Scandalized(68)
* * *
“We cannot use his account,” I say to Billy as soon as I burst into his fourth-floor office. I feel a hundred pairs of eyes on me and close the door even though everything is glass and there is no such thing as privacy here. My suitcase falls heavily over where I’ve left it, but I ignore it. “Do not add it.”
My editor lets out a booming “Fuck!” into the air and stands, rounding his desk to stare out his office door in frustrated silence for several aggravated moments. “You can’t talk him out of it? It would clear his name.”
“I can’t even get ahold of him anymore.” I don’t bother hiding the sob, and my knees buckle so that I sit gracelessly onto the couch against one wall. Out of the car, away from Yael, I feel my composure slipping. “I don’t know what to do. I’ve been completely cut off.”
Across the room, Billy goes silent. Long enough for me to count to ten, and I know now he’s noticed my suitcase. “Shit, Georgia. You two?”
“I tried to tell you last night and chickened out.” I cover my face. I’m too devastated to be ashamed. “I’ve known him since I was seven, Billy. We ran into each other in Seattle, and I didn’t know he was involved until after we…”
“Shit. Shit.”
“Billy, it was my call to pull his account—he didn’t know,” I admit, keeping my voice as steady as possible. “I was trying to protect him and also not rely on information I obtained from someone I was sleeping with. And now that he’s being ripped to shreds online, his team worries that if he comes forward, it looks like he’s just covering his ass unless he gives a name, and he doesn’t want to come out and say that Sunny was drugged and assaulted.”
Billy’s seething anger ripples across the distance separating us. “You’re telling me you decided to cut this? Without my input, and without asking your source?”
God, this is such a mess. I swallow a sob because Billy doesn’t want to see me cry right now. “Yes, I did.”
“This story is too big, and you are too green to make that call.” The disappointment in Billy’s voice is gutting. “Your relationship to a primary source in a story like this is the kind of stuff you disclose to me, George. I can help you if you tell me—I can’t help you if you don’t.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
Billy moves back around his desk, falling into his chair and gripping his forehead.
“He’s not a creep,” I say. I feel sick. My insides swim.
“Doesn’t matter if you and I are the only ones who know it. It doesn’t look good.”
“He went in there to get his sister out.” Urgency, panic, heartache: they all swarm like angry bees in my chest. “You know this.”
“It doesn’t matter if we don’t have it on the record!” Billy slaps a flattened palm to his desk. “His association with Anders is bad. It’s all bad, George. He’s really gonna take the hit?”
I nod, staring down at my hands. “Looks like it.”
“This is fucking wild, man. Eventually he’ll be cleared, but who knows what it does to his career in the meantime?”
“I know. I feel helpless.” More than helpless, I feel like I want to climb out of my own skin. I want to go back to last night and talk this through with Billy. I want to go back to early this morning at the Waldorf Astoria and yank Alec into my arms. I can’t imagine what he’s going through right now, and I can’t be with him while he goes through it. I can’t even apologize, because he’s not taking my calls.
You’re going to make me love you, aren’t you?
I’m sure going to try.
Oh my God. A sob tears up my throat as I struggle to hold it down. I want to eat my own fist and punch down the pain.
“It looks bad,” he says again. It’s sinking in for Billy. I can hear his conviction gathering steam. “You’re going to have to stay the hell away from him.”
“I know.” I bite my lips until I’m sure I can get the next words out without crying. “I don’t think that will be a problem.”
* * *
It’s mayhem at the office; everyone wants to congratulate me. No one understands the gravity of what’s happening with Alec; for all they know—and because he won’t come forward—he’s just another trash-can human being rightfully dragged for his sins. It’s painful battling my way from Billy’s office, through the sea of cubicles, and back out to the street to catch a Lyft. Nearly everyone who comes up to me to say something nice, to congratulate me, to pass along their praise is my senior in some way. I’m still considered the scrappy new kid. Some of these people are writers I’ve admired for years. I can only hope that every single one reads my watery eyes and warbling voice as the good kind of overwhelmed exhaustion.
For the first twenty minutes after I get home, I have no idea what to do with myself. I want to leave my body through sleep but am not tired. I want to eat away this hollow ache in my gut but even the thought of food makes me nauseated. I want to distract myself with work, but I have nothing to write. Alec still hasn’t read my texts. The pictures have now spread past social media and are on the news—shared with my headline.