Page 107 of Bad Words

But I typed, I saw the review. Have you been hunted down with pitchforks yet? People love that book.

And she said, almost immediately, Sorry, can’t talk. Being burned at the stake.

And I saw her there, at a desk that I imagined was spotless smoked glass, and I pictured her hair bound in a knot at the base of her skull, and I saw her in that silken navy dress she’d worn when she’d come to my apartment last weekend, and its neck was open, and there was a seed pearl necklace sinking into the dip between her collarbones, and she had that secretive half smile on her lips as she looked down at her phone. My imagination was so full of her it felt halfway to inspiration.

Chapter Twenty-TwoSelina

I shouldn’t have been responding to Parker this way.

I was a curiosity on the edge of his life. Any given evening we didn’t text, he might be curling up around Emily Shapiro, on his sofa, in her bed. When I was in line at the grocery store or descending the subway steps, I’d imagine them like that. His hair messy from the way she’d run her fingers through it. Her fingers spread against his naked chest, his hand gripping her waist or thigh. They were going on sweet, wholesome dates for nice people. She was kissing confectioner’s sugar off his mouth. His mouth—he’d tilt it easily against hers.

This was humiliating.

I had never felt so humiliated in my life as I did by this: spending hours texting a man who was in the act of falling for somebody else, because whatever he gave me still felt better than nothing.

Since my apology, we’d been texting every day, and I’d begun to accept, torturously, that he wanted to be friends. Why had I done this to myself? I didn’t want to be his friend, although, yes, of course I did, because nobody had ever managed to make me laugh so often, alone in my apartment, pausing at the cutting board, wiping slivers of carrot from the tips of my thumbs over and over again so I could answer him, rendering my life slower and more inconvenient and, undeniably, happier.

Apparently I didn’t just enjoy his company. Apparently I wanted the version of my life that had him woven into it.

I told myself it was better this way. Even if he had been single, and miraculously interested in me despite everything we’d said to each other, the optics around getting involved with a writer I’d reviewed seemed less than favorable.

Yes: much cleaner to be friends, and stamp out these feelings in my own time. I just had to hope they faded before I made myself sick with sleep loss. I was spending a few nights a week at the Slippery Cork now, soothed by the rhythms of my fellow regulars. “What’s with you?” Nadia asked one night, replacing the dartboard where Haunted Santa had been.

“Why?”

“You’re here all the time.”

“No reason,” I said.

“Okay,” she said, and when she didn’t push, I felt embarrassed by my disappointment.

January was coming to a cold, dry conclusion, and the City office was somber. So far, I’d been spared getting assigned to the listicles and what Kellie referred to as “the drama beat,” but I knew my days were numbered. Hayden now sat beside Scott at the round table during our meetings, vetoing idea after idea. Her vetoes were met with a dull, resigned silence. We all knew about the rent hike, now.

In the first week of February, Hayden turned to me at a pitch meeting, and I knew that my time had run out.

“Selina, I have a proposition for you. Hear me out.”

“Promising way to start a proposition.”

She held up a hand. “I’ve been mulling this over, and I think you should request an interview with Parker Navarro, with his new book coming out.”

The sound of his name surprised me into silence.

“Okay, no immediate objection! That’s a good sign.”

I sighed. “I’m listening.”

To my left, Kellie cocked an eyebrow. Her wry looks always had this grim edge to them, these days. “Could be interesting,” she said. “You two could talk about what last fall was like.”

“As long as you can both keep it civil for an hour or so,” said Scott.

“Okay, but is civil interesting?” said Hayden. She tapped her pen on the round table, a rhythmic tick, tick. “I mean, he spent a lot of time bad-mouthing you in fall. You kept it pretty clean, pretty focused on his book. But this guy is just like all mediocre men who think they deserve to fail up, right? If we can show how entitled—”

“No,” I said.

She broke off. The rest of the staff glanced my way.

I avoided their eyes. “A … mutual acquaintance gave me a better sense of his background. I’d given him flak for his advance, but he used a lot of it to help his family.”