SADIE
My boss was a crazy person. I didn’t know how I didn’t notice it sooner.
When I’d come into her office to give her my notice this morning, I had a plan: explain like a rational, mature adult how inappropriate it was that she rewrote my article and used my picture with Drew without his written permission. Instead of listening, she’d brushed off my concerns and gone on a twenty-minute rant about how Axel Everett snubbed her once back when he was on some Disney show as a preteen and her dad had arranged for her to get backstage passes to meet him. Apparently Eirin had been low-level stalking him for about ten years and it escalated to full-blown obsession more recently.
“A restraining order! I mean, who does that?” she shouted, pacing back and forth behind her desk.
“People who don’t want to be harassed?” I said from my seat in front of her desk.
“Does he not understand who I am?” She carried on as if I hadn’t spoken. “He can’t do this to me.”
“I don’t understand. How did you even get those pictures of his family? Or his address?”
“I hired a private investigator.” She said it as if it was the most obvious statement in the world. “It was clear I nailed the location, but you weren’t getting anywhere with the locals. I wasn’t about to let this opportunity slip through my fingers.”
“Then why even keep me on the assignment? If you already had someone following Everett?”
“I was hedging my bets. I thought you might surprise me. You did.” She stopped pacing. “Not in a good way. Even your relationship article was complete drivel.” She pointed her finger at me and waved it around in a circle. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I’m in love.”
She barked out a maniacal laugh. “Love? Love is a joke. You know what love will do to you? Love will ignore you. Love will send all your letters back unopened, go on to marry some skank from a Nickelodeon show, and then file a restraining order against you once you finally hunt him down again.”
I ignored her tirade. Eirin didn’t know the first thing about love. Love made you want to lift someone up, not burn their whole world down because they didn’t want you. That was a delusion.
“How did you get the picture you used when you rewrote my article?” This had been bothering me for days. I needed an answer before I left today.
She put her hands on her hips and stared at me. “Did you read any of the paperwork you signed when you started here?”
“Uh…” There was a lot of paperwork, and it was possible I skimmed some of it.
“You’ve been using a company phone. Everything is on the cloud. Your text conversations. Your pictures. All of it.”
“So, what? You’ve been reading all of my text conversations all these years?” I asked, outraged.
“Don’t flatter yourself.” She rolled her eyes. “I scan things from time to time. You’re usually too boring to bother with. But lately I kept a closer eye in case you managed to catch any shots of Axel and didn’t tell me immediately. Obviously, that didn’t happen. When I fixed your article, I remembered that picture of the two of you and I knew he’d bring in plenty of clicks. For god’s sake, you could cut a steak with those cheekbones.”
“You didn’t have permission to use that picture.”
She waved me off. “It was in the paperwork you clearly didn’t read. You gave blanket permission for the use of any images taken by you, or of you, stored on company-supplied equipment.”
“You don’t have Drew’s permission to use his image.” I gritted the words out through clenched teeth.
She flopped down in the chair behind her desk. “Ugh. You’re like an annoying little gnat. ‘Drew this, Drew that.’ Do you not understand that you were in the same town as Axel freaking Everett?”
I changed tactics. “You have to take down the article you rewrote about Drew. Or at minimum take down the picture of the two of us. He could come after you, legally speaking. And you’ve already got too much going on with the restraining order. And the whole thing with Lauren and the feds.” I was grasping at straws here.
Eirin’s eyes darkened. “Fine. I’ll take it down. It’s not like it’s driving that much traffic anyway. Not nearly as much as the piece on Axel.” She turned her attention to her laptop. “Was that all you came in here for?”
“No. I quit.”
She raised an eyebrow but didn’t move her gaze from her computer. “Great. That will save me the headache of firing you.”
I’d expected a bit more fanfare over quitting, but considering Eirin was knee-deep in Swimfan mode, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. “Okay. I’m going to go clear out my desk.”
“Leave the phone,” she shouted from her office as I walked out the door.
SADIE