I don’t let Jenna finish. “You can move back in whenever you want!” I say. I’m not thinking about Jake at all. I’m thinking instead about the fun that Jenna and I used to have. How we used to go for jogs along the water, or out to brunch after a night out. I miss those days. They seem so much simpler.
“No, I need to tell you, I seriously fucked up, Alicia,” Jenna tells me, sitting me down. I remain silent. “I believed Jake when he told me you were purposely withholding sex from him and using him to get him to do things for you. That you were using sex as a weapon over him.”
I gasp. “I never even…” I’m about to continue when Jenna shushes me.
“I get that now. It took me a long time but when I heard how he attacked you, I was glad that he’d stopped calling me after you guys broke up. I’ve been wanting to apologize ever since for what I did,” she says.
I’m about to tell Jenna that I forgive her when she continues, as if she’s reciting something that she prepared. “But I knew I couldn’t just come back and say sorry,” she says. “I had to make a gesture to show you that I meant it.”
Now I’m silent.
She takes a deep breath.
“It took a lot of work, and literally getting my Dad to talk to everyone he knows from his business contacts, but I think I got it,” she says, and pulls out an envelope from her duffel bag.
“I submitted some of your recent work and got it shown to the right people. There’s an interview ready for you as a Senior Politics Reporter at The New York Sun, if you want it.”
Oh, my. I don't know what to say. I can’t even begin to fathom how Jenna was able to get the necessary contacts to get me this opportunity to work with the most prestigious newspaper in the country. Literally, the paper of record for the United States of America. I’m literally speechless.
“It was hard,” she says, as if hearing my thoughts. “It literally took four months of digging while I lived at home, but it was worth it,” she says.
I don’t know what to say, so I barely manage a “Thank you, Jenna.”
She nods. “I needed you to know how sorry I was,” she says to me, looking me in the eyes. “And I knew you were miserable writing gossip, so I put everything I had to make a grand gesture to show you.”
I reach over to hug her. I have so much to tell her.
But what she said to be starts tickling at my brain. She was sorry. She made a grand gesture to show me how much.
It’s an idea that noodles around my brain while we open a bottle of wine and talk about our lives in the last four months.
It’s an idea that I wrestle with as I tell her all about Derrick and she consoles me.
It becomes a plan as we make dinner together.
And it gets me sitting at my desk after dinner, with Jenna’s blessing as I put it into fruition.
The next morning, I walk into work. There are some stares in my direction. People have either heard about what went down with Derrick yesterday from the newspapers or they’ve heard about Samantha’s meeting with Mike, Danielle, and me.
Whatever. I’m not some fragile little girl. I’m a force of nature today.
I walk into Mike’s office and he looks up and smiles at me.
“Tomorrow’s column,” I say and hand him my piece. He takes it and reads it.
Then he reads it again. And again.
Finally, he looks at me.
“You’ll probably get fired for this, Alicia,” he says. “I won’t stop you from running with it, but I won’t be able to protect you.”
I nod. I could probably be throwing away my chance at the most prestigious newspaper in the country, The New York Sun, as well with this piece. But that’s my grand gesture. “I know,” I tell him.
Then I walk out the door.
Derrick
“All rise,” the Bailiff announces as the entire courtroom gets to its feet and an elderly looking judge comes in from his office attached to the back. The Bailiff continues. “The Honorable Judge Walter E. Byrd is now presiding over the Federal Court for the 10th Circuit. Please be seated.”