brain come up with an appropriate reply, but it feels like all my gray matter has been swirled around, driven over by a truck, and is now being asked to write outHamletwith word-for-word accuracy.
Of course I’ll meet with her. I would have done that even if I still had my job atThe Current. If Amanda Lagden asks to see you, you don’t turn her down.
The Sentinelis definitely on the up. It has a rising readership, and the owners seem interested in investing in quality investigative journalism—a rarity these days. Plus, they have cool modern offices in the Flatiron district that are a far cryfromThe Current’s rundown ones in a location where the wind whips off the Hudson and straight through the rattly windows every winter.
But still…maybe I’ve become overly suspicious or cynical, or maybe it’s the unexpected strength of the pain from Oliver saying goodbye in such a weak and ill-defined way, but deep in my gut, there’s something about this that seems a bit odd.
“I could not be more delighted to have you on board,” Amanda says, rising from behind her white desk next to a huge window that looks over the east side of Madison Square Park and has a glimpse of the Empire State Building.
The last time I saw that from a window, I was in Oliver’s apartment.
I shove the thought from my head and struggle to my feet, still reeling, shocked, and at a loss for words, even though Amanda and I have been talking for more than an hour about the six-week contract in Yemen she’s offered me. An offer I’ve accepted.
“It’s enough time to figure out if we’re a good fit for each other and if coverage of that part of the world gets good readership,” she says. “And enough time for you to decide if a location like that is right for you.”
“I’m certain this is one hundred percent right for me.” I take her offered hand and shake it. “It’s everything I’ve always wanted.”
And everything I thought had been ripped from me just two days ago.
Amanda’s not even concerned about the topless hot dog blow job photos because she knows the editor-in-chief who published them and had persuaded him to agree to take down the article before I even got here.
Talk about a roller coaster of a month.
I’ve gone from Julian offering me the job of my dreams to being unemployed to getting a great new opportunity, all in the space of a few weeks. Not to mention a brief stint as a prince’s memoir writer, his fake and then real girlfriend, a public trashing of me by his family, and a bit of minor falling for him—okay, major falling for him—along the way.
Well, this is one way to help me get over a broken heart, I guess. Go to Yemen to report on people much less fortunate than me and highlight their plight, which puts my nonsense thoroughly into perspective.
This job is going to consume every cell of my brain and every waking moment of the day, so there won’t be a single second to think about what might have been.
But, right now, even standing here in Amanda’s office, I don’t quite feel the thrill I always thought would go with an opportunity like this—one I’ve worked my whole career for.
The overwhelming excitement I always thought it would bring is tempered by the heavy ache pulling down on my belly and the hollowness in my chest. Neither of which I can imagine ever fully shaking off.
