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“The team isn’t one hundred percent sure yet—oh yeah, Aiden, I’m on the phone with her right now. Right, I’ll tell her. Aiden says hi!”
“Tell him I said hi, Mia. What else do you have to tell me?”
“She says hi! Anyway, they’re not positive, but the team think that he’s been using sockpuppet accounts online?—”
“What? Sock puppets?”
“Basically he’s been using social media profiles under fake names to slander us. Not just me, both of us.”
“Well. That’s not very nice of him, Mia.”
“No, it is not!” Mia agreed, and Harper could hear a door close on the other end of the line. She knew her phone volume was low enough for whatever followed to not be overheard, if confidentiality was needed.
Mia’s voice was low when she spoke, as if she was worried somebody might overhear her. “He looked at some of our earlier emails and saw the pet names and affection there. He was constantly asking about you, who else you were working with, and I didn’t tell him much so he must have gone digging for dirt.”
Harper was shaking. To think that somebody she had trusted had gone looking for... compromising information like that so he could slander her. She felt blindsided.
“What on earth is happening?” Harper asked both Mia and the sky, looking up to the cloudy space above her for answers and only finding gray clouds. “Why would he do something like this?”
“Money? Attention? Revenge? I have no idea, Harper, I really do not. What kind of guy gets so mad he was fired for stealing he starts slandering his ex-boss online? Honestly, I’m worried he might not be the only one.”
That seems like a bit of a long shot. Still, as Harper thought about it more, she realized that if she couldn’t trust one of her own assistants, who else could she not trust?
Mia seemed to be on the same page. “You’re pretty much the only person I fully trust at the moment, Harper. I know the guys at the label want the best for all of us, I do, but if one person was tempted to do it, who knows what else could happen?”
Harper did her best to avoid the implications of that. Professionalism. “Is the legal team on it?”
“They’re trying to track him down as we speak, and we have the press team on standby to do damage control in case he does anything. I mean, what else is he gonna say, tell people I’m a lesbian? As if they’ll be surprised?”
Gallows humor at its finest, there’s my—nope, there’s the Mia I know. My work friend Mia. Nothing else.
“Mia, I mean this in as nice a way as possible, you pretty much only write about being a lesbian and wanting to have sex with women. I love it, but it’s your thing, and I would guess there are only a handful of confused straight people out there who don’t understand.”
Mia laughed brightly, and despite herself, Harper wished she could bottle it for the bad days.
“Like I said, I trust you,” Mia said to Harper. “Honestly, I know your current signing is a big deal, but I really wish you were here. Communicating about this in person as things develop would be super useful, especially if... Oh my goodness, what if the offices are bugged!”
Harper felt bad for laughing, she really did, but it was so funny. “What are they gonna call it, t-shirtgate? Mia, I know you’re worried. Maybe you should go home for the day, get away from the stress. The team know what they’re doing. Look, I’m going to be back in town in another few weeks, can you hold out for me?”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. “I guess I can, Harper. It would be easier for me if you were here, but I understand, really, I do. I’ll see you the next time you’re in town and I’ll text you with any updates.”
I wish I could go, Harper thought suddenly, feeling a magnetic pull through the phone as she said goodbye to Mia. She wasn’t alone out in LA, not anymore, but it made sense that she had wanted Harper around when things got tough. As her representation, she had information that was useful, and as her… friend, it would be comforting to have somebody around she could trust.
She was completely torn. She would have the opportunity to head back to LA early, but she was unsure about taking it. She needed a level head. She needed someone who would tell it to her straight, no pun intended.
Scrolling through her contacts, Harper called Deborah. She knew she would pick up.
“Harp! How you doing? How’s New York?”
“I’m in pieces and New York is still cold, Deb. I need some help.”
“You know, we can never just go for coffee anymore, you’re always needing help. You have enough money to get a decent therapist, you know!”
“Yeah, but a therapist can’t give me updates on how Mia’s doing… though I suppose if they could that’d be concerning. Besides, what would we talk about?”
“We could talk about anything else! Anything at all!”
“Deb, please. I can’t talk about it but shit’s going down at the label and I need to know how she is. I’m worried about her.”
