Love Like Yours

Then she rode the rest of the way to work, her mind spinning with excitement.

*

Keira entered the office to find it in a frenzy. The phone was ringing off the hook and people were dashing about all over the place. Elliot immediately came out of his office, grinning, and whisked Keira into the conference room before she had a chance to catch her breath.

She walked in and saw the room was full of people, all unfamiliar.

“Uh… hello,” she said, tentatively, as Elliot pulled a chair for her.

“Keira, so great to meet you,” a man with dark auburn hair said. “I’m Rick, your new publicist. This is Sally.” He gestured to a woman with thick curls and bright red lips sitting beside him. “She’s my assistant and will handle your timetable.”

“Nice to meet you,” Keira said, shaking each of their hands in turn. “And the rest of you guys?”

“The new editorial team!” Elliot beamed, throwing his arms wide.

“Team?” Keira asked. So far, Nina had been the editor of Viatorum, then as things had picked up she’d been given a group of interns to assist her, but nothing like this, nothing professional. Keira realized then that Nina wasn’t sitting around the table with the editorial team. “Where’s Nina?”

“At her desk,” Elliot said, simply, as though it were a bizarre question to ask.

“She’s still editor, isn’t she?” Keira asked. The thought of her friend being demoted because of her success sat uncomfortably with her.

“Of course,” Elliot said. “She’s editor of the print part of the magazine. Which now accounts for approximately ten percent of our sales. It’s all about the Internet team now, the only subscription model, the social media bite-sized articles. That’s what the new team will be handling from now on.”

Keira looked around at all the unfamiliar faces. It felt odd that Elliot hadn’t thought to promote any of the people they currently had in the office, or to have Nina oversee the online editing. It didn’t seem fair. She understood that Elliot would want the best and brightest money could afford, but she’d never have gotten to where she had if no one had taken a risk on her.

Rick cleared his throat then. “Shall we get down to business? Sally, can you give Keira the low-down on her publicity appearances?”

Sally seemed like an even more efficient version of Heather, if such a person could exist, because she appeared to have preempted Rick’s question and turned her attention to a neat notebook sitting in front of her.

“Breakfast New York, News 24, Daily Roundup, Good Morning USA, Helen & Phil In the Morning, Katie & Joe In the Evening…”

As she listened to Sally reel them off, Keira mind boggled. All these talk shows and new organizations wanted her on their shows? She started to feel sick with nerves.

“Are you good at press work?” Rick asked, once Sally was finally finished listing TV shows.

“I have no idea,” Keira told him. “I’ve never been on TV.”

“That’s fine,” Rick said in his no-nonsense business tone. “I’ll train you. Sally, book Keira onto Helen and Phil In the Morning for tomorrow. That’s a great teething show. The interviews are short and quite informal. And importantly, prerecorded. So it’s a win-win. We’ll move onto live once we’ve seen how you perform there, so Sally, get some afternoon slots lined up as well.”

Sally didn’t even waste a second. Her cell phone was up to her ear immediately, and within moments she was talking rapidly into it. Keira could hardly get her head around how quickly everything was moving. She looked over at Elliot, who was grinning like a Cheshire cat, clearly loving the sudden increase in pace and pressure. Unlike Keira, he thrived on this kind of stuff. But Keira couldn’t help but feel a bit like some kind of pawn in a game. She’d always felt like that with Viatorum, even when it had just been Elliot and Nina calling the shots. But now with this whole team of people scheduling her life it felt even worse.

“We’d better get to work on the training,” Rick said then, folding up his papers and standing.

“I have to leave at five tonight,” Keira suddenly blurted. “I have a shopping trip with my sister.”

Everyone stopped and looked at her suspiciously.

“Uh, yes, of course,” Rick said, smoothing his jacket down.

Keira could tell immediately that they’d been expecting her to give up all her free time, that they hadn’t even given a second thought to what she wanted. They’d all just assumed she’d go with the flow, follow their demands and have no input of her own.

Rick looked at Sally. “Make sure everything winds down by five.”

Sally nodded.

With the meeting adjourned, the new editorial team rose to leave the conference room. Keira was about to leave when Elliot addressed her.

“Can I have a moment of your time, Keira? Privately?”

Keira looked at Rick, who seemed to be the person calling the shots these days.

“Of course,” he said, even more stiffly than when she’d asked to leave at five.

Everyone left the room and it was just Elliot and Keira left.

“What’s up?” she asked him.

“I know this is all a bit much,” Elliot began. “Your article has caused a stir.”

“Among the staff?”

“Oh, I don’t care about that,” Elliot said. “Jealousy can be a great motivator. No, a stir amongst advertisers.”

“Oh,” Keira said, a little confused. “What do you mean?”

“I mean they’re willing to pay vast sums more to appear in Viatorum than they used to. I mean there’s a bidding war going on for advertising space in our next issue and on our website. We’re getting a lot of attention.”

“That’s great,” Keira said. “What’s that got to do with me?”

Elliot laughed. “You’re not very business savvy, are you, Keira?”

She shrugged. “There’s a reason I became a writer.”

“Good point.” He chuckled again. “Keira, I’m saying you’re bringing increased revenue into the company. So you deserve a reward.”

It began to sink in then. “You mean like a bonus?”

“That’s exactly what I mean.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a slip of paper, then slid it across the glass table top to Keira.

She picked it up. It was a check. Keira read the sum.

“Five hundred dollars? Thanks, that’ll pay for my new furniture.”

Elliot frowned. “No, Keira. It’s five thousand dollars.”

Keira almost choked. She did a double take at the check. Indeed, the figure was five thousand, not five hundred.

“Wow. Well… I don’t know what to say. Thanks so much.”