Anger shoots through my veins and I reach in the banker’s box and pull out a fat black mug with I heart NY printed on the side. I pull back my arm and fling it as hard as I can at the wall outside Heath’s door.
“Fuck you!” I scream as the mug explodes and shards fly. “Fuck your fucking gossip rag!”
I grab another mug printed with a Mike Wallace quote: If there is anything that is important to a reporter, it is integrity. It’s credibility.
What a joke.
Heath appears in his doorway and I hurl the mug. It shatters on the wall inches from his head. He rears back from the doorframe with a yelp, his eyes wide.
“Fuck your stories that don’t matter! Fuck stealing secrets! This is not what I signed up for!”
“Stella! Get out of here!” Neil hisses, then ducks behind a cubicle partition in case I turn on him, too.
But I’m all out of mad. I leave the banker’s box with the rest of my mugs and badges, grab my purse from its hook, and storm out of the newsroom. I jab my finger on the elevator button and pray I can escape the building before security gets its act together.
I’m in luck. I push through the revolving door and the morning heat nearly flattens me on the sidewalk. I want to cry, I want to call Tyler and beg him to make it all better, but I can’t do that to him again. I get into one disaster after another and he keeps rescuing me.
A thick slice of pride makes me want to nurse my wounds and hide for a while. So I go to a bar.
Comforting. I order two shots of vodka and then a beer, just to have a drink to babysit while I’m thinking. It’s early and the bar is fairly empty except for a handful of solitary drinkers and a group of men I assume are just off the night shift.
I scroll through news articles on my phone and the horror of what’s happening to Tyler finally sinks in. Dirty details of his life are laid bare in an exclusive, tell-all piece featuring Kim Archer in Us Weekly, with the rest of the gossip and entertainment media parroting the juiciest bits of that interview.
Right about the same time I moved to New York a year ago, Tyler had an affair with Kim, an ex-model turned real estate agent. He was twenty-four. She was twenty-eight. In the interview, she describes in excruciating detail how close they were. She claims Tyler pursued her, romanced her, charmed her. She says she couldn’t help but fall for him.
It didn’t last long—they were only photographed together at two public appearances, but quotes from her back then appeared in a few gossip sources where she claimed they were “made for each other” and hinted that things were “getting serious fast.”
My gut burns with jealousy but I’m relieved that Tyler didn’t make similar statements to the press.
I order another shot and read the rest of the story—their fallout, in which Kim says Tyler suddenly disappeared, and then her realization that she was pregnant.
I zoom in on the photos of Kim Archer’s three-month-old daughter Isla. The baby girl is breathtaking, with fine strands of dark hair like Tyler’s and bright, blue-gray eyes. Kim clutches her proudly, and the caption is sickening: “All I want is for Tyler Walsh to take responsibility for our baby girl.”
Kim is dressed in a thin white blouse, her big blonde hair and long lashes looking wholesome and gorgeous and believable. Is it possible she’s telling the truth? Or is she just trying to shake Tyler down for money?
Deep in the article Kim reveals that she went to the media after repeated attempts to “make things right” with Tyler, which I think might be code for the behind-the-scenes legal wrangling to extract money from him.
I stow my phone and order another shot. My brain is cloudy with vodka, replacing the adrenaline that spurted through my veins during my coffee mug attack on Heath. Throwing stuff at Heath is even starting to seem kind of reasonable. The bastard got less than he deserved.
A morning show is on the TV over the bar and I see a woman’s picture in a box over the presenter’s shoulder. Fuck. Kim Archer is following me. The anchor throws it to tape and Tyler and I are on screen, smiling plastic smiles at the premiere, pretending like everything’s OK.
I call for another shot and the bartender hesitates but then pours it for me. When I slam it down, he ventures, “You look pretty upset. You want someone to talk to?”
“No.” My answer is too harsh and he shrugs and turns back to unloading glasses from a tray. It’s a lie. I want desperately for someone to talk to who can make it all better.
I scroll through my phone contacts and try to focus on the too-bright display in this dark bar, wishing I could call Beryl. But I don’t want her to see me like this. I’m afraid she’d tell Gavin. I’m afraid he’d tell Tyler.
I keep scrolling. The shots have my head spinning and I’m sure Tyler will be angry that I reneged on my promise to stop drinking, so I bypass his name.
Violet. Her name is nearly last in my contacts and I touch the letters before I overthink it. She answers on the third ring, her voice soft and timid.
“Stella?”
I fucking hate caller ID. “Yeah. Hi. You want to come get wasted with me?”
Violet giggles nervously. “It’s ten-thirty in the morning.”
“It’s five o’clock somewhere.” I hiccup loudly and tell her the name of the bar and my words slur when I give her the address. “Get over here an’ cheer me up, m’kay? It’s been a shitty day.”
Violet tells me to sit tight and she hangs up. I arrange my face in a pretty-please smile, bat my lashes at the bartender and earn another I-can-handle-my-liquor shot that disappears down my throat immediately. The beer I first ordered remains untouched.
I turn off my phone, unwilling to let Violet call me back and change her mind. And I don’t want a call from The Indie Voice’s HR department or whoever’s going to give me shit about throwing mugs at Heath.
I didn’t throw them at him, exactly. Just at the wall. Near his head.
I shred my bar coaster and when the bartender won’t serve me more vodka, I sip my beer as the squishy feeling of booze softens my limbs and pollutes my brain. Compared to the sharp, high-definition feelings from last night with Tyler, this state is soft-focus and fuzzy, but I don’t want too clear a view on what I’m doing right now.
I’m going nowhere fast. Sitting in a bar with a bunch of strangers. Having a pity party. Getting fucked up. Chalk up another low for Stella.
I feel like a failure.
A pale hand touches my shoulder and I nearly fall off the barstool as I turn to see Violet, her flame-red hair and round cheekbones looking angelic in the dim funk of the bar.
“Wanna drink?” I hold up my glass in a cheers-like salute and slosh beer down my forearm. I lick it off my arm and grin at her. “Whadda ya wan?”
My tongue is thick in my mouth and I don’t seem to be pronouncing words quite right. Consonants are complicated.
Say that ten times fast.
Violet forces a smile and leans close to me. “Food, Stella. I’m starving. Haven’t had breakfast yet. Come with me. I’ll buy you pancakes.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Violet beckons the bartender and settles my bill, a process I watch with fascination. The green paper isn’t paper at all, you know. It’s cloth. But it feels like paper. So confusing.
I follow Violet out of the bar, holding her hand like a lost child. She coaches me over curbs and other wicked obstacles that are all over the place in New York.
My alcoholic haze clears slightly by the time we reach the diner and I dump myself into a padded booth, resting my head in my arms on the table. This feels good. I don’t think anyone would notice if I napped here for a while.