It was done.
***
The rest of my day had been nonstop meetings and conference calls with Paris. I was glad to be home and looking forward to unwinding. I had just stepped out of the shower when my phone buzzed. I figured it would be Meg since I had promised I’d call her to fill her in on how everything had gone. I wrapped a towel around myself and picked it up. On cue, it was her. I opened the message and read it.
You guys at Sinclair are in hot water, Lilah. Do you know anything about this??
Attached to the message was a link to a blog post which I opened immediately. The title hit me like an uppercut to the chin.
“Sinclair Agency Posts Transphobic Tweet and Sets off Twitter Storm!”
What the hell? That wasn’t what I was expecting. It was bad, really bad. I typed out a quick response to Meg.
Thanks for the heads up. I do NOT know anything about this, but I suspect Brendan Savage might—and I intend to find out exactly who is behind this. Looks like I’m going to have to fill you in later. I have a phone call to make.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Asher
My palms were clammy and cold as I clicked on the link Lilah had just sent me. The headline alone was enough to send chills of dread running down my spine: “Sinclair Agency Posts Transphobic Tweet and Sets off Twitter Storm!”
Of course, the first thing I'd done when Lilah had sent me the link was log on to Sinclair's official Twitter account and delete the offending tweet. It contained a phrase we'd been tossing around for one of the new campaigns for a new men's cologne.
The offending phrase had been: “Conjures up images of a time when men were men.” It had only been a rough idea, part of a larger ad idea that wouldn’t have been offensive in the least had it been seen in the context of the other ad which referred to dignity, responsibility, hard work, and such. It had nothing at all to do with gender.
Someone in our company, however, had taken that isolated phrase and tweeted it. Minutes later, a transgendered blogger had caught wind of it and hammered out what I could only imagine could have been a sensationalist piece.
Luckily, the blogger didn't have many followers, and it appeared that nothing had gone viral—yet.
I hoped it would stay that way. I sent a private message to the blogger, explaining how the phrase had been taken entirely out of context, and that when taken in context, there was nothing that referred to gender, and I asked very nicely that they take their article down. I waited for an hour. The message had been marked as read, but no reply came. It became apparent that the blogger wasn't going to take their article down.
At that point, all I could do was wait. Wait and pray the situation did not go viral because then we'd have a real mess on our hands. I shot Lilah a text to keep her up to date on what I hadn’t heard from the blogger.
Keep me posted. She’d texted back.
I found my thoughts drifting to my conversation with Lilah in my office that morning. It had been good to clear the air between us, and I'd been relieved to find out that she hadn’t been romantically involved with Savage in any way. I was especially reassured by the way she’d said she had absolutely no interest in him. I wondered what that meant for me, about me.
Did it mean she had strong feelings for me? Is that why Savage never stood a chance? But if it did, why did she insist on keeping our relationship strictly professional? That had been the hardest of her demands to give in to. The other things—the salary, the company car, the promotion—they'd been easy. She was talented enough to deserve it all, even if she had only been at the company for a short time.
But in that short time, she'd done way more than merely turn my company's fortunes around. She'd turned my life around, inside out, and upside down.
I could have sworn that these intense feelings she'd awoken in me weren't one-sided. I knew it wasn't just me! It was there in her eyes; I could see it every time she looked at me. I felt it when we kissed, when we touched. That’s not something you can fake.
Even though her words had said that she wanted nothing to do with me, her eyes conveyed an entirely different message.
But despite the connection I’d felt even as she told me, despite what I had seen in her eyes, what could I do? She had laid down her dem
ands—a strictly professional relationship between us being one of them—and that was that. I had to honor her wishes and pray someday she’d change her mind.
I wasn't sure how I was going to cope. It wasn't something I had much experience with. Usually, it was a girl falling for me and leaving me to be the one who had to draw a line or end the relationship. The whole experience was new to me. I'd never felt like this with anyone else.
I knew, somehow, I just knew she felt the same. It was the strongest gut feeling I’d ever known. But until she would admit it, I was at her mercy. I was her boss, nothing more.
I sighed, poured myself a glass of whiskey, and went up to my turret to look at the stars.
***
I called Lilah into my office first thing that morning to talk about the Twitter disaster. As far as I knew, nobody else in the office knew about it. Luckily, nothing had gone viral just yet. It seemed that Lilah and I were the only ones aware of the near catastrophe, and I intended to keep it that way.