Dr. Stud

She takes a deep, calming breath and pulls her heels up to sit pretzel style on the sofa. She hides her face in her hands. A few more seconds elapse while my heart races wildly. Too much is happening here. She pulls her hands away from her eyes all of a sudden and breathes in sharply.

“Well you know Hannah called me to her office… right after the, um, event.”

“Yes… go on…”

“She wanted to tell me the merger is done. We did it. She got the papers and everything.”

“That's great!” Emmet declares, probably a little bit too loudly for the room. I shoot him a look and he shrugs apologetically, his lips stretching over gritted teeth.

“Yeah, it is great,” Bella sighs. “Everything we did worked out. We stayed at the top of the news cycle for the last three weeks, almost, and somehow you guys are magically transformed. Especially you, Emmet. You're like Prince Charming now. Google couldn't wait to scoop up your brand.”

I nod, unsure what to say. I hear the little bit of sourness in her voice.

“We did it,” I repeat quietly.

Her eyes flicker up to meet mine, wide and wet. In this state, there's almost nothing between us. No defenses, no invisible curtain, nothing. Here she is, wounded. I fight the urge to pull her into my arms and hold her tight.

“And then…” I prompt her gently.

“And then…” she closes her eyes, taking a deep breath that takes a long, long time. Her fingertips pluck at the fabric of her yoga pants over and over again. “But I guess our agreement was just… well at least you guys got what you wanted.”

“Wait, hold on,” Emmet objects. “We didn't… I mean, yes, we did get what we wanted. I'll have to look over the papers and everything, but if the merger is complete then that's true. But you have something too, right? Your agreement with Hannah? With us?”

She shakes her head, pressing her lips into a line.

“Yeah, didn't you have it ready to go? Your novel? Your change to more personal journalism?” I continue. “It's a natural thing, Bella.”

“I thought so too,” she whispers. “But apparently I'm just… I'm just a writer. She says it's up to Google. She doesn't have authority to say yes.”

“That's bullshit,” Emmet declares.

“You don’t need her authority to say yes,” I shake my head. “You already did it. You already wrote the book, right? Is it finished? Is it ready to go?”

Her mouth opens like she's going to speak, but then she stops. She balls her hands into fists and I reach out automatically, taking them in mine. I can feel her trembling through her core, a bone deep shudder that seems to erupt from somewhere deep inside her.

“She says she owns it.”

“Owns what?” Emmet asks, annoyingly clueless.

“My book. What I've been writing… she says that it's work product. Since I worked for her while I wrote it, she owns it.”

“Well that's —”

“And then when I refused to give it to her to be chopped into hundred-word sections and hidden on the bottom of the page, she fired me.”

She stares at me, helpless, silently pleading with her eyes.

“Do you understand?” she asks in a shuddering whisper. “I had a book, now I don't. I had a job, now I don't. I had a plan, and now…”

“Okay, that's bullshit,” Emmet declares.

She starts to glance at him, but I reach up and take her cheek in my hand, drawing her attention back to me.

“Don't look at him, he's being an insensitive ass,” I command her, drawing out at least a little bit of a smile. “She doesn't own your book, okay? Let’s say that first. And maybe she did you a favor.”

“She says she does own the book,” Bella counters. “And I have no plan.”

“Planning is my middle name,” I boast. (It's not, really. My middle name is actually Drew.)