Page 79 of Secret Nights and Northern Lights
Ben shoots me another inquisitive glance as he leans forward to slide the stack across the table to Calvin. My cheeks flame. I don’t know what’s more embarrassing, the way Ben looks at me like he doesn’t know the person acting this way, or Calvin’s blatant dismissal.
Calvin flips through Ben’s photos slowly, reverently even, taking his time to study each one in depth while the rest of us practically choke on the silence. Or maybe that’s just me. Finally, Calvin wrangles the photos back into a neat stack, looks up at Ben, and says, “Truly exquisite work, Benjamin.”
Shirley writes that down.
Ben nods his head once. “Thank you, sir.”
An actual smile forms on Calvin’s stony face. “Now, I’ve told you to call me Cal,” he says—playfully?—and I’m not sure which of us has the bigger crush on Ben. Of course, Calvin’s crush is more about the money Ben stands to earn him, but still. “All right, Ms. Miller.” He straightens his tie as he addresses me. “Let’s hear it.”
My stomach somersaults. This is it. My chance to earn my promotion. To prove I’m cut out for this. To live my childhood dream. No pressure.
I clear my throat and begin. “There are two things that stood out to me about Iceland, sir. One was the overabundance of natural beauty everywhere I looked—as you can clearly see from Ben’s photos.” I catch myself saying Ben instead of Benjamin, butCalvin’s too busy beaming at him to notice. “The second thing is the personal journey—the physical, mental, and emotional one—an average person like me had to take in the pursuit of seeing these stunning places.”
I slide my outline in Calvin’s direction and, always prepared as I am, slide an extra copy to Shirley. “I’m not a hiker or an outdoor enthusiast by any stretch of the imagination, and I think that’s probably true for the majority of our subscribers. While I could simply list out a superfluous description of each place we visited, I believe this article in particular needs to incorporate more personal aspects than normally featured inAround the Globe. I want to write about how each of these sites made mefeel, and how getting there challenged me.” I pause before adding, “Iceland changed me, sir. It pushed me to my limit in about every way it possibly could, but it also rewarded me far beyond anything I could have imagined, and I think that should be the focus of this piece.”
Calvin peruses his copy of my outline, the only sound in the conference room the frantic scratching of Shirley’s pen. At the prolonged silence, my cartwheeling stomach performs gymnastic feats that would make Simone Biles proud.
When Calvin’s steely gray eyes finally look up again, any trace of his good mood from moments ago has packed up and left the building. Glancing up from her note-taking, Shirley glimpses the ominous expression transforming Calvin’s face and takes a quick hit off a vape pen, waving away the puff of smoke that momentarily obscures her face. No one says anything for the longest ten seconds of my life.
“Ms. Miller.” The chilly cadence of Calvin’s voice sends ashiver from my scalp to my toes. “Around the Globeis a respected leader in the travel journalism industry.”
“Yes, sir. I’m aware.”
“Oh. So you areawarethen that I didn’t ask for a personal essay about yourfeelingsor a quiz on which sites in Iceland you should visit based on your zodiac sign, for Christ’s sake.”
My stomach falters and crashes to the floor. “I, uh, that’s not—”
“Our readers don’t care about yourpersonal growth, Ms. Miller.”
“Actually, I think—” Ben starts to interject, but I snap my head around and nail him with a look that makes it abundantly clear I don’t want him to rescue me. He falls quiet.
I lower my voice, defeat setting in. “I just thought our readership might appreciate someone being real about the toll a trip like this can take on someone who is not athletically inclined and has zero experience with the outdoors. I wanted to show how rewarding it was to challenge myself in ways I never expected. How I gained so much more than just a trip to Iceland, and how I discovered pieces of myself I didn’t know existed.”
“No.” Calvin is persistent. Unwavering. “That’s the final answer. Get a new outline to me by the end of the week.”
The battle is over, and I went down in flames. So much for a promotion. So much for my dream of seeing the world. At this rate, I’ll be lucky to keep my old job as a Local. “Yes, sir. My apologies.”
Calvin stands and buttons his suit jacket, signaling the end of this meeting. Following his lead, Shirley gathers her pens and legal pad and vape. I clench my jaw to keep my chin from quivering. This was a goddamn disaster, and I’m humiliated and angry and too much of a coward to do anything about it.
“Oh, and Benjamin,” Calvin turns back, already halfway out the glass door. He chuckles smarmily, just the two of them in this boys’ club I’m not privy to. “Going forward, you might want to rethink your insistence Ms. Miller be the one to cover any articles you photograph for us. I hate to tell you I was right when I said she wasn’t up for an assignment of this magnitude. I apologize profusely for not being more insistent.”
My heart stutters.
Blood roars through my ears with such ferocity that my eardrums vibrate.
“Wait.What?” I swivel my chair in Ben’s direction because this must be a misunderstanding. His pleading, wide-eyed expression all but confirms that it’s not. “Youchose me? You set this all up?”
“Ems, listen to me.” He places a hand on my arm. “I was going to tell you. I wanted to tell you. But things were so good between us after all these years, and I didn’t want to screw that up.Again.”
Nausea crashes over me like an Icelandic sneaker wave. If I thought I couldn’t be more humiliated, I was so wrong. “Youliedto me. I thought fate brought us back together, but it wasn’t fate at all, it was you. You arranged this.”
“Excuse me,” Calvin’s voice booms through the glass rectangle. “You two are involved in apersonalrelationship?”
I press a hand to my churning stomach. In the corner of the room, Shirley reaches inside her blouse and pulls a cigarette and lighter from her bra, the vape pen no longer cutting it.
“I can explain,” Ben says when I don’t say anything at all, but Calvin holds his hand up again, gray eyes locked solely on mine.
“With all due respect, you don’t work for me, Benjamin. Notyetanyway. Ms. Miller does. She’s the one who needs to explain her actions here.” He releases the door and moves in my direction, his gaze a laser beam pinning me to my chair. “For Christ’s sake, when I said to recruit him, I didn’t mean by sleeping with him!”
