Leaning back to sip my coffee, a tiny movement out of the corner of my eye made me jump, almost spilling down my shirt. “Jesus,” I muttered, setting the mug down before I scalded myself. “You scared me. Come over and sit with me.”
“No.”
I turned to see that Alice’s bottom lip was trembling, and her pale hands were in fists by her sides. She looked absolutely beautiful in a dark silver gray dress that was quietly elegant. A bit dressy to be going to a therapist, but it would make her cinnamon hair stand out on camera.
I quickly realized that the furious look in her eyes was probably due to my phone conversation, but I wasn’t sure how much she overheard from my side.
“How could you tell me that you love me while you’re lying to me?” she whispered, backing slowly away.
“I never lied,” I said, standing up and taking a step toward her. To my horror, she took another step away.
“Alice, I was going to tell you everything as soon as the show was over. I just didn’t want to put extra stress on you while we’re muddling through this thing.”
She made a disgusted snort and rolled her eyes. “That’s always the case. Men keeping information away from women so that they can control them. Like how my boss at the coffee shop won’t tell us the schedule until the last minute, so he can pretend he’s important. Or how my first year professor would email assignments to the guys, but make each woman come into his office and beg for it.”
“Baby, it’s not like that at all.”
“So you and Gary and Darlene are going to take over the TV station? Why?”
“It seems like it,” I said gently. Sitting back down on the couch, I tried to appear relaxed, to put her at ease. “Gary and Darlene are my cousins. I’m an only child, so those two are vaguely like my younger siblings. When my grandfather passed away a few years ago, his lawyers laid out the weirdly intricate terms of our inheritance.”
She stopped backing away, leaning against the door frame as she scowled.
“We hadn’t even known that he’d owned that derelict station. We all had different ideas of what to do with it. Darlene wanted to do entertainment programming with her husband, Darrell. I didn’t care one way or the other. Gary wanted to find a way to flatten it and sell the land to a strip mall corporation.”
Alice’s mouth fell open. “That’s horrible.”
“Yes, well, that’s why I came on board. To help the two of them work it out. We figured that if the TV station was functional, even just as a studio producing online content, we could see how much land was actually needed. Technology has come a long way since Grandpa’s time. We figured maybe sometime down the road, we could sell off the extra parking lots, while keeping most of the production facilities.”
“And you had to make a show to fulfill the terms of his Will?” she asked. “It’s not an experimental show, it’s a greedy cash grab.”
“A popular educational show,” I clarified. “It’s to prove that we’re actually interested in the station itself, and creating content. The terms were both precise and vague in different ways. We had our lawyers and Grandpa’s lawyers settle on some reasonable numbers. Gary got some students to do a bunch of media planning, and the numbers are incredible.” I waved to the big screen TV while Alice stared in disbelief.
“That can’t be right,” she muttered.
“It is,” I sighed heavily. “There goes my big dream of being completely anonymous online. We’ve practically gone viral.”
Her pretty eyes looked glassy while she blinked quickly, as if she w
as trying not to cry. “Dammit. If my roommates think that I’m making much money from this, they’re going to jack my rent again.”
“Alice, you can stay here as–”
She held up her hand. “I cannot believe you didn’t tell me you’re related to them. That you have such a huge personal stake in this.” It killed me that tears were filling her eyes. “You can’t tell me you love me while you’ve been lying to me,” she said again. “It doesn’t work. I don’t know if…” She shook her head. “I need some space.”
Grabbing her coat and shoes, she was out the door in a flash.
Sitting there completely dumbfounded, I didn’t know what to do. I needed to chase after her and explain, but once a woman says she needs some space, that’s that. That much I do know.
I could only sit still for ten more seconds, then threw on my shoes and raced out the door.
Running down the driveway to the street, I looked in both directions, but Alice was completely gone. Even after calling her name a few times, she had simply vanished.
The worst thing of all was that the wind had picked up, and she didn’t have a warm coat with her. I could handle her being furious with me, and even wanting to be away from me for a while.
But the thought of Alice and her freezing little fingers out there all alone made me completely nauseated with panic.
11