Page 78 of And Now, Back to You

“You sure you don’t want to do this together?”

I shake my head. I’m not interested in drawing out my humiliation by having Jackson bear witness to whatever this call with Keith will be. Keith already thinks the worst of me. I can only imagine what he has in store.

I fix a smile on my face that’s only eighty-three percent forced. “I can handle a single conversation on my own, Jackson.”

“I know you can. I just—”

I stare at him, arching my eyebrow. “You just?”

“I don’t want you to apologize,” he tells me with another bone-deep sigh, still hovering in the doorway. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I know that.”

Except it feels like I did. Maybe not to Jackson, or Gianna—who has been texting me motivational support memes for the duration of the afternoon—or Mark, even. But it feels like I’ve done something to let myself down. Made the wrong choice. Or wandered too far down a path that leads nowhere good.

Still, I repeat it to myself like a mantra while the phone rings. You didn’t do anything wrong. One more with feeling when Keith answers and barks a short, agitated hello.

I press my forehead against the glass of the window, letting the cold sink into me.

“Keith,” I say. “I’m returning your call.”

His silence is loaded. He waits just long enough to have me on edge. Something I’m sure he practiced between all those missed calls.

“Been busy out there, have you?”

Another slice against all my tender parts. My shoulders hike up to my ears. You don’t have to explain, I remind myself. You didn’t do anything wrong.

“Mark said there were some technical difficulties with the broadcast earlier. I understand there was a situation with my mic, but I—”

“It’s fine,” he interrupts.

I stare at my reflection in the window, blinking. “Um . . . what?”

“I said it’s fine,” he repeats. A loud slurp, likely from whatever frozen Dunkin’ drink he sent a poor intern to retrieve. “Can’t say I’m shocked, Delilah.”

“What do you mean?”

His laugh is like an oil slick. “We can always count on you to be our good-time girl, can’t we?”

With one sentence, Keith has diminished my confidence to the size of a thimble. This is exactly what I was afraid of. Keith didn’t need to lift a finger to humiliate me. I made myself the butt of the joke, all on my own.

“What you heard,” I try to explain, reaching for something that’ll make sense, “it isn’t what it sounded like. Jackson just—”

“Delilah,” Keith interrupts. “Do you think I actually care?”

I’m confused, floundering ten feet behind this conversation while Keith breaststrokes ahead.

“No,” I answer, my voice faint. “No,” I repeat, louder. “There’s nothing to care about because it was a mistake, and it won’t happen again.”

I hate that I sound like I’m about to cry. The last thing I want is for Keith to have any sort of satisfaction that his opinion matters to me. But I’ve always struggled with buttoning up my own emotions. I’m an open book, a bleeding heart. Usually, I’m proud of that fact.

Just not right now.

“Frankly, Delilah, I don’t care what you do or don’t do out there. I was concerned, at first, about your professionalism. But I realized something while I was waiting for you to return my call.”

I almost don’t want to ask. “What’s that?”

“You’re a puff piece, at best. The expectations for this series were pretty low across the board. It’s no skin off my back if you fail to meet them.”