Page 18 of The Enemies With Benefits Deal

“Maybe you need to give him a little bit of grace. This is the company he’s been working for his entire life, and you’re coming in and looking to change everything.”

I drop the tassel. “That’s the thing, though. I’m not trying to change everything. I’m trying to bring back the energy the paper used to have. It was filled with community and connection before it started making a lot of money. The man who owns it made over a billion dollars from that company alone.”

“And look at where it’s gotten him.” Mom reaches out and takes my hand, giving it a squeeze. “He’s now looking at a failing company that had to bring in your brilliant mind to rescue it.”

I roll my eyes but lean closer to her, tucking myself into her side as her fingers comb through my hair. “I don’t know how I’m going to get through the next two and a half months.”

“Give yourself and everyone around you some grace. You don’t have to be the best at everything you do, and if you loosen the reins and allow this Grayson man to input some of his ideas, you might like what you come up with together.”

“You might be right about that.” I groan and close my eyes. “I wish I could stay here tonight, but I’ve got a meeting with Paloma later — she’s helping me with the website design.”

Mom gets up, tucking a couple pillows beneath my head in place of her side. “You just stay there and relax a little bit. I have dinner ready to go in the oven, and it shouldn’t take more than twenty minutes to heat up.”

When she comes back into the living room, she sprawls on the other couch, turning on the television to one of my favorite shows.

I giggle along with her to the laugh track, starting to feel better about the way the last two weeks have gone.

As much as I want this transformation to be a smooth process, I came into it knowing that I was going to have an uphill battle on my hands.

It’s finally time to embrace that.

Paloma opens the door to her apartment an hour after I leave Mom’s house. She gives me a once-over, opening the door wider.“You better tell me that those are your mom’s peanut butter balls in your hands.”

“They are.” I hand her the container and follow her into the industrial apartment. The polished cement floors are cold against my feet the moment I kick off my heels.

She grins and puts the container in the fridge. “Those are going to be good after a couple beers and working on the site.”

“Thank you so much again.” I drop down onto the burgundy crushed-velvet couch.

She follows me over with a couple bottles of beer, sitting cross-legged beside me. “How was dealing with Grayson today?”

“Well, he insisted on keeping the curtains in his office open, and since I haven’t gotten any to hide my side of the wall yet, I was stuck looking at his stupid face all day.”

She cackles and drags the coffee table closer, lifting the section that pops up higher. “You mean you spent the day thinking about how close the two of you used to be in college.”

“No.” I lean forward, peering at the initial designs on the screen as she opens the laptop. “Those look amazing! I really love this one.”

Paloma scrolls through a few more designs, all of them clean and simple. She stops on one of them. “I thought this one would probably be your favorite.”

The base color of the scream is beige, with a clean font in a deep black. The newspaper name is written at the top in a decorative font, but it’s still easy to read.

Though the pictures are nice and big, they don’t take up the majority of the space like some of the other designs. The headline story is still visible on the screen, and if you scroll down, there are two more stories that would be visible straight from the home screen.

I nod and point to one of the little icons on the sidebar. “What’s that supposed to be?”

Paloma bounces in her seat as she brings up another design. “I think you should bring back a comic section and a crossword section, and I think you should be able to do them online, too.”

“You’re a genius!”

I lean in, looking at the designs for those pages. They look like something straight out of one of the company’s old newspapers.

I pull out my phone and make a couple notes. “Comics could go back to being in the Sunday paper.”

“Does that mean you’re going to get them to go back to having a Sunday paper?”

I nod. “It was one of those papers that everyone of all ages used to look forward to.”

“How many countries is the paper even in anymore?” Paloma switches to one of the mock-ups for a crossword.

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