Page 26 of Silver Fox's Secret Baby

I started Infinium because I love stories. Not the stories of my own life. Those could stand to be better. But humans need stories. They need escape. Action movies to make us feel like heroes, romances to make us feel like lovers, philosophical mumbo jumbo to make us feel like we might have brain cells that haven’t melted from staring at screens. A good story reaches right into your soul and stirs it up.

All the work Infinium produces now, though, is bullshit.

I know I have a hit by how loud my bullshit meter goes off.

It’s sad, isn’t it?

“We can even work on making it ‘woke’,” the showrunner says. I can hear the air quotes. “Get a consultant for things like that.”

Now, I sigh. Can’t help it. White showrunners really think they can catch up with modern standards of creation by hiring someone to do the work for them. “Abel River, huh?” I lean on the windowsill and rest my head on the glass. “Sure. Why not.” I’m going to regret a flippant yes. But my mind is bouncing all around, in five different places at once.

“Really?” the man’s voice nearly squeaks. “I mean–wow, I thought–”

“Send the documents over to my assistant. We’ll get an in-person meeting in the books. I want to see your storyboard. And I want a few more people attached to the project before we move forward. Get something in writing from Tina Tharman.”

“G-got it. Got it,” the showrunner replies hurriedly and then rattles off a slew of thanks yous before I politely say goodbye and hang up.

The moment I pull the phone away from my ear and am left in the silence of my office, my body completely relaxes.

This has been the norm lately. I’m not present for the work I do like I was only three weeks ago. Now, my head is always split in half. One part focused on where I need to be, and the other part always flushed with thoughts of Harley Solace.

I thought time would alleviate my desire for her, but it hasn’t. The ache inside me remains. My body yearns for her at all hours of the day. Is this a curse for betraying my friend? Am I going to be cursed with desiring Harley for all of eternity, with never being sated by the thought of another woman?

Perhaps in the scheme of things it hasn’t really been that long. But I’m nearly fifty years old. I don’t have the excuse of youth and immaturity. I’ve been around the block and seen a lot.

A young woman shouldn’t completely throw my world off its axis.

And yet, Harley has.

A knock at the door interrupts my thoughts. Pity, I wanted to revel in self-loathing a bit longer. “Come in!”

The door flies open and in comes my head of PR, Resa Blackwell. She’s got her thick black hair piled on her head like a beehive and her black-framed glasses dwarf her face. “Do you mind if we start our meeting early today, Grant?”

“Not at all.”

Resa buzzes in, followed by her assistants, Carlyle and Kim, both of whom started as interns at USC and now have full-time positions on the PR team. I sometimes mix them up. They have the same generic long, bleach-blonde hair, carry the same luxury purses, and drink the same colored smoothies. They’re quintessential California.

The four of us settle into the seating area, the three of them clumped together on the long leather sofa and I settled back into a dark blue wing chair.

“First thing’s first, we need to address how we are going to deal with the nightmare that is Flick Harrison.”

I run my hands over my face. “Right, yes. Of course.”

Flick Harrison, star of one of our most lucrative shows, has just been embroiled in a humongous scandal that includes an affair, tax evasion, and illegal street racing.

“We’ve already addressed our audiences with our original statement, but now we have to start massaging out the details of keeping Flick on the show as long as he doesn’t have to serve any time,” Resa explains. “Everyone likes to play morality police nowadays and forgets that pretty much every actor in the fifties was an adulterer with a second family,” she says with a burbling laugh.

I love Resa because she makes situations like this feel like tiny sparks rather than fires. It’s just what happens when you run an entertainment conglomerate. Things are constantly going to shit.

“Now, I’ve put an embargo on Flick doing any press. And I know his lawyers are instructing him to do the same,” Resa continues. “But our audiences are starting to get antsy. We need to spotlight the rest of our talent and programming. And while marketing is doing a great job on that, we need to come up with some more community-based ways to get audiences reengaged with us.”

“And not in an internet troll way,” Kim says with a twist of her lips.

“Right…” I trail off, leaning back in my chair and hardening my brow.

“We want to give people a peek behind the curtain of Infinium. Make them feel like they know us better and know what we stand for,” Resa says. “Without letting them know what’s really going on behind the scenes.”

“So, pop-ups, community events, interviews–” Carlyle begins to rattle off.

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