Page 44 of All the Right Words
Joey slapped his lap. ‘Right!’ he said, and he stood purposefully. ‘You’ve given me something to think about, Gina. So I’m going to go home and sit in the bath with a cup of Darjeeling and put on Ed Sheeran. See how I feel.’ And off went the writer of sexy bad boys to do just that.
‘There he goes,’ Harper smiled as Joey walked past the window with his head down, thoughtful. ‘A changed man.’
‘You think it’s gone in?’ Gina asked casually. She didn’t seem terribly invested in the result.
‘I do,’ Harper told her. ‘That was quite a thing to see.’
‘I only said what you said,’ Gina said, almost irritably.
‘And yet it came out so differently,’ Harper noted quickly.
Gina shook her head. ‘He wasn’t listening to you. Familiarity had bred, well, I don’t wanna say contempt…’
Harper laughed. ‘I think that’s a fine choice of word, actually.’
‘But me?’ Gina continued. ‘I’m an unknown quantity. He had no idea what I was going to say, so he was a lot more prepared to listen.’
‘That might have played a part, but it wasn’tjustthat. You know how to talk to another writer.’
‘I think we’re all better at talking to our own, aren’t we?’ Gina shrugged.
‘Yeah, that might be true about many jobs, but writers…’ Harper made the fifty-fifty hand gesture. ‘They spend a lot of time alone with their thoughts. It’s not always going to translate into incredible social skills,’ Harper said, realising as the words left her mouth that maybe this was a rude thing to express to an actual writer.
But Gina nodded. ‘Yeah. They’re a funny lot.’
Harper thought for a minute about whether she should say the thought on her mind. It was way too easy to put her foot in it with Gina. But somehow, the words came out anyway. ‘You just said writers were your own, and then you called them, ‘They.’
‘Iwasone. I’m not now. Tenses will get muddled,’ Gina explained evenly.
‘Do you everreallyquit something like that?’
Gina fixed Harper with a cynical look. Luckily, Harper had seen a few of those now, and they weren’t as intimidating as they’d once been. Harper might even say she’d grown slightly fond of her hard stare. ‘It’s not always a calling. Don’t romanticise it. If you quityourjob, would you feel like an agent for the rest of your life?’ Gina told her.
Harper shrugged and smiled. ‘Maybe.’
‘So, if you quit now and spent the next thirty years working as a train driver, you don’t think that’s how you’d come to see yourself?’
‘Can I be a ticket collector instead? I’d like to use the little hole punch thing all day,’ Harper asked with a small smile. Gina looked like she was trying not to return it. Harper rather liked to see that. ‘Actually, no never mind. I won’t be a ticket collector. Because that’s a false equivalency.’
Gina smiled as though enjoying Harper’s nerve. ‘Oh?’
‘Because that’s not quite whatyoudid, is it? You stayed in the literary industry. You didn’t change track. You’re writing adjacent.’ Harper felt she was playing a dangerous game here, pushing Gina. But she couldn’t help herself. She was such a strongbox of a human; it was impossible not to try fiddling with the lock.
‘It was a job, and it paid more than I already made. It wasn’t anything more than that,’ Gina told Harper.
‘That’s right, Michael hired you himself, didn’t he?’ Harper asked.
‘Yep,’ Gina replied quietly, her tone laden with sadness.
‘Any news about him, as he came up very organically?’ Harper said with a sly smile.
Gina snorted lightly. ‘I’m not the one to ask. I haven’t spoken to him.’
‘Has he tried to speak toyou?’ Harper asked.
‘Nope. I think he knows his bridges are well and truly burnt. He nearly took the place down and everyone’s jobs with it. He still might. Olivia said the lawsuit is with legal now. But I don’t think she thinks there’ll be much to recoup.’
‘Well, Brenda’s going great guns if that’s any reassurance.’
