He put his hand flat on his desk.
“I can’t see how that’s any of your business.”
She walked closer to his desk.
“Oh, really? You can’t? Because you are my business, everything about you is. I can only be as good at my job as you allow me to be. Did you know about this?”
Oh shit, this was what Kara looked like when she was mad. He’d forgotten that. She was usually so calm and collected.
“Yeah, I knew. She told me early on.”
Kara nodded, opened her mouth, closed it, and nodded again.
“Okay. Good, that was smart of her, I’m glad to know she was watching out for you. Now I know which one of you to be mad at. Because, if you knew that, why the FUCK didn’t you tell me?” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “My apologies, sir. I didn’t mean to say that.”
He just looked at her.
“Yeah you did, don’t give me that ‘I’m sorry, sir’ bullshit. It happened when she was a teenager, and those records are sealed, so I thought it wasn’t relevant.”
Plus, he hadn’t wanted to make this whole thing even worse for her.
Kara sat down in the chair across from him.
“Sealing records means nothing if you have people who know and who will talk, which is I’m sure how this reporter got hold of this story. If only we’d known this, we could have prepared for it; I could have talked to Olivia in advance, we could have maybe even controlled the release, depending on what she’d said, but now . . . Do you know what people will say about your criminal justice bill now? Not to mention what will happen to her.” She let out a breath and stood up. “I’m sorry, I know you didn’t want to hear that, but I had to prepare you. At least the news cycle the rest of the summer will be so bananas that I think this might be a few days of stories and that’s all. But Ms. Monroe should know this is coming.”
He closed his eyes and nodded. Dread filled the pit of his stomach at the thought of telling Olivia this.
“I know. I’ll call her.”
Kara walked across the room and opened his door, but before she walked out, he raised a hand to stop her.
“Kara.”
She closed the door again and looked at him.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She nodded.
“I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have said . . . most of what I just said. But . . .” She shook her head. “I’m just going to tell that reporter my standard ‘no comment,’ just FYI.”
He had to call Olivia right away. Before a reporter did. Or . . . oh shit, had a reporter already called her?
He picked up the phone.
She answered right away.
“Hey, I was just about to call you—I got a weird message from some reporter, and it’s been a few weeks since that happened, do you know what this is about?”
Shit, she sounded so relaxed and cheerful. How was he going to tell her this?
“Yeah, I know. Olivia . . .”
He should have told Kara. It didn’t have to be a big thing, he knew he could trust Kara not to tell anyone. He should have done everything in his power to protect Olivia.
“What is it? What happened?” He could hear the change in her voice.
He just had to let it out.
“There’s going to be a story coming out soon—Kara just got a call about it—about your arrest as a teenager. We’re saying ‘No comment’, and you should do that, too, or just don’t say anything at all, but Olivia, I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry” seemed like such an inadequate word.
“I see. Okay. That’s . . .” She was quiet for a moment. “Okay. I thought the worst was over, that’s all. And this timing couldn’t be worse, our big pitch to Clementine is tomorrow.” She sighed. “Damn it. I wish you were here.”
She sounded so stunned. He’d never heard her like this before.
“I wish I was there, too. This is all my fault. I hate that you’re going to have to deal with this because of me.”
He really should have thought of this. Why did he have to do it all so fast? This was what he had staff for, damn it.
“It’s not your fault,” she said. “I should have assumed someone would be nosy and dig this up. I guess I just wasn’t thinking.”
Fuck, he had to tell her this part, too.
“I have to apologize: I never told my staff about this, and I should have. They would have prepped you—us—for all of this.”
There was a long silence on the phone. So long he wasn’t sure if she was still there.
“Olivia?”
“Yeah, I’m here,” she said. “I’m just . . . kind of stunned. You didn’t tell them? I thought you talked to your staff before the Hollywood Bowl? Didn’t you think they should know this? My God, I would have told Kara if I knew you hadn’t!”
He had nothing to say. Well, nothing good to say, anyway.
“I hoped no one would have to know. I didn’t want you to have to deal with all of this. I did talk to my staff—well, Kara—but . . . obviously not enough.”
She laughed, but there was no amusement there.
“Yeah, obviously. Okay, well, I guess I’ll just see what this story is, and figure out how to deal with it.”
He hated that it was only Tuesday. He wouldn’t get to see her until Friday night. She was so mad at him, and there was nothing he could do, and he felt like if he was there and they could talk about it and maybe she could yell at him some, they could resolve this a lot faster.
“Can Kara call you? She’s as mad at me as you are, but she’ll be able to give you good advice on how to deal with everything.”
Olivia sighed.
“Yeah, that’s a good idea. Have her call me.”
He noticed she didn’t deny she was mad at him. She was right to be mad at him. He knew that. He just wished she wasn’t.
“Okay, I should probably call my family now,” she said. “Just so they know this is out there. And so my dad doesn’t yell at a reporter if they call him.”
Oh God, her family. He hadn’t even met her parents yet, and they were going to hate him.
“I love you. Talk to you tonight?”
There was silence for a moment.
“I love you, too, but maybe not tonight. I’m going to try to relax and get to bed early so I’m in good shape for the pitch.”
He wished there was something he could do about that defeated tone in her voice.
“Okay, tomorrow, then. And I hope you kick ass on the pitch.”
“Thanks,” she said.
“I love you,” he said again. But she’d already hung up.
Wednesday morning, Ellie picked Olivia up on the way to their pitch at Clementine.
“It’s not too late to cancel, you know,” Ellie said when Olivia got in the car.
“You know as well as I do that if we postpone this pitch, it would be the same thing as canceling it,” Olivia said to Ellie.
If only the pitch had been scheduled for next week. By then, hopefully everything would have died down some—that’s what Kara had told her, anyway, and she trusted Kara not to bullshit her. But apparently the universe had conspired against her.
She’d seen only a few of the stories about her arrest, and they all seemed predictably titillated by a teenager who broke into her high school twenty years ago. She’d anticipated that—people had always reacted that way, and she’d seen what the media did to other Black women, after all—but she hadn’t realized just how much it would all hurt her. And she hadn’t prepared herself—enough, anyway—for the stories referring to her high school “in the ghetto,” or the one suggesting she’d manipulated Max into a relationship with her. And all of this just because she happened to be a Black woman who fell in love with a famous, attractive white man.