Palm Beach by Mary Adkins

Author:Mary Adkins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harper
Published: 2021-08-03T00:00:00+00:00

After dinner, Rebecca left to relieve Samantha, and Mickey stayed on to clean up and shut down the house for the night.

Waiting up for him, she’d wondered if she’d gone too far. But no self-respecting journalist would have sat there and not taken the opportunity to talk to London Fry (since Mr. Stone himself wouldn’t answer any questions) about his determination to orchestrate the demise of journalism.

As it sunk in that she might have lost both of their jobs, however, she started to second-guess her doggedness at the table. One person she hadn’t been thinking about during that conversation had been Mickey. She had a fun little side project going with Mrs. Stone, but he was the one who had to work there sixteen hours a day.

The saying was “don’t shit where you eat,” but she’d shat where he ate.

Just before eleven, he came in, dropping his keys on the counter without looking at her on their new sofa—a plush, creamy sectional from Restoration Hardware with enormous, dream cushions. It had cost three months’ rent.

“Sorry,” she said. “I got carried away.”

He sighed and opened the fridge. “Do we have anything to eat?”

“Frozen pizza?” she said. Usually, these days, he ate leftovers at work with Paul. “You didn’t eat at work?”

He shook his head. “I just needed to get out of there.”

“Here,” she said, going to the kitchen and opening the freezer to pull out the pizza. I’ll throw this in. Sit down. You’ve been on your feet all night.”

He reached for her, pulling her into a hug, which surprised her, but then he groaned and pulled back, squeezing her shoulders with his hands.

“Why did you do that?” he said through clenched teeth.

“I got carried away,” she said again, setting the oven to 425 degrees. “Do you think I’m fired?”

“Oh, you’re definitely fired,” Mickey said. At least he was laughing. “The only question is whether I am, too.”

“No way. You aren’t going to be let go just because I got a little real.”

“You accused my boss of destroying American journalism. In front of his employees. And his wife.”

“Yeah. I could have said so much worse, though,” Rebecca said. “That’s the irony. I didn’t even mention how loss of local reporting undermines democracy. And how because of them, fake news from Russian bots polarizes the country and so he’s the reason America is dying. See? I held back.”

“Rebecca, you were their dinner guest.”

“I’m still me. They knew what they were getting. I’m not going to turn myself off just because someone has nineteen more zeros in his bank account than I do.”

“They were serving you wine that cost thirty-five thousand dollars a bottle.”

“I didn’t ask for that. I didn’t really like any of those wines. I wouldn’t have paid more than fourteen dollars for any of them. Except maybe the first.”

He shook his head.

“I’m going to bed and hope I have a job tomorrow,” he said, heading to the bedroom and shutting the door behind him.

“You don’t want the pizza?” she called after him.

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