Scandalized

“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.

I barely move. I stare up at my ceiling, at the fan that goes around and around and around, wishing for nothing more than the distance of time. I remember this feeling after Spence—the helpless, skin-clawing crawl of time passing after heartbreak. Wanting to skip all the pain and anguish. And on top of it, there is guilt this time, knowing that a choice I made without asking has complicated things for Alec. I snatched an easy explanation right out of his hands.

And all I can do is sit in the pain, breathing through it. Remembering the sound of his voice and the weight of his hands, the heat of him in the bath last night and his lazy, slippery kisses. I can only let this hurt and anger and sadness pass through me. I know I didn’t imagine what happened between us, and I’m worried this is it for us. I’m worried about him.

I wonder whether he’ll get written out of the show, whether the network will back him up, whether there is some other way to clear his name that doesn’t involve Sunny. I wonder all of these things for him in a flurry, hoping that he can make it out the other side all the while knowing that if the media is unkind, the internet is a mass of bloodthirsty savages. Every minute that passes without Alec fixing this is a year off his life as an actor.

I’m in the middle of a mental tornado when Eden walks into my room. “I thought you were at work.”

“I was,” she says. “I came home.” Dark circles carve shadows beneath her eyes; she looks like she is about to fall over. She looks worse than I feel. “Have you seen Twitter?”

“I saw his pics, yeah. It’s not what it looks like.”

She shakes her head and hands me her phone, and I don’t even feel satisfied to have been right that we were not anonymous on the beach. That the stupid-hat-and-sunglasses trick did not hide our identities when we went out for doughnuts. And that no matter how many times Alec looked over my shoulder at the bar in Seattle, he still missed the cell phone pointed right at us.

Nineteen

Alec sitting across the low bar table from me, our hands are joined over the center, eyes locked.

Alec pinning me against the rock cliff, his hand grasping my waist, mouth sweetly pressed to mine.

Alec in sunglasses and a baseball hat, laughing as I feed him a bite of doughnut.

Me reaching to wipe a smudge of chocolate from the corner of Alec’s mouth.

All these perfect memories have been posted by TMZ for the whole world to see. Their carefully curated collection, shared in a single tweet, has nearly five thousand retweets and ten times as many likes in only two hours.

I’ve seen the internet dogpile before, but I’ve never even been a close bystander. Now, in the same tweets that contain thinly veiled rape accusations against Alec, I am accused of covering up his crimes, of using my position at the LA Times to shelter a criminal. With the photos of him outside Jupiter, it is a veritable bloodbath now. Eden has already had to delete all of the social media apps from my phone because I was starting to hyperventilate.

Two hours later, still numb and reeling, I’m walking to the kitchen for a glass of water when my phone rings. I’ve been expecting this call at some point from Billy, but adrenaline makes me light-headed anyway and I perch carefully at the edge of the couch. I can’t decide whether this call took more or less time to arrive than I expected.

He’s silent for a good five seconds before saying only, “Hey, George.”

My voice is hoarse from yelling into the void of my bedroom. “Hey.” I close my eyes and pull my brain into order. “I bet I know why you’re calling. We need to craft a response plan.”