Page 71 of The Refusal

“Stressed?” I finish. “I’ve got a problem.” My heart claws up the back of my throat.

“What’s up?”

“There’s a photograph of Janus and me online.”

Of all people, Kate will understand. She shares some of my paranoia about career dreams evaporating.

“Let me find an office,” she says, and her shoes click heavily on the floor, ringing phones providing a background clamor. A swing door whooshes and thuds.

“Are you busy? I don’t want …”

A pause.

“No. I’m okay at the moment.”

“You save lives on a minute-by-minute basis, and this problem is not the same level of crisis as that.”

She snorts at me down the phone. “Quiet, you. Stop with the feeling guilty about calling me at work. We’re not busy at the moment: I can take five.”

Another door opens and clicks shut, and the hospital noises disappear. I can hear fingers tapping on a computer keyboard.

“Okay, I’m online,” she says, blowing out a breath. “Site?”

“Gazette,gossip section.” I chew my nail, pick at a hole in my jeans.

She hums a little into the phone. “Right. Let me see … Got it. Cute picture of the pair of you. Let me read.” The line is quiet for a minute. “Okay,” she eventually says, “I presume you’re freaking out on about fifty different levels right now.”

“Oh, God,yes, Kate. Jesus.”

“I hate the way newspapers write about women,” she grumbles. “‘Looking after him’ indeed. Goddammit. He runs a billion-dollar company. Hopefully by now—because, you know, he’s an adult—he can take care of himself.”

A strangled laugh huffs out of me, and the fluttering in my chest that started in the elevator eases a bit. I would hug her if I wasn’t on the other side of Manhattan. She’s given up her precious emergency time for this. She gets how women are judged; she gets the sting in the article for me.

“What are you planning to do?” she says.

“God, I don’t know. All I’m doing right now is kicking myself for getting involved with him in the first place.”

She hums a little more. “I think that horse has bolted now, Jo. I know you: Don’t give yourself a hard time about something you can’t do anything about. You can’t go back.”

I nod into the phone despite the fact she can’t see me. This is a typical Kate response: practical, clear, shutting down avenues that would cause me to spin my wheels.

“Whatever happens, you want to try to control this.” I can almost hear the cogs whirring. “Even if this dies away, being with Janus is inevitably going to involve scrutiny, exposure of one form or another. You have to decide if he’s worth it, but you also must take charge of it, too. You can think about whether he’s worth it, and the effect on you and your career, later. Put that aside for now. First things first: Find someone to control this for you.”

Caltech. It’s the first word that pops into my head. And although that wasn’t personal, their PR person, Carly, handled everything, and deflected the heat in an almost magical way.

“You’re right. God, you’re right. I should have prepared, done something before this photo got out there. I knew this was a potential problem.”

“Stop giving yourself a hard time. No one thinks about this kind of thing until it happens; otherwise, you’d tie yourself in knots trying to cover a thousand different contingencies. Like me,” she mutters the last two words under her breath.

“I’ll get on it.” The lump in my throat rises up again and I can hardly speak.

“Let me know how it goes. I’ll let you press on and sort. You want to catch a drink later? Come over to the apartment and talk it through a bit more? I could come to you?”

“Oh, God, would you? Would you come to my place? I don’t want to …”

“Perfect. Girls’ night in. I’ll bring wine and we can order pizza. Should I see if Liss is up for it?”

Both of them. I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding; this is just what I need to get through this day.

---